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Dominic998: Hey, I'm another wanna be developer (trying to get into the games industry). In fact, I'm currently working on a demo (so I have something to show with my CV :P). Like you I don't really have much skill, but I do know a bit of C and have been playing around with SDL (I'm a Linux user).

My demo is going to be a very simple (probably text for the first version) detective adventure game, but I'm using it as a way to explore some ideas from my experience of playing adventure games.

However, a community made game sounds really cool, and is much more likely to get off the ground then just one person doing it in isolation. I don't have too much time at the moment as I have my final exams coming up, but if you do decide to go ahead I hope I will be able to get involved in some way.

As another idea, do you think creating a mod rather than a game from scratch would be a easier way to start? Though I'm afraid I don't have any experience in that department, either.
Anything could work, so long as the right idea was used. Working a mod for an already released game could even work as a good way for whatever team emerges from this idea to see how well they work together.

Frankly, I'm just glad people seem interested in the idea!

KavazovAngel: Frankly, if GoG were up for distributing the game too, the more power to the group. It might not be a Good Old Game per se, but an indie title made by the community for the community could not only fit easily within the site's own pricing structure, it would also require less strenuous pursuit of the game's license since, heck, the entire dev team would be right here. Besides, if the game's made by the community and influenced by that community heavily, it's likely to fit into the kind of genres and play styles that community would enjoy, so it would probably sell decently too.

EDIT: Not a mod, exactly, but an easy idea to implement could be an adventure/platforming game built on the Quake 3 engine. The engine is open source now, has decent texture/resolution/lighting support, will work on about any system someone from this site will be using, and is cross-compatible from the get-go between Windows and Linux. "Alice" was a great game, and I've seen more than one person here crying for the game, so something along the same lines could easily do well within the community.
Post edited March 30, 2011 by rasufelle
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KavazovAngel: Can I make a suggestion? Switch to XNA, you have everything you need to make a game in there. No need to have a hard time figuring out which libraries to use, how to connect them, and other similar stuff.. Visual C# 2010 Express is free.
I actually don't know what XNA is :P. SDL seemed a good place to start.
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rasufelle: KavazovAngel: Frankly, if GoG were up for distributing the game too, the more power to the group. It might not be a Good Old Game per se, but an indie title made by the community for the community could not only fit easily within the site's own pricing structure, it would also require less strenuous pursuit of the game's license since, heck, the entire dev team would be right here. Besides, if the game's made by the community and influenced by that community heavily, it's likely to fit into the kind of genres and play styles that community would enjoy, so it would probably sell decently too.
Sales aren't something to worry about. It it happens, it would be an indie start up project, so no need to go for many sales. The most important thing would be to learn how to make a start up game / engine, and then keep on improving it.

It's the whole "we're busy" thing that I have a problem with (in regards to GOG). The damn support system has been... Whatever, lets not change the subject!
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rasufelle: EDIT: Not a mod, exactly, but an easy idea to implement could be an adventure/platforming game built on the Quake 3 engine. The engine is open source now, has decent texture/resolution/lighting support, will work on about any system someone from this site will be using, and is cross-compatible from the get-go between Windows and Linux. "Alice" was a great game, and I've seen more than one person here crying for the game, so something along the same lines could easily do well within the community.
Or the HPL1 engine made open source after the Humble Indie Bundle :)
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rasufelle: EDIT: Not a mod, exactly, but an easy idea to implement could be an adventure/platforming game built on the Quake 3 engine. The engine is open source now, has decent texture/resolution/lighting support, will work on about any system someone from this site will be using, and is cross-compatible from the get-go between Windows and Linux. "Alice" was a great game, and I've seen more than one person here crying for the game, so something along the same lines could easily do well within the community.
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Dominic998: Or the HPL1 engine made open source after the Humble Indie Bundle :)
The HPL1 engine is nice, but might be a bit system resources heavy, especially working across the internet between people with Ghu-knows-how-many different system configurations and such, not to mention the butt-loads of free materials you can find for use with the Q3 engine.

