Project

[BlueTiger]

Hi, I've been sporadically posting around here for the past couple of days or so, but I never really introduced myself. And seeing as what I'm about to suggest is pretty big, I figured I'd quickly say hello.

The name's AJ, I'm an 18 year old who will be going to a local college next fall. I'm a pretty classic nerd, what with my love of comics and video games and so on, with the one exception that I enjoy sports. More pertinent to the rest of this post, I program video games.

Don't get too excited now. Yes I proposing to start a DMFA video game project. Specifically a fighting game. However I'm not very experienced, and I work in a little used programing language called Blitz Basic (the descendant of the language BASIC, for anyone who knows about that stuff), so I can't guarantee how good it would be. Also (the reason I'm posting this), I'm going to have to rely on the help of other people who are willing to do work for free. Mostly artists.

I got the idea while surfing around the site and found the DMFA: Fighters (work in progress) thread. When I saw it I though "You know what? I bet I could actually do that." This was yesterday. In the past, oh 16-17 hours or so I've slept, ate, and programed. Using Naruto sprites I've had, I have charcters that can move and duck. I'm trying to getr jumping down before I move to attacking (Jumping is harder to program then you'd think). I also already have written down how I plan to have the fighting engine itself work.

The reason I'm posting this is because before I get too involved and excited over this, I need the following:

1) Amber's okay. Obviously this can't get anywhere without Amber's approval, but seeing as this isn't for profit, I figure she'll be okay with it. (PLEASE say yes Amber!)

2) Artists. Specifically Artists who can make sprites and those who can do backgrounds. I enjoy drawing, but I've got no scanner and no talent with spriteing outside of re-coloring. I know there are a lot of artists around here, and if at lest one of you can sprite, hopefully you can help out any of the others who want to help

3) Programers. Now this is unlikely, but if there are any of you out there with any previous experiance with blitz basic or it's cousions blitz 3d and blitz max, then I would greatly appreciate your help. I am willing and able to to the programing end on my own but it is a HUGE task, and any help would be great.

Well, that's that. If any of you think this is a great idea and want to help but feel you have not talent (because your an artist and that's how all artist feel or because you aren't an artist or programer and feel you can't help) I could find a use for anyone. In fact, if you've never programed before in your life, but have some money to spend and what to help out. Pick up the book "Game Programing for Teens: Second Edition." http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Teens-Second-Maneesh-Sethi/dp/1592008348 It was the first programing book I ever got (it was a christmas present). The information doesn't pertain directly to fighting games, but once you've gone through it, you could still help out on the programing end of things.

So I'm off to see if I can't get that sucker Naruto to jump right. I'll check in later.

[Faerie Alex]

I think the stock response is go ahead, other people have started, but no one's actually finished one before.

That said, the answer to your first question is yes, as per here (scroll down to the bottom).

[Amber Williams]

Frankly speaking, you can do what you like...but keep in mind you are not the first, second, or even fifth person to come along with an announcement of starting some kind of DMFA game.  And honestly, I doubt you'll be the last.  It seems every few months someone comes around with shiny-eye ideals of making some sort of DMFA game...but it usually ends up with them biting off more than they can chew and after a couple weeks of buzz...it falls off the planet and is forgotten.

I've been keeping a tally of how many times someone has come around and tried to start up a game.  Once that number reaches 10, I'm likely to just outright deny permission since I don't have the heart to watch people on the forum keep getting their hopes built up only for them to get smashed down.

But it hasn't reached 10 yet.  So feel free...but that's the most support I'm willing to extend to this project.  Good luck, and sorry if his post seems cynical or mean.  It's not my intention...but I feel you should be aware that the reality of the situation is harsh and that you are facing a major uphill situation you may want to bow out of while you have the chance.

[BlueTiger]

Actually, something I forgot to mention in my first post, was that I have nothing but free time. Also I'm extremely stubborn. So if I have to do this by my self, I will.The only thing I can't do on my own is the art. Actually, I could, but it would take years to do this, and that's the part that's not worth it.

