Metagame Reboot - YOUR PARTICIPATION IS REQUIRED!

[Ignate]

Hm, a core mechanic, you say? It might be a good idea to have the game focus on an original, but not too constricting concept. Braid, to my knowledge, had separate mechanics but was generally a game about time control and intense puzzle-solving.

The background-foreground thing seems like a pretty good concept, but right now it doesn't seem so fleshed out, if it even can. 3D levels up to a level like Fez would be way too much for us methinks. Right now the game is sort of a mish-mash of different gameplay aspects, mixing in platforming, the scene-switching, puzzle-solving, combat and whatever else. We're brainstorming these different aspects which is all good but there seems to be a lack of focus on one aspect. Just pointing it out, I might have to elaborate later.

[Geti]

The background foreground thing is just a way to have levels that are deeper than 2 dimensions, so you can have internal rooms and caves and whatever. I don't feel that that's a core mechanic at all, and I'd like one to work towards.

As I said, we have time travel as an idea, but I don't want to go down that road for quite a few reasons :/ We also have squibbles paint-on-white idea (which could be done, but would make the 3D be weird and need dropping, which I suppose is okay ( :( )) and also the idea of gravity puzzles. None of them really grab me as something to base a game on though.

[Geti]

TILE RENDERING BASED ON NEIGHBOUR RECOGNITION
TILE RENDERING BASED ON NEIGHBOUR RECOGNITION
TILE RENDERING BASED ON NEIGHBOUR RECOGNITION
have to fix the wrapping issue but it makes the whole game look a lot more presentable.

[Spawn of Yanni]

TILE RENDERING BASED ON NEIGHBOUR RECOGNITION
TILE RENDERING BASED ON NEIGHBOUR RECOGNITION
TILE RENDERING BASED ON NEIGHBOUR RECOGNITION
have to fix the wrapping issue but it makes the whole game look a lot more presentable.

Is it just me, or did that just make the size of the bin work a /whole/ lot better?

[Geti]

I think it's because it puts some sort of scale on the tiles in relation to the robot (size of the surface etc).
Not sure, but that could be why. Glad you approve, I'm going to do a quick dirt texture and see how it looks, might be updated soon

[Geti]

FURTHER GRAPHICAL UPDATES
All of this is on git for those that want to tinker. Still need a new level, I want to see how the tiling system works/looks on everything possible. Should be fine, but it'd be nice to test and I'm tired at the moment.

[Ignate]

The binbot fits in much better now. But I'll have to edit the sprite when I can, try to replace that smokestack with something less intrusive.

[Geti]

Indeed, I'd love some more textures to work with, but I suppose that means I'll have to write a level parser that allows for more than solid and empty :P The edges are done separately from the tile textures though, which is what I was aiming for.

[ℎalifax]

I've been thinking about tiles. Rolling is currently very clunky, in the sense that I don't particularly feel like I want to roll anywhere. This is because we only have square tiles. I think angled slopes could work well, like the vector system Elastomania has.

On another note, we should kind of decide the core mechanics before we go any further. I think that's top priority right now.

[Geti]

Well, I'll think about working in angled tiles, but I do very much doubt that we'll have anything along the lines of elma's vector system. I wish we could, but it'd make leveldata incredibly confusing, and require a complete rewrite of the collision engine. I think the problem is less with the tiling system and more with the current map design, personally.

But yeah, as it is I'm not sure what I'm meant to be working towards, which basically means I'm not working. :/ Also, I'm likely to be unable to get much internet access for the next week or so, I hope that shit will get done in my (semi)absence.
I'm not fussed what direction this goes in, truth be told I wouldn't mind if it became a straight exploration puzzle-platformer with doors and keys and enemies that you can't do much about.
Also, where's matt? O_o

[mattk210]

i was meaning to post with an edge glitch fix and some restructuring, but i apparently don't even have time for that. Really sorry, i shouldn't have accepted the "lead coder" position as busy as i am.

If progress is as slow as it seems from this thread, the project isn't looking good. It would be a terrible shame to see this die (again) though. I thought there would be a lot of interest from artists etc but we didn't even get a rolling sprite did we? If you don't know what to do, a good place to start might be extending room tiles to fix the edge glitch, and maybe working towards some sort of smaller game than originally planned so at least something gets hopefully finished.

I will try and contribute when I can, at the very least to offer help with bugs when necessary. But you may need to remove me from that "active participants" list on the front page.

[Geti]

Heh, jesus you guys. I leave for a week or so and this doesn't move at all? O_o
Matt, that's fine. I'm just wanting to make something with this, considering we have a tile engine and level format done and it'll be pretty trivial to add objects and such into that.
Guys, what do you want in this? Mines? Soldiers? Launch Pads? What? Currently, I'm caught up in other things but I can likely spend a night or so just adding all the stuff that's missing for objects and particles and the like and putting object loading into the game, and likely player death. For now I think it'd be a good idea to do "checkpoints" thus: whenever you move from screen to screen the level is saved to a string that can be loaded upon you dying. I could just save the screen, actually, and leave level saving to a later date. The reason this is going slowly at the moment is a lack of community participation. I'd love to get some work done, but I need something to work towards, and I need people to work with. I've got other stuff I can work on in the meantime.

