Game idea thread: share your ideas here!

[shponglefan]

This is designed to be a companion thread to the Beginning Game Programming Course thread.  We can share and discuss different ideas here.

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To start off this thread, I've got an idea for a shmup-style game with additional space trader elements (ala Elite).  One of the things I am trying to figure out is basic control scheme.  My ideas are:

1) Basic Asteroids-style control (thrust + left/right rotation): 3 buttons
2) Asteroids-style control with additional thrust directions: 4-6 buttons
3) Combination mouse + keyboard style control (i.e. mouse for rotation/aiming + keyboard for thrust)

For the latter option, I was wondering if it's possible to adopt an FPS style control scheme to a 2D shmup.  I've never played such a game and was wondering if anyone here has?  Any thoughts on these options?  Any good examples of different 2D space game control schemes?

I've got a basic working prototype with the Asteroids style control; once I get more options in place I might post them here so people can try them and give feedback.

[Le Chuck]

Shinobi skinned to look like Big Trouble in Little China - some levels you play as Jack Burton and some you play as Wang. 

[yotsuya]

Shinobi skinned to look like Big Trouble in Little China - some levels you play as Jack Burton and some you play as Wang.

You're playing with whose Wang??

[wp34]

The check is in the mail.

[lordnacho]

Shinobi skinned to look like Big Trouble in Little China - some levels you play as Jack Burton and some you play as Wang.

I would def play this

Levels 1-5, the 3 gods, Lo Pan, then the beast dude.  Level 6, have to refight them all one after the other(god i hate games that do that)

[Vigo]

To start off this thread, I've got an idea for a shmup-style game with additional space trader elements (ala Elite).  One of the things I am trying to figure out is basic control scheme.  My ideas are:

1) Basic Asteroids-style control (thrust + left/right rotation): 3 buttons
2) Asteroids-style control with additional thrust directions: 4-6 buttons
3) Combination mouse + keyboard style control (i.e. mouse for rotation/aiming + keyboard for thrust)

For the latter option, I was wondering if it's possible to adopt an FPS style control scheme to a 2D shmup.  I've never played such a game and was wondering if anyone here has?  Any thoughts on these options?  Any good examples of different 2D space game control schemes?

I've got a basic working prototype with the Asteroids style control; once I get more options in place I might post them here so people can try them and give feedback.

I think asteroids controls is the way to go. And am interested in what you have in mind for additional controls. I think there were two additionals to controls on the EV game I mentioned. One was a 180 spin from your trajectory, which was used as a slowdown, or reverse measure. The other was a homing, you could target you opponent or a planet, and then a button would point your ship directly at them.

Maybe start with only one main thruster, then have optional thrusters that you can purchase from money you get from trading. Or maybe a salvage function, that you can steal parts from ships you destroyed.

[nitrogen_widget]

A Golf Game that uses a trackball natively.

[Generic Eric]

A Golf Game that uses a trackball natively.

+1
I've got 3 4" trackball assemblies that need a purpose

[Vigo]

OK, here is my current #1 idea. I have others, but I think this one seems very fun.

When I was a kid, I play a lot of a game called High Noon on my C64.



Simple shooting game, bad guys would come onscreen and either aim to shoot you down, or rob the town of its money, booze and women. At the end of each round, there is a showdown for bonus points.

I think the setting is perfect for a beginner. Static background, simple graphics. I could focus on gameplay mechanics. The big difference I would make is make it a bit more madcap Robotron style. I am thinking going dual joystick and have the enemies pour in quickly. Speed things up and devote more of the screen to playfield.




Once I get that bit down, I plan on adding a few new elements. Keep in mind, this is the "Feature Creep" section. Not gonna be my focus until I figure out the basics.

• Foreground Objects - Both as a shield and as obstacles.
   
• Showdown Deluxe - A more innovative showdown at the end. Don't know how just yet.
  
  
• Wounded mode. Something Like you can get shot once, but you start limping and slowing down. Shot twice and you die.
  
  
• Sim element. Like your performance determines the town population. Like paperboy, you do good, the town grows, If your town gets looted of its money and women, the town dies. It would be represented by the number of buildings in the background.
  
  
• Functional buildings I would take that sim element another step and have the buildings do things. Like if a leathersmith building is in town, you can buy armor, if an apothecary is in town, you can buy medicine to heal. Have short bursts of time between waves where your sheriff can go in and shop. I want shopping as frantic as shooting. Go to the door, you bought the item.
  
