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Balderdash: A Pheo/Saha project

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Also, I have been wanting to get better equipment. My netbook isn't meant for game design lol. I want to get a desktop.

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Also, http://en.wikipedia....ot_%28series%29

I was talking with Muffin about how great Crash's deisgn was, how tight the level design and everything were, and how charming it was. At least, on the Playstation. We should play Crash Team Racing, or Crash Bash sometime. They're pretty great. I have a physical copy of Crash 3 and Spyros 1 and 2, I believe. So if you want to emulate those and see what I mean, that'd be cool. The Crash article is really informative though.

I can't quite place my finger on it, but those two games really were extremely charming and very stylish, and they feature low-poly things that might point you in the right direction as far as design goes. Modern sensibilities are too restrictive nowadays, I think. Older games during the N64/PS1 era were great, I think, because they were treading new ground back then, since 3D gaming was a developing concept. Crash and Spyro kind of went hand in hand somehow. Until Activision bought them out, and since it's EA, everything started to suck.

Point is, I think if we want to do a low poly game, I think it would do us well to explore games like this that still had a sense of childlike discovery, risk, and wonder, rather than modern games that seem to all follow a template. Since publishers know what makes money now, they don't have a reason not to follow a template. Your concepts all seem really whimsical and stuff, which I think would fit this kind of thing, so we should get together and draw inspiration from early attempts from early 3D games to identify where they're truly good, rather than which elements makes people buy them more. Since I haven't been buying games lately and only play them at other peoples' houses, I'm not really sure if I'm just used to certain elements, rather than enjoying them.

Sahaqiel

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Not averted to playing any crash games. If they're that fun, we can pick them up over the summer. And if you really draw inspiration from them, then hey, all the more reason to do it.

Point is, I think if we want to do a low poly game, I think it would do us well to explore games like this that still had a sense of childlike discovery, risk, and wonder, rather than modern games that seem to all follow a template. Since publishers know what makes money now, they don't have a reason not to follow a template. Your concepts all seem really whimsical and stuff, which I think would fit this kind of thing, so we should get together and draw inspiration from early attempts from early 3D games to identify where they're truly good, rather than which elements makes people buy them more. Since I haven't been buying games lately and only play them at other peoples' houses, I'm not really sure if I'm just used to certain elements, rather than enjoying them.

Sahaqiel

aaaaaaAAAAAWWWWW SHIT, BOYO. Do you realize what this means?

IT MEANS NOW I GET TO MAKE THE "FEEL" POST. YOU THINK I HADN'T THOUGHT OF THIS. squid YOU I THOUGHT OF THIS. HERE LET ME GO UPLOAD SOME EARTH PORN. Some of these photos look kitschy, but I think they do a good job of illustrating my point. Oh man I am literally getting BUTTERFLIES because I get to TALK ABOUT THIS.

Okay, so. By "Feel post" I mean "How I want you to kind of feel while you're playing the game." I say kind of because I don't know for certain how all the other aspects of gameplay might affect this. I'll get into that later. But first, let me try and explain an anecdote or something. Have you ever climbed something? Specifically, something you weren't supposed to climb? Really high? It's one thing to climb a tree. It's another thing to climb to the top of the tree. And it's another thing still to forgo the tree entirely and climb a billboard instead. Maybe this is just me (also I haven't climbed any billboards but I'll probably end up doing something like that this summer, just because), but isn't it weird, when you get to the top and you look all around you? Especially so if it's somewhere you've been a thousand times and you've always walked through it with the same path, and pattern, and routine. In fact, even just crossing the street just once can really make you stop and say "woah." Right? I would not mind at ALL having that feeling in this game.

So here's the theory, and it's part of why I mentioned climbing instead of crawling or swimming or something. See, you're a guy who runs and flies. So there's gonna be running portions and there's gonna be flying portions. The transition between running and flying won't be instantaneous. You have to build up enough speed on the ground, then get airborne. Getting back on the ground means you have to start from zero, and get running again. Don't get shot down! But, when you're transitioning between ground and air combat, You're not just moving between two different play styles, but you're also moving between two different levels, kind of, wouldn't you say? Here, let me grab some pictures for you.

forest_4_by_snowskadi-d4xnfuy.jpg

This is by a guy named snowskadi on dA. He does some great environmental concept work. I love him and keep forgetting to post his stuff in that artist thread that LL made.

