I’m following this thread from the beginning, maybe is time to start with something. Since Math doesn’t appeared here again, somebody else will have to start it.
If the game will be top-down style, maybe some system to detect the leg’s direction (strafing, front and back) could be a start?
Project.zip (7.54 KB)
Erdo, DB/Gdrive folder is a bad idea. It doesn’t have versioning, so you must be extra careful to not bork the project. Repository on Github or Bitbucket is better idea, it will allow to rollback changes if anything bad happens.
I didn’t want to start the project in this “repository”, but only give a basic file to start with something 
(I know it’s basically nothing, but nobody started it yet)
He’s right.
Ok I have a little bit more free time now. Is anyone interested in doing an open game project?
I am, but I still get that feeling we didn’t agreed WHAT kind of game we’re making.
Unfortunately I don’t have time, I’m pushing work from next week. But, occasionally I can participate with some scripts.
But Darkhog is right, first of all we have to agree on a basic concept for the game. We should work out at least the very basics to get started.
What kind of game would be it?
-shooter?
-rpg?
-platformer?
-startegy/tactical?
-racing?
-topdown?
-isometrick?
-side scrolling?
or maybe an unique puzzle, logical, brainstorming board game or a mix of all of these, maybe a card game?
Anyhow we need something that going to dominate in the core gameplay.
We have to agree at least on a very basic concept to get started, we can go in to details later when we have something to build on the top.
But first of all, we need someone who going to be the maintainer of the whole thing. It just not going to work if everybody uploading, project files, arts, sounds to the forum, to dropbox to google drive, everywhere and when anybody have time, put some of them together. We really need a project maintainer, don’t have to be a “leader” by any means but at least someone who dedicated to put everything together and know the whole concept. The best would be to have at last 2 person to make sure at least 1 person always there to care about the project.
I’m also agree on that we should use github or something similar, but again we need someone(s) who going to maintain the git repo and the whole thing.
I have more free time this week to participate but I can’t guarantee anything (frequent) from next week 
Hm… Just had an idea. How about we’d make some sort of WarioWare-like minigame compilation? Each interested member would make short game that would be at the end compiled into one project file.
Why are you even asking if there is someone interested in get involved in this project?
As I read this thread (I mean, ALL this thread) many people has publicly announced themselves as willing to devote their free time to help with this project and they have not received any response and… as an outburst of childish tantrum, I can include myself in that list.
I mean, really put my effort to draft a technical roadmap to develop this project, then I offered to help in areas where I have experience and no one f***ing care and I’m not the only one who offered his time and ideas for this project.
Want an example? Take it:
Something like the Indie Quilt project. That’s a pretty good idea. Hope you all take it consideration instead of just pass it away.
And why are you still trying to choose what the game is about?
Moreover, as far as I understood (and I’m pretty sure there’s no other way to objectively understand this discussion) you all was agreed that the concept of the game was something like a “GTA in space” with 2D top-down perspective .
But in any case, who is responsible for this project?
Who owns the opinion you all are waiting to legitimize your own decisions?
I think this is the biggest problem. Let me give a practical example:
You ask who can put all the pieces together and manage the GitHub repository?
Ok, that’s very simple… I will do it.
You know why that will not ever happen?
Because you’re going to get into an argument about the legitimacy of the authority to manage the project and that will lead us to forget the project for a few weeks and then, maybe in about 3 months, someone will post a message like “Hey, is anyone interested in pursuing this project?” and so on, ignoring the offers of the people who are really interested in helping, until one day, in the end, nobody cares.
And that’s why you need to delegate functions. I’m sure users like @Darkhog or @Lizard-13 can manage the project. It isn’t like get another job! Is just a few hours per week of your spare time, so even I can do it! And please put a TEAM together, there are a lot of people with very specific abilities in this forum.
And if you are not even sure about what the *** the game is going to be about, then I’ll give you an idea: make a simple 2D platformer. GD is loaded with stuff that makes easy to create a simple platformer.
You want to demonstrate that you can make a community game with GD?
Ok, that reads as: MAKE A SIMPLE PLATFORMER.
PS: and yeah, I’m so dangerous because I put that phrase on capitals and bolded to suggest mediatic irreverence.
Next time it will get a huge letter size (start shaking).
… along the lines of what I suggested last month in this thread?
I would be willing to donate some of my time under a couple conditions:
- If the project gets organized. I don’t like working with a mess.
- If it shows promise of actually getting finished and published. I can’t stand wasting my time working on something just to see it thrown away or shelved.
Great idea, probably the best way to go. Don’t need to worry about any cooperation and project management, maintenance, everybody can do their own thing in their own time, once it finished, everybody can share it, play it and decide if it good enough to be part of the compilation, if not what to change and if erdo could offer some nice art to polish the look of the chosen games would be really great… I’m in.