Basically what I'm saying here is "I'm going to do this, mostly because I've got nothing better to do and I can. But I'll need some help." I will get frustrated, I will get mad. I will not give up. That's just the way I do things. The one thing that will slow me down the most is a lack of art.

Amber, you didn't seem cynical or mean, in fact it was the exact response I was expecting. (Minus that, after 10 tries I'm stopping all attempts at a game. Unexpected, but not a bad idea from where you're sitting.) And while it seems I'm still on the wide-eyed stage, I have made a few games before. They weren't released to anyone but my friends because I was doing it for fun and I want the practice. It's what I'm going to college for, what I want my career to be. I haven't tried a game this big before, but I've made some big ones. I know what I'm getting into.

So, if there is any artists out there willing to take a chance, I promise I won't be giving up on this game so long as you supply me with the sprites and backgrounds

EDIT: I almost forgot. Good news! Naruto jumps! He just doesn't come down.... grrr...

[Darkmoon]

Jesus, another person is doing this now?

[Eibborn]

Best of luck with this! I hope something comes of it. 

[Tapewolf]

I'd never heard of 'Blitz Basic' before.  Truth be told I wouldn't put much stock in something that uses BASIC as its underlying language, although I'm pleased to see it seems to have more runtimes than just a win32 one.

Anyway, the problem you are going to have is actually getting the artwork.  That, more than anything else, is what offed the TeamFurrae project.  There was a spark of initial interest which gradually tailed off.  I didn't really have the time to commit anything more solid than storyline, a few design ideas and some plot scenarios, although to be honest I did say that this would likely be the case up front.  The only person who really got anything done was the engine guy, and there was only one of him.  We could not recruit the artists.

Now, a beat-em-up engine is pretty simple (we were basically trying to recreate Morrowind ).  For the right kind of money and no interruptions I could probably write one myself in a week 
Anyway, here's a suggestion - if all else fails, drawn the artwork yourself.  Seriously - I don't think anyone has ever done a pencil-sketch beat-em-up before.  I think it would be pretty cool - rather like NPR Quake.

[Alondro]

Some people have done amazing things with Sprites and Flash...

*checks Newgrounds*

That could work well for a storyline sort of game.  Maybe a farce story like "Clue" with ridiculous alternative endings.   

[BlueTiger]

I'd never heard of 'Blitz Basic' before.  Truth be told I wouldn't put much stock in something that uses BASIC as its underlying language, although I'm pleased to see it seems to have more runtimes than just a win32 one.

Trust me, it's nothing like BASIC anymore, it's just it's roots. I still laugh at the line numbers form BASIC though. Good God, it must've been awful to program back then.

Anyway, the problem you are going to have is actually getting the artwork.  That, more than anything else, is what offed the TeamFurrae project.  There was a spark of initial interest which gradually tailed off.

This is what I'm afraid of. I'm going to do everything I can for this game, but I'm afraid I won't have the support I need. I mean, no one has even stepped forward to say "I might have an urge to think about helping you," yet.

Anyway, here's a suggestion - if all else fails, drawn the artwork yourself.  Seriously - I don't think anyone has ever done a pencil-sketch beat-em-up before.  I think it would be pretty cool - rather like NPR Quake.

OMG! That would be freaking AWESOME! I hadn't even thought of that....
Except I have a lack of scanner... curses. If all else fails, I'll definitely do it this way. I'll just have to borrow a friend's scanner or something...

Some people have done amazing things with Sprites and Flash...

Yeah, but I don't have flash and don't know how to work it. Sprites are exactly what I need though.

Jesus, another person is doing this now?

Thanks for the support! I'll be sure you have to pay for the game once I finish it. j/k

What can I say? I want to do this for a career. If I can do this now and show it to companies after college I'm hoping they'll be like "You did this just out of high school?!" And assuming I do good work in college too, I'll get hired. So I certainly have the motivation, the question is if I'll have the support.

