Hello everybody!

Partially in response to the recent post by 'thebooboo', I would like to explore the possibility of a group project whose purpose is the development of a good GP2X game. Basic parameters of the project:

1) Open source under GPL license for all materials (code, art, music, etc)
2) "Open process" -- that is, all communication related to development of this game will take place in a thread on this forum. Doing so will be entertaining for onlookers, will help with motivation and recruitment, and will provide an easy way for any interested party to assess what does and does not work in a project such as this by simply reading the history.

I nominate myself as primary coder and principal organizer. I would be happy if somebody else took the role of principal organizer, but if you want that job be aware that lots of people will be counting on your constant attention for a long period of time.

First order of business: what type of game should we build?

Simultaneously: who is interested in participating? I strongly believe that the bottleneck on this project will be art, so graphic artists can make the largest impact.

I would like to set a goal to get the basic organizational structure ironed out (although not necessarily all the participants, as I imagine that roster will unfortunately change over time) and have a rough idea of the game type by May 7.

A rough target for the completion of the game at a feature complete level would be the end of the year.

Comments? Ideas? Flames? Volunteers?

Posted in the General GP32 section.

Sound cool though, hope people are interested in this.
Don't have a lot of artistic abilities, can't help.

For which I apologize. If a kind moderator could move it that would be helpful.

realy good idea, i thinks an adventure game or rpg game will be the more exiting thing. Good luck

an RPG doesnt seem very appropriate for a group project over a forum, maybe a shooter or racing game, puzzle, or something more simple?

This sounds like a great idea. Alas I don't think I'm strong enough in any one talent to assist.

I think a solid RPG or action game might be the best bet. Although I'd think it best to shy away from 3D, why excentuate the negative?

Actually, while I was waiting for my GP2X to arrive (Pre-DaveC cap) I envisioned my idea of the killer app. A puzzler to rival Lumines or Meteos for the GP2x designed to minimize use of the infamous joystick. It was sort of like Lunar Lander meets Tetris and Arkanoid. I'm just doubtful it will be as great in the real world as it is in my mind.

I need to learn Fenix and mock it up sometime...

I don't think it's necessary to learn Fenix; if you can and are willing to just do some quick sketches (they can be horrible as long as they communicate the concept) and some description, it seems like it could be a possibility.

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=26679

We are already trying to put together an Adventure RPG. I currently have too many coursework projects, which are consuming my programming abilities. And bigtrouble is working hard on a site for his work... this is why things have slowed down, but anybody is welcome to help out. I will pickup again over the summer since I should have a looooooot of time off.

I offer my services as a 3d artist. just give me a topic and Ill give you the model

OK first stab, haven't really written the idea down before now...

Basic Setup:
You are the stoker operator on a spaceport power furnace. The spaceport captures asteroids that are determined to be mineral rich. The asteroid is brought into a chamber next to the furnace, and a mining-drill is deployed to the surface and a drills to the core. Unrefined ore is then shunted to the stoker furnace via a low power tractor beam.

The display:
The furnace takes up most of the screen, shaped like a Tetris well.
There is an ionizer ( an arrow shaped pointer) located in the bottom left of the screen.
There is a red line located 1/3 to ½ if the way from the bottom. This represents the trigger sensor.
(Optional)A representative of your character is located at the control panel in the top left of the screen.
Your stoker is represented by a ‘Arkanoid’ style bar with a left and right thruster. It resides within the furnace.
(Optional)To the right is a graphic display showing the drill going to the core of the asteroid. This server to set the pace of the game and inform the player how far along they are in the Wave.
The tractor beam between the drill and furnace is used to preview the incoming pieces.

There needs to be a score and fuel indicator located somewhere….

