40 replies to this topic

[Jack Indie Box]

polarbears, and thin ice could be big hazards

[Markonicus]

Snowy location could be good if done properly. Tropical or just plain random european climate island is much easier to do as it has forests, beaches, a lot of animals and fruits to hunt/collect or to stay away from in order to survive. With a location covered in snow it would be a bit harder to execute as you'd have to get really creative with the things player can find and interact with. Unless you made the environment kind of like Skyrim's snowy areas (if you've played) or just imagine Scandinavian countries.

Ice fishing... now that would be great :D

Edited by Markonicus, 11 May 2012 - 03:35 PM.

[Daddio]

Yeah, I've been watching "Out of the Wild" Alaskan experiment and it's an incredible challenge to find food, hunt or avoid black bears, fish, gather berries, etc.

On "Dual Survival" they were on a crappy little snow-covered island in one episode as well.

Objectives:

Gathering wood
Building shelter
Making fire
Finding food
Finding food
Avoiding threats
Finding food
Escaping

[lmbarns]

So, here's something neat. Doesn't this game have a terrific look? Really rocking the iso thing.

I've used another game engine(could do same in blender) to place my 3d models and take screenshots to isolate 2d images from my models. There's even a software for creating animated sprite sheets from your animated 3d models from whatever angle you want.

In the 3d engine I just make a bright pink background so they're easy to isolate. If I were doing an actual game I'd probably code the camera angle so it's the same for everything, or even rig up 4x cameras to take pics from different angles at the same time.

The other thing with posing stuff in any 3d engine is you can place lights how you want, create shadows, etc and really create neat moods.

These are just plain screenshots that took about 1 minute to crop out: I've resize them to be the same size "frames" and can use them in tiled editor or wherever.

topdown: slight side angle: top down:

Edited by lmbarns, 11 May 2012 - 09:38 PM.

[Daddio]

Very nice!

Yeah, you know in Blender you can render out a PNG with alpha channel so you don't have to try and chroma key or pull that pink out later. It just comes out with transparency.
Did you make that model? It's a good one, at any rate. I'd need some trees, ground clutter, a character, basic shelters, etc.

I really ought to be working on my other game, but I was fiddling around with a random room generator. It's good at crashing the game so far!

BUT I did get it to randomly create small bodies of water with pebbles around the outside.

[Jack Indie Box]

It's good at crashing the game so far!

Make sure there are no infinite loops

[lmbarns]

Very nice!

Yeah, you know in Blender you can render out a PNG with alpha channel so you don't have to try and chroma key or pull that pink out later. It just comes out with transparency.
Did you make that model? It's a good one, at any rate. I'd need some trees, ground clutter, a character, basic shelters, etc.

I really ought to be working on my other game, but I was fiddling around with a random room generator. It's good at crashing the game so far!

BUT I did get it to randomly create small bodies of water with pebbles around the outside.

Nice, no I just barely know enough in blender to make a mesh, edit the points to make really crappy terrains with a single material. Or merge vertex points to try to cut down the number of faces. I was using 3ds max first, which I thought was easier and made lower poly models with less stretching, but then I realized it's $4k for a license to use any of it commercially, so I switched to blender.

I bought royalty free rights to a huge 3d model package a year ago with thousands of objects, multiple village/castle/dungeon packages and animated characters. I can use them myself but can't sell/give them away otherwise I'd be pumping out tons of sheets of 2d models. I used some when I was making a 2d game and I was happy with the results.

Here are some images 256x256 and 128x128 pixels I just made in about an hour, from some public domain models I've picked up which are free to use. Not sure if they're of any use to anyone, right click each to save......

[lmbarns]

few more
enjoy

Edited by lmbarns, 12 May 2012 - 12:33 AM.

[Daddio]

Very cool. You should make a post in the graphics area - I bet somebody would find good use for them.

If I can scare up some open source .blend files, that would be grand. I know there are trees, which are a HUGE pain to model up yourself.

[lewis96]

You could make it somewhat more interesting by making it survival against monsters and animals and such.

[ND4SPD]

New idea for a survival game: what if you controlled an entire civilisation instead of just one player? Instead of mining and chopping trees and starting a farm as one player, do these things as an entire civilisation. Maybe you're settling a new land? So you've just brought a couple of workers, some soldiers and some heroes (i.e. the civilisation leaders). From there, you establish cities and such.

If it was set in a sort of medieval world with mythological creatures, it'd be sweet. Natural disasters would come, hordes of beasts and creatures would attack, other civilisations would encroach on your territory.

It'd essentially be an RTS or TBS game but with an infinitely large randomly generated world, and no goal past "Survive" (as in, other RTS games would have you destroy an enemy nuke silo to complete the mission; here, you just go for as long as you can).

[Markonicus]

New idea for a survival game: what if you controlled an entire civilisation instead of just one player? Instead of mining and chopping trees and starting a farm as one player, do these things as an entire civilisation. Maybe you're settling a new land? So you've just brought a couple of workers, some soldiers and some heroes (i.e. the civilisation leaders). From there, you establish cities and such.

