A boards game

RedXIV

Note to self, keep shooterSF away from art assets...

pg5678pg

Would love to be a part of this project, I have a good bit of experience using XNA and Unity using C#. Any plans so far on what platform would be used to develop the game?

Anima

Any update with this? What is the result of the survey?

RedXIV

Am going to stick with as above, the end of the month before moving ahead with this, I've 8 responses to the survey so far, anyone else who's interested still has another week to put their interest in. I'll put together the results then and give a proposal then based on what I've seen.

8 responses though (excluding myself) is a good sized team though! Very promising!

koHd

Exams are over. I'm ready to get cracking. First step, project manager's action plan?

I take it Red is the PM?

Mr. CooL ICE

Just completed survey.

I have very little experience in game dev but am in the middle of some OpenGL Android tutorials, so there is little I can contribute.

That said, I didn't see anybody offering sound. I could knock together some songs that are slightly better than MIDI quality if you don't mind a SNES feel and if necessary, could probably get some actual recorded music together if its called for.

tok9

I wouldn't be too worried if you lack experience. I think it's safe to say you are in the majority (like myself) but I'm looking forward to getting cracking with this and learning from it.

Who knows we might even release something in the future

koHd

I've just downloaded GitHub.

Since this is my first introduction to proper version control, I downloaded this handy free ebook guide:

Progit

Good so far.

returnNull

just be aware koHd that the free github accounts mean all your repo's are viewable by the public.

returnNull

just dont want your Call of Duty/Pokemon/monkey island hybrid game been stolen on you

tok9

returnNull wrote: »

just dont want your Call of Duty/Pokemon/monkey island hybrid game been stolen on you

You had that idea too?

returnNull

tok9 wrote: »

You had that idea too?

well was humming and haawing about nicking ideas from monkey island but said fuk it ,its gone be in 3D!!:)

koHd

returnNull wrote: »

just dont want your Call of Duty/Pokemon/monkey island hybrid game been stolen on you

I see you were already snooping around my repo's then...

RedXIV

Alright guys, just a heads up, tonight I'll be putting something together and it will go off interest showed in the survey mainly. If anyone is still thinking of getting involved, do post here or complete the survey in my previous posts by the end of the day.

Cheers,
Red

RedXIV

Sorry about the delay in getting this together guys, real world stuff has made it impossible to sit down with it for the last few days. I will get something up here tomorrow and we can work from there.

First milestone missed! Just like real life

mahamageehad

RedXIV wrote: »

Sorry about the delay in getting this together guys, real world stuff has made it impossible to sit down with it for the last few days. I will get something up here tomorrow and we can work from there.

First milestone missed! Just like real life

Take your time Red! Better a decent plan late than a shoddy plan on time! :cool:

RedXIV

OK guys so here's my plan for the first stage of this. Taking into account the various answers given in the survey, there are a few things that have shaped my design. We have a good variation of roles that people are interested in but there is definitely a strong inclination towards code (unsurprisingly).

The tool/language I'm suggesting we use is the Corona SDK, a multi-purpose tool that can publish to iPhone or Android or others. Corona uses the Lua scripting language which is a bit easier to get to grips with but it can be altered with C++ if necessary. I'm recommended we start with this as

• Its got a good community and a lot of resources
• Developing for various platforms gives us a better look at multiplatform code
• Mobile apps are a nice way to show what you can do for those of you who'd like to show this off as a portfolio piece

As regards the game for us to start, I wanted something that had a majority of interest as well as being something that would cover enough of the basics for others to splinter off and do their own thing if they wanted to after this was done. With that in mind, I came to the conclusion that a 2D Tower Defence game covers a lot of the points I'd like us to cover. Things like:

• Drawing Sprites
• Moving Sprites
• Game Variables
• Animation
• Enemy AI

I don't want to go too deep into the design as there are a few people who have expressed an interest in the design aspect of the game and lets be fair, everyone who works on a game has their own ideas So I won't go into too much detail here, instead I'll concentrate on what I'd like us as a group to accomplish in the next month.

Monthly milestones are short enough to be realistic and long enough to achieve relatively large amounts of work. This could be broken into weekly milestones if required but until it is, I'll stick with monthly. As I mentioned when I started this, the primary driving factor behind it should be a tool for people to learn. If you are going to be possessive about code you write, this might not be the project for you. I would like everything to be open to all collaborators and with this, all code should be accompanied by plenty of comments. If you use code from somewhere else and don't know exactly what it does, say so in the comments and someone else might be able to figure it out. I'm using code as a baseline as its one I'm most familiar with but the same should go for everything. If you're creating a soundtrack, it should be available in edit-able form, wireframes etc for art assets also. No idea if that's what happens on the music/art side but just be aware this whole thing will be open source.