  
• Salary. You are sheriff, you make money for your performance. Bandits steal your money, you can't buy anything. Salary will go towards  the above mentioned items. Maybe also work out things like donating salary to help the town grow, or putting your money into your score, like Hatris.
  
  
• Arsonists. They come up and try to burn down the buildings. You either kill them early, or you have to go get water to put out the fire. Fail to do either, the building burns down.
  
  
• 2 players?At this point, 2 players starts to sound appealing. One player can work on keeping your valuables safe, the other can be the exterminator.
  
  

         
         

[yotsuya]

OK, here is my current #1 idea. I have others, but I think this one seems very fun.

When I was a kid, I play a lot of a game called High Noon on my C64.



Simple shooting game, bad guys would come onscreen and either aim to shoot you down, or rob the town of its money, booze and women. At the end of each round, there is a showdown for bonus points.
 

Sweet! I'd play that! Bonus points if you can incorporate the Booze and the Wimmin.

[Vigo]

Saucy Sue's Saloon will be brimmin with wimmin and drinkin ripe for the takin.

[yotsuya]

Saucy Sue's Saloon will be brimmin with wimmin and drinkin ripe for the takin.

Will we have the ability to stampede cattle through the Vatican?

[Vigo]

Saucy Sue's Saloon will be brimmin with wimmin and drinkin ripe for the takin.

Will we have the ability to stampede cattle through the Vatican?

KINKY!!!

[eds1275]

One of the ideas I had for a basic game was called Battle Bus. I had the idea a long time ago actually. The programming is easy. Basically there are 2 guys sitting on top of a bus that drives around a bad guy stronghold. Big mansion, castle, etc etc. The guys on top of the bus have giant guns, and you shoot the baddies coming out with a lightgun. Once a section is clear, the bus goes around to the next part. I would do it in 3d with toon shading, and raycast the position of the lightgun cursor to the end of the big gun, and make the guy with the gun face that direction.

The thing that has been stopping me from getting a start on it (besides to many projects already) is Unity only allows for one mouse, but I hear that might change with the release of Unity 5 last december that I'm still waiting on

[lordnacho]

Thoughts on this? 
Wizard kid(I heard Harry Potter was popular), magic wand with various powers that affect the enemies or objects you target.  Thinking xbox controller, so move around with left controls, A to jump, B to focus/lock on an enemy, then you can move the thumbstick to move it or throw it.  Or maybe combo with other buttons to do other effects, like shrink(and then can jump on them to squash them) or make them bigger and try to explode them. 

I'm not even thinking past these mechanics yet, not sure if 2d scrolling or something like Nightmare in the Dark.

Feel like this is something I could just get coding with, not worry about artwork at all(which I lack the skills in).  And can slowly add in features, enemies, levels, spell upgrades.

[Generic Eric]

I'd like to take this moment to suggest a sub forum again.  Neat ideas are brewing here.

[RoyalScam]

Edit: Should start at 6:36, I must've screwed up
http://youtu.be/yrexEsjnaUE?t=6m36s

In reality though, I've always wanted to do a ( not sure what it's called ) top down adventure game.  Where the main character pretty much stays screen center and the world moves around him, like Zelda sort of.  I've read a book on Commodore 64 programming years ago, Compute's Machine Language Routines for the Commodore 64/128, and typed in some sample code called BIGMAP but I've never followed through with it. I think this what I'd eventually like to accomplish.

Regards,
Scam

[eds1275]

In reality though, I've always wanted to do a ( not sure what it's called ) top down adventure game.  Where the main character pretty much stays screen center and the world moves around him, like Zelda sort of.  I've read a book on Commodore 64 programming years ago, Compute's Machine Language Routines for the Commodore 64/128, and typed in some sample code called BIGMAP but I've never followed through with it. I think this what I'd eventually like to accomplish.

Well, after this course may I recommend running through the Roguelike tutorial for Unity?

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/2d-roguelike

In fact, the entire Learn section of their website is pretty rad, but mostly the tutorial section:

http://unity3d.com/learn

[BorgDog]

Had a game idea pop into my head last night.  a simple vertical schump along the level of xevious or that gen but tentatively titled Assimilation where you play as a borg cube and mission is to assimilate all of course.  Have ongoing fights with small spacecraft, boss Enterprise and space station battles, scrolling star field background, weapons consisting of phasers and photons and such although I believe they used a tractor beam a lot hmmm...  much ideas to develop.