[Spawn of Yanni]

The problem is that we've had 9 pages of this very technical discussion and we're essentially nowhere with a consensus about a core mechanic. What we need in terms of community participation is that /everyone/ just needs to let loose with any sort of interesting element to differentiate this game from anything else.

[Geti]

Thank you for the announce you awesome person.

Everyone spam stuff. Play the latest build at http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1280226825 and then give suggestions for gameplay based on that.Only Exception: Please don't spam "we need ramps", I'll consider it but it'll be a pain to set up with the current collision detection algos. If you're any good at manual nediting I'd love you to put yourself forward for level design and coding, getting a graphical editor happening is a while off. As such, I'll try to keep the files as human readable as possible for as long as I can with the introduction of objects.

[squibbles]

I've been following this thread and I still have no idea what the hell the game is. Like, all I know is that there is a protagonist, and he moves. I think he's a bin robot? Maybe? Platformer, I suppose, then, but that isn't certain. This is why I said we needed a plan, because while it may be all good and dandy for you guys as programmers, for the art people and musicians, we have no idea what the hell we're doing. What are the themes of the game? The mood? It'd hardly be appropriate to have christmas themed levels and pirate themed music.

Also, as for actual feedback, the collision either needs to be improved, or the protagonist slowed, as he can easily run over a single tile gap without falling in. :/
Also, can I suggest a map? Perhaps in the top right corner? It's rather...mazey at the moment. :S

[Spawn of Yanni]

That's just it. There is no plan. We have no concept. Hence "please suggest something".

[OutrightOJ]

As a musician I could try out some compositions, as I already have some stuff going at the moment.

Only problem is that I don't have any sort of keyboards/computer software which might be of any use, so if anybody has any suggestions as to any good programs then that would be helpful. In the current circumstances I'll probably need to use the Metanet Ensemble to post any stuff over for others to record on keyboards and whatnot.

Also, as squibbles said, the type of game would need to be specified beforehand. It would be nice if we had some actual decent sounding background music unlike all the monotonous synthy shit which generally dominates all these online games at the moment.

I like this whole idea; I hope it goes ahead.

[Geti]

Guitar Pro 6 is amazing as far as composition and audio production goes, just make sure you've got a good converter, as I think it only exports audio to .wav. I fully agree about this not having chiptunes behind it.

I've been following this thread and I still have no idea what the hell the game is.

Inthusfar it is a platformer with a bin robot as a protagonist with 2d/3d levels. THAT'S IT. I want the community to come up with a premise for the game.
Orange and Spoon have done some story concept work but as far as concrete design has gone there's pretty much a bunch of duct tape over the initial lazy idea.
-> discuss, think of ideas for either a story (of we want a story oriented game (which is more work and I vote NO PLEASE NO NO)) or a gameplay premise (which is less work and more fun in the short term at least).
I'm doing ~5 other projects actively and don't want to be in charge of design for this one. Ignate is going art afaik (though he's vanished), I or someone else can cover that easily enough if he's actually gone. I can do code without matt if he's only able to debug, that's only a setback, not a roadblock.

The issue is that I've been coding, and Orange and Spoon (and sometimes remaniac and yanni) have been discussing gameplay, but it's gone nowhere because we don't have much participation. We need a premise that's simple and fun. Currently, I have essentially faux-3D levels going, I can up the resolution of them if we want (I could very easily drop the 2X pixel style and double the grid resolution with no changes to the game resolution for example), though I kind of think it could be a good idea to stay small-scale.
Level design/production is appreciated. You can do it in ned for the most part if you keep the grid to 25x17 and then take out the extra characters. I found it easier doing it in a text editor personally and then just stripping away whitespace and newlines.

IN REGARDS TO "THE PLAYER MOVES TOO FAST": http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1278835974 hit ~ and change the values. Give me good values for all of them, so I can hard-code them.

Map later, gameplay first imo.

EXAMPLE: we have no goal at the moment for the player, it's purely exploration, and that's boring. How should the player win a level. Try to keep this generic, as we really really want to have userlevel capabilities for this, so no save xy thing style goals if you would be so kind.

[OneSevenNine]

Only problem is that I don't have any sort of keyboards/computer software which might be of any use, so if anybody has any suggestions as to any good programs then that would be helpful. In the current circumstances I'll probably need to use the Metanet Ensemble to post any stuff over for others to record on keyboards and whatnot.

If you're not looking to spend any cash there's http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/ ; for sheet music composition. it's not free, but the free, never-expiring trial lets you save any files up to ten times, and there's no restriction on copying/pasting the entire contents of one file to a new one and saving that. For actual audio production--as in, electronic music--Linux Multimedia Studio is the fullest-featured free thing out there, though there's quite a learning curve.

(Great to see this is going again--I remember offering music, posting a song, and almost forgetting about it--but I guess nothing's nearly far enough along to start composing music to. As per Yanni's request for suggestions I'll be brainstorming. What's a concept that can distinguish this game while still being simple enough to be programmed by this informally organized team?...)

