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An old game concept of mine: 1 screen lunar miner ctf

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by Snow, Jun 9, 2011.

Mods: BlueLuigi
  1. Snow

    Snow Guest

    Hey,

    I came up with the following concept about 5 years ago before mining in a game became popular heh:

    This was before I knew how to program so I never really commited to it, but I've always hung onto the concept. I simply called the game Moon or Moon 8. The premise of the game is that there are 2 warring companies vying for resources on a moon of some kind. So, they equipped their employees: lunar miners with weapons and let them duke it out. What I was aiming for was a multiplayer game played on a single screen. A bullet would only travel a short distance/radii, making random killing and spraying impossible. There were 4 classes: Soldier-shotgun, Heavy-machine gunner, Sniper and Bomber. All classes shared 1 or 2 special abilities such as a special weapon that fired projectiles in 8 directions. The game was loosely inspired by one of my favorite 16 bit topdown shooters: Soldiers of Fortune or The Chaos Engine as it is called in the UK where it was made. Even the controls would be specifically like old console controls. The sprites can only move in 8 directions, but they can strafe (you can lock your direction with a button and still move). So this could be easily played on keyboard and on a USB gamepad.

    - The game is a lunar surface with 2 bases: red/blue
    - Each base has a large air tank (the flag) that the players must go to periodically to get air.
    - The players besides being armed can also mine.
    - 2 different types of crystals exist on the surface: Oxygen and Energy (increases health).
    - Every time a game starts, crystals are placed randomly. Some are exposed, some can become exposed if there is an explosion within a certain distance or radii and others must be mined from rock.
    - When a player mines a crystal he/she is given an immediate choice
    1. the player can use it on themselves,
    2. the player can equally split it up between all teammates
    3. the player can show mercy to an enemy and give them oxygen or health
    4. if it is oxygen, the player can send it to the base where it is added to the big oxygen tank.
    - The oxygen tanks, being flags can be stolen. When a team caps they are awarded extra oxygen, the opposite team loses the same percentage of oxygen that the other team was awarded.

    This was a mock up screenshot I made of the idea. (Sorry that it's small, Flickr had shrunken the original image for whatever reason some time ago.)

    [​IMG]

    The concept was actually going to be an experiment for one of my New Media classes. Kind of like a multiplayer social experiment. I wanted to see what would happen with the element of mercy and acts of kindness. Everyone in the game is running out of oxygen and so must continually mine or go back to the base to replenish.

    Depending on the advancement of KAG and how moddable the engine becomes... I could see the KAG engine running this. I can code the game easily myself, but I'm a total noob at netcode, so I'd prefer a prebuilt engine to build it on. I'd love to see it and play it online, even if for a day.

    Of course the artwork would be much better.. I sucked at pixel art when I made this.. and I forgot to add the craters on the higher surfaces lol (the lower surface is mined ground - the map always starts with open areas).
     
  2. Lizardheim

    Lizardheim Guest

    Looks like a top down Liero.
     
  3. MM

    MM THD Team THD Team Administrator Global Moderator

    Messages:
    327
    I think this aspect alone:

    "- Each base has a large air tank (the flag) that the players must go to periodically to get air."

    would make the game extremely interesting. I'd like to play it some day.
     
  4. Snow

    Snow Guest

    I will make it so. Perhaps I should code it from scratch and learn netcode in the process. I'm glad you're interested in it.
     
  5. Xan Kriegor

    Xan Kriegor Guest

    This sounds very interesting, and I'd love to see it go a long way. I'd suggest the ability to make walls, or a general builder or engineer class to make buildings. The mockup seems nice, and I'd love for there to be some sort of worm (think sand worms from Dune) that can gobble up miners. The terrain in the mockup seems to be very bland, so I suggest you add some craters and more scenery. Also, I do like the current mockup of pixelart, it highly reminds me of Bitmap Brother's Z.

    If you can make up a test version, I'd be glad to test it.
     
  6. Snow

    Snow Guest

    A lunar sandworm is fucking brilliant. I just keep thinking now of the 3 worm boss in Zelda on SNES. It would break out of the ground at a random location. I could see red and blue guys stop fighting and start shooting at the thing to try and quickly kill it.

    I actually found a sketch where I had drawn terrain in just 2 types of blocks: square and angled blocks. Just square blocks like KAG though would be interesting. I could take a bit of inspiration from KAG (after all, it's the reason I posted the concept - some similarities).

