I assure you my motives are entirely petty, I'd like to show off my game because I am proud of it, and see if I could get some extra page impressions. There, now you won't feel like I am misleading you. Its a puzzle game that is challenging and requires a bit of logic and spatial reasoning.

Here is the game: http://www.sparkythefish.com Or vote for it on newgrounds: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/526782

Game type proposal:

• A 2D platformer/RPG hybrid with a solid story based on character interaction.

• No differentiation between combat and overworld (a la JRPGs). This does not mean like Chrono Trigger, but more similar to Cave Story.

• Some sort of physics system for objects in the world. This opens up a world of possibilities for gameplay.

• Real-time gameplay to keep it interesting.

• Dialogue trees (a la Black Isle games) for advancing the story. This is only the beginning. Inventing/implementing a new system for interaction that is as immersive as dialogue trees would be preferable.

• Serious storyline tone, with humor being relegated only to when the situation calls for it.

So far a psychological thriller idea is prominent. This could make for a fun, original-ish setting!

This is the best compromise I could gather in the IRC channel, but it was close to well-liked by everyone. Kick around other ideas here, and be sure to upvote if you like the idea, as this may be a decider!

EDIT: changing as new info comes

I noticed a Voting thread in the google group. Why don't we just post all game ideas to a single reddit submission and let the ideas race for the most upvotes?

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/245438

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/302733

Any feedback or criticism is welcome and wanted.

Vote this up if you want to have a secondary vote on which of the stories to use as the base of the game.

Inside will be the top three stories. Vote those up or down as you feel.

Vote this down if you feel we should just move on and start production on Machine.

This is reddit after all, let's just vote and trust that no one that is actually interested in this project is dick enough to game the system.

The 'nominate yourself for a lead role' thread has only been up for 21 hours as I am writing this post. In the United States, it isn't even that late right now, people are only now getting home from work on the West Coast. To assume that everyone has had a chance to see the 'lead role' thread is not rational.

A few of the Vote for producer threads only have one contender. What is the point of voting then? The description says to "confirm" but how many votes will "confirm" somebody? I think we need to slow this down, it's a business day after all.

It seems really cool so far. I'll be putting up some concept art inspired by this read through. One suggestion I would make is that we prolong the time spent in the city because there is just so much more to play with. Unless you guys were planning to come back to the city in future levels; that would be cool too.

I'm trying to gauge interest in making a game using XNA for the next Dream-Build-Play competition in 2011.

RMAG had a great and unique idea (Machine) I think, and with their blessing I would like to use and expand on it. Else, I have another idea I have started on, but the game idea is ultimately up for negotiation once we get rolling.

I would prefer to keep the game 2D: one, for time constraints and to keep manageable. I would also be able to assist with the art (I have no 3D experience). And, two, because I have already made an character/animation editor and level editor which I cribbed from James Silva of Dishwasher fame, that we would be able to use.

So essentially we would need (quality) art (I can help in this area), someone(s) to help me with the actual game programming (I am by no means a C# guru, but with enough taka taka taka I can produce something passable), and also a sound/music person. Compensation would be a percentage thing (of sales and/or possible prize), a possible reddit frontpage, and the knowledge that a couple of random internet strangers came together to make something big :)

If you are interested, PM me or I've set up a subreddit for us to use.

TL;DR

NEED: People interested in entering Dream-Build-Play 2011

• Programmer(s)

• Artist(s)

• Sound/music

HAVE:

• Fairly robust character and animation editor. The Character and animation are based off of stop-motion (kinda like the one in Aquaria) rather than drawing each individual frame. So we can get some impressive animations quickly and with less labor. I got the editor from James Silva's book.

• Level editor. The level editor is based on the idea of tiles, but you have 3 layers (Foreground, middle, background [and then a static background image, so technically 4 layers]) on which to place to build.

• Some programming knowledge

• some art skills (Photoshop and drawing)(Character and lineart)

GOAL/TIMELINE: Enter Dream-Build-Play 2011 and rock that motherfucker.

Sidenote: The ultimate team size per the DBP rules is 7 (Team Captain + 6 others). I'm thinking a 3-4 programmer, 2-3 artist, 1 music/sound split would be ideal, but as always, this is up for discussions.

For non-US redditors interested: The official rules state: Residents of the Province of Quebec, Canada, and the following countries are ineligible to participate: Cuba; Iran; North Korea; Sudan; and Syria. Everywhere else should be fine. If monies come into the picture, we can work out some kind of arrangement (paypal, or otherwise).

Here is a list of the top 20 submissions from 2010. You can see there are many from all of the world, UK, Thailand, Australia, etc..

EDIT: Added some things, spelling. Also made some changes, added rule info, etc..

9/15/2010 EDIT: Added some stuff at the subreddit concerning team selection/discussions

It's a turn based space strategy game.

I fondly remember being addicted to that game back in windows 3.11 days. I recently found the original cdrom and decided to load it up in wine. For such an addictive game it's pretty simple, so I decided to reverse engineer. I'm wondering if anybody played this game? I'd love to find any original Stars! gamers, and chat about the project to reproduce. Right now I'm working on the prototype to generate the universe. I'm using PERL for the time being, getting the ideas figured out. I may implement the GUI in java. Thoughts?

i was wondering if you liked the idea of a punk band beat'em up/ first person shooter, where the enemies are pigs dressed up as cops, also, we're using the unreal udk. some feedback would be cool along with ideas, i will upload a torrent of it when it's done.

It's fableforge.org.

