Let's Make A Game 2012

@mscupcakes said:

@mandude: Hey, would I be able to add some percussion to that track? As soon as I listened to it I had something in mind.

@SexyToad: Thanks a lot! :D I'm glad you like it.

I'm not mandude, but I say do it. I think it'd be cool if people posted their music and others added or reworked it and later on it can be decided which tracks are used.

@mandude: awesome, can you make it downloadable on soundcloud so I can mess around with it? :D

@mandude: awesome, can you make it downloadable on soundcloud so I can mess around with it? :D

I have a question. Can all of us advise on any part of the project? I'm also interested in the story aspect and was just wondering whether that's limited to only particular users.

I have a question. Can all of us advise on any part of the project? I'm also interested in the story aspect and was just wondering whether that's limited to only particular users.

Hi, I'm maybe a bit late but I'd love to help out in any way I can...

I'm sort of an artist - I mainly draw and paint game and comic book characters and can work in a variety of styles. I've done a little bit of sprite design and dabbled in some game design ideas too.

I can play the guitar badly (should the game require a slightly 'off' sounding acoustic vibe) and I've always been interested in tackling a writing project of some kind.

If there's anything I can do then please sign me up!

@mandude: I threw something together just now. I hope you don't mind that I shred over it a bit with my electric piano. It's pretty rough, but it should give you a good idea of the drums :D

@mandude: Hmm, that might be tricky, but not impossible. We could make a shared dropbox folder or something along those lines.

@mscupcakes: It mightn't be so tricky so much as tedious. We could make a separate folder in Drive for each individual song and then just upload the song and all the tracks separately. I'll try that out now...

@mandude: Might work, although positioning for certain tracks might be a bit messed up. What program do you use? We could try sharing logic project files if you use Logic too.

@mscupcakes: If you solo a single track and render it to .wav or something, it should keep the position. I use Reaper, because I'm a cheap fucker. I guess Logic is Apple?

@mandude: Yeah, it's Mac only. And I'm not sure if it's program files are compatible with any windows software. (Maybe Fruity Loops?) I could try bouncing each individual track, but be forewarned, an average song for me has about 30 tracks or more since I use a lot of instruments and textures.

@mscupcakes said:

@mandude: Yeah, it's Mac only. And I'm not sure if it's program files are compatible with any windows software. (Maybe Fruity Loops?) I could try bouncing each individual track, but be forewarned, an average song for me has about 30 tracks or more since I use a lot of instruments and textures.

Ah, well that's a shame. Haha, I figured as much. :D Hmm. I guess that's too unwieldy for you then.

@mandude: Well I have no problem working with tracks like the one you uploaded if you want to keep working like that, if you make a longer version I can do the drums from scratch again. :D

What's the status of the Plot/direction of the game? Are we going to have a survey on that soon? So for we only have three solid plots worked out that I could tell from the brain dump folder (me, ghostiet's, and SexyToads). I say by tomorrow night we raise another survey to determine the plot and then we can move on to the actual game design and script. Anyone agree?

@tariqari: I'll pm all the ideas duders and we'll see what comes out of that.

@mscupcakes said:

@mandude: Well I have no problem working with tracks like the one you uploaded if you want to keep working like that, if you make a longer version I can do the drums from scratch again. :D

Well we could always just do it on a track by track basis. I suppose we're fine as long as the final tracks are all mixed properly. Some of my tracks will be pretty unwieldy too...

I'm not sure how I'd make it longer. It's actually made sure it was modular when I was recording it, but I'm not sure how you'd set it up in your DAW to be the same.

Okay so I sent the pm out and hopefully we can narrow down the idea a bit. But for now sleep.

@Aegon: @tariqari: Fattony is handling the story management. The idea isn't for him to write the whole story. While I have trouble putting it into words, having someone steer the ship is better than having everyone going crazy with their own ideas. Bio2Hazard and Chase324 are the top-dogs so to speak on the Code area, they provide guidance to the other coders.