Now, the levels here wouldn't be this cluttered, obviously. You need a track to run down. Maybe some curves n' shit, maybe some forks in the road, even. But yeah, you're in the underbrush. The sky is overhead but it's covered with trees. So you just run up stream or down stream or what have you and pick off the enemies until you can get up the speed to get out. And then, Bam!

Bn0HL.jpg

(This is some of that earth porn I was talking about)

You're flying up above the trees and everything! Man, look at all those trees! Also, there would be like, artillery and tanks and jets and shit you have to fight that you can see for miles from up here. Also airborne units coming after you. When you're running around on the ground, If there's a big impressive horrifying enemy unit or group of them, you're running between them, and can only really see two or three at a time, whatever the situation dictates. When you're flying, you can see for miles. You can see the big ominous final boss on the horizon or something! Just thinking out loud here. Its not like I have the path through every level in this game planned yet. I certainly want a level like this one with trees and rivers, though. And when you're up high, you're flying faster and faster and you're exposed to way more enemies than you are on the ground, and this is where the game's challenge comes in. All that danger being way up high, but I still want there to be a beauty to it. That's part of the advantage between having a not instantaneous and violent transition between ground and air combat. You don't straight rocket into the sky. You ascend into it. You rise into it. That's part of why I want Rush's arms out at his sides when he flies instead of in front of him, or flying in some kind of managable exo suit where he could manage a rifle. I keep drawing thumbnails of him with rifles and guns. It's tempting. But his arms are at his sides to convey the idea that he's flying.

Now, remember how I keep mentioning levels where you wont be running at all? That's because I'm worried about environment and level design. All of these listed demand low altitude flight. It's almost like I'm dooming you never to fly above the clouds. Why would I do that to you? We gotta have levels like that. And it's levels like that that make me inspired by things like the opening sequence in strike witches Phanny posted. Sans all the moe moe camel toe.

I've mentioned levels that are track based and levels that are arena based. I haven't mentioned mixing those between when you will have the ground and when you wont. More often than not you'll definitely have solid ground to land on, but I still want arena based or track based levels where you don't have ground, and you're like two miles into the air in a giant fireball dogfight with enemy units. I'm trying not to go too deeply into gameplay. I just want to talk about environments and look/feel stuff.

I feel like I'm leaving out a lot of stuff, if only because my mind is so focused on other ideas for this game right now that I can't talk about because plot. So just ask me any questions you have about feels and stuff and I'll try my best to answer it. Mind you, I'm well aware the pictures I posted all look like they took a whole lot more work and time and skill than I should be able to do.

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You could add "revelations", "resurrection", "revival", "forever" to these titles.

reloaded, unleashed, the revenge of, returns, etc.

For some reason, "Forever" in a title makes me kind of sad and nostalgic. Ever since I was like 8. It's probably because I know nothing lasts forever, and putting forever in a title just makes it seem like it really is never going to happen again. Also, them being sequels is also kind of a joke because they're all completely different from each other except in a few common elements.

And yeah pheo, that's pretty cool. The soundtrack would probably help in instilling that kind of feeling also. I'm trying to work out how well the environment and the ascension will be in relation to the gameplay. I can't help but think that being knocked out of the air would be kind of clunky, and really slow down the gameplay and frustrate any players. And melee combat in the air or on the ground in a game about dogfighting is a really high contrast, so I'm worrying about how well you'll be able to hit anything with a tiny wrist spike while also trying to move at high enough speed for takeoff. Think of Super Smash Brothers, if the environment were very large, the characters were normally sized, your combat range were small, and everyone had Bunny Hoods.

So if you've noticed I really haven't posted anything in regards to plot yet, other than how we're going to present it. I acknowledge gameplay should come first, because without it, nothing else in the game will really matter. You should read the first part of that Crash article. It goes into depth on what they did and how they got to their final result, which I think is really cool. Not only in gameplay, but in graphical presentation, which you are the main guy for.

