Project: Metagame - Join and contribute!

[LittleViking]

For nearly five years, the Metanet Community has been growing and progressing to the point it's at today. Drawn together by a fun little, independent game for the PC, our group has representative members from all walks of life. Gamers, artists, musicians, coders, web designers, kids who just want to pitch in; we have class clowns and intellectuals, chronic underachievers and Ivy League scholars; we have people from Asia and America, Australia and Europe, all parts of each country and all over the world. (Except South America for some reason... but Kablizzy has always had a thing against Brazil.)

But if there's one thing we all have in common (and there may be only one thing), its our love for free games. Simple games, indie games, games that the players can give back to. N became famous for its community features. The highscore board, the level editor, the exchangable map and demo formats, and the user map archive. Every level is taken to the limit by highscorers. The map archive is literally brought to the breaking point every month by the traffic it garners. As diverse as we are as people, we're still rabidly brought back to the game so we can give back to it.


The Proposal

The logical next step to this fauning over N is to try to recreate its magic in our own game.

We have serious talent in this community. We have enough experts and hobbyists to pull off a project like this. Don't start thinking that you can't help out just because you're not a master of your craft. Raigan Burns, co-creator of N, once said about game programming, "You can play guitar to be a really good guitar player or you can play guitar 'cause you wanna write songs." You don't have to learn everything there is to know before you can work on a game. If your song only uses five chords but sounds really, really good, who's to say you're not a musician?

This project is open source. That includes code, images, music, anything that goes into the game. The final product will likely be offered up for free, with or without copyright. As an open source project, we're asking you to join up and contribute. Everyone is welcome, as long as you're not damaging to the project. You'll be working on a team, so you'll be expected to compromise. And of course, you'll be expected to do some work. I've seen too many game projects crash into the ground because half the team disappears at the mention of work.



See the project's homepage for a more in-depth introduction, including the different kinds of people we're looking for and how you can join the team.
http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/metanet

[smartalco]

I have become a watcher, and I'll throw myself at the coding, whenever we get to needing coders. (pending that isn't finals week)

[Animator]

I'm a spriter (no surprise), and trying to aim myself at level design as well.

[T3chno]

I'll just act as a back-up artist. I'm not that good at making the elements for a game yet. I'll just watch then.

[Geti]

what do we want to make?
i can see a few things that could work (and would be interesting to work on)..
brainstorm, away!

taking some inspiration from Knytt, as well as N, would it be possible to make a physics platformer (rpg style) with a lot of ambience?
i can picture landscape transitions from steampunk/rusty metal flying structures to natural ruins to seaside through to "cleaner" high tech stuff. that would be very fun. character would be a robot that constantly adds to itself, taking parts of the environment and placing them on his body. so at the beginning you would be a barebones robot, and from there you could keep adding to yourself, rebuilding, remodelling to the situation. if done with vectors, placing and editing attachables would be easy, though i suppose it would be with sprites too.
one the violence side of things, you should be able to attack enemies once you have attachables, and they should attack you. you could take pieces off of them, and repair yourself if damaged. that would make battle very interesting. there should also be other bonuses of using attachables, like attaching wing-like objects in the right areas would make you float down, beefing up your legs would make you run harder and jump higher.
i would love a game like that, and id love to work on it. ill mock up some sketches of things if you guys like this idea, like the robot, and some art style things, or landscapes.
also on the community side of things, you could compare characters and possibly have multiplayer (WAY LATER)
comments?

[Combo Bustperson]

Play testing and story design is about all that is within my talent. Maybe character design.

[Lenny]

Done. I'm a musician... who would have guessed?

Also, the "official" IRC channel for this is #Q. So drop in, do stuff... yeah.

[TribulatioN]

I too, could playtest. This is something I can see being quite the success.

[kkstrong]

Done. I'm a musician... who would have guessed?

Also, the "official" IRC channel for this is #Q. So drop in, do stuff... yeah.

Huh, I would thought it would be #metagame

[squibbles]

Most DEFINATELY in.

I can help with music, and i'll talk to trezoid about sprites...he's good at pixel art...

oh, also, i should add, i used my REAL name, Stephen, because...well, I felt like it...so yeah, I'm that guy...

[smartalco]

taking some inspiration from Knytt, as well as N, would it be possible to make a physics platformer (rpg style) with a lot of ambience?
i can picture landscape transitions from steampunk/rusty metal flying structures to natural ruins to seaside through to "cleaner" high tech stuff. that would be very fun. character would be a robot that constantly adds to itself, taking parts of the environment and placing them on his body. so at the beginning you would be a barebones robot, and from there you could keep adding to yourself, rebuilding, remodelling to the situation. if done with vectors, placing and editing attachables would be easy, though i suppose it would be with sprites too.
one the violence side of things, you should be able to attack enemies once you have attachables, and they should attack you. you could take pieces off of them, and repair yourself if damaged. that would make battle very interesting. there should also be other bonuses of using attachables, like attaching wing-like objects in the right areas would make you float down, beefing up your legs would make you run harder and jump higher.
i would love a game like that, and id love to work on it. ill mock up some sketches of things if you guys like this idea, like the robot, and some art style things, or landscapes.