There are a few people who have plenty of time for this and they will probably get the most out of it, as it true for anything you put time into. The more code you write, the more you will undoubtedly learn. One of the reasons I chose the Corona SDK is that if you don't think you could contribute to the main chunk of code, perhaps you could modify it to work for your own device?

JUNE MILESTONES

Ok so for the month of June, taking into account the phenomenal weather in the next week or so, I'm going to suggest we start small.

1. EVERYONE, and that means everyone, should download the Corono SDK. Even if you're not confident about working on it, downloading it is the first step. Do it here
2. Attempt "Hello World" - The legendary first program everyone tries when the start something new. Try and output, however you like, the words "Hello World" when you run your app. Just to get you familiar with the interface that Corona provides.
3. Attend a "Team Talk" - We are going to need to communicate a lot for this, and while this thread can be thought of as HQ, we are going to need a good bit of back and forth. I'm suggesting Sunday the 9th for the first one, but that can change if people are unable to attend/doesn't suit.
4. Define the game in a more complete manner. This is primarily for the artistic sides which have to invest a lot of time to get the look right. We need to have an idea at least of art style, overall mood and game mechanics past "fun game".
5. Something to appear on screen when we run the code - Artists, musicians, coders, hopefully we will have SOMETHING by the end of the month, even if its a simple black square that appears on the middle of the screen, the important thing is that everything else is a mere derivative of that. Once we figure out how to display a sprite, we're half way there.

This is all open to change guys if there is something you are not happy with, but please don't say you don't like something or don't want to do something without offering an alternative, its very hard to keep momentum up when that happens

Finally, for those looking for perhaps more detailed instructions, please attend a team talk or better again, volunteer to tackle something. Think you could come up with a nice start menu piece of code? go for it! Want to start up a catchy tune? brilliant! Nice idea for concept art? We'd love to see it! Let us know here so we don't have a lot of people doubling up, or at least if you are doubling up, you can help each other. Ideally I would like us to get about half way through the month with a few small chunks of code that the authors can explain to everyone else and we'll move out from there.

Comments are most welcome guys! Criticism is expected, your opinions matters the most as you are the guys doing this! My input is purely motivational/managerial, with perhaps the odd dive into code.

Let me know what you think!

ShooterSF

Cool. I actually made a little game in gideros last week and its similar to corona and uses lua so I can probably help a little with the language if anyone is completely new to it and has problems (though Im still only learning!!)

As for Sunday it's not my best day. Working from 4pm.

Now to download a few tower defense games.

Mr. CooL ICE

Cool. Downloaded Corona SDK last night before but didn't have a chance to play with it much. However, LUA was something I was thinking of learning at some stage, so this is a good time to start.

Sunday should be good for me, but preferably before 7

koHd

In person meeting on the 9th, is that the plan?

tok9

koHd wrote: »

In person meeting on the 9th, is that the plan?

I assume a skype chat.. in person would be a bit much for such a small project right now.

RedXIV

Yeah we'll keep it to a skype chat for now, but as seen here already, it doesn't suit some so it's open to change. Would Monday suit others better? I'd be looking for something after 8pm personally

BobbyPropane

Would love to take part in this but have the small matter of the leaving cert Will follow anyway and promote when possible ! Good luck.

ShooterSF

Any idea what kind of size team we'll have, I guess an estimate is the most you can manage. Im around every monday but not between 7:30 and 9:30 (football!)

Mr. CooL ICE

Won't get a chance to play with lua for a few days, but this article seem useful for people like me with very little knowledge of scripting:

http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/The_briefest_introduction_to_Lua

mahamageehad

Thanks for all your work on this Red!
Depending on the time on Sunday I may not be able to make it, I am at the Game Of Thrones Exhibition in Belfast on Saturday so it might be evening by the time I'm back on Sunday. I've downloaded the SDk but I probably won't get a chance to even look at it until Monday!

tok9

My schedule has gotten very busy very quickly. Just got a job in London and I'm starting Monday so I can chat in the evenings or some time sunday.

RedXIV

Congrats on the job

If Sunday/Monday doesn't suit this week guys, we can push it out a little bit, but I'd be reluctant to do so without another date in mind, thats how these things start slipping into "a project I'll do SOMEDAY"

Have added a doodle poll here so people can add in what time suits. Forgive the size, but i want to give people options so we can get as many as possible involved. The first meeting WILL be held when the most people are available.

Link to Doodle timesheet

ShooterSF

I wont fill that in yet as I dont see my roster in work for next week till tomorrow. Stupid job always interfering

ShooterSF

So on the minus side: my roster wasnt done But im in at 4 tomorrow. Im most likely off Monday and Wednesday nights but with aforementioned football on monday. Dont let me hold up any skyping though. Ill still fill in that poll when I know tomorrow.

Now on the plus side. I got to play with Corona a little today. It's taken me a bit to relearn some things I had learned with Gideros but I'm getting there. Ive got a simple screen with some text that when you touch, loads different screens using the storyboard part of Corona's API.