The keys:
Left shoulder – left thruster on stoker
Right shoulder – right thruster on stoker
X - stoker magnet
A – flips direction stoker is heading
Y – impurity cannon (not enabled at startup)
Joystick Up and Down control Ionizer (only on levels when the sensor is disabled)


Gameplay:
You control the Stoker. You move it around within the furnace. Your goal is to load the ore in such a way as to avoid empty spaces and impurities. The ore has different properties(non-magnetic, extra-rich,etc…) and (optionally) loading like ore next to each other increases the energy gained when ionized.
Initially, your only tool is to engage a magnet to hold onto the ore and place it at the bottom of the furnace. Without the magnet engaged, you merely ‘push’ the ore with your stoker. You can also ‘push’ impurity laden ore (or any other unwanted ore) out of the furnace into space.
Once the ore ‘snaps’ into place (a la Tetris) at the bottom, it fuses with the rest of the ore and cannot move. Once any piece of the fused ore gets above the red sensor line, the ionizer is engaged and cycles upward, ionized each layer of ore. This feeds the station, increases your score, and increasing your fuel supply. If a layer is not complete or contains impurities, it will not be ionized and stay behind, again similar to tetris. On levels with impurities, a blaster will need to be installed on the stoker to blast away offending material. If you miss your shot and hit the fused ore, all of your fuel store is destroyed.
Run out of fuel, Game Over.
Get caught below the red line by the ionizer Game Over.
Fill the furnace Game Over.

Each stage can introduce new challenges. On some stages, the ionizer could be broken and needs to be manually controlled. You may encounter ore with impurities or which cannot be magnetizes. Ore may have increasingly difficult shapes etc…

Each stage is a spacestation. Lots of variety in design I hope…
Each wave is an asteroid. May have different kinds of ore in each.

And here is my real ugly (and oddly phallic) mock-up


Anyway, just getting the idea out there. Like I said, I'm not sure it will work, some of the gameplay mechanics, I suspect, will simply not be as fun as they should. However, if anyone likes the basic idea and wants to improve,m they are welcome...

i may be able to contribute some artwork, i'll watch this thread i guess.

How about the game play of Atic Atac with an isometric viewpoint. Atic Atac is a good fun game. It has a map element, a shoot'em up element, you have to manage your energy level, you use specialised objects against 'Bosses', yet from a programming aspect it would not be too challenging. For a first group project I think a fairly simple game would be best to increase the chances of it being completed.
An isometric view would be a real novelty in a homebrew. Why is it that there are no homebrew isometric games ? It has to be my favorite game format.
The most important aspect is going to be selecting a team that are not otherwise committed, so the project does not go the same way as the bigtrouble77 one. At least Dzz has demonstrated that he is active in developing for the GP2X and always seems to be available.

In reply to ingrin

When you say impure do you mean like it will be grey in colour and so you will have to blast the dirt off to reveal the colour?

The only fault with this project is that it is to similar to tetris (and about 50 other games that copied it) but i like that project layout.



I have two ideas for project



Has anyone anyone heard of the game sneech for the amiga? http://www.shoecakegames.com/sneech/
This was an 2d snake that had upto 10 ai on screen at a time, this was interesting as you had to eat the food to grow and if you hit someone elses tail you would start to shrink and had to quickly move away from the tail else death would occur. You picked up three main types of items, food (to grow) black dots to speed up and money. You also gained money and points for hurting someone else.
At the end of the round you had to head to the home portal where your size and items would be translated into points.


At each round you could buy power up items such bombs (to blow through someone tail) extra speed, extra size, reverse, extra life and other such items.

This game would be excellent to play and very addictive

I inclose a good picture of the game in action




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When i was younger, my brother used to write programs for his computer club at school (even released games on the acorn for people to buy)

A few years back we got a copy of dark basic and we rewrote some of his games however due to time we canned it after a few weeks.

However we had a working exe of the project that i will search the pc for now (just checked, it isn’t there any more )


Basic concept
Basically the project was a typical space rpg however once you have completed a certain section, you would have to fight in ships against your opponent. (AI)

Now the Rpg will be to complicated and long winded to encode however I think that the space ship part might be an interesting and simple project to achieve.

Gameplay
You would occupy the bottom of the screen whilst your opponent would take the top of the screen and you would have to fire lasers at each other until one person died
There will also an upgrade shop for you to buy bombs and shields.