[shponglefan]

I think asteroids controls is the way to go. And am interested in what you have in mind for additional controls. I think there were two additionals to controls on the EV game I mentioned. One was a 180 spin from your trajectory, which was used as a slowdown, or reverse measure. The other was a homing, you could target you opponent or a planet, and then a button would point your ship directly at them.

Maybe start with only one main thruster, then have optional thrusters that you can purchase from money you get from trading. Or maybe a salvage function, that you can steal parts from ships you destroyed.

Thanks for the feedback.  I like these ideas, particularly the homing idea.  I think the upgrade idea is good too, as it would allow the player to ease into more complicated controls rather than getting everything up front.

At any rate, I'm still working out the basics physics/motion vectors and trying to come up with something that is reasonably smooth and controllable.  It's proving more challenging than I thought it would.

[shponglefan]

Thoughts on this? 
Wizard kid(I heard Harry Potter was popular), magic wand with various powers that affect the enemies or objects you target.  Thinking xbox controller, so move around with left controls, A to jump, B to focus/lock on an enemy, then you can move the thumbstick to move it or throw it.  Or maybe combo with other buttons to do other effects, like shrink(and then can jump on them to squash them) or make them bigger and try to explode them. 

I'm not even thinking past these mechanics yet, not sure if 2d scrolling or something like Nightmare in the Dark.

Feel like this is something I could just get coding with, not worry about artwork at all(which I lack the skills in).  And can slowly add in features, enemies, levels, spell upgrades.

That sounds pretty cool.  I really like the idea of being able to toss enemies around; kinda like a 2D version of the gravity gun from Half-Life 2.

Nightmare in the Dark-style would probably be the easiest to start out with.  You could work up to making it a scroller if you wanted.

[shponglefan]

OK, here is my current #1 idea. I have others, but I think this one seems very fun.

When I was a kid, I play a lot of a game called High Noon on my C64.



Simple shooting game, bad guys would come onscreen and either aim to shoot you down, or rob the town of its money, booze and women. At the end of each round, there is a showdown for bonus points.

I think the setting is perfect for a beginner. Static background, simple graphics. I could focus on gameplay mechanics. The big difference I would make is make it a bit more madcap Robotron style. I am thinking going dual joystick and have the enemies pour in quickly. Speed things up and devote more of the screen to playfield.

Sounds like a good idea to start out with.  As you say, it would be pretty simple graphics-wise and you'd have all the basics for game mechanics: player movement, shooting projectiles, collision detection and AI.

[melvinbates]

Hmm, I've been racking my brain trying to come up with a game, so far I think it would be fun to have a robotronesque space game where you pick up some mcGuffin or another and possibly be able to get power-ups etc.  Perhaps have the play area be able to scroll not sure whether I would like it to wrap, be finite or infinite at this point (thoughts?).

[Generic Eric]

Hmm, I've been racking my brain trying to come up with a game, so far I think it would be fun to have a robotronesque space game where you pick up some mcGuffin or another and possibly be able to get power-ups etc.  Perhaps have the play area be able to scroll not sure whether I would like it to wrap, be finite or infinite at this point (thoughts?).

Simple is better.  If you can get your robotron dude to move in the box. Keep a 100 second timer (if timer counts down to 0 and all of the threats are not eliminated then death), keep track of score. *this floor is lava level* *bezerker walls of death* but I'm already adding too much.  Minimum Viable Product and that.

Personally, I like short games that get to the point and are easy to pick up, hard to put down. Quarter Pushers. I'd like to be part of a group that gets their games together and puts them on a 60 in 1 type of board.

A ragtag group of arcade fans turned cab restorers/builders turned indie dev that released their own multi game board. That would be a pinnacle achievement.  I'm a bit of a dreamer though.

[eds1275]

A ragtag group of arcade fans turned cab restorers/builders turned indie dev that released their own multi game board. That would be a pinnacle achievement.  I'm a bit of a dreamer though.
[/quote]

Well, one of the good things is that code can be shared. I've already written code to keep track of credits, and although it's built using the unity package instead of the system package it could be easily converted. If each person were take care of a little bit of the housekeeping functions it would take some of the load off.

[yotsuya]

A ragtag group of arcade fans turned cab restorers/builders turned indie dev that released their own multi game board. That would be a pinnacle achievement.  I'm a bit of a dreamer though.

Funny you mention that, Eric. I wonder if the games we write could be squeeze on to this: https://basementhobbies.wordpress.com/uzebox-jamma/

[Vigo]

That would be pretty darn awesome. 

[Generic Eric]

A ragtag group of arcade fans turned cab restorers/builders turned indie dev that released their own multi game board. That would be a pinnacle achievement.  I'm a bit of a dreamer though.