Simply, because to develop a game need a concept and at least 2+ active developer agreed on that concept, it makes no sense if we agree on a platformer, we start to make it but finally we don’t agree on that if it would be metal slug or mario and people just quit because loose interest, can’t agree. The best would be to form a team around the same goal not just start something without any clear goals, plans and finally drop the whole thing because we don’t agree or we don’t have active devs, people have no time, or we just realize that our concept is not complete and we have no idea where do we go further. This is the reason why I did want to discuss so long, and deeply the concept of the “GTA in Space” but… seems like it is way too complex idea for such project/community and probably we have to drop it or at least need to be trimmed down, but to do so, really need a discussion about it and everybody should agree on that. At least those people who could be more “active” in development.
I mean fine, if everybody agree on a GTA in space that’s cool. Let’s make some flyable ships, some explorable stations, some enemies, asteroids, upgrades, and then what? If we don’t even started but already don’t know the direction what is the point 
At least, this is the way I think.
Nope. Everything would be publicly shared. All the project files, arts, sounds, everything can be downloaded by anyone, really no point to try to steal it and put it on steam greenlight as yours because you have to protect, prove your ownership against the whole community and public forum entries where we are “agree” on that who has authority to manage the project and also on openness, freeness of the project made by the community. Well, I’m not a lawyer, maybe you could work around this case legally but would it be really worth it to go down on this road?, As the game files would be publicly shared, anybody can compile it in such case and share it for free. So, no, I would not get in to any argument about authority if you don’t give a reason, but if you do, is it worth it? Probably not.
If you are really interested, please go ahead
Yes It was my original vision but Mats was interested but busy at the time, Lizard and Darkhog offered help only occasionally and I did really want to have a discussion about the project before we start to do anything… As of now, only you, digitalhead, Mats, Lizard, Darkhog and my self offered participation. Lizard, Darkhog, digitalhead, and my self can offer help only occasionally (I don’t know if it changed), so to form an active team, only you and Mats left in the box.
Ok, cool.
Look, I feel you misunderstood some of my points here, but let’s make this simplier:
I’m good writing optimized algorithms and drawing sprites (I’m very good finding memory leaks and designing the overall look of a game). So, you can tell me: “hey, erdo we need this sprites in a week, can you do it?” and I can tell you: “of course” or “yes, but I’ll need more time” or whatever… but I don’t (and I bet, nobody) want to “pursue” the project trying to get involved… I want to offer my experience (in a few number of things that I know I’m good) and work in it.
I don’t care what game do you want to develop if it’s a realistic choice; just tell everyone involved in this project what to do. That’s the leader function… the one that puts all together.
I love to give instructions, you know? I’m kind of a watered-down megalomaniac. That’s exactly why I DON’T want to manage the repository or lead the project (even if I could do it if it’s necessary).
Now you know I want to help and to what I’m good for, so when we have a leader, then I hope that person will give me some instructions.
PS: you cannot always be so democratic if you want this project to work but if you insist on that, you should make a votation to choose what the game is about and then start developing.
As everybody agreed on a GTA in space sort of game, I think we should stick to that. Because seems like, nobody interested to take the lead in any form or to share ideas, in my opinion we should just get started. No discussions, no instructions, no plans just let see if we can bring anything to the table.
I have done some basic player control.
-you can move around in space
-you can enter ships and walk around inside the ship
.you can fly any ships (well, ships are moving right? 
)
-you can exit from ships in to space
No collision or anything, I was focusing on a basic technique of movement of the player between interior of ships and exterior.
drive.google.com/folderview?id= … sp=sharing
Of course, everything is a place holder in this project and lot of things, basically everything can be and must be improved, but at least something to start with. If you think my “solution” for player movement between ships interior and exterior is crap, that’s absolutely fine, do a better, improved version and share it 
If anyone going to add, improve anything please let as know in this topic to make sure, nobody going to work on the same thing at the same time. Once you have something, just upload your version anywhere and share it, if nobody else going to, I’ll put everything together when and if I have some free time. I can definitely do some this week, but no guarantee from next week.
Please don’t forget to use comments, and use external events to add new features
If we can put something together this (crappy) way we can go further with this, if not, no point to force the topic.
Okay, I’m start to work on loading stations exterior/interior and to be able to move between them by ship and by player character is well. My plan is to use station exteriors as randomly chosen animations of an object and load interiors from external layouts based on the “animation” of the station object and maybe also use more type of stations with unique ID variable similar to ships. This way, later we can load all kind of station interiors based on the random “look” and ID number of the exterior: human, alien, ancient, deserted, abandoned, ruined and the combination of them. Of course interiors going to be pre made in external layouts but for now I don’t worry about design. Everything going to be ugly place holder.