Why didn't you make that game like, 5 years ago?

[Combo Bustperson]

I came up with someting from geti's post.
The game starts out with an assembly line. People working, making robots (whatever we choose to make them look like). Then, there is one with a dent in it's head, a worker picks it up and looks at it, then proceeds to throw it in a chute marked: Junkyard. That robot will be our protaganist. I cant think of any in depth plot for us too follow, but i hope this will help.

[Geti]

I came up with someting from geti's post.
The game starts out with an assembly line. People working, making robots (whatever we choose to make them look like). Then, there is one with a dent in it's head, a worker picks it up and looks at it, then proceeds to throw it in a chute marked: Junkyard. That robot will be our protaganist. I cant think of any in depth plot for us too follow, but i hope this will help.

cool idea. easy to animate.

but yes, like the idea? or was the 5 years ago sarcasm. i hate that on the net.
anyway, to photoshop to draw me some robots! :D

[Ad]

That's actually a very nice idea. As is this whole project. When my workload dies down, I'll think about signing up and helping.

I had a small idea for the graphical style: as the community has several good sprite artists, as well as some who are better with a pen and paper, how about combining the two? Who could have, say, the characters and display drawn by hand, with a clear scruffy style, and with the levels designed by sprite artists. It would give it, hopefully, a nice graphical style, whilst cashing in on all the artistic talent on display here.

[lord_day]

Once things are running, I'd love to help with level design. And I'm also not afraid to do work. D:<

[Eiturlyf]

I could probably make images. Not sprites,- images.

[runningninja]

I'm in, I'll be a level designer.

[AF]

I think it'd be neat to make something similar to Scorched Earth, Worms, or Gunbound. That would be totally cool to code, it would be fun to play, and it would most likely be unique.

[Geti]

on the graphical style, ad. yes please. i was thinking a little grungy too, like very detailed but dirty everywhere.
also i have a concept, but its not on this HDD. maybe ill sprite something now, as i have GIMP on this compy, but maybe not. its cool though i like it.
he looks kinda mournful.

this would be extra cool if when something made of the same stuff you are (self repairing mechanical messes) got their legs removed (or you did for that matter) they could drag themselves with their arms. damaged robots doing things like that while trying to repair themselves, look, feel and are awesome.

[ska]

I think if we want to reach a wide audience, a level editor is a necessity, both for the level designers and the end user, preferably with an easier to use interface than Ned which is quite daunting at first glance.. (I didn't even know there was a level editor until I accidentally hit the ~ button one time!)

Level Designer/playtester - (I have always loved designing games levels for games)
Sound Editor (post production)
Promotion? Designing a video to advertise the game?

Just laying out some ideas...

[Geti]

here he is.

Untitled-1 copy.png

Robot concept

(7.25 KiB) Downloaded 1650 times

not sure on the colours but he looked so naked all B+W so here you go.
note the sad. no dent yet (see quote's post above for reason), but this is just "stock" gear, it can be discarded and other things attached, or things added to it. i love modular games, and i know theyre an absolute ass to code but oh theyre fun. ill mock up some landscapes soon if i can, and put this guy in context, with some modifications. anyone else loving this?

level editor.. i dont want to do this with tiles, but if we could code a vector editor for landscape that would skin itself, and be able to add vegetation/scenery and control depth then that would be all good. ill show you what i can see the game looking like in some mock ups :P

[ska]

here he is.

Untitled-1 copy.png

not sure on the colours but he looked so naked all B+W so here you go.
note the sad. no dent yet (see quote's post above for reason), but this is just "stock" gear, it can be discarded and other things attached, or things added to it. i love modular games, and i know theyre an absolute ass to code but oh theyre fun. ill mock up some landscapes soon if i can, and put this guy in context, with some modifications. anyone else loving this?

level editor.. i dont want to do this with tiles, but if we could code a vector editor for landscape that would skin itself, and be able to add vegetation/scenery and control depth then that would be all good. ill show you what i can see the game looking like in some mock ups :P

Really digging this actually...

I <3 the red and black actually (carn the bombers!)
vectors sound like an excellent choice actually. Elastomania-ish =D
An animator might like to consider reconstructing the charater so he can walk, jump, roll into a ball etc.
Starting with the character is always a good start. any ideas of what you'll be working in?

[Geti]

ahahahah footy reference..

i have no idea what ill work in, id sort of prefer not flash, but if people are more comfortable with it, i suppose i will. in the mean time ill sprite up pieces i suppose, but not now, sleeping now. if someone else wants to do it, feel free. keep it clean-ish for now, we can mess it up later :P
what size are we working at?

-

yae high?

-

-
yae high?
-

-

or
yae high?


-

it would be interesting to do it at any of them, smaller makes for huge environments, large makes for huge detail. scale please ^________________^

glad you like it btw ska.

[Brttrx]

I can draw pretty well so maybe I can help develop some concepts or whatever, plus I have time to make any music for the game if that's needed, (some games don't need it)

LV's post got me fired up! Im all ready to help out in any way! =D

[Spawn of Yanni]

I doubt I'll be free enough to go for some full-fledged music composing here, but I'll be more than happy to create/edit sound effects. I could even help with editing the musics, if necessary.