(if the programmers are up for it, the 1d limit of the game could be removed to allow the ships to move around in 2d space however this will cause the ai programming to be a lot harder) other modifications could be as exotic as 5 verses 1 or 2 verses 2

Picture
I have included a picture which I threw together in about 2 min so don’t laugh at the terrible paint skills :-P




much larger picture

http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=s...ipdesign2ay.gif
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Personally I would love to see both game being made but as a choice I would go for sneech any day as no snake game has ever managed to replicate this little beast.

I think the primary reason is the artwork, which takes a lot of skill to get looking good.

Keep the ideas flowing everybody! I don't want to make any comments yet, so don't misinterpret my silence as disinterest.

Is it just me getting deja-vu with the Community Game Project here? Not that that exists anymore, of course, but nonetheless. Hopefully this will go further than it did!

However, Dzz, if you're after a complex game to attempt to make, I believe a lot of planning did go into that, though I can't find the place where all of it is stored. Ask Rico, or wait until someone manages to dig up the info.

3 words.

Tic Tack Toe

Even tough this might be too big to handle, I would like a epic RPG most... sure, there are many of these games for emulators out there, but that would be my favorite, I think the fighting system from Grandia2 would be a great base (I just loved it) . It would be best if we would get a sophisticated battle system and a cool story, I could probably contribute to both of these points... (a friend and me worked out a huge roleplay-world, which is basically a fork of many, many different worlds/films/games and some cool new ideas thrown in; atm it's still under development, planned to be used as an alternative ShadowRun world, but it has got a fantasy setting)
I do not know if 3D is appropriate at all, somehow it seems to me as if most (if not all) open-source 3D games (which do not use already existing engines) don't look "really good". And, too bad, I guess we will not be able to use the CrystalSpace Engine.
Furthermore, and no matter what game it's going to be, I will be able to translate it English<->German(<->French if not tooo complicated).

As I have my own music and sound effect studio http://www.studyosmart.com I can contribute this project with live music and sound effects if needed.

If we are thinking about a game that rocks anyone who has GP2X, it should be an action game. 3D or 2D but it should be awasome looking and sounding. A RPG game is easier to develop but I think it should be something different to embrace all GP2X users.

Translation of texts and speechs from English to Turkish is another thing I can do at the moment. My coding is not very good in C/C++ but i can give a hand to algorithms if needed.

This might sound kinda stupid now, but I think, if we want it really good looking, the menu both in and "out"game should look really cool, eventually with all these eye-candy fade effects, and probably some animation...
I do not know what type of game would be suitable to most people, I guess we won't be able to hit everyone's favorite type.

Me too. I always judge a book by its cover. But we really need a game first.
Would not snake or tetris be too small for a group project ?
One of the reasons I suggested an isometric game is that each room can be a separate puzzle. If a small room builder utility could be released anyone would be able to design puzzles to be included in the project. This would open it up to the whole community. The editor can just use plain blocks with different characteristics to allow puzzle design. These could be replaced with artwork by the team's artist/s for inclusion in the game.
Also a room by room layout allows for an open ended map size depending on the level of contributions.
When it comes to a story line I would rather have a simple 'avoid the bad guys to achieve the objective' than wrap it in some hackneyed Indiana Jones type story-line unless it is truly relevant to the game play.

If there is any need for a translator from English to Spanish i would be glad to join your team also im good at art if you need it

Great, I'm glad to see a few artists speaking up. To all the people who could do some art, what sort of art are you best at doing? Any ideas how to apply that to a game we could work on together?

Well, I kinda like the idea of taking a fundamentally simple game and tarting it to the max. It would be comparatively quick to create, not require much in the way of localization, and allow the great artists within the community to show off their skills. It would also serve as a quick validation of the 'gold standard' plan.


Again, it was games like Lumines, Meteos, and Geometry Wars that were heralded with the arrival of the 3 most recent systems. There is no reason the GP2X can't have its own simple but addictive game that shows off the graphical capabilities of the system it was exclusively created for.

