At last, a clear sprite request for the Art Dept.

596295

More input, this time per gameplay.

Perhaps we could say that teams are going to pick up the three components. Your team happens to be part of the "cool" team that's just awesome. The other teams meet uncertain disaster upon their missions. So, in the beginning, you get to pick which order you retrieve the three components (as the other teams attempt to go to the other locations). This breaks it up making it less linear. We just need to figure out how to make the six different paths work (e.g. properly balancing monsters, plot, etc.)

No zombies. We've already got a space shooter/rpg/mystery, we don't need to add zombie killing into the genres.

Deep Thought. Yes. It must happen.

Quick comments:

Because of the size and scope of this game, I'm thinking we're going to keep the setting a little lower than "planet" scale. The player will operate out of a central hub, around which will be a basic overworld with the four dungeons, plus a few caves and crashed vessels to explore should the plot require it. The "collect three things and go" plot is a bit unsatisfying to me; firstly, there's not a tremendous amount of logic to the dungeons and bosses that surround these objectives unless we put a little backstory into them, and secondly, it pretty much negates the in-between plot stuff I was thinking of. Bluntly, it's kind of dull and we can do better.

Here's where I was starting out, and maybe we can build on this. I can supply a map in a day's time if this turns out to be agreeable:

The main character will assume the role of a forensic investigator/engineer, or whatever the appropriate title is. This is a young colony he's arriving on, and there have been some mechanical malfunctions he's been called upon to investigate. The game opens with some minor footwork as he moves the backstory forward talking to NPC's, reporting here and there to pick up his weaponry (light personal protection, mainly). I was thinking of a firing range where you have to hit moving targets with limited ammo; no reward for winning, just a simple minigame you can play anytime, get used to new weapons. Eventually he turns in for the night. Nothing you haven't seen in Chrono Trigger or a million other RPG's.

Cut to darkness as he steals out of the colony and heads for dungeon 1 in a deliberately shady manner. Once the dungeon is completed the backstory is fleshed out: he's a military internal affairs investigator and they are suspecting a member of local command of sabotage for some not-yet discovered motive, and he's investigating covertly, James-Bond style. Between dungeons 2 and 3 there's some questioning, and something useful left for the main character by an informant who's identity will be disclosed later. It's an NPC the player's already had interaction with, naturally. We need to keep some plausible mystery, and enough clues to keep the player wondering.

The investigation ultimately leads to Dungeon 2. The plot heats up a bit, perhaps the guilty party is now aware someone's on to him. Whether that party has been revealed to the player, the main character as the prime suspect, both, neither, whatever, depends on the rest of the plot and how we want to play it. Maybe the main player has a near miss with an "accident". Also keep in mind that this whoel time, the main character can gleefully arm himself with whatever he finds and can take without being caught. That inventory is slowly filling, Zelda style ...

Dungeon 3 pretty much ends any real mystery as all the pieces fall into place. Then it's just setup for the final dungeon, protagonist vs. antagonist, as the good guy has the bad guy on the run and backed into a corner. We can tease the half-destruction of the colony or something to explain why the main character runs in alone instead of with military backup, or whatever else the plot can sensibly allow. Throw a supporting cast in there (like the informant), cool weapons and items, flesh out everyone's motivations and personality, figure out the dungeon settings to follow along the plot, and I think we might have a winner.

I don't mean to step on the previous ideas; just throwing out my own brainstorm. I'm open to being outvoted on this, but like I said I have a few reservations about the previous ideas, unless someone has some really good ideas to make them more workable ...

There's always the possibility that there was a huge volcanic blast the hurdled these nearly-indestructible high-tech pieces into outer space. They had just enough juice in them before they crash-landed on various planets (or portions of the same planet if you want) to send out a homing beacon so someone knew that they were at least "out there somewhere" and a general location (on the western jungle continent, and on the far end of one of the northern moon craters, etc.)

That would explain why there was no one left, and why it appeared that they all left in a hurry without actually gathering this technology with them for their flight.

Then you could build your story around that premise, and that you need to

and do all the recovery stuff...

I nominate Matt Smith as the Evil Producer.

I'd say the "core programmers" should figure out what type of game they want (in this case, it's a tile-based, top-down RPG) and start on the engine code.

1) Figure out how maps will be stored, saved, and loaded.
2) Figure out how the characters (player and NPCs) need to be represented on the map
3) Figure out how to draw the entire map, including background tiles, characters, shadows/shading, etc.
4) Figure out how movement and bounds-checking will be implemented, including for battles. Will characters be constrained to tiles or be able to roam freely?

While they're doing this, everyone else can hammer out "what should the game BE ABOUT". After all, that's a DESIGNER's job. It's also their job to create or provide the tilemaps once they agree on setting, which should just "snap in" into the code that the "core programmers" had established.

Plots, subplots, etc. are all superfluous at the early stage of the game, IMO.

Unrelated EDIT:

Næssén, in this thread posted a link to a project on code.google.com. Maybe that would be a good place to setup a temporary repository?

I agree totally. But no one is saying "just throw together some crap and call it finished." In my experience, you start out with that just to get the functionality working. Then you tweak, improve, adjust, and otherwise fine-tune it and hone it to perfection after everything is coming together.

That's the difference between the role of a "programmer" and a "developer". The programmer just needs to make it work; the developer needs to make it work well.

I do think that what we have now, gameplay-wise, is enough to start work on code. The finer details of story aren't important to the code, or shouldn't be--it's just a matter of writing the right cutscenes.

We have enough to go on to start coding, and I think we should. Actual progress will help keep up our motivation to work on this project.

Speaking of working on the project, maybe we should begin deciding who will do what. I'm willing to do anything needed as long as it's within my abilities.

Wow, this is not something I want to be left out of.

Too late to join?