Troubled Windows game project?

[Mokura]

I've been thinking about trying to make a game of sorts based on the OS-tan.  Nothing too fancy, just a good ol' "oldskoo" SNES-like platformer game.  The problem is, I'm not so great with graphics, and I'm still a novice programmer.  So I would appreciate help, comments, advice, etc. from people.

EDIT: Here's stuff that I need to work on.

Design Engine
I need to figure out what to create this game with.  Preferably something easy to use and free without limitations (watermark, limited features etc.).  MP3 support (for background music) and the ability to create the game as a stand-alone executable are very important.  If I do well enough, I just might do a rewrite of the game in a proper programming language (after learning it, of course).

Story
I'm trying to come up with a story myself.  I know most platformers don't really have a plot, but something needs to be there.  All I know for sure right now is that the main character is Toshiaki.

Graphics
Since I'm totally incompetent with graphics, I either need existing sources, or people to help me with graphics.  As far as player sprites go, I feel that "SNES size" would be the easiest to work with.  Look at the characters Super Mario World and Final Fantasy 3/6 for an example.  Enemies and bosses... I haven't gotten that far yet. --;  For map graphics, tileset-based stuff would work the best.  If anyone's ever done "ROM hacking" or messed around in RPG Maker 2k/2k3/XP, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Map Design
Oy vey.  I never was much good at level making, even a few years back when Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was still widely netplayed.

Music
I actually have some music lined up for this, a lot of good stuff from Overclocked Remix, a site with some very good remixed video game music.  As far as suggestions go, I'd say keep them on hold until I see what the levels are going to look like.

Please don't think that I'm trying to make other people design this game for me.  I'm not trying to.  But I don't think I can work on every aspect of the game on my own.

Anything else... I'll update this post.

Note that I am doing this in my free time, and I'm not sure how far it'll go.

NOTE: Mods, move this topic to whereever it should go, if not here.  I'm not sure if a fan-made game would be considered a 'fanfic'.

[Fedora-Tan]

The project seems interesting even if I'm not sure i could help a lot since i'm also a crappy designer... I could help a bit about c++ since it's really like php that i use here.

All I could offer for now is hosting your project and a place to talk about it  ;010  

I know Captain is good at design but i know he's busy and i don't know if he'll be interested... You should ask him (or i'm pretty sure he'll see this thread too )

Just ask if you need anything  ;hi

[Mokura]

DarkLord, I'm not even sure if I can follow this through.  I would hate it if you guys set up all this stuff for me, only for me to run into some RL crap which prevents me from working on this.  But I'll try.

Anyway, for design, I want to start by using a simple design tool, something for me to cut my teeth on.  If it works well enough, I would probably feel motivated to learn C++ or something more efficient.

What I really need is a large chunk of free time to take a serious look at this and plan it out.  I'm in my first semester of my first year in college, and since it's almost finals time, I'm running around like a total dumbass trying to keep everything in shape.

For starters, I'd appreciate any graphics samples, or sites with royalty-free graphics.  I've thought of some more things to work on, so I'll update the topic post.

[Fedora-Tan]

Well let's see the mind of other members first and then we'll see...  ;010

DarkLord added the following  2 minutes after last message :

I edited forum name so it'll fit here

[CaptBrenden]

humm, you could go old pixil art stuff, but if thats the case, I cant help you one bit. I really truly suck at pixil art.  I learned how to make those little screen mates once, but i never compleated any just cus i cant do the pixil art to compleat them -.-

another posibility is flash.  Flash MX can do alot of what you said you wanted.  It can be saved as an exacutable for downloading, or we could embed it somewhere on the site for people to play.  Its got an easy image interface making work for your artist/graphics people esier as well.  There are dozens of websites and books that will teach you all the ins and outs of flash action script as well.

Ive seen som really good games (as well as many more bad ones -.-) built with flash.  

as for story and such, you could go several ways. Platform games are nice, I love em, but I cant see it doing to well with the tans.  They seem more suited for say an RPG or a dating sim.  A little more of a streach but still workable are the fighting game style, or puzzel types, which im sure we have all seen the mock ups of what they COULD look like floating around as doctored images on the web.
I mean that one that Q4(V) found was nice, but I think ME was more suited for a tetris type defrag game then that one.

now depending on how the two projects develope you could snag story and such from the Manga we are working on, tying them together and such for mutual.. something or other.  You know, fans of the comic would love to play the game, or the gamers read the comic, and it saves on writting, and if you do go with flash and can embed it on the web, it will draw people into the site and forum

[Mokura]

Flash MX, hehehe.  I can't afford Flash, and I'm way too paranoid to crack it.  Anyway, I can see your point about the platformer thing not suited to the OS-tans, but maybe I can try to do something that combines platformer and RPG, something like Castlevania.  Of course, I could make an RPG with anything in the RPG Maker series, but... I dunno.  I'm still caught in the academic shitstorm that close-to-finals-week is, so there's been zero progress on this.

And pixel art, unfortunately, was what I was trying to go for. T _ T

But I still don't know where I want to go with this. ;026

Edit:  What the HELL was that?  I didn't expect that weird thing...

[Agelu]

There were so great SNES RPG games... i can help u lots, but mostly with ideas, or "scripts" on what people should say...

[Pikawil]

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was still widely netplayed.

And it still is.

Anyways, the villain could be some sort of supercomputer (ala MPC from Tron and Kingdom Hearts 2... Yeah, that's my current avatar.) churning out evil robots...

...with Clippy as its henchman. *rimshot*

[BloodDoomer]

Hello, I'm also a noob game developer. I'd like to help if possible. I could make the sprites if they're 32 X 32 pixels (see my avatar). I've also made a really oldschool RPG called Blood Of The Demons (no, it's not as violent as it sounds...) It's Windows only though.
Are the OS-tans fighting you, or are you working with them, or are the NPCs?


My RPG is at ca.geocities.com/xentaliongames

[i2l84u00x00]

haha this is quite old if you wanna learn C++ i sugest you buy a book dude
thats how i leanred and looked at alot of source code not hardcore stuff but just lil by lil
as far as anything goes dive into direct X cuz windows GDI is meh lets just say i know a expert who has troubles with it
but yea Direct X man
now i sux @ drawing things also
so i can hepl you with the programming but the art and story i sux @ hardc0r3
even though i love to write..hmmm
anyways
g00d s1t3s to st4rt w1th is:
http://www.cplusplus.com
http://www.gamedev.com
http://www.google.com lol

[C-Chan]

Wow, this is quite an old thread.  ;__;

Used to do pixel game art, but only in my dreams would I have the time to work on another game this late in the game.  -v-

On the other hand,... maybe if it were like an OS-tan variation of the old Lemmings games (the DOS-era ones, where the characters were barely detailed), then perhaps there might be a way to cheat using Poser.  ^__^

[Alex Stankevitch]

I can help out with graphics, but thats kind of about it. Oh music too, and maybe an intro vid...

[C-Chan]

We still have to make sure that this project is being considered.  For all we know, it could be dead and we're just "necroposting"...  ^^;

[NewYinzer]

If anything, we should get that dating sim we were talking about back on track. I think someone on Wikipedia had something going:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan_visual_novel_%28Ren%27Py%29.png

[CaptBrenden]

You dirty necroposters you!


If i could find the base flash file that someone has been using to make all the flash date sim games Id do up some artwork to post into it, but my flash knowlage is to basic to start one from scratch -_-