@Fattony12000 I changed it to commercial after some people started voicing their desires for a commercial product. I am now unsure what the hell is going on. They could just be the vocal minority. When I started this whole thing I intended it to be a single free game that is made by the Giant Bomb community. I didn't want it themed after GB. I wanted everyone to collectively build an assets and share them (as we are doing), but with an open license so that more awesome games could be made with the same resources. I also thought about doing this whole thing again next year, but with access to the same resources. We would continually build up this amazing library of assets, and games, satisfying our creative impulses. So if you want you should create a form on Google Docs and embed it here (you have admin edit powers). I have been trying to accomodate everyone's needs to avoid having a competing community project.

Whether free or commercial, I'm just doing it for the love.

EDIT: People having competing game projects, but not creating another assets repository is not something I would discourage ;) So if you don't like the main game, make something else using the resources available. But remember, to use those assets for commercial reasons you will need permissions from each creator whose work you used.

EDIT: I had a form here deciding on free or commercial. Free was chosen. Now accepting many members again, and Fattony will be eventually making a poll to sift through all the ideas people's stories.

This last survey seems to be suggesting in it self what direction we should take.

Shit. I cast a vote for free without entering my email address.

@Chops037 said:

Hi, I'm maybe a bit late but I'd love to help out in any way I can...

I'm sort of an artist - I mainly draw and paint game and comic book characters and can work in a variety of styles. I've done a little bit of sprite design and dabbled in some game design ideas too.

I can play the guitar badly (should the game require a slightly 'off' sounding acoustic vibe) and I've always been interested in tackling a writing project of some kind.

If there's anything I can do then please sign me up!

Hey Chops, we could certainly use more artists. A lot is still being decided, we are very early in the planning process. If you'd like to show some of your work or try to help develop an art style visit these forums

@Fattony12000: Thank you. Close that last survey when you are satisfied with the amount of responses. Form > Stop accepting responses.

@DrFlapjack: Those plant monsters look really cool. Hopefully we can do both Urban and Natural style environments for this game to explore all these crazy ideas.

No more musicians!?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Oh well. I will watch this project with interest, from afar. It's a cool idea!

@Fattony12000 said:

I want to reiterate that I'm not looking for final submissions for story RIGHT AWAY. Therefore, I am tentatively putting out a deadline of midnight on Monday the 8th of October, 2012. Would duders be cool with that? I would then be looking to put up a Giant Bomb poll for people to vote in (with all of the submissions embedded inside), probably on the Tuesday. Does that sound like a thing?

I would also like to address a point that @Tebbit brings up...

Should we really be turning away anyone who wants to help out? Especially in areas like music where I just flat out think that the more people we have making things = more things to choose from in the end.

I agree, the more people we have making music and art for this the better.

Was busy today so I havn't gotten much done on the project. Apologies.

How are the game design documents looking as far as stats and such go ? Any idea on combat ? Is it gonna take place in a transitioned place or same place ?

I have some ideas on how to expand on that initial prototype I made, but the more information I can get regarding what to put in, the better :)

Whether or not the game is free, I'd like to set up a bandcamp page for the soundtrack once all of the tracks are finished. We could have it as a "pay what you want" type thing or if the rest of the musicians want we can have a fixed price.

Hey I'm still relatively new to GiantBomb but this project seems really interesting and I am a Programmer. Seeing as I'm still learning a lot at my job, I don't know how much help I can be, but I'd like to try and contribute what I can. My github account darkmage530 my email is darkmage530@gmail.com I have the most experience in Java, Groovy(Griffon/Grails), and with varying experience in the C languages (C, C++, C#). I've never worked with the Unity Engine but I would love to start learning. I'm bookmarking this and will try and be active in it.

Anyone interested- I've come up with a concept for an animation style and would like to know what everyone thinks along with coming up with your own styles. You can find it in this thread here.

@Bio2hazard I'm not sure how familiar you are with Unity, but if you'd like I can give you this quick animation test along with a jump animation to try in Unity. I've had most luck exporting/importing .fbx, but let me know your thoughts.

@Fattony12000: I'll get done with my idea by monday. But do you want us to do the wholestory or just the basic story?

@Tebbit: We're now accepting musicians again as the game will be non-commercial as originally intended.

@DarkMage530: Welcome to the team. Thank you for making things easier by providing your handles.

@GJSmitty: @verysexypotato: Welcome to the team. I am happy to announce we are accepting everyone. There are LEADS for some skill areas to provide direction in the team, who make decisions based on input.