[Tapewolf]

You might find parts of this thread interesting:
http://clockworkmansion.com/forum/index.php/topic,791.msg19786.html#msg19786

...before it settled into a game using TKG's 3D engine, a beat-em-up was discussed.

[Shaotic Master]

i wish you the best of luck

[Alondro]

*Charline peeks in*  I can be a special character with my "Charline Beats Everyone Cuz She's A Cubi and Cubi Are TEH Ultimate Awesome" attack!   

[bill]

yeah, well i can cast iddqd. so there

[techmaster-glitch]

Anyway, the problem you are going to have is actually getting the artwork.  That, more than anything else, is what offed the TeamFurrae project.  There was a spark of initial interest which gradually tailed off.

This is what I'm afraid of. I'm going to do everything I can for this game, but I'm afraid I won't have the support I need. I mean, no one has even stepped forward to say "I might have an urge to think about helping you," yet.

That's the thing; this has been tried numerous times before, and all failed miserably. No one here is going to actually help you with this, or give you serious, involved support. However, some might (and already have) give advice. Other than that, you're on your own.
As for me, I wish you good luck. You're gonna need it.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I think it's not so much don't -want- to help, as have other things that come first.

Which, sadly, leaves little to pass on to this. Particularly since it's a repeat of a previous failure.

I think if you manage to get somewhere, it might garner more help than is immediately apparent now...

[Kenji]

If need be, you could make the game basics, and substitute the DMFA characters for other characters that you can obtain sprites and such for. Then, when you have a good chunk of it taken care of, and can then garner support, you can one by one replace those characters with the real DMFA characters.

Dunno if you'd wanna, if you could, or even if using the other characters would be legal, but I figured I'd toss the idea out there just in case. If someone else wants to elaborate if its doable, be my guest.

EDIT: As well as keeping a list in the thread showing where at in development you are. List what you need and put "to be started", "in progress", or "finished" next to them so those who may help can see you've gotten progress done and you don't just pop it all out at once after people have forgotten about it.

[BlueTiger]

Yeah, that's a smart idea Kenji. Both of them, I'll do that second one but before I do either I'm going to see about getting some artist elsewhere. There's a webcomic called Plush and Blood: The Unstuffed that just reached 100 comics. It's much more dramtic then DMFA (despite the fact all the characters are living dolls), but a game idea has never come up over there. Maybe if I proposed it over there I could artist and then there could be a DMFA vs. Plush and Blood. Kinda in the style of Capcom vs. SNK.

[Fuyudenki]

I'd just like to drop in and impart some knowledge from someone who's just been where you're planning on going.

Making a video game is no cakewalk.

I mean, it's not too terribly bad if you're using a video game factory like The Games Factory or Game Maker, but even then I poured 20 hours into my Kid Radd video game, and all I got done was two levels.

Granted, a significant portion of it was spent ripping sprites and sounds from the comic which inspired the game.(I'd say I did a pretty good job, myself.)

You, however, claim to be planning on making a real game, with real programming.  While I applaud the effort(you can make much better games this way), I would just like to warn you.

4 months, 3 guys, half the work was done for us, all of my other classes suffered because I invested so much time, and I still wouldn't show the result to anyone except my personal friends.

Sure, the graphics are pretty, and the levels are clever, but that's about it, and our lead programmer invested more than 150 hours in the game.  Just programming.  I spent at least 20 hours writing code, and some 30 hours making sprites.(most of which are visible in my art thread, and were never used.)  Our level designer spent 40 hours designing and building levels, and another 15 hours re]building the levels from scratch when we discovered the physics engine couldn't handle certain types of collisions, and the enemy AI was going to be far simpler than intended.

And the game was technically 5 minutes late.  I burned the CD on my laptop in-class while still working on the final presentation, which we get to give tomorrow.