Also, low poly.

Trees are going to be like, literally one two-dimensional picture of a tree perpendicular to another picture of a tree. C'est la vie.

Sahaqiel

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Duke-Nukem-Forever.jpg

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see even that makes me sad and nostalgie

even Hannah Montana Forever

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I'm aware of the nature of air to air combat. He wont be using those spikes during any actual gameplay, as far as I'm concerned. I've only ever had them in mind for boss fight sequences and cut scenes. There wont be as much melee combat in this game as I'm playing there off to be. In regards to plot, I like the idea of cut scenes and brief story sequences taking place in the middle of levels without skipping a beat or breaking the rhythm or the music or anything. But we've still got to give the player somewhere to stop and say "Oh man, I need to calm down for a second." So I think in between levels there needs to be a way to rest. Star fox had a map and level select and things. We're probably not going to have that, so cut scenes. I don't know how long they'd be, but for the sake of good story telling I'd like them to be decently long enough to tell the story. On that note, I think there should be both a story mode and a level select mode. Story mode has cut scenes and level select doesn't. Can't skip the cut scenes in story mode, but if you're just playing the game for the levels, thats what level select is for. Or maybe you can skip the cut scenes, but only after the first time you watch them. I'm just thinking out loud.

I don't have time to read the crash bandicoot article, because finals, and I especially can't do it when it's as long as it is. Let me know what parts specifically you want me to read into and I'll do it.

I should also mention I'd like the characters to have voices. This is when the fact that I know so many amateur voice actors comes in handy. I know plenty of people with talent who would love to lend their voices to this game if I just ask them to. Expect that.

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is this just going to be kid icarus uprising

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THAT WAS WHY I WAS SO PISSED TO FIND OUT KID ICARUS WAS GOING TO PLAY LIKE THAT

I REALLY NEED TO PLAY KID ICARUS SO I KNOW I'M NOT MIMICKING IT ENTIRELY

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its this game where you fight in the air and on the ground

and there are furries everywhere

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Naughty Dog

After presenting Way of the Warrior to Mark Cerny of Universal Interactive Studios, Naughty Dog was signed on to the company for three additional games.[2] On August 1994, Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin began their move from Boston, Massachusetts to Los Angeles, California.[3] During the trip, Gavin and Rubin decided to create a 3D action-platform game. Because the player would be forced to constantly look at the character's rear, the game was jokingly codenamed "Sonic's Ass Game".[2] The basic technology for the game and the Crash Bandicoot series as a whole was created somewhere near Gary, Indiana. The rough game theory was designed by Colorado. Soon afterward, Gavin and Rubin threw out their previous game design for Al O. Saurus and Dinestein, a side-scrolling video game based on time travel and scientists genetically merged with dinosaurs. After moving into the Universal Interactive Studios backlot, Gavin and Rubin met with Mark Cerny, discussed the design of the game and made an agreement to go into production.[2] On September 1994, Gavin and Rubin decided to develop their new game for the PlayStation, after which Rubin began character design.[3] On November 1994, Naughty Dog hired Dave Baggett, their first employee and a friend of Gavin's from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[2][3] Together, Gavin and Baggett created the development tool "Game Oriented Object LISP" (GOOL), which would be used to create the characters and gameplay of the game.[2] On January 1995, Rubin became concerned about the programmer-to-artist ratio and hired Bob Rafei and Taylor Kurosaki as additional artists.[2][3]

Needing a lead character for the game, Naughty Dog recruited American Exitus artists Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson and met with them weekly to create the characters and environments of the game,[2][3] eventually creating a character named "Willy the Wombat".[4] The marketing director of Universal Interactive Studios insisted that the character be named "Wez", "Wuzzles" or "Wizzy the Wombat".[5] On creating the levels for the game, Zembillas and Pearson first sketched each environment, designing and creating additional individual elements later. They aimed for an organic, overgrown look to the game and worked to completely avoid straight lines and 90-degree corners. A Naughty Dog artist sketched every single background object in the game before it was modeled. The artists were tasked with making the best use of textures and reducing the amount of geometry. Dark and light elements were juxtaposed to create visual interest and separate geometry. The Naughty Dog artists would squint when sketching, texturing and playing the levels to make sure they could be played by light value alone. Correct use of color was an important goal for Naughty Dog's artists; for example, mutually accentuating colors were chosen as the theme for the "Lost City" and "Sunset Vista" levels. The interior of Doctor Neo Cortex's castle was designed to reflect Cortex's twisted mind.[6]