Hell, if I thought people'd be up for it I'd say do something in the Build engine just for the weirdness value of it, but I don't think even a community like ours would be up for something that odd, besides which I was thinking a third-person game anyhow, and I don't think the Build engine would support that.

There are tons of great engines available out there to work from: Source, Unreal, and so forth. The problem would be cross-system and OS compatibility and level of commitment needed by art team/programming team/design team/sound team to make the engine worth the effort. People will be a lot more forgiving of lower-resolution textures and slightly gawky models in an older, less sophisticated engine than they would on something like the Unreal Engine.
Post edited March 30, 2011 by rasufelle
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Dominic998: Or the HPL1 engine made open source after the Humble Indie Bundle :)
Its a mess. And it doesn't like Intel cards.
I would absolutely love to help make a game.
I've done some pretty simple stuff with flash, and I could possibly do some art, or maybe music (if you don't mind absolute crap, that is).
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maxman43: I would absolutely love to help make a game.
I've done some pretty simple stuff with flash, and I could possibly do some art, or maybe music (if you don't mind absolute crap, that is).
"Reach The End," huh? Interesting...

Flash could probably be functional for the first game I listed, if it was done right, though it would probably be hard. Shockwave would probably be better -- all assuming, of course, you wanted to go internet platform as opposed to making it a downloadable game.

You do seem to have a good head for puzzle games, though. Could be a good route to take.
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maxman43: I would absolutely love to help make a game.
I've done some pretty simple stuff with flash, and I could possibly do some art, or maybe music (if you don't mind absolute crap, that is).
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rasufelle: "Reach The End," huh? Interesting...

Flash could probably be functional for the first game I listed, if it was done right, though it would probably be hard. Shockwave would probably be better -- all assuming, of course, you wanted to go internet platform as opposed to making it a downloadable game.

You do seem to have a good head for puzzle games, though. Could be a good route to take.
I forgot to mention, I've also made a downloadable game, Happy Jump Death. It can be found on my website, second paragraph block from the top. Just keep in mind, I don't currently have a computer that could run Unity (the engine I used to make HJD).

I do indeed enjoy puzzle games (Myst being my all-time favorite game), but I've also always wanted to make a RPG. I'd be most interested in working on a game that mixes the adventure/puzzle genre with traditional rpg elements, but I'd be up for working on anything really.
If you guys do decide to try something, then I wish you all the best of luck. It would be really cool if some day you get a hit on your hands, and I can say I remember when it was hardly even an idea!
The whole concept of programming is so foreign to me, that it's not even funny. I've been playing video games since the first paddle ponged a ball across the screen, but I have no idea what goes into actually making it work. About the closet I've ever come to any kind of programming was way back when I had a commodore 64, and one of the computing magazines had a 3 page entry full of machine code (just lots and lots and lots of numbers).
After many, many agonizing hours, my brother and I finally finished inputting (and proofreading) all those numbers, just to see a little ball go bouncing around the screen. After that I quickly realized that programming just wasn't for me.

So again, if you do decide to go for it, I wish you the best of luck.
So, are we talking about game developers on GOG in general, or rasufelle's specific project(s)?

Because I wouldn't mind plugging my own project if only I had something substantial to show for it. Right now I'm trying to work up the effort to implement a few basic button panels, which are likely going to change later anyway.

As for you, rasufelle, have you taken a look at scripting languages like and [url=http://www.ruby-lang.org/]Ruby? Those languages are pretty high level and can help you get something off the ground quickly.

For Python the most popular library is , though it's really a wrapper for SDL and therefore starts to feel kind of "coarse" when you have a lot of code. [url=http://www.pyglet.org/]Pyglet feels smoother but is less featured, and you may have to drop into Python's raw OpenGL library to do advanced stuff. There's also which extends Pyglet with a variety of features like animated sprites and scene transitions. If you want to look at Ruby, I highly recommend [url=http://libgosu.org/]Gosu. Actually I switched to Ruby+Gosu on my own project because Python+Pyglet was too slow for a certain kind of animation I wanted.