    Not sure about walls, but building things would still be cool. If players were to build I was thinking not walls, but more like generators, laying wire or cable, laser turrets, laser barriers - like walls but deadly - would even kill the worm. Hmm. Walls in this kind of a game seem more like delaying the inevitable - enemies breaking through it and fighting you. When I first thought of it, I thought of a fast game, rounds that lasted only minutes. In KAG walls serve as not only barriers to hold the enemy back but shelter for archers, catapults, etc and now, you can drop a wall/ceiling onto enemies if you wish.

    I might do another mock up but with KAG like terrain (square blocks), a worm, better pixel art (bland ain't the word for the above pic lol), and the buildable stuff I mentioned.

    As for making a test version.. that's fine, but .. time and I need to either have premade netcode or research how to do it. I suppose for a quick test I could do something like LAN only. Even if I started now, it would be months, if not a year depending on the complexity of the features I mentioned.
     
  7. Xan Kriegor

    Xan Kriegor Guest

    Off-Topic: I'd love if you made a texture pack that makes KAG looks like the lunar game you're making. I've been wanting something like that for a while, and your pixel art skills are great.

    This'd be like a moon-based KAG that's top-down. Perhaps you can make a turret that you supply with crystals to power? Possible sandbags to place as a make-shift 'wall' would be nice too. There should be more wildlife that could kill you, like decoy crystals that jump up and 'leech' off of your air.
     
  8. Snow

    Snow Guest

    That would look weird. I'm not going to invest into texture packs just yet, until they can be officially integrated with the builds so that the graphics don't get replaced with default graphics when KAG updates.

    Literally somewhat. Top down KAG like game would be interesting, but I still think no walls of any kind, other than a deadly barrier. If KAG should become moddable, I would love to make it as a mod. Because of the similarities.. why not make it an homage to KAG. It is quite the inspiration. Michal and Geti are both gifted IMO. I also got hooked to Flixel because of Geti a year ago - when I played his little robot vs. robot game. Though I have to relearn Flixel somewhat.

    You'd supply the generators with cyrstals to power them up. You'd have to keep mining to produce wire to hook up generators to devices such as turrets.

    I think anything more than the sandworm (if I were to put that in) would make it too distracting for the players. I still love the sandworm idea though. Out of curiosity, like I said, I'll make the new mock up pic and see. I'm starting to visualize an arcade SNES like game with this.
     
  9. HA1TER

    HA1TER Shopkeep Stealer

    Messages:
    172
    STOP WRITING POSTS AND GO MAKE US A GAME! :p
     
  10. MM

    MM THD Team THD Team Administrator Global Moderator

    Messages:
    327
    The tool they made Gang Garrison 2 seems perfect for this game. Please try it.
     
  11. Shadlington

    Shadlington THD Team THD Team Administrator Global Moderator

    Messages:
    1,562
    Or have a crack at doing it all in HTML5 & Javascript with http://impactjs.com/

    ...I really have no idea how handy it is, but it looks pretty nice (and I've seen a slick looking game made with it).
    Pity you have to buy a license to use it.
     
  12. Snow

    Snow Guest

    If you're talking about Game Maker, I have it, but I prefer coding. Then again, if I'm just prototyping, why not use GM? I'll consider it. I can't remember if they're still using the 39.dll thing for multiplayer, or if someone made an improved multiplayer extension.

    I'm just sketchy about using JS libraries, although I believe that's the only way you can do anything with the canvas in HTML 5. As for HTML 5, many browsers support it now, but performance from what I've seen isn't perfect. Unless, support has made a giant leap in the last 6 months. I'll check out the website none the less.

    Thanks for the suggestions.

    Plus, I'll get around to making the new mock up soon. I've really been inspired by Geti's work and concepts as well. Not that I'm going to copy the style, but I want to try a mock up that uses blocks just to see what it looks like.
     
  13. Shadlington

    Shadlington THD Team THD Team Administrator Global Moderator

    Messages:
    1,562
    Oh my suggestion isn't that serious. I just thought it was a cool looking library and wanted to mention it somewhere :p
    If it was free I'd like to just play around with it.
     
  14. Snow

    Snow Guest

    I wonder if I could get Geti to do artwork for this game with me, once Kag has reached final release and only getting bugfixes and minor cosmetic work. I've seen Geti's other games and I just like the pixel art and blocky style that he has. I don't think I could do anything in his style that would look as good. As an artist I'm more of a photocopier, painter, cartoonist and vector type, but pixel art I have trouble with. I'd love to see how he would create artwork for this game and how he would visualize a lunar surface with little lunar astronaut-miners running around.
     
  15. Shadlington

    Shadlington THD Team THD Team Administrator Global Moderator

    Messages:
    1,562
    Geti is probably super busy.
    Major is possibly worth asking as he's been doing a bunch of sprite art around the forum lately.
     
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