If you want to join, sign up here:

Oh is there actually going to be voice acting in the game? I might be interested in helping with that :D

@DrFlapjack: I'm not familiar at all with unity, but it's definitely a learning experience! So sure, a animation test and jump test would be great :) I looked at the rigidbody stuff, and I think I can disable some physics on the player model to prevent it from tipping over. For jumping I was thinking of using the method to apply force on a specific spot ( so just apply force at the bottom - ergo unit "jumps" and the physics take care of the rest ). Any advice and stuff you can give me would be great!

Do you know how easy it is for unity to accept 3d models ( possibly textured models ? ) from Maya or Blender ? I remember it was a nightmare to code something that could parse blender textured models for my own engine, so I hope it'll be easier in this.

@Bio2hazard: I would try disabling physics and adding a character controller. As for models I think you can just copy the .blend file straight into the assets folder and it will recognize it.

My idea is almost finish! I'll clean it it up a bit and then tomorrow share it! You can look at right now if you want but I might change some stuff up!

Just some inspiration.

@mscupcakes If you want to do voice acting, you're welcome to. We should have a basic plot in the next couple of days.

@Bio2hazard: I'm trying right now to choose a texture for a box in Blender, and I can't get the properties inspector thing to change appropriately for that task. Must view more tutorials...

@Bio2hazard: I'm an artist so I haven't had much experience programming, but I have tried plenty of times. There are some tutorials available on Unity's site, a little outdated perhaps, but a good place to start. I do know, however, that you can drag a Maya file directly into an open scene and it pops in there. The only caveat is that you have to have Maya installed on your machine which is why my team has been using .fbx files since not everyone has Maya.

If you'd like to try what winston suggested with the character controller and mess around with that, I'll get you a rough run and jump animation tomorrow. Perhaps @Eder or @Chaser324 would also be able to lend a hand if they're more familiar with Unity? Also there are some links with Unity tutorials and such in our other forum. And like I stated there, it would be good practice for everyone to familiarize yourself with Unity, at least a little.

Edit: One more thing, I found their API Reference to be helpful as well.

@w1n5t0n: Well physics in general should be helpful. I looked at what's possible with it and it seems like there's some cool stuff :) I'll figure it out though. I'm curious by nature so I love diving into methods and checking out what I can do with em.

@DrFlapjack: Sure! I'll be looking forward for that model with running and jumping and I'll try to implement it. I've been reading through multiple unity tutorials ( mostly http://www.burgzergarcade.com/hack-slash-rpg-unity3d-game-engine-tutorial andhttp://forum.unity3d.com/threads/37093-Over-7-hours-of-Unity-Training-Videos-Download-them-now!)

So far it's been going pretty well. The main thing that I need to wrap my head around is how to actually get into the code, how to cross-reference objects, how to have scripts run which arn't necessarily attached to a object in the hirachy and stuff like that. I will probably set up a more expanded test/demo tomorrow once I get that model from you, and then we can work from there :)

And yeah I always have the reference open! Currently on the rigidbody page to adjust the physics stuff :) rigidbodySo yeah, I definitely think I'm making good progress learning. I hope that soon we can split up some tasks for the other coders using the "scenes" in the game. I'm hoping one coder can do the menus, one coder can take care of battle screen and I guess I'll work on the exploration aspect.

@Bio2hazard: Good to hear you're making progress learning to use Unity. Unfortunately, I'm just really struggling to find the time to work on this stuff right now. I'm trying to finish up a few other side projects that I've got going, but realistically, it might be 2-3 weeks before I have a lot of time to dedicate to this venture. I'll be happy to pitch in at that point, but I think for now, you along with possibly @Eder or @w1n5t0n should probably take point on the software side of things.

Sorry to have to mostly pull out for the moment, but I have an obligation to focus on these projects I have in progress that I'm getting paid to do.

I have never made a game before but would love to offer my programming skills. Ill post my details to the main form.

@Bio2hazard: I was also struggling with where to place scripts, it seems people just attach them to empty game objects like a "MasterObject". I'm working on an event manager for another unity project and was able to make it a singleton. I'll share it with this project if needed.

@w1n5t0n: Sure. I'm sure it'd help me out just by reading it and trying to understand what exactly you are doing :) A example of how exactly I can tie game mechanics together would be grand!