And it's not as good as the two games which have already been presented, honestly.

So you're stubborn.  Good.  So you're determined.  Good.  So you've got nothing but free time.  Good.

This raises your chance of success to about 15%.

All I've got to say is: good luck.  You're going to need it.

[Tapewolf]

Making a video game is no cakewalk.

You, however, claim to be planning on making a real game, with real programming.  While I applaud the effort(you can make much better games this way), I would just like to warn you.

Not to belittle what he's planning, but he's only writing the control logic really.  All the hard stuff is done for him already.

Here's one I made when I was 19:  http://www.it-he.org/ithe.htm#jav

(You'll have to run it in DOSbox.  XP or Vista will have a hissy fit)

It was written entirely in C++ and assembler.  Think about everything which Blitz Basic is doing for you with the sprite rendering, keyboard handling, timer systems and so forth.
Then add everything which DirectX (or SDL) is doing for them.  For Javelin, I wrote all of that myself with help from a few friends.  From 'putpixel' on up, even the FLI movie player.  The only thing I brought in from outside was the audio library, the GIF decoder and the DOS extender (the only other game which uses that particular one is Jazz Jackrabbit BTW).  Oh, and the music was donated since I was useless at music back then.  IIRC it took about two years including one engine rewrite when I switched to DPMI from pure DOS.

I still haven't completed another project since - my RPG has about 9 years of effort in it and it's on hiatus at the moment.  Partly because I can't get the artwork 

Before I went into University I did want to be a games programmer.  After I came out, I ended up doing mobile data stuff instead 

[Sienna Maiu - M T]

Quite frankly Amber, that was far less cynical than I was expecting, but then again, maybe it was the sheer fact I was expecting it. Although the ten attempts is a twist.

Alright, so I've had this window open for several days, but was daunted by your large chunks of text. However, I managed to read through the blockage of words, and upon signing in and refreshing the page (leading to more, but less daunting words) I am here to say one thing. Well... two.

1)I wish you all the best with your endeavour and admire your moxy.

2) I am willing to put it all out there...
and provide backgrounds.
I know, "oooooh~... "

This of course, is only a valid offer, so long as what you want is simply hand-drawn/coloured landscape/dungeons/what'ev.
This is actually, also something which I think may help me grow as an artist.

As an aside; Naruto *snicker*
You should know he's so hyper it takes forever to get him to come back to earth.

[Gareeku]

I got to "Naruto sprites" and immediatelty stopped reading.

Just kidding. Good luck with the project, though I'm not getting my hopes up largely thanks to the many annoucements in the past.

[Fuyudenki]

Making a video game is no cakewalk.

You, however, claim to be planning on making a real game, with real programming.  While I applaud the effort(you can make much better games this way), I would just like to warn you.

Not to belittle what he's planning, but he's only writing the control logic really.  All the hard stuff is done for him already.

That's all my team did, too, really.  If you're not using DX or OGL/AL these days, you're just asking for it, and with some pretty good open-source graphics and audio APIs out there(Irrlicht), you'd be silly not to take advantage of them.

I can not begin to fathom how much work you put into that game.

Now, that post was not to be discouraging.  After all that, one of my team members and I still plan on making a Turn-based strategy game, and re-making our project into what we'd originally planned on, but this time, the time restriction's off.  I've also got several or so games planned, so clearly, the class has done nothing to discourage me, it's only given a somewhat more realistic perspective.

To be fair, there was a Lode Runner clone presented Tuesday which would be marketable, had that team another month to work on it.(and a lot of legal advice... their sprites are ripped from nearly every game imaginable.)

[rt]

Wow a i'm a bit surprised, first at the actuall number of attempts made so far, but also with the number of knowlegeble people in this and the other game thread that nothing has been made. So not even a game/level so basic that it just qualifies as a game? Not even an interactive flash thing-a-mabob?

A real modern game, well that I understand, that takes 100+ employee teams year(s) and much much money. Mabey blue tiger has something a bit simpler in mind.

