What will we do for the 7dfps?

[od0x0]

Probably the most important question before we start on much else. The development period is August 10-17.

1) What will the game be about? 2) What will we use?

[bink]

I agree. This is very important. However, we shouldn't make story or scenario the main focus of this project. There's no way we're going to pull that off convincingly within seven days, and it's not the idea behind 7dfps, I think.

What we should focus on is fun and innovation. We need to make a game that's somehow different and original but can still be considered an FPS. After that, we can come up with a nice story and a scenario that fits our gameplay.

[od0x0]

Oh, for sure. By "about", I meant, the entirety of it, like what the gameplay would be, what the styling would be, etc...

I'm not entirely sure we should do a retro-style game again, either... and please no first person puzzle/platformer games, they require too much time and effort in the level design work in order to work for this challenge.

We could try a game where all the levels are autogenerated (probably using Unity3d, since I've gotten some experience with it and it's a very good toolset)

[bink]

I'm also leaning towards Unity over, for example, Dim3. And by leaning towards I mean you should imagine me literally leaning towards it at a 45° angle.

While we all have experience with Dim3, which is a huge bonus considering we're developing with a very limited amount of time here, I don't think it's very usable in its current state, and I don't think that Brian will be of much help with all the ray tracing stuff he's been working on. (Which, right now, is a nice demo of what's possible on modern machines, but hardly a technology ready for producing games.)

So it's either Unity or something we developt on our own. Considering the limited timeframe we have to work with, Unity is the only option left.

Therefore I propose a very simple game that we should create BEFORE 7dfps, in order to prepare and practice. It must be completely different from what we want to do for the contest though. We don't want to be cheating by re-using ideas or assets

[od0x0]

For the small test game, I propose: Fuck Hunt. You're on a hilly terrain with a couple rocks. You have a bolt-action rifle. There are a bunch of bouncing turds, and a lone turd labeled "Fuck". You must hunt the Fuck out of that shit.

[bink]

lol. Seriously though?

[Kurton]

Let's roll with that, sounds good for learning and understanding the basics for those of us with no experience in Unity

[od0x0]

Well, it's a small game that shouldn't require much work, but touches on just enough areas that it could help us practice. I just felt it'd work with a joke.

[Kurton]

By 'us' of course I mean me

[bink]

k. let's do it.

[bink]

Actually let's not... we should either try to make something a bit more serious or something without any theme or style to it at all.

[od0x0]

I'm up for whatever, but worrying too much about a theme for the test game will probably distract from the overall intention of treating it as a test/practice.

[bink]

Why not remake Attack of the Killer Robots from Space in Unity? We have all the models, sounds, music, levels, etc. so those parts would cost no time. It's all about getting assets into Unity and making things move, shoot and die.

[od0x0]

Doesn't sound that bad of an idea, actually, but I'm worried about if Aaron or whoever else might want practice warming up to making asset sets like that again, though I guess we could just extend with new assets as well.

Also, we'd need to recreate the levels since they are in dim3's internal format (though, that's probably fine, since the levels probably needed a lot more work anyway)

[bink]

Recreating the levels in Unity from the pieces we have shouldn't be too much work. And remember that we were going to add some more weapons and maybe an additional enemy as well. So we'd be making assets but those would be limited to only a few. Just for practice.

[od0x0]

Alright then, I'm up for it. We just need to see what the rest of the team thinks.

[bink]

I just forked the old repo to Pew3Interactive/killerrobots/ and I'll remove the Dim3 stuff later today, as soon as I'm home. Then we can put in an Unity project and import all the assets and everything. Maybe that should be two different repos though. We'll see.

[trianglebutt]

willies and bums

[od0x0]

So, are we going to wait to start porting it over until a certain date? Also, we still need ideas for what game we can make for the upcoming 7dfps, and we can refine our ideas after we get a better feel for unity.

[bink]

Actually we should start now. I just didn't have time to set everything up until now. I hope I'll be able to get to it later today. At least I'll remove all the dim3 stuff from the repo, then maybe someone with a little more Unity experience can set up a project for us to work on. I'll also create a few issues as a to-do list.

[od0x0]

Are we still doing this? I'll be pretty busy that week, but I should be able to do something.