Well, one of the good things is that code can be shared. I've already written code to keep track of credits, and although it's built using the unity package instead of the system package it could be easily converted. If each person were take care of a little bit of the housekeeping functions it would take some of the load off.

I look forward to better understanding the challenges involved in incorporating code originally compiled in another language.

A ragtag group of arcade fans turned cab restorers/builders turned indie dev that released their own multi game board. That would be a pinnacle achievement.  I'm a bit of a dreamer though.

Funny you mention that, Eric. I wonder if the games we write could be squeeze on to this: https://basementhobbies.wordpress.com/uzebox-jamma/

That is a cool unit.  Thanks for sharing the link.  If what we code from this class won't run on that^{Surely it won't, as there is no mention of XNA}, I'm sure we could learn how to code to that board or if not to another board just like it.


That is a way off, but it sounds like a thing worth pursuing.

[shponglefan]

This is a quick demo of the 2D space game I'm prototyping.  I implemented mouse controls for aiming so I wanted to test it out.  It works okay, but the movement physics still need a lot of work.

Spaceship sprite was obtained from Opengameart.org.

[Generic Eric]

This is a quick demo of the 2D space game I'm prototyping.  I implemented mouse controls for aiming so I wanted to test it out.  It works okay, but the movement physics still need a lot of work.

Spaceship sprite was obtained from Opengameart.org.

Nice.  Do you have prior experience or is this from the lesson plan.  I've only watched one video from week 2

[shponglefan]

^ I have prior programming experience, although that was mostly during my youth.  I haven't done much real programming for the last 10-15 years.  And C# and XNA/MonoGame are completely new to me.  Mostly I'm relying on the course material plus whatever other tutorials I can find.

[Vigo]

  You got talent. That looks good.

[shponglefan]

Thanks Vigo!  I'm having a lot of fun with this so far!

Here's another video, this time with projectiles added.  Right now they start out in the center of the player sprite, but I'll add code at some point to do a proper offset so it looks like they are coming from the guns.

[shponglefan]

Btw, for anyone who is interested, I've been following a lot of the tutorials at these sites:

http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/xna-tutorials
http://www.monogame.net/documentation/?page=Tutorials

For example, the projectile code I added was largely based on this MonoGame tutorial, albeit modified to allow for 360 degree shooting.

[Generic Eric]

Wow.  I need to get on it.

[lordnacho]

Good stuff.  Can't wait to look at shooting and then collision detection.  Currently on jumping now

Update: never thought the logic behind jumping was so complicated

[eds1275]

Wellhere is some exciting news that began brewing yesterday but I waited to post until now because I didn't have all the facts.

UNREAL ENGINE IS NOW FREE

UNITY IS NOW FREE

tada! Unity has all engine features unlocked but theres still some other stuff you might want to pay for, advanced debugging and other things.
Unreal engine 4 is now free, except you must pay 5% back to unreal for any money you make.

I am updating Ramp and Roll right now with the new shaders and it looks pretty awesome. There will be a new version out by the end of the week.

[shponglefan]

Update: never thought the logic behind jumping was so complicated

I know what you mean.  It's quite revealing how things that seem really simple on the surface actually have a certain complexity behind them.  It makes me appreciate well-designed game mechanics all the more.

Wellhere is some exciting news that began brewing yesterday but I waited to post until now because I didn't have all the facts.

UNREAL ENGINE IS NOW FREE

UNITY IS NOW FREE

That's sweet news!   

I was a little surprised to hear that Epic did away with the subscription fees, but I guess they make enough from royalties.  Very cool for amateur game development.

[shponglefan]

Here's another 2D shooter video after adding dual lasers properly shooting from the guns.  I found this illustrates how something that seems like it should be simple actually took some thought to figure out.  In this case, having to calculate vector offsets for the lasers and then transform them using a rotation matrix to get the correct origin based on the player angle:

Code: [Select]

bulletPostion.X += (float)(bulletOrigin.X * Math.Cos(player.Angle) + bulletOrigin.Y * Math.Sin(player.Angle) * -1);
bulletPostion.Y += (float)(bulletOrigin.X * Math.Sin(player.Angle) + bulletOrigin.Y * Math.Cos(player.Angle));
There's also a weird bug where there's a bit of a stutter when the lasers reach the edge of the screen.  Although it might be hard to see in the video:

[Generic Eric]

Sweet!  What is next?  Player 2? Or a fixed target?