Let's think about a killer game...


Maybe a FPS with modern graphics and some of the good stuff that plays like an older one. Some sort of really fun exclusive puzzle game that isn't available elsewhere would help get some attention.
No, it would't. Nobody will buy a Pyra because of funny puzzlegame or just another shooter.
This may be a little out there, but what about combining elements from different popular game genres? You could have a game with elements of racing and FPSs that also switches over to a puzzle game and other stuff at times. It would require a good story to hold it all together, but that shouldn't be difficult. The protagonist can need to get somewhere fast, then when she gets there she has to shoot her way into a vault or something where she has to solve puzzles.

I feel there's a lack of adventure games and too many FPS.
Throw some adventure stuff into my idea above. I still think keeping FPS elements would be nice. I don't know if there can really be too many games in a genre. You aren't required to play them, but those who like them like variety, or the different experiences.

Another benefit of a game like this made for the Pyra is that it is similar to the Pyra, where it is a little bit of everything. It can be a highly polished tech demo showing off a bunch of stuff. Going with this diverse approach would allow people working on different parts of the game to do their own thing without worrying about what others are doing, while still working together with them on the whole project. I don't know how easy something like this would be to accomplish, but it seems interesting to me. I have no skills to make a game, so maybe it is a dumb idea.
Yes, dumb idea. It is RIDICULOUS.
Mixing puzzle, fps, racing and adventure is a HARD task, needs a lot of game making experience and even then it will probably fail.
While I still don't know anything about how to accomplish it, and my idea is dumb, it seems that maybe you misunderstood what I was getting at.  It wouldn't really be a complete game, but rather a series of minigames with a story joining them together.  It would combine whatever little things people made.  I wasn't suggesting it would sell units as game, but as a demo to show the capabilities of the Pyra, which is actually what I suggested it as.

Since it is pretty obvious most people seem to think there is no chance of it happening it is probably best to let it go.
 
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Maybe we should do more.

I know it's not anywhere near an easy thing, but it wouldn't hurt to try something.
It wasts time. And it is not easy, it is IMPOSSIBLE.
It's not "impossible", just extremely unlikely

Yes! Let's make a new engine! There aren't enough yet! It's so easy and fast made in the spare time!
This made me chuckle, coming from you... who wrote the Sparrow3D engine in his spare time.
I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment though.

Mixing puzzle, fps, racing and adventure is a HARD task, needs a lot of game making experience and even then it will probably fail.
Hmmm, actually, I could picture a Racing FPS. You could always do something like Cannonball mode in the original GTA, but as a first/third person, I think that'd be pretty entertaining.


but rather a series of minigames with a story joining them together
You mean like Pandora Panic? :)
 
I know it's not anywhere near an easy thing, but it wouldn't hurt to try something.
There was Paper Wars.... but it was never completed, unfortunately.

For example, Halo or Fable on the original XBOX.
Oh you mean like games that costs millions of dollars and required hundred of people working together ? :)

This way, we could send people a message, clearly showing "This is what Pyra is capable of, and here's why you can't have it : you don't own one. Yet.".
Does not fit very well with the ideals of Free Software or an Open COmmunity to have exclusive software for a single format, though. But maybe you don't come from the Linux world.

Maybe we could first try to port a big and powerful engine like Unity.
Porting without access to the code? good luck :)

But we need 3D. And a really good one.
Then the Pyra hardware is already outdated versus what the nVIdia shield and modern phones can already do.

And since when good games are only based on graphics ?

P.S. : I know I'm a little enthusiastic over here, and that's kinda crazy. But I just had to share my thoughts.
Sure, but think about the resources and technicalities issues as well. I've seen enthusiastic people who are super excited and then get discouraged very fast when they realize nothing is done in a single day.
 
I've seen enthusiastic people who are super excited and then get discouraged very fast when they realize nothing is done in a single day.
It's even worse when you do get stuff done quickly in the beginning. You show the promising stuff to people and when reality hits you have to deal with the guilt and shame of never finishing the darn thing :D
 
I think we should stop making excuses, pull together 500 million USD, and make something that competes with Destiny, only aimed specifically for the Pyra hardware and install base.

Until the funds have been pulled together, we can reflect on some of the cool stuff that has been brought to Pandora: 

  • Who can forget the 'Hey guys, my name is Ari64, I've written an N64 dynamic recompiler, anyone interested in some N64 emulation?'
  • Or the time that Exophase mentioned working on something secret and then one day released his DS emulator?
  • Everyone couldn't quite believe it when Notaz was all like "Where we're going, we don't need source code" and 'ported' Starcraft
  • When lunixboch made his library so you can run GL games on GLES hardware it was like, 'Eh, of course, why isn't this already done, this is amazing'
  • Or when lunixboch finally got Unreal Tournament running a decent frame rates on the Pandora
  • That time we got PSX emulation with higher render resolution that looked better than PSX emulation ever has
  • That post a long time ago that glimpsed Dreamcast emulation, we weren't quite sure whether to believe it, but finally it was released, it couldn't do the impossible and run at full speed on Pandora, but for Pyra it looks promising
So, all in all there have been some amazing developments (the above are just a subset that spring to mind) on Pandora, due to large number of tasks the Pandora can do, the above don't really have the same 'killer app' meaning that Halo had on Xbox. The Xbox was a games machine, Halo was a game, people brought Xbox to play games, and Halo was (seen by a lot of people, although to be honest, not me) an amazing game a the time, so it became the killer app. On the Pandora, some people write novels, others create websites, some develop games, some play games, some only play emulated games whilst others port Linux distributions, for all these diverse groups, the idea of a killer app doesn't really work. We instead have a 'killer device'.

