IC Forum Archive

Krabjuice · Posts: 114

Alrighty people, heres the story. Due to some thing or another, you are now flying a sub-par short range fighter jet into some assortment of enemies or what have you. Because of some not-yet-decided plot device, you can't land on the ground. Instead, your only means of refuge is a rusting old air-carrier. Unfortunatly, this rusting old air-carrier is short on fuel, both for itself and you. Likewise, your ammunition is limited. So, in order to reach your goal and stay alive (and afloat) you must make intelligent progress across the terrascape, conserve your ammunition, and protect your carrier. Your carrier will be off-screen at all times, but any enemy that crosses you has an oppourtinuty to attack. To that degree, as your enemies race towards your carrier, they will be intercepted by whatever means necissary. That means your total ammunition count will continue to lower, often at a quick rate. As well, due to damage inflicted on the carrier, some fuel tanks and storage cells will rupture and explode. Thus, your precious fuel and ammunition will continue to flounder. As the battles progress, you will be able to change weapon configurations in order to counter forseen enemies, or simply to save ammunition.

I'm thinking a third person over-the-shoulder type game where you fight hundreds of enemies and mondo-giant-citysized bosses. Since I like manic shooters, this will be a manic shooter. It's one hit kill, since your fighter needs to carry extra fuel pods in order to complete the mission. Thus, a super small hit box (namely, pilot/fuelpod sized in comparison to craft) will be used for the player ship. I'm guessing two player play would be acceptable, either with both players using the same or similar transports. Although, making them share would infer greater (and thus better) conservation concerns. To make the game playable, you'll probably meet other air-carriers and their pilots who will pitch in to the war effort. You'll probably get to use the pilots for special attacks, or even use artillery strikes from the air carriers as a bomb attack. All, of course, costing fuel and ammunition.

It's a bit ambitious, I know. I intend to shy away from Java for this one. I'll make it my personal business to learn C, or some derivative of C similar to Java.

shnozlak · Posts: 704

So in one summer you propose to learn a programming language and all the concepts and practices involved, learn game design and make a playable game. All without having any previous experience.

okay.
right.

or you could be sensible and just download yourself a copy of game maker.

Krabjuice · Posts: 114

shnozlak wrote:

All without having any previous experience.

You assume much. Far too much.

Six years. Thats how much experience I have. I started with simple mapping scripting, and eventually modding. I am now capable of building my own game engines. I've got three years of programming classes behind my belt, and my understaing of those "concepts and practices involved" are far above my grade level. I've not only tutored individual students, but I've instructed entire classes. Learning the first language may have been difficult, but shifting to another is considerably easier. Especially when one language is designed to mimic the other.

I can inherit and polymorph your ass.

Krabjuice · Posts: 114

Actually, now that he's mentioned it, it would be a bit reckless to run into a completely different programming language. Fortunatly, I've already got a basic scroller engine built in Java which I can modify for a basic version of the game. I'll just need to optimize it for applets. Once that's done, and I get a hang of a more efficient language, I can just rewrite the engine and import all of the content. Easy peasy.

Decinoge · Posts: 129

krab... i like u...
graphics?
u'r not expecting for the game visualization to be the code running?
(wich... is far from beeing a bad graphic idea)

Krabjuice · Posts: 114

Eh, well, if you could produce a superdeformed looking airship with a runway, I would appreciate it. Somewhat.

Decinoge wrote:

krab... i like u...
graphics?
u'r not expecting for the game visualization to be the code running?
(wich... is far from beeing a bad graphic idea)

Eh, well, my engine is only some 200 lines of code. Watching those lines scroll across the screen endlessly would get boring.