A fun game library to use is , where you program in [url=http://www.lua.org/]Lua. Lua is another a high-level scripting that is also very lightweight, though this can also be a drawback (you need to do metaprogramming tricks to get classes and objects, for example). Löve has several components built in like a particle engine and a (2D) physics engine.

As for art, you might want to look at , at least for temporary artwork. For medieval RPG-style artwork there are also a [url=http://pousse.rapiere.free.fr/tome/tome-tiles.htm]popular collection of tiles by a David Gervais, which I'm using for my own temporary art.
Post edited March 31, 2011 by Aaron86
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Aaron86: So, are we talking about game developers on GOG in general, or rasufelle's specific project(s)?

Because I wouldn't mind plugging my own project if only I had something substantial to show for it. Right now I'm trying to work up the effort to implement a few basic button panels, which are likely going to change later anyway.

As for you, rasufelle, have you taken a look at scripting languages like and [url=http://www.ruby-lang.org/]Ruby? Those languages are pretty high level and can help you get something off the ground quickly.

For Python the most popular library is , though it's really a wrapper for SDL and therefore starts to feel kind of "coarse" when you have a lot of code. [url=http://www.pyglet.org/]Pyglet feels smoother but is less featured, and you may have to drop into Python's raw OpenGL library to do advanced stuff. There's also which extends Pyglet with a variety of features like animated sprites and scene transitions. If you want to look at Ruby, I highly recommend [url=http://libgosu.org/]Gosu. Actually I switched to Ruby+Gosu on my own project because Python+Pyglet was too slow for a certain kind of animation I wanted.

A fun game library to use is , where you program in [url=http://www.lua.org/]Lua. Lua is another a high-level scripting that is also very lightweight, though this can also be a drawback (you need to do metaprogramming tricks to get classes and objects, for example). Löve has several components built in like a particle engine and a (2D) physics engine.

As for art, you might want to look at , at least for temporary artwork. For medieval RPG-style artwork there are also a [url=http://pousse.rapiere.free.fr/tome/tome-tiles.htm]popular collection of tiles by a David Gervais, which I'm using for my own temporary art.
Well, while I'd *like* my own ideas to be talked about (otherwise I wouldn't have posted them) anything related to game design by users is more than welcome :P

And thanks for the Python tips. I've taken a look at Python before, but I was told (by a representative from DeVry who was interviewing me for a fully-paid position at their college at the time) not to waste time with it, and my computer at the time was a community brick so I gave it up.

I'll have to look at it again now, though...
Hi rasufelle,

yes, I guess there are many developers out here. I am kind of an amateur, but I am programming in my free time for a free game. Sometimes it's more fun than playing itself. However I learned that one should talk about the concept really a lot and even more before starting to code.

One question would be: do you want to make it commercial or free? A commercial project would probably require at least certain quality levels to have a chance... but no risk, no fun. :)

Anyway just want to chip in one of my ideas:

A many multiplayer online strategy game
So, you have teams, but the strength of a team does not depend on the size but on the combined intelligence, so you have to communicate and convince others that your ideas are better. And it's about tactics but you always have enough time to think, so fast reflexes are not necessary. Example: Commanding a StarFleet against a Klingon Fleet, or some MiddleEarth scenario or StarWars. Or in other words: a big strategic world where you cooperate and operate against others at the same time on different hierachy levels.

One of my questions: Should such a thing live in a browser or in a standalone client?
Post edited March 31, 2011 by Trilarion
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Dominic998: (...)I'm a Linux user(...)
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KavazovAngel: (....) Switch to XNA (...) Visual C# 2010 Express is free.
Thank you. That just made my day ;)
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KavazovAngel: (....) Switch to XNA (...) Visual C# 2010 Express is free.
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Fujek: Thank you. That just made my day ;)
I wasn't going to say anything :P