Project: Metagame - Join and contribute!

[mattk210]

did you see my notes on coding? By my system planets can be any shape so long as it's made up of arcs and lines (although obviously the more complex the shape the slower). Tunnels are possible if we want them. I just objected against loading geometry from an svg, because that's hard and pointless. We should have a geometry editor and the actual image of the planet can be a loaded svg.

don't really like the idea of adding more playable characters. We already have 3.

[Geti]

did you see my notes on coding? By my system planets can be any shape so long as it's made up of arcs and lines (although obviously the more complex the shape the slower). Tunnels are possible if we want them. I just objected against loading geometry from an svg, because that's hard and pointless. We should have a geometry editor and the actual image of the planet can be a loaded svg.

oh. cool then. even better if the geometry editor can load the svg to trace over.

don't really like the idea of adding more playable characters. We already have 3.

mmn, i dont either. the change would be mostly graphical, but eh, i dont care.
i like the robots better. vote?

[squibbles]

but is making funky shaped planets with structures on them going to make funky "shaped" gravity?

Because that would be a bit of a problem.

[mattk210]

did nobody read my coding notes? I outlined that. Each 'planet' has a fixed point that is a gravitational center, and the sum of all the masses of each point times the inverse squares of the distances to all these points is the gravitational vector at that point. Most planets would have that point in the middle and everything would be dandy (except as you get inside the planet the gravitational force will increase, which is not true in real life but too complicated to change).

[Geti]

ive gone back over your notes (again) and understand all the stuff i misunderstood last time (plus that part you explained on irc about geometry collisions) and im fairly happy with it.

WHAT ARE WE CODING IN? WE NEED SOME CODING PROGRESS GODDRATTIT. ><
id prefer something a little less intensive than flash, tbh, although flash does make it cross platform.. depends what we need i assume.

[mattk210]

I assure you, I want to be coding too. But I don't know who the coding leader is and I don't want to start anything without a basic framework or at least a language we'll be using for sure.

[LittleViking]

Why do we need coding progress? We don't have a game concept yet. As soon as we know everything we need to know about the game, we can start making art, music, levels, writing code, thinking about plot, so on and so on. And while I can't say objectively how much more planning we need before we begin, I can say that in a nutshell, every team should mostly know exactly what to do after looking over the design document.

[mattk210]

Usually when I make a game, whenever I think of a mechanic, I implement it in at least partial form to see how it plays; because just from thinking about it we don't know if it will be fun, or even be plausible to code.

You're right about having a basic concept first, but I think we now know enough for sure that we can start coding. A basic platforming engine of the type I outlined would be needed for whatever design choices we decide to make.

OK, I thought about it, and you're right. Sorry, I am getting impatient. I've never worked on a game in a team before.

[Geti]

mmn, i suppose we are. or i am.

the design document is a sprawling mess, we need some more structure.
i can see where this game is going, and i think we all can. its just not all of our interpretations are the same. so we need to come to some conclusions, about all of this. its easier on irc i suppose, but whatever.

[smartalco]

I'm going to throw out my take on character development even though creative story telling isn't my strong point (its 2 AM, so if any of this doesn't make any sense, I'll explain tomorrow).

So, I liked the 3 character idea with the human/Astro, robot, and alien. Three completely different races makes explaining each ones own quarks and abilities much easier (plus, aliens, you can make them do anything).

Made up story behind the three: Astro leaves Earth with the story mentioned a page or two back, crash lands somewhere, ruining his space ship. He (she? it?) then has to do stuff on the planet to repair his ship, and his helpful robot <name>, which also was ruined in the wreck. This gives players time to get familiar with basic game mechanics/controls while still only having to worry about 1 guy running around.
Once your ship/robot gets repaired, your robot then becomes a playable character. I'm going to interject that I like the idea of the robot strapping itself to your back while you wonder around, mainly because I don't like the idea of having to go back to your ship/wherever every time you want to change you ability set (read: character) (it isn't exclusively a R&C thing btw). At this point, your spaceship is repaired (at least enough to move somewhere, think a little Pikmin) so you can explore new planets/moons/whatever, I would probably progress through 35-45% of the game with just you and the robot.
Finally, you reach a stranger world then previously visited. Here you meet the alien. He is an outcast from his society (someone make up a good story) and decides to follow you, as what else is a stray fetus going to do? (I like the art of the alien posted a couple pages ago as well, if you didn't get the fetus reference). Since having the alien attach itself to you would be boring, and repetitive (robot already does), it should just levitate and follow you around constantly (probably make it roughly 1/2 the size of the human) (also, this would be easy to code, just take its current position, and then turn and move it towards the human's head until it is x distance away (in my envisioning anyway)).

The human should have a fairly normal personality in the game, but should look cartoony and awesome (as drawn earlier).
The robot should look more serious but occasionally do odd/funny things for some comedic relief (think Gir from Invader Zim meets the fire extinguisher robot in Iron Man).
The alien should be introverted (I'd be if I looked -4 months old), with the human often trying to coax some form of structural friendship out of it. Also, the alien should show small glimpses of possessing enormous (but untapped) power (randomly is able to help the human out of a really tight situation in ways mostly beyond explanation, but not very often).

With that, I am done typing for now, as it took me half an hour, and since daylight savings happened in that half an hour, its sorta took me an hour and a half!

