Interested In Being A Game Programmer...


Mr.Gonzo

Mr.Gonzo

*implode*
Joined
Oct 15, 2008
Messages
662
Location
Montreal QC CA
Website
www.myspace.com
wn4p2.png

This was made really fast , just to give you guys an idea ( it was based on a few of my concept drawings that has bin sitting for too long ;) )

UPDATE
30ua7sx.png

heres a little hint of what is gonna happen in the first levels!

Hello everyone !
Im looking for a talented coder/programmer who would be interested to work with an artist to make an arcade game for the pandora!

Think of this game like a Super Mario meets Metal Slug meet Bionic Commando meet Conkers Bad Fur Day...
... With lots of mini games !

The programming will be the one of a traditional platformer , jumping , bouncing on heads , running , pushing climbing , bla bla bla.
Then there will be shooting in front , top , down and diagonals .
Add to that some grabbing to ledges , jumping up , wall kicking.
And we would have an ultimate fast paced action platformer.

Sure there will be some more complex stuff.
Including a code for Ropes. And ropes grabbing , shooting , Swinging.
i want the harpoon gun to be used as a Bionic commando-ish weapon. Shoot a wall , ceiling , swing , jump.
Or to grab on some people and pull em toward you Scorpion style finishing them with a blow to the face.
Or use it as a puzzle solving thing.
And of course use it whitout the rope to nail your enemies to any solid surface!

I got alot of ideas to make a real good platformer that alot of people will appreciate.
So i will need a real good programmer that knows what he is doing!

I'll take care of the graphics , story , music and sound effects.

AND i will be open to any suggestions !

I know this sounds ambitious. AND it might never see the day.
BUT HEY , if it does make it , it would be pretty awesome!

-Mr.Gonzo

PS: I dont want any reply saying something like: LEARN CODING.
Thanks!
 
That looks awesome. Like a rated M cave story. I would volunteer, but odds are good I would get halfway through coding it and never touch it again. Good luck though. It could be a great game if you find the right programmer.
 
I must say it looks and sounds pretty good, even if only some of those features would be implemented at start i think it would be a cool thing to play.

Im not nearly skilled enough to handle the code part, but i could help out in the story/sound effects/credit's list/whatever i've done before. But mostly just a thumbs up :)
 
Ravnos:Yeah , thats the thing i need a top notch coder becuse i really have Gameplay and fun in mind :).
But this thing could be really rewarding for ME and the coder. Becuse with this in your port folio you can get somewhere!

( and then if people decide to donate , hallelujah ! )
ahah ;)

Markoez:Well i got alot of the story and concept so far ! but maybe if i see some of your stuff i would know where to turn to if you need help !
This could be for sure a community thing! i love collective work.
 
You have just found the biggest problem in game programming: everybody wants to make a game, but it's extremely difficult to do artwork and do games, and then extremely difficult to get artists and programmers together. I hated going into introductory programming classes and meeting a dozen kids who for every project wanted to make a game. Programming is tough. Artwork is tough. Not to rain on your parade or anything, but that's the truth.
Best thing to do right now would be to start working. Open source/community projects only start working when there is already something to tinker with. A demo code base with stick figure sprites might have somebody get interested and make some better sprites. A semi-complete set of nice sprites might have somebody start writing some code to use them. Linus didn't announce his kernel project till he had started working on it, and development started to kick off when people where able to look at some working code and tinker with it. Read Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar if you want to understand more about OSS project dynamics.
Everybody has in the back of their mind that game they would like to make, just like that book you would write or the movie plot you would film. The question is, do you have what it takes to make you idea work?

On a side note, you should check out Tee-world, which has pretty similar game mechanics to what you are talking about.
 
Sounds like a good game, and I like the art style. But yeah, it does sound like a lot of work :)
I wouldn't be surprised if someone takes up the challenge though. Are you doing level designs also? I bet if you get some layouts done with enemy positions and such, it would help show people that the game will actually be fun and worth the effort. Actual background artwork for a full level would be even better.

I wouldn't exactly recommend the LEARN CODING route anyway. If you love the feeling of creating something entirely yourself and you know it's really what you want, then it is well worth the effort (I'm about 9 years into this route myself). But a team can get a game done in much less time, so if you like that, then there's really no need to master every skill involved.
 
Yashton: Oh i know all of that... Thats why i spent most of my early days doing stuff with The Game Factory , RPG maker and others.
Coders and artists are rarely put in the same "entourage".
But hey i think its mostly a matter of place and time.

You say alot of coders are dreaming of making a game.
Well if a coder who has a love for Retro and platforming shows up here ( which isnt that rare on these forums ! )
He might be interested !

but i do know where im going , i have alot of experience in all that is artistic.
Alot of storyboard and conceptual work behind me.
Alot of sprite , Video game music ( music in general! ) , animation , sound effect experience.
I think thats more than half of what a game needs !


I checked Tee-World out The only mechanic i see is similar is partly the Graplin.
For the aiming mechanic i was more looking for a Metal slug kind of one.