If it was set in a sort of medieval world with mythological creatures, it'd be sweet. Natural disasters would come, hordes of beasts and creatures would attack, other civilisations would encroach on your territory.

It'd essentially be an RTS or TBS game but with an infinitely large randomly generated world, and no goal past "Survive" (as in, other RTS games would have you destroy an enemy nuke silo to complete the mission; here, you just go for as long as you can).

As you say that goes into RTS game which would bring way more complications with programming friendly AI unless they were to stand and wait for every single order which would look just terrible (imagine Sims doing nothing unless you tell them to).

[ND4SPD]

New idea for a survival game: what if you controlled an entire civilisation instead of just one player? Instead of mining and chopping trees and starting a farm as one player, do these things as an entire civilisation. Maybe you're settling a new land? So you've just brought a couple of workers, some soldiers and some heroes (i.e. the civilisation leaders). From there, you establish cities and such.

If it was set in a sort of medieval world with mythological creatures, it'd be sweet. Natural disasters would come, hordes of beasts and creatures would attack, other civilisations would encroach on your territory.

It'd essentially be an RTS or TBS game but with an infinitely large randomly generated world, and no goal past "Survive" (as in, other RTS games would have you destroy an enemy nuke silo to complete the mission; here, you just go for as long as you can).

As you say that goes into RTS game which would bring way more complications with programming friendly AI unless they were to stand and wait for every single order which would look just terrible (imagine Sims doing nothing unless you tell them to).

When would a unit ever be idle? To supply your fortress, you'd constantly need workers on the farms and in the mills and in the mine, and you'd probably have guards on patrols all the time.

[Markonicus]

When would a unit ever be idle? To supply your fortress, you'd constantly need workers on the farms and in the mills and in the mine, and you'd probably have guards on patrols all the time.

First let's put this into perspective, it would be a survival story with a limited number or people and you wouldn't produce units like you do in regular RTS. And this group would be FAR from having anything as farms, mills or mines in the beginning if it was to be any sort of challenging game. So you'd most likely have a few weaker characters who would be good for collecting fruits/wood and maybe building, while you'd have a small group of stronger warrior type of guys. So when you go exploring you'd take those with you, in the mean time the ones you left at the camp would finish what you ordered them to do and would be idle until you return to camp screen to give them new orders unless they were programmed to repeat the last action or do something else by themselves, but that,as I said earlier, would make the game harder to complete and it's easy to mess it up. Yes, there is work for villagers to do, but they would have to be programmed to do it. That's my point, and programing more villagers means more work. And I personally prefer stories with one, well developed character.

There is already a series of video games quite similar to this idea, only in that one you can later have babies thus increasing the number of villagers. It's called Virtual Villagers so you should check it out and see how it was handled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSdCxFOJncw

Edited by Markonicus, 13 May 2012 - 05:57 AM.

[Daddio]

Just for jollies, I got this up and starting to work. Still a bit rough and unfinished, but that's the idea.
Thanks for the input!

Survivalist 001 WIP

[Lilybugged]

Sounds like Minecraft, but I can see Ho you could make it different.

Like drowsyness, and dehydration. But what really matters is if its 3d or 2d. 3d would make it more realistic, but harder to work on. 2d would make it less realistic (unless you have good sprites), but it would take shorter to make.

Good idea. It also sounds like hunger games.

I hate when people see something (such as artwork or games) that Minecraft has/is related to and then says it's too much like Minecraft. Minecraft didn't start the idea of surviving in the wilderness, and, I'm just saying this to get it out there: Just because Minecraft is completely made up of blocks, doesn't mean that nothing else can be blocky. I love Minecraft. It's my favorite game. But when people say stuff like this I get annoyed.

Also, Daddio, I think this would be really fun to make. I'm going to try.

[Daddio]

Ha, yeah apparently, all games sound like Minecraft. I hear that one a lot.

[theepicgeno]

Sounds like Minecraft, but I can see Ho you could make it different.

Like drowsyness, and dehydration. But what really matters is if its 3d or 2d. 3d would make it more realistic, but harder to work on. 2d would make it less realistic (unless you have good sprites), but it would take shorter to make.

Good idea. It also sounds like hunger games.

I hate when people see something (such as artwork or games) that Minecraft has/is related to and then says it's too much like Minecraft. Minecraft didn't start the idea of surviving in the wilderness, and, I'm just saying this to get it out there: Just because Minecraft is completely made up of blocks, doesn't mean that nothing else can be blocky. I love Minecraft. It's my favorite game. But when people say stuff like this I get annoyed.

Also, Daddio, I think this would be really fun to make. I'm going to try.

Just sayin, but I didn't say that it's too much like Minecraft. I said, only, that it sounds like Minecraft.

Minecraft is my favorite game to btw

Edited by theepicgeno, 21 May 2012 - 05:10 AM.

[Daddio]

I'm sorry, what? I missed that. I was playin' Minecraft.

[Markonicus]

Back on topic, that's a great start with what you did there. Especially that fire making mini game, really makes you immerse in the game world.