/zzzzzzzzzzzz

[NicNac14]

Here you meet the alien. He is an outcast from his society (someone make up a good story) and decides to follow you, as what else is a stray fetus going to do?

on that thought I came up with this...

okay...
He used to live with his mother on his home planet and they had the best leader ever... but one day that leader die's and his cousin takes over... his cousin makes up some new rules that the alien doesn't like so he rebel's and gets thrown out and loses all his friends and even his mother goes against him...
he becomes an outcast of society and swears to revenge himself... ( a level ) but before that he meets the Astro and robot who he decides to follow and they decide to help him later on... (hence the level)
well thats just my story....

oh and what developing program are we using?
oh and are we using c++ coding?

and ur all saying we can only have perfectly round planets cause thats going to be exciting... or is what matt sayin' true that you can use a fixed gravitational point yet still place objects on the planets just the further away the object is on the planet the less gravity?

[Geti]

no we arent saying that at all.
there was just a mix up as to how things were going to be loaded. we will just be using a centerpoint for gravity.

[LittleViking]

okay...
He used to live with his mother on his home planet and they had the best leader ever... but one day that leader die's and his cousin takes over... his cousin makes up some new rules that the alien doesn't like so he rebel's and gets thrown out and loses all his friends and even his mother goes against him...
he becomes an outcast of society and swears to revenge himself... ( a level ) but before that he meets the Astro and robot who he decides to follow and they decide to help him later on... (hence the level)
well thats just my story....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King ?

[Condog]

okay...
He used to live with his mother on his home planet and they had the best leader ever... but one day that leader die's and his cousin takes over... his cousin makes up some new rules that the alien doesn't like so he rebel's and gets thrown out and loses all his friends and even his mother goes against him...
he becomes an outcast of society and swears to revenge himself... ( a level ) but before that he meets the Astro and robot who he decides to follow and they decide to help him later on... (hence the level)
well thats just my story....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King ?

The Lion King 4 :: Lion's in Space!

[NicNac14]

hehe...
oops didn't realise that it reminded of the lion king..

.

okay...
He used to live with his mother on his home planet and they had the best leader ever... but one day that leader die's and his cousin takes over... his cousin makes up some new rules that the alien doesn't like so he rebel's and gets thrown out and loses all his friends and even his mother goes against him...
he becomes an outcast of society and swears to revenge himself... ( a level ) but before that he meets the Astro and robot who he decides to follow and they decide to help him later on... (hence the level)
well thats just my story....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King ?

The Lion King 4 :: Lion's in Space!

okay...
He used to live with his mother on his home planet and they had the best leader ever... but one day that leader die's and his cousin takes over... his cousin makes up some new rules that the alien doesn't like so he rebel's and gets thrown out and loses all his friends and even his mother goes against him...
he becomes an outcast of society and swears to revenge himself... ( a level ) but before that he meets the Astro and robot who he decides to follow and they decide to help him later on... (hence the level)
well thats just my story....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King ?

The Lion King 4 :: Lion's in Space!

[smartalco]

OK I worded that wrong, I was thinking more along the lines of 'got lost while space traveling, has been stuck on a lonely planet for several years'

[Animator]

New page, with new concepts. Read.

http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/metan ... s_Document

[Geti]

i edited some enemies in, i hope thats alright..

[Commander]

I drew him just now, we should totally include him as a boss. As you can see, he's fat and has long arms. Have fun.

[squibbles]

That is one shady boss cam.

[RedSham]

Here's a possible boss concept I though up of.

[Ad]

I really want to be a part of this, but have no idea how to sign up, get on IRC, do anything! =D
(I have ChatZilla, what next?!)

[EDIT: Finally realised that the Watcher thing was a hyperlink. Durr. Anyway, I'm watching now.]

Here's another boss design, but I put in more detail, actually gave it an attack formation, maybe you guys will approve? Hope so:

[mattk210]

out of the bosses I like:

anacondroid (seriously, i hate the name spacobra)
Ad's kamele-gone (but not the name)
polybius

the rest seem a little unfocused and the plot/graphic based rather than mechanic-based. Of the enemies, I like the ground sweeper best.

for chatzilla, i looked at the irc link at the old forums and changed the n to metagame. I don't really know though.

[Geti]

loving the kamele-gone 5000, cool mechanic and decent weakspot, though kinda mario..

textual-boss-concept-that-someone-can-edit-in-for-me-cause-its-really-late, go!

The Hive:
basically a large planet with holes spattering the surface that spams tiny beings at you. a couple of bulging red patches show, these must all be burst for the initial shell to break off. now the planet has a new layer with more holes and angrier bugs coming out of it, with some of the other shell remaining. a few red shelled tentacles with hook hairs on the ends show, these are now the primary target. once theyre all taken down, the queen smashes off the rest of the hive, the parts of which float around with gravity so you can jump about. the queens abdomen also has gravity, but her tentacle claw things and biting head make all that difficult to attack. her body and arms are vulnerable to fire, enemies still rapidly spawn from her rear.

have a picture, with comic descriptions. rawr it says, rawr.

[Condog]

Oooookay, i think we need step away from the bosses for the moment. Everyone is getting very excited, and discussion of the actually game seems to have dried up.