Dekutree: beleive me most of the stuff i created involved me doing everything , thats why i know how to do alot of the stuff i do
...but see im far from being a tech head ahah. Some people are really creative... Some people are really smart ... you know wich category i fit in ahah.
 
I'm a coder and a big fan of Retro games (I'm a Manager over at RetroRemakes.com) and I'm interested. I've made numerous games over the years and I won the GLBasic GP2X competition this year with my game B'lox! I code in BlitzMax and GLBasic at the moment, although I've used a number of other languages throughout my long coding history.

Here are links to just three of my pc games (B'lox! works on GP2X too).

B'lox! - http://www.booleansoup.com/index.php?p=gal...full&id=127

Off The Mortal Coil (won RR point & click comp) - http://www.booleansoup.com/index.php?p=gal...full&id=128

Guru Logic Champs (WIP) - http://www.booleansoup.com/index.php?p=gal...e=wip&id=30


I am however currently busy right now, doing a remake of the classic C64 game Impossible Mission.

http://www.retroremakes.com/forum/download/file.php?id=6613

http://www.retroremakes.com/forum/download/file.php?id=6623

Unfortunately, the RetroRemakes competition will be ending soon and I'm also a judge for that, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have for a while if you wanted me to do the coding for your game.

So look around and see if anyone else bites - if not, I'm here :)
 
I'm interested.
I have some skills in c/c++, and I always wanted to create a game.
Let me think on this (some design analysis and possible frameworks to reuse)... Don't hope for a tech demo next week.
 
Looks very interesting, heavy on-screen-action right? :) Thats one of the reasons why I love the "Metal Slug" Series: there is so much that happens on screen. For your Game of course you need to find a balance betwen speed and playability. It could be difficult to do all the action like jumping, climbing, ropes grabbing , shooting , Swinging. etc... during heavy fights. maybe that#s the reason why you only walk and jump in Metal Slug (or fly or drive).

Good Luck with this project. :)
 
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I would have to echo the concerns about level design etc. Level design is 99% of a good game and can destroy an otherwise brilliant idea. I don't just mean "fun", I mean practical - conforming to technical limits, able to let the player win the game, find the secrets etc., not too frustrating, easy to update the artwork, change the game style, change the game physics etc.

The problem of writing a game is not the coding, or the artwork. They are just the tools to realise the game on a particular machine. The real problem is the mechanics of the game and the legwork this inevitably causes for conceptualiser, artist and programmer.

The game would need to be broken down... "generic platformer" is fine, but then you get into bouncing on people's head, swinging on a rope, etc. Those things all need careful thought and planning. Take, for instance, SuperTux... it's a platformer, just like Mario, and plays in a very similar way. But you can tell from the "feel" of the controls, the way the character responds etc. that the back-end is entirely different. Even "Super Mario War" (a third-party, one-screen, clone of the dynamics of the Super Mario Games) isn't perfect in it's replication. And "getting it wrong" destroys a game. Most freeware platformers suffer from this effect - because the character doesn't respond as expected (or as seen in other games), they are described as "clunky", "awkward", etc.

Simple things like a jump can turn into a nightmare where you just wished that the physics would handle itself (and where "true" physics usually makes for quite a poor game)...

Forward motion + upwards motion.
He jumps up and forward and hits his head.
Now... does he drop down to the ground where he contacted the object? Does he continue his forward motion but at a reduced pace and still fall? Does the angle of his motion get "deflected" in the horizontal axis?
What if he hits exactly in a corner and can't move forward? Does he bounce back? Does he slide down the wall? Does he get turned around?

How high can he jump? At what point in that jump can he "grab" things? What sort of limits, ranges, tolerances do you have on that sort of collision detection? What if he jumps on an enemy, but not quite? What range of horizontal/vertical motion determines "the monster eats you" versus "you splat the monster"?

And when you've done ALL of that, down to the level of detail where you've either programmed it all or can test it on paper/models, does it actually "feel" right? Can you play it? Does it fit in with the levels? Does the motion style fit in with the animation/game style? Even between the 3 classic Mario games, all of these parameters change (admittedly SMB2 wasn't really supposed to be a Mario game anyway).

One problem is that any prototype of even the simplest of these questions effectively means writing that part of the game, so you are reluctant to say "Well, that was rubbish" and end up using it anyway. You can spot this is a lot of cheap games.

All of that is not to say that it can't be done or hasn't been done a million times, but the days of one-man coding/artist/design teams are fast disappearing, and larger teams mean a lot of effort, co-ordination and trust.

For instance, you can just add in "with a rope" but that could easily add several thousand frames of animation, some extremely difficult phsyics (I hope your coder is an amateur mathematician too) and a slew of alignment, movement, arrangement problems... not to mention you now have to re-think everything to do with the mechanics again (e.g. what if I grab something with the rope while jumping? Before you know it, you've gone from simplified 2D platformer physics to a full-blown physics engine with rope deformations, dynamically drawn elements, etc..

Even if the mechanics are all worked out (down to the pixel), the coder won't want to do that work for little benefit, the artist will be overwhelmed because they will have to produce all of those frames with pixel-perfect precision to get a good result from the code, and then the slightest change to the way the physics work could destroy the effect and mean it all needs re-doing.