After the main character's creation, the team went into three months of developing the game. The game first became functional on April 1995 and became playable on June 1995. The first three levels in the game were completed by August 1995. However, they were judged to be too difficult to appear so early in the game and were moved to the game's power plant area. Artist Charlotte Francis joined Naughty Dog at around this time.[3] On September 1995, a videotape of Crash Bandicoot was shown to Sony Computer Entertainment behind closed doors.[2][3] While playing the game during development, Rubin realized that there were many empty areas in the game due to the PlayStation's inability to process numerous on-screen enemy characters at the same time. Additionally, players were solving the game's puzzles too fast. Rubin soon came up with the idea of a box and putting various symbols on the sides to create puzzles. Breaking these boxes would serve to fill in the boring parts of the levels and give the player additional puzzles.[5] The first "crate" was placed in the game on January 1996, and would become the primary gameplay element of the series.[3] Willy the Wombat's destruction of the crates would eventually lead him to be renamed "Crash Bandicoot".[3][5] On March 1996, Sony agreed to publish Crash Bandicoot, which went into the alpha stage on April 1996. Crash Bandicoot was first shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo on May 1996 and was met with enthusiastic reactions.[2][3]

Development of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back began in October 1996. For the game, Andy Gavin perfected a new engine named "Game Oriented Object LISP 2" (GOOL 2) that was three times faster than the previous game's engine, could handle ten times the animation frames and twice the polygon count.[2][3] The jungle levels were originally to have featured ground fog, but this was abandoned when magazines and the public began to brutalize other developers for using fog to hide polygon count. Sunlight and depth accentuation was experimented with for these levels. Wanting to have some "dirty" locations in the game, Naughty Dog worked in the sewer levels and added color contrast to the levels to show depth and break up the repetitive monotony of the endless sewer pipes.[6] A flat plane z-buffer was created for the game; because the water surfaces and mud in the jungle had to be a flat plane and be exactly flat on the Y-axis, there could be no waves and the subdividing plane could not be at an odd angle. The effect only worked on objects in the foreground and was only used on Crash, some enemies and a few boxes at the same time.[2] The soundtrack of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back was provided by Mutato Muzika (consisting of Mark Mothersbaugh and Josh Mancell), while the sound effects were created by Universal Sound Studios (consisting of Mike Gollom, Ron Horwitz and Kevin Spears). The characters were designed by Charles Zembillas of American Exitus, Incorporated. Clancy Brown provided the voice of Doctor Neo Cortex, while Brendan O'Brien voiced the dual role of Doctor N. Gin and Doctor Nitrus Brio and Vicki Winters voiced Coco Bandicoot.[7] The game was unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Atlanta, Georgia on June 1997 to a positive response from the game industry. The game went into the alpha stage on August 1997. Around that time, Dan Arey, the lead designer of Gex: Enter the Gecko, joined Naughty Dog and streamlined the level design.[3]

Like the first one, the second game was also critically acclaimed, green-lighting a third game. Production of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped began on January 1998, with Naughty Dog given only 10½ months to complete the game.[2][3] Programmers Andy Gavin, Stephen White and Greg Omi created three new gameplay engines for the game. Two of the three new engines were three-dimensional in nature and were created for the airplane and jet-ski levels; the third new engine was created for the motorcycle levels in the style of a driving simulator. The new engines combined make up a third of the game, while the other two-thirds of the game consist of the same engine used in the previous games. Jason Rubin explained that the "classic" engine and game style was preserved due to the success of the previous two games and went on to say that "were we to abandon that style of gameplay, that would mean that we would be abandoning a significant proportion of gamers out there." An arbitrary plane z-buffer was created for the jet-ski and flooded Egyptian hallway levels of the game.[2] To create a completely fluid feel for the water on these levels, an environment map that reflects the sky was fitted onto the surface of the water. A real shadow was given to the Crash character at the request of the Sony Computer Entertainment America producers, who were "sick of that little discus that's following him around." To create an "arcade" experience in the airplane levels and to differentiate them from flight simulators, the enemy planes were programmed to come out in front of the player and give the player ample time to shoot them before they turn around and shoot the player rather than come up behind the player and hit them from behind. The Relic system was introduced to give players a reason to return to the game after it has been completed.[8]