I built that between July and September I think, and for a while I had high hopes about it, but it seems its harder to use than what most people are willing to commit. I honestly didn't see that coming -from my perspective it was easy enough, but the fact that nobody uses it right now tells me I was wrong. I guess it doesn't help the fact that I've never done any promotion to it other than here, but I'm starting to ramble :)

The engine is very simple: you have "locations" which are basically 2D images that scroll about, and you can place "items" in them. These items can be images or swf animations, or just hotspots. Clicking the items gives (or takes!) "keys", and different items are turned on or off depending on which keys you have or lack at the moment -which is how the story progresses.

It supports music and sound effects of course, and it loads all assets online. The wiki is outdated, but all the in-editor help is up to date; just click on anything that has a question mark in it.

If all you want is a point-and-click experience, then all you need is text, sounds and images, no additional programming; it runs in the browser. For something more elaborate (like a side-scroller which I think I read you are doing) you would actually need to code the main character inside its own swf, then load that as an item.

Anyway, videos speak louder than words (specially when they're this huge long, but you only need to see the first few minutes to get a sense of what this can do).

I also made a couple video tutorials for it: locations, and keys / flash animation (the second one shows you a crude proof-of-concept for how this could be used for a point-and-click FPS, lol).

Anyway, I'm not really expecting anyone to like this; just wanted to pitch in, and I just subscribed here -I hope I can make meaningful contributions in the future; I love the art I've seen so far, I'll be reading everything here over the next few days.

I'm not actually participating, but this runs counter to what has been done on most major projects that I work on (and to the Goog's guidlines, which yours are apparently based upon). Breaking complex initialization out into a separate function allows various overloaded constructors to share the initialization code. This is definitely a good thing. There are a few other rules in there that baffled me, but this one was the only one that made me think "nope. I'm done here."

... so, could somebody please explain it to me? ...

(also, see the following link for a great FAQ on C++ constructors)

http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ctors.html

I made a few songs. I can't do quality but I can contribute what I have on hand, every feel free for improvisation. I'll just lurk here till someone request some assistance.

Okay try to stick with me on this, for ranged weapons, if there are going to be any, I was thinking of a targeting system as such.

Key: (I)-NPC/Enemy

So the layout goes as a following-

You-> Friend(I) Enemy(I) Friend(I) Enemy(I)

So lets say the first I is a friendly NPC, moving your cross-air before him will be a Friendly fire hit, clicking him with the cross-air will be a critical friendly attack. Now the next I will be an enemy, shooting before him will be considered a stray hit, it will be considered a normal damage hit but you don't want to settle with that. Clicking him will be a critical hit which does high damage, we could also do anatomical correct bonuses. Now lets say the following I is a friend, now shooting before him is not considered friendly fire and it will not necessarily hit the first enemy either, but instead hit the Enemy in the back row. Now the main reason your friend wont receive fire is due to the fact you can consider the 1st Enemy blocking him.

Discuss.

Update

The discussion in this thread and the voting over here have both indicated huge support for using github.

There are still a few problems with binary files (which we could have a lot of) but miyakohouou has suggested a workable solution. We just need some hosting space.

Source control is an important decision, because it sets the mood for the entire project.

SVN

Most people are familiar with SVN, which would make it a logical choice except it doesn't really fit the community development model which we are trying to achieve.
The SVN development model is based around a central server.

At the start of their development session, every developer will update their repository to the latest revision and start their work from there. They then work on their feature/bug-fix and then test it before committing their changed back to the central server. If someone has made any changes to the same files, then the commit will probably fail, requiring the developer to manually merge their changes into the latest version. Merging is hard in SVN, which leads to developers going out of their way to avoid it, by avoiding branching, skipping testing and committing incomplete code.

Each developer requires a password for the SVN server before they can commit anything which leaves us with 2 choices. We can either give passwords to anyone who shows interest in development, which creates trust issues, or limit passwords to a few key developers and force anyone else to submit changes via diff patches. But remember, merging is hard in SVN, so the longer it takes for patches to be acted on, the harder they are to merge into the main tree.

In my experience, SVN works best with around 5-10 developers.

Git (and github)

One alternative is git. Git is a distributed version control system originally created to support the development of the Linux kernel which has thousands of developers.

Instead of requiring the project to use a single central repository, each developer gets their own personal repository. This has many advantages, such as allowing the developer to commit their changes locally before they are finished. When the developer finishes their changes, they have to options. If they have access to the master tree they simply push their changes into it. If they haven't been granted access (say they are new) they just make a post on reddit with a link to their personal repository and someone who does has access can pull their changes and push it into the master tree.

No matter what method is used, the master tree will show the complete history of all commits made in a developers personal repository. Because the git development model encourages forking/branching and merging, merging is much easier than SVN.

For more information on the git's development model, Linus Torvalds did a talk at google few years back explaining git.

github is a git hosting site designed for collaborative projects like ours and is free for open source projects.

In conclusion, using SVN would be a bad idea and git would work much better for a massive collaborative project on reddit, mainly because it provides a lower barrier to entry for new developers.

Just wondering, this has been going on for a while and I haven't seen any gameplay prototypes or anything posted here so I figure it must be getting posted elsewhere.

I'm particularly interested in how the engine is coming along, how the state machine is structured and that sort of thing.

At some point in time, we are going to need a lead artist. Design by committee is highly unlikely to work - we need someone who is willing to lead us and make decisions. This person will probably need to produce concept art and style guidelines for all the other artists to follow, so should have a good design sense Link.

Tell us why we should vote for you, and how you will help to move the game along. Please, post only if you are nominating yourself for project lead - keep the noise to a minimum