Start with game mechanics. Art and code are nice distractions but to actually describe what will happen in the majority of circumstances that you're liable to come up against is necessary to code the game (even if the only manifestation of such thinking is the game code itself).

Seriously, have a look at your first post and think how much work is involved in determining the results of interactions between every element you mention. What if I shoot a block with a harpoon (animation, code)? What if the block is a different type (animation, code multiplied by the number of block types). What if I try to pull a block once it's been harpooned/roped? (animation, code, physics?) What if the block is a different type? What if my character has power-up X which gives him greater strength? etc. etc. etc. Just consider how many possibilities there are there, and how much data you require (e.g. weights of blocks, even if in some made-up game-specific unit where 10 is heavy and 0 is light - you'll have to decide on the weights of everything, the strengths of various things, the formulae that join them etc.). This is the main part of game design - the conceptualisation of the actual mechanics and the laborious checking that on Level 5, Scene 2, Block 26, you can't take a massive shortcut or crash the game by harpooning a block that has to be light for the puzzle on the next screen to work etc.

That said, if you can come up with a half-decent mechanism for the simple stuff, I'm sure a coder would love to jump on it and then you can work by trial and error to start adding in the more unique parts. But I think that you'll quickly find that a labour of love just turns into labour quite quickly.
 
Iprice: Wow! you the man!...
aha , well i sure do hope all of your stuff will be done as soon as possible!
Im pretty sure it would be alot of fun working with you.
Give me some news when you can. ;)

Ledow: Dont worry , i've bin doing animation long enough to meet all the frustrations that comes with it.
Oh all the work i have redone, and all the files that i lost and had to start from point 0.
I had all of this in mind since back in the days i did alot of The game Factory stuff and yes , just for a fun project it ended up being alot more animation than i thought , Animation is fine. Pixel animation is LONG!
But still i always loved doing it through all the frustration.
And beleive me for the coding part and getting stuff RIGHT i will be really difficult. thats why i want a really good coder and a gamer too.
so everything feels top notch.
Now for the rewarding part, just having a game like this done can open alot of doors , first of all theres alot of indie gaming going on. ( look at the guys of newgrounds that already have 2 games out on the big consoles... 2d ARCADE games! )
Or else for this project we could maybe ask for a 2 dollar - 5 dollar donation to get it on the pandora. Who knows ?
If done right it could even end up on the DS!

I can dream can i.
All of this sounds really Ambitious... i know!

OK now to eleminate all confusion
The "screen size" on the demonstration sprite i did WONT be like this in the game , it was just a fast bundle of sprites in action to show a little bit how it will look!
Sure there's going to be alot of action on screen
but im more looking for a Super Mario word type of environement size.
not a Metal slug one. Becuse i want strategy and puzzling to be in there.
Sure there will always be different part of the games where a genre will be more present.
Lets say you enter in a room after alot of traveling and adventuring and then you get pinned by a bunch of Hammers ( thats the name of the gas mask dudes, ahah. Now i let you guess the name of the hero. )
Now it turns into a crazy Metal slug type of gameplay.
OOps the building is blowing up , racing escape part where you gotta flee with the help of your harpoon gun.
And then a strategy big boss.

i always wanna keep it balanced , thats the fun of it.
And thats why i want a few mini games in there too.
like Vertical racing with guns.
And then put you into different situations like being in zero gravity, or being a spermatozoon (Nobody commented the picture i added in the first post :( ).

and much moar!
 
QUOTE
One problem is that any prototype of even the simplest of these questions effectively means writing that part of the game, so you are reluctant to say "Well, that was rubbish" and end up using it anyway.


I disagree. If something doesn't feel right to me in my games, I rewrite and rewrite until it does.

Whilst the ideas do come first, sometimes it's not clear to see the whole vision until you've actually got something to work with.

Game design isn't just created by a designer and then nothing changes - code, graphics, sound and other media helps to see problems in the design and changes in code can dramatically affect how the game plays for the better (or worse).

It's not a one way system of design, design, then design some more - all parts of a game need to come together to share a single vision.

I never design my games on paper first (and I've got about loads to my name).

QUOTE
Even if the mechanics are all worked out (down to the pixel), the coder won't want to do that work for little benefit, the artist will be overwhelmed because they will have to produce all of those frames with pixel-perfect precision to get a good result from the code, and then the slightest change to the way the physics work could destroy the effect and mean it all needs re-doing.


That's not strictly true either - I code games for fun, not profit and feeback is all that I desire.

QUOTE
All of that is not to say that it can't be done or hasn't been done a million times, but the days of one-man coding/artist/design teams are fast disappearing, and larger teams mean a lot of effort, co-ordination and trust.
Whilst that is true, those small teams of one, two, three people still exist and will continue to do so forever.

The answer to any problem is COMMUNICATION. Good communication betweer coder, artist, level designer and musician (if they exist) is all important. There is not a single problem that cannot be overcome by effective communication.

You are placing problems in front of the guy before he's even started. Sure, projects come and go - some will succeed others will fail, but if he doesn't try, especially when he and others are willing), he will never succeed. Give him a chance before writing him off.
 
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