Hi Dzz & everyone else,

first off I have always been held back by my ability to code & since it sounds like there are some decent programmers floating around on this forum I will submit a proposal later this week. So far a lot of the ideas posted seem very basic - simple is good but lets think different we can break new ground.

I like to focus on design & gameplay but I have a good background in 3D & digital arts + can script to some degree...

DZZ do you think 2.5D is suitable for GP2X? am already aware that GP2X cannot handle 3D well due to the lack of a FPU but we could bits of 3D in software.

anyway lets see what I can come with

Ingrin : On reflection it may not be a bad idea to put something together quickly to test the resolve of those who volunteer and generally get the hang of managing a collaborative project. What do you mean by localisation and the 'gold standard' plan ?

Start with something simple to build some teamwork before tackling a big project.

Sure, I think 2.5D is fine. I'd rather not tackle a pure 3D title right away because building a super-optimized 3D engine for this platform is a rather large task -- I could be talked into trying it though if we had the right mix of 3D artists and game concept.

I know I am repeating myself over and over but after "gameplay" the most important thing is the "content" which is largely artwork. Code is important but I don't think it will be our downfall.

Looking forward to your proposal morph80! And big thanks to others who have submitted ideas so far.

I was refering to this post by thebooboo
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=27732

I can contribute 3D models.

Concerning the game itself:
It should either be a game with a high replay value, like a racing game or a puzzler, or it should be only a extendable engine sort of game, with a demo game (that can but doesn't need to be as big as a real game, but should have enough art assets for others to use).

I think a strategy type game would be probably a good mix for a 2.5D project, somewhere along the lines of FFTactics. Good replay value, easily extensible, good 'pick-up-and-play' appeal. I would definately like to work on a strategy combat game. I can offer coding as well as some art.

As for the concept, I'd really enjoy working on a mech-battle type scenario. As a turn-based strategy game, we can keep the performance high without sacrificing aesthetics. Large explosions always look good with a bit of slow-down anyway. All the 3d modellers here could contribute some great mech models I'm sure.

Anyway, I'm just letting it be known that I am interested in an pre-apocalyptic mech-battle turn based strategy game.

Yep.

Dzz im not a 3d artist but im a good at 2d and some anime if you need my assistance

I've got to say, is anyone completely against the idea of a good old traditional adventure game? They are a dying breed, it would be nice to see a quality adventure game on an obscure platform like the gp2x. And the groundwork for an adventure game would (hopefully) be able to allow others to make their own adventure games using the same engine.

Allan.

Since this will probably require the help of many community members, I think the gameplay should be designed to also have the option to be involved with the community. And, if you want to appeal to the largest audience, it should be really simple to play and still be really fun and have a little bit of challenge. So, the basic game idea I thought would be cool is something like Mario Party.

It could consist of a bunch of mini-games that could be downloaded separately and of characters which would also be downloabable. People could create their own mini-games and characters, but I thought it could still be more involving with the community. What makes a game like Mario Party fun is playing with other people, so I think this game should be multiplayer. Although this is yet to be done on the GP2X, I think there are a couple of ways this could be accomplished.

Since the GP2X is a little obscure, I think a community web server would be the best place to connect to live multiplayer games. The game could connect to the internet through a wifi adapter, or for people who do not want to buy an adapter and/or break-out-box, a USB network connection.

A chat function would be nice if the player wanted it. This could be accomplished through an http interface if the user is connecting through the USB connection, or a USB keyboard connected to a BoB.

The game should take care of most of the setup on the GP2X end so connecting will be easy to follow for some of the least technologicly inclined users. The new firmware with networking and USB support should make connecting the GP2X to the internet easier.

What if you're not around a computer or you're not in a USB hotspot? The GP2X is, after all, a portable console. Obviously, the mini-games will need a single-player mode, but this kind of defeats the whole community involvement thing.