[Tapewolf]

That's all my team did, too, really.  If you're not using DX or OGL/AL these days, you're just asking for it, and with some pretty good open-source graphics and audio APIs out there(Irrlicht), you'd be silly not to take advantage of them.

Indeed.  Back then it was a bit different - graphics libraries were expensive and we had no money.  The core library behind Javelin was called 'ITG' or 'IT-HE Graphics Library' which was the brainchild of three talented people.  We didn't know much about optimisation - the college didn't get an internet connection until we left, so apart from the Bresenham lines and stuff, we invented all the algorithms ourselves.  (In the UK 'college' is a 2-year stage between school and university)

Nonetheless, in terms of performance we smoked at least one library worth $150 

Nowadays I'd use SDL or Allegro for a graphics library for the platform independence.  ITG never did quite catch up in that regard.

I can not begin to fathom how much work you put into that game.

To us it was a fun project for the free time between classes, and writing the graphics library was a damn good way to learn assembler.  Of course it helped that we were on good terms with the sysadmin, and the computing department supported it rather than trying to kill the project.  In actual fact they got us to set a beta version of the game up on the open day 

Wow a i'm a bit surprised, first at the actuall number of attempts made so far, but also with the number of knowlegeble people in this and the other game thread that nothing has been made. So not even a game/level so basic that it just qualifies as a game? Not even an interactive flash thing-a-mabob?

TKG had a working level editor with some physics.  It was based on Irrlicht.  The problem was getting the textures and models done.  What we were trying to do was put together a small hamlet of houses you can't enter in hopes of attracting enough attention to reach critical mass.  Sadly we failed to get that far.  In any case what we were attempting was very ambitious.  Too ambitious, really, but had it succeeded it would have done justice to the DMFA concept.

Personally I don't really like beat-em-ups, but even if I did I have a full-time job and lot of side-projects going on - music, the Radio Project, the anti-walkthroughs, the CJP and FH stories and (very rarely) my own game project, which I ported to the MacOS a couple of months ago...

[e_voyager]

I'd never heard of 'Blitz Basic' before.  Truth be told I wouldn't put much stock in something that uses BASIC as its underlying language, although I'm pleased to see it seems to have more runtimes than just a win32 one.

Trust me, it's nothing like BASIC anymore, it's just it's roots. I still laugh at the line numbers form BASIC though. Good God, it must've been awful to program back then.
Thanks for the support! I'll be sure you have to pay for the game once I finish it. j/k

What can I say? I want to do this for a career. If I can do this now and show it to companies after college I'm hoping they'll be like "You did this just out of high school?!" And assuming I do good work in college too, I'll get hired. So I certainly have the motivation, the question is if I'll have the support.

hey now i remember programing in basic with fond memories. just me and apple 2 and hours of spare time while waiting for the class to finish up the assigned program that i sketched down while the teacher was describing it. 

[insanekaosx]

how many bits you want the sprites? If you want a REAL basic game, I can recolor some nice 8bits for ye ;D


I might be able to manage a few 16s if you want just a little more advanced xP

Thats about all I can offer for help here, maybe some background art, like Sienna

[e_voyager]

well i have mega man sprites  if they will help.

[Ryudo Lee]

You know, if you wanna make a fighting game, why not just use MUGEN?  A little knowledge of DOS and a few artists to do the animations, and you're all set.

[Tapewolf]

You know, if you wanna make a fighting game, why not just use MUGEN?  A little knowledge of DOS and a few artists to do the animations, and you're all set.

Well, the artists thing is the problem he's trying to solve, but ultimately I think he's really trying to get experience in engine development.  Interesting link, though - I'd never heard of that one.

[James StarRunner]

Ya, unfortunately, this artist can't commit to anything else right now. I've already bitten off more than I can chew. Good luck with the game though. Perhaps if you're still going by the time I catch up on my workload, I may be able to help.