Next time you see a killer app/game, check out the credits for it, if you manage to stay awake as the scroll by (due to how many there are) it should give you some idea of just how hard it is to make a triple A game, you are normally talking several years of hundreds of peoples time (or in the case of Destiny, supposedly a grand total of 500 million USD).
 
Next time you see a killer app/game, check out the credits for it, if you manage to stay awake as the scroll by (due to how many there are) it should give you some idea of just how hard it is to make a triple A game, you are normally talking several years of hundreds of peoples time (or in the case of Destiny, supposedly a grand total of 500 million USD).
And Destiny is not even a good game, on top of that :) Money and People is not just enough :p
 
FPS and Racing?


Yes, that turned out well with Rage...


Even when Millions of Dollars are pumped into something it is not guaranteed to become a superior game.
 
Wow. Seems I got quite a snowball rolling.

First, I should never post anything before going to bed. This wasn't reflecting my full thought. ^^'

Now I'll explain myself in the comments order :

I know that we already have many good games, including 3D games.

What I wanted to point out is that we lack original games.

I mean Pyra-aimed new games, not Pyra-exclusive games.

Also, I wasn't all about a billion-dollars game. It was more about the concept.

I shouldn't have taken Halo as an example. I should instead say something like Tetris.

I also know it's quite an impossible thing given our respective free time and the size of our community.

rygD said "My idea was not that it couldn't be ported, but that it would initially only be available for the Pyra, and that it would be optimized for that hardware.".

I was thinking about something similar, quite like the OUYA. Yeah, I know that it's a terrible failure.

We don't quite have a "killer game" that is not either an emulator or a PC port.

I'd like to see game studios doing things for the Pyra, but let's face it : we first need to both sell a great number and show it's technical capabilities.

Now to answer Red Ring Rico : I don't have a devboard. But I wasn't thinking about the programming part of such a project, as The Pyra isn't released yet.

I made quite a few GameMaker games in my youth, even if I never finished them as I wasn't willing to.

Still, I mainly study web development, including HTML, CSS, PHP, and also a large part of JS, Java and even a bit of Flash.

I'm also planning on pursuing with game design studies, if that's of any help in programming the core game.

A Minecraft port would be a really awesome idea. Even more if we manage PC server compatibility along with working mods like Flan's.

I'm a huge fan of racing games, and to say the least, we don't see any almost-simulations on handhelds.

The closest we have right now is Gran Turismo 2. That's a fantastic game and I totally love it.

But I'd like to see something more like Racer. Maybe TORCS, with better graphics and gameplay.

If we focus on adapting an open source engine on the Pyra, make it fast and beautiful, then let anyone mod in their cars and tracks, then it would be somewhat feasible.

I never said it wouldn't be a long-time project. But surprisingly, there's a real lack of good racing games so it may be worth it.

Plus, if we release the sources, people could port it on PC, thus allowing more content modders.

When I mentioned Unity, I didn't want it specifically to be ported, I was more thinking about a good-already engine, almost ready to be ported over. But open-source.

ekianjo, I know that the Pyra isn't that powerful, but we are willing to optimize it to its full potential. You can't get such a thing coming from Android.

All in all, the best shot we could have is porting-enhancing an open source game (TORCS already mentioned, but really hard to get all the libs running fine) or working together on a new emulator.

I'm totally beta-testing an hypothetical GC, PS2 or PSVita emu. :lol:

That's what I launched the topic for. To think about what would be the community choice as a new game, port or emu.

At least that would help programmers figuring out what to do with all that power.

P.S. : Apologies for the long post.
 
I wish there was a Pandora/Pyra magazine that presented all news in detail and reviewed or looked at games and programs cos I really miss most of all thats made it seems...
 
I wasn't suggesting it would sell units as game, but as a demo to show the capabilities of the Pyra, which is actually what I suggested it as.
FWIW, I always think it's a minor shame that the Pandora never got its own demo, as in demoscene. We got a few ports of old PC demos, and I'm thankful for those, but nothing that shows off the Pandora's graphical and musical capabilities apart from games.
It's also a shame PandoraPanic didn't get a little more polish - it's so nearly there. I wasn't lurking much in those days, so I missed any drama there might have been, but a little more love would take it a long way.
 
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