So, what if you could play the mini-game by yourself and record what you did and post it on the internet. Then, anyone can download your recording and play against it. If you're going on a long trip, you could download, say, 50 recordings and play randomly (or choose particular recordings) against maybe 1-3 different people. The number of recordings and option for random opponents would keep it from just being a "best time" opponent and allow a novice to win sometimes. After you get back, you can post some of your own recordings.

The website could have a small forum where you could generally talk shit about each other's ability's. All in good fun, of course .

The "offline" multiplayer scheme would, obviously, work best with time based puzzle or racing mini-games and not multiplayer shooters or Pong like games.

A project like this would involve more than just game programmers for the engine and mini-game coding and artists for levels, characters, etc. but also web designers and developers, people who can provide hosting like EvilDragon, and, most importantly, many GP2X users to contibute by playing the game.

For adventure games you can use SCUMMVM, and to be honest... there are plenty available for the GP2X with scummvm, and we wouldn't be able to match the quality of those anyways.

And I think it should absolutly not be a multiplayer game, as that would require extra hardware, which only few people have.
Recorded demos in a racing game would of course work though.

I kind of like the 3D tactical turn based strategy idea, but on the other hand there are quite a few really good games already available (Crimson fields, that panzer general clone, several emulated ones; but most with really unpolished ports) or could be ported relativly easily (Battle for wesnoth, Advanced strategic command). They are not 3D but that shouldn't really matter for those games.
In other words, not a bad idea, but it would be a lot quicker to polish/port existing games.

I feel you're being a little naive, there have been many excellent homebrew adventure games about the place. Sure, they're a lot of work, but well worth the effort. I'm not talking about playing existing games, I'm talking about making new ones - what you're saying is sort of like telling Sepnroth not to bother with TTX because he'll never match the quality of commercial RPG's.

Plus, an adventure game would be much more accessible to the community in the scope of creation - because there is plenty of varied art, scripting, sfx and even perhaps voice work to be done.

Allan.

I would be more in favour of a scriptable adventure engine similar to SCUMM so that non-programmers can use it to write their own games.

USB network connection!!! Everyone with a GP2X has a USB cable that came with their unit, and most people have access to a computer with internet access as that is one of the only ways to get content for the GP2X.

@Muncher666: Adventure games are a hell of a lot of work, for very little actual game content (play though once). Sure I like them too, but it is just not feasable. Besides, not everyone is a great storyteller, and who do you suggests writes the story for it (has to be done by a single person more or less, otherwise it will be highly inconsistant).
I was under the impression though that you could use SCUMMVM for custom games, which they do not advise on their homepage though So maybe yaustar is right, but I still think there are better possible game type to create.

@donny662, sure I use the USB cable to upload content to my GP2X, but then I leave my PC to play on the go, because that is the reason I got a GP2X. If I wanted to play infront of my PC, I would use my PC for that

Julius, I think your concept of feasability is flawed. Not being mean, but AGS has a huge community of people who make games for it, and they even have competitions that involve people creating games in a limited amount of time (usually a week) that usually have a few decent entries, not to mention the ones that took ages to make. A simple scripted engine would be great for making 'lunchbreak' sized adventure games that wouldn't take too long to make, and maybe have a couple of hours of gameplay, made by a dedicated userbase who collectively could release enough to make it worthwhile, and keep you coming back for more. The Reality on the Norm group in the AGS community do a similar thing where they make small games based around a base town, and they now have 50+ small games based around this concept.

Seriously, an adventure game engine (perhaps with a nice game that we could all make collectively) would really be something special. As far as writing a plot - inconsistencies are something that are always a problem with any community based effort, adventure games only being one of them. You could have a small group of people (perhaps chosen by the group based on small submissions of plot ideas) who write the plot, a large contingent of people writing dialogue, making art, doing voice work, etc - and have a quality assurance team (gee, beta testers are hard to get around here ) who critique things so that people have a good idea of what isn't working that needs to be worked on, plot wise, graphics wise, etc.

So in short, a group effort is always going to be inconsistent if planning is also inconsistent, so that argument I feel doesn't hold water. Perhaps we should have a poll.