Afterwards probably I’ll do the same for planets too. I’m also going to add transporter to ships interior to be able to beam down to surface of planets and stations, probably huge ships not going to dock on stations and land on planet surfaces.
Hi, I take a look at the project and like what you did. Have some ideas for the project and the graphics, but I think I 'll start to work on that when you had complete the stations things.
BTW, I’m not understanding the placeholder thing.
Placeholder - an image which can be easily replaced by different one. It used to just make the program work.
Great
The stations will be done probably tomorrow, so far I can load interior from external layout based on the randomly chosen “look” (animation) of the station. I can dock/undock using the character, I can also dock on station while flying a ship, I can also exit from the ship while I’m docked on the station and walk around and even beam out to space and leave my ship behind. What is left to do is to be able to enter ships while we are on a station, undock and fly back in to space. And probably have to polish some events too, at the moment the events pretty messy while I try to keep them tidy But it too late now, I’ll continue tomorrow.
The place holder thing is basically graphics, sounds that used only for testing purposes and probably not going to be part of the final game because of quality, style or because of licensing. At the moment, I don’t care about licensing or quality or style. I just download and use anything I can find on the web, so I use them as “place holders” inside “place holder” folder and I suggest for everybody to do the same. This way, we can simply find and delete later all the place holder content when we don’t need them any more. I think for now, if anybody using content from the web, it should be considered as “place holder” anyway, even if it free, even if it good quality because in my opinion the style of the graphics should be the same, even if it low quality but must be the same. Just looks not right if one ship, station, tileset is super detailed but the others next to it, looks cartoonish. For example, I just found some really nice free sprites on the web:
millionthvector.blogspot.co.uk/
But, I don’t know anything about licensing and also, if we can’t make tilesets, interiors to fit the style and detail of these sprites, just going to look not right, so I use even these super high quality sprites as “place holders” because I don’t know if any of them going to be part of the final game.
The best would be if someone from the community could make every single sprites and tiles, backgrounds, everything in the same style to support the project 
Thanks @komencanto
I understand the placeholder concept but what I don’t understand is why the higher level in the folder hierarchy where the graphics are stored are always called “placeholder”.
I mean, I understand the graphic itself is a “placeholder” BUT this “placeholder graphic” had to be stored in the definitive destination where the definitive graphic will be (to easily be replaced).
In the project the graphics are ultimately stored in folders called “placeholder”, I’m sure someone will change that in the future and then will have to reload all the pictures in the project and then will have to remake all animations (along with its custom points, collision masks, frame times) or manually rewrite the folder path of every single graphic in the project.
Example:
Actually the data are arranged in this way:
An I think this way will save us from a bad surprise when replace the pictures:
You can replace whatever for spacesuit or animation_01 or whatever 
(well, you get it, the definitve folder name)
The important thing is make sure the “placeholder picture” lays in the definitve folder where it will be replaced when it comes the time, rather than be in a “placeholder folder” (at least you all are too excited about the idea of rework almost the entire project when replaced the pictures and the folder names).
Just an advice.
At the moment, not only the sprites even the objects in the project are place holders, temporary as at the moment I don’t know how the content going to be arranged and how it going to be organised really. Are we going to have multiple type of characters to choose from? How many type of ships, stations, planets, creatures, weapons, tilesets, NPC’s…etc we going to have? What kind of and how many animations the objects going to have? How many frames the animations going to use? And so on. All these things depends on the people really, who going to make the actual content for the game. At the moment we are (I’m) about to make the framework, to add the features to be ready to add content easily by setting up only a few parameters such as points, variables and groups, animations. So really, every single sprites, sounds and objects have to be remade and added anyway by the actual content creator(s), it unavoidable at this stage of the development I’m afraid
I don’t add content really, I’m only using place holders even objects are temporary only to make the framework and test it if it works, I don’t focusing on content such way at the moment, I’m focusing on features at the moment and so I would really stick to placeholder folders and suggest to everybody to use them until the framework is done and we (can) start to add actual content
I have created higher level in folders to draw attention of people on that thing what you just saying. If anybody going to start to work an actual content in such form that can be part of the final game then of course, it have to be placed in the definitive folder in a definitive way BUT the object inside the project that going to use that content, have to be created by the content creator or by someone else and the object have to be added to the right groups to be controlled, used by the events and have to be placed in the scene if not automatically created in events, as I don’t focusing on content in such way at the moment only focusing on features and the framework
uhrmmm… ok, I understand your work model. Sounds fine to me