Game MVP Discussion

[Intuer]

[macaullyjames]

This should be fleshed out a bit :)

• What will the game mechanics be?
• Are there obstacles/enemies? Do they need an AI?
• How do you win? Can you win? Completion time, highscore or something else?
• Are there levels or will it be an infinite scroller?
• Target platforms?

You should add some images showing what the game will look like (doesn't need to be fancy) as well.

[jacobsorme]

Main Goals

• Game mechanics mainly developed around the phenomenon gravity.
• Obstacles in form of planets of different size, mass and texture/colour. Planets need some sort of AI, when planets bash into each something have to happen. Otherwise light speed will be reached when the distance approaches zero. One thing could be to create one larger planet of the two.
• No winning, no losing. No levels, no infinity. Just a nice solar system.
• Target platform: computers that can run Java programs.

Optional but Hopefully ( at least some ) Fulfilled Goals

• Player, spaceship. Goal: use your jet to not get to close to lethal gravitational pull, but at the same time take advantage of the gravity to escape this collapsing solar system. Don't use the jet to much though, fuel is limited.
• More solar systems. Goal is to get as far as possible. Highscore measured in systems escaped and in time escaped. Fuel pick-ups.

[jacobsorme]

[jacobsorme]

[jacobsorme]

[jacobsorme]

[jacobsorme]

Technically: The speed of light in our game is basically instant. If the speed of light in our real universe were instant, the night sky would be white. Since there are stars shining in every direction, at some point. Also we would be quite tanned I guess. To the point: I think I prefer a white-background universe.

[macaullyjames]

I'm no physicist, but the white background could also be an excuse to use Newtonian physics which might be simpler to implement :)

[jacobsorme]

Me neither, just derping :) Yep, so the main formula here is basically this: Newton's law of universal gravitation

[macaullyjames]

I know I said this at the övning but I'll say it again: I really believe that you're going to have a hard time pulling this off without some kind of framework. It's not a question of technical skill; I don't doubt that you're capable of implementing a basic physics engine, input handling, collision detection and all that jazz... but doing all that in three weeks and making a game that's actually playable? I couldn't do that. I can't think of anyone that could do that.

And even if you could pull it off, why would you? You're just adding a bunch of extra risk to the project with very little benefits (if any). It would really suck to spend 300+ hours on a half-baked unplayable game and fail the course. That said, it's your project and you can choose whatever stack you want. I'm just here to advise :)

[jacobsorme]

I have been thinking about this as well. The closest I have ever been to making a game in Java was probably that Bouncing Balls project. When I looked at libGDX I thought that was way too complicated for me to understand, and that it would be much easier to just work without it. Now that I looked at some tutorials it seemed quite ok. I think I am going to have a hard time either way though. Nicklas knows what he's doing, but I don't want him to do all the hard work. Maybe if we use libGDX we could learn together and make things more even. :)

[macaullyjames]

I think I am going to have a hard time either way though.

That's a good point. There's no "easy" way here, you're going to have to learn a lot no matter what you choose to do :)

[macaullyjames]

You're going to need to make a decision pretty quick whatever you decide, you've already lost a week of dev time 👍🏻