Allan.

Edit: By the way, the idea of a multiplayer game seems ludicrous for a 'killer app' (as it were) because it can only be played this way, and the GP2x wasn't really intended for this. Even though the possibility is there, I very much doubt I would ever use it's multiplayer applications. If the group game ends up being something that could use multiplayer, could we please have a single player option too?

AGS is a perfect example for my 'concept of feasability'
AGS is a pretty much perfect tool for adventure creation, including a massive amount of tools and such, which all of it we don't have and would have to create (which is a big project in itself) and they have a huge community (which we don't have... this place might seem big, but there are maybe 100-300 people in total doing stuff for the GP2X, after all there are only about 10k GP2X in total sold so far). And even though they have all this... really good games for AGS are few and hard to find.

Besides that you can't really recycle a lot of content for adventure games, which out them becoming boring, while for other games you can more easily.

i will gladly help on any art/graphics/animated icons/things after my uni finishes on the 5th of march, pm me if your interested.

A Turn Based game like Advanced wars or that Metal Gear game for cough* P$P would be more original. And it's not that hard to create such a game...

You can even use simple 3D models in the game.

Hope I'm not too late jumping in here, but one game that I really got into last year, and which I'd never known about before, is "Master Of Magic" on the Spectrum. I'd love to see a game like this on the GP2X, as it has some nice features: Exploration, Spells, Mad panic dashes, multi-level dungeons, line-of-sight auto-mapping, etc. I also like the fact that it doesn't bog you down with excessive player stats.

It's a lot like Rogue/Nethack (which I also love), but with more detailed graphics (people's opinions on this may vary.)

It's one of those games which, while not particularly flashy, has that certain quality that draws you in. Maybe this would be a good candidate for a starter game, as it is a pretty basic template, but has a lot of potential for being jazzed up on a more advanced platform.

Bump... this shouldn't die

My personal favorite would be a 3D racing/rally game... surly ambitious but possible I guess (maybe another open-source racing game could serve as a base?).
Add a community ghost challenge multiplayer option, and a relative easy way to make levels, and it would be the absolute killer app for the GP2X.

Check out this FordFocus model I did for a GP32 Rally game that never saw the light of the day: http://freegamearts.myexp.de/fga.php?filte...=ford&sort=name
It is a 128x64 pixel texture (90%complete) and a approx 120poly model (without wheels) --- all available under the GPL

Thanks for bumping it and the suggestion. On Thursday I'll try to collect the various ideas into a single post for another brief round of discussion.

After that, how should we decide on a "winner". We could have a poll I suppose, but if the winner ends up being something no artists want to work on, we're kind of screwed. Thoughts?

Here's a totally different shot out of the blue: what about a pinball game?

I sure love those...

I'm currently in the middle of something else but i had this idea before the things i've started and it sort of won't go away.

Something based on the ZX Spectrum game Tranz Am but a Tranz GB. Full map of GB, differing background gfx depending on location.

I had thought about using a more shaded version of this image as the car (apologies for the magenta transparency being attached) but i was only doodling some ideas down at the time

I like it! A pinball game is simple, can be made graphically impressive, and will likely require minimal use of the stick.
Now, here comes a possibly unpopular suggestion... can we expand that idea out? Add elements that scream "hey, I'm using the basic idea of a classic pinball game, but taking advantage of the digital medium (and specific features and limitations of the console) we are using and doing things that can't be done on a physical pinball machine?"
I'm thinking Odama/LocoRoco etc... Simple idea with creative tweaks that enhance the gamplay and make us think "Wow, I would pay good money for this".

Is there any reason the GP2X can't stand toe-to-toe graphically with the PSP on a 2d game?

I have resisted giving my opinions about the ideas presented so far, but I will say that this is by far my personal favorite suggestion. I'm not that familiar with pseudo-pinball concepts; one thing that does strike me is that it would be nice to use the whole screen but the screen is not shaped like a "normal" pinball playfield.

How about sideways pinball?