[Geti]

The thing is, the verbosity is more of a problem when it comes to program than surface "simplicity". It's easy enough to make something with bullet trails and splash damage and a punchy wall-jump mechanic, but it's really hard to do something like time travel and make it feel polished because of the things you have to allow for. Basically, chuck ideas at me and I'll tell you whether coding them is feasible (if matt's around he might tell me otherwise, he's a lot better at AS3 than me), but don't constrict yourself to "simplicity" because it's difficult. Coding is a pretty fickle art.

[Geti]

Sigh, been screwing about with this, hopefully I can extract the parts I want for a DynamicObject class without fucking everything up, the annoying thing is that it won't really simplify the Player class considering how much of it is input related.
Might email matt about it and see if he's better at that kind of thing, it kind of bores me senseless. Anyone had any fun ideas?

[Spawn of Yanni]

magnetism - attract metal objects from across the screen to destroy enemies/trigger switches/whatever
button-based - heavily puzzle-centered mechanic based on opening doors with buttons in combinations, for example
line-of-sight - only the parts of the level that the protagonist can see can be seen by the player
build - collect various items (in a certain order?) and combine them to solve the level (a mix of platforming and MacGyver/point-and-click?)
rope - use a rope (or object with similar mechanics; chain, etc) to navigate through the level
jetpack/flight - self-explanatory
lemmings-enemies - destroy parts of the landscape to cause enemies to fall to their deaths
destructable landscape - self-explanatory, would require heavy weapons from both protagonist and enemies
espionage - ??? a bin bot that tries to gain access to high-level systems by sneaking around avoiding security
level-up - start as a useless punching bin, gain new abilities as the game goes on
fan - protagonist has a wind-blower of some sort to move enemies/parts of the level around
eat everything - yeah, you have to like, eat things strategically... to defeat enemies. shut up I am running out of ideas
christmas - it's fucking christmas everywhere. santa claus wants to kill you
bin-buddies - have some system to allow user-controlled mini-trashcans to do things to the level while - or before - the user plays the level as the protagonist

[Geti]

feedback at 1AM wooo:

• magnetism - I like this. It seems feasible for a bin to be magnetic too, so you could have like, a series of remote controlled electromagnets that you have to move around the greater level with (in between platforming), while avoiding being crushed by scrap flying about cause of all the magnetism. We could get some electricity going too (induction) and make a tesla-feast of it. I like this idea
  Buttons - Cool. Not sure how much longevity it would have without some sort of juicy other mechanic chocked on the side.
  LOS - feels like a secondary mechanic, not sure how you'd have this as core unless there was like, a huge boltergeist out there looking to scrap you. aside: that kind of thing would be awesome anyway, especially if there were other citizens getting gobbled.
  Build - I'm working on this kind of thing in quite a few other projects. I love this kind of thing, but it's a bit of a bitch to code most of the time, haha. I'd like cumulative keys though (like you need x y and z keys to get through this door kthxbye), that kind of thing is really easy.
  Jet - I like the idea of a binbot with a rocket booster flying stupid fast and bouncing off walls. it just seems fun, especially if it's on the way to some sort of epic battle. fuel would be a good limiting factor for a jetpack I think.
  Espionage - I love this type of thing.

THUS - combining these we get a binbot spy running around a scrap heap full of dangerous electromagnets attached to a small jet engine with limited sensory ability who has to flick many switches to open few doors to get at some sort of super-secret files for great justice.
Cool secondary mechanic :

• -the ability to draw /erase on pages to take notes and draw maps. -> you're a spy so you use your deductive skills to solve the puzzles and jot things down. means we don't need a mapping system, and it also means that we can leave behind notes as "files" that help you solve the crime. they'd have to be "typed" though, so we could userdata them.

lol just rambling, it's late so this is all silly, but i like the idea of crossing "spy" with "ridiculous setting".

[OneSevenNine]

magnetism - attract metal objects from across the screen to destroy enemies/trigger switches/whatever
build - collect various items (in a certain order?) and combine them to solve the level (a mix of platforming and MacGyver/point-and-click?)
lemmings-enemies - destroy parts of the landscape to cause enemies to fall to their deaths
destructable landscape - self-explanatory, would require heavy weapons from both protagonist and enemies

Replace the flow of lemmings with a flow of, say, water or something.

I suppose the jagged landscape in the current, uh "demo" inspired this, but what of a gameplay mechanic that heavily involves altering the flow and settling places of water or some other liquid (or more than one liquid, with each type having different properties); move objects into pools to make them overflow, letting some water drop into another area; alter landscape, jutting land into middle of waterfall that used to go into endless abyss, causing the water to now pool in the area--use a bomb to blow the bottom of a lake, allowing water to fall into the cave beneath letting robot progress--well, if he's made of a bin maybe it's, uh, oil? or maybe in some levels there's both oil and water as liquids, and the oil floats on top of the water which allows some things to float on top of the oil and others just on top of the water--

Just rambling here.

[Universezero]

So, a physics engine? Because I concur that that would be a good idea.