While initially Naughty Dog was only signed on to make three games, Crash Team Racing was a possible Crash 3 as it started out in production after Crash 2 and the game which was finished first in production would be released first. However, Naughty Dog had already gotten far into the project and decided to finish it and release it. David Baggett produced the game's soundtrack, with Mark Mothersbaugh and Josh Mancell of Mutato Muzika composing the music. Sound effects were created by Mike Gollum, Ron Horwitz and Kevin Spears of Universal Sound Studios.[9] This marked the end of Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot games. (and also the beginning of subsequent Crash games being bad, even evidenced in the reception portion of the article)

This also brought up something I wanted to discuss earlier. Models are great and all, and they're not too difficult at low poly, but what about textures? With a low poly count, textures are very important. Can you make those?

Also, I said Spyro and Crash, as they're two good examples of whimsical, charming games that came out on the PS1, and even further, we could explore other games early on in the 3D console generation, as they all seem to have that kind of experimental feel. Ocarina of Time was one of them, only it was much ahead of its time in terms of mechanics and execution, which is why it is so pivotal of a game. But I do want to explore other early games, some of which I may or may not have even heard of.

For mFufni's, for example, in order to get the feel of what a good 2D game is, I started playing Link's Awakening DX, and I composed a mental list of what is good and bad, and what is unique as an experience. I would not play a current gen first person shooter to emulate the experience of an early first person shooter like Doom or Wolfenstein 3D. (But if you go too early like Duck Hunt then you're being a bit too extreme)

In other words, attaching modern sensibilities to older styles feels like a copout move to me, as per the inevitable retro trend of anything. I would want to reproduce the feel of older games in a way that is similarly unique and not as cookie cutter as today's entertainment. Even Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was unique back then, but then it started to get bland over the years, and I ended up playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 8 or something and the magic was lost on me. Older things have a kind of borderline cheesy style that kind of hangs on the fence in such a perfect balance that it becomes charming. In the 90s, games had a trend of having cheat codes with things like "big head mode", which was completely ridiculous in concept, but it's charming in the fact that it even exists, because you can go about your business with a gigantic mascot head. Yes, this was in multiple games. In fact, what even happened to cheat codes? In the early 2000s, it was like they were a dying breed. Nowadays no one asks if there are cheat codes in games because we haven't seen a game with legitimate button combo cheat codes since like 2003. Save for like, Grand Theft Auto, but it's not the best example.

In things like Spyro for example, you had stereotypical very white sounding voice actors talking with attitude B), and you're a little purple dragon who has horns and eyes that may as well be sunglasses because of how much of a mischievous scamp you are.

Spyro_the_Dragon.jpg

Now look what they were going to turn him into.

The_Legend_of_Spyro_3D.jpg

Now look at what they turned him into.

spyrox-large.jpg

It's kind of like the Sonic Cycle, only it applies to everything nowadays.

Actually wait,

tumblr_lwdpsb1ufb1qkr4jn.gif

252px-Crash_Bandicoot_3_Warped_Original_Box_Art.jpg

Bonus image.

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Not even responding yet because I'm busy studying lol (like i even need to respond, we've been discussing this irl, but I should respond anyways)

More Importantly:

Imw6l.png

I AM LEARNING TO MODEL

FEAR ME

it's art

Also: Contest to name Pig Mask Lady. I can't keep referring to her as Pig Mask Lady. It simply will not do. Winner gets her name canonized. Gogogogogo.

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video games aren't art pheo

yeah, this is gonna turn into one of those discussions now maybe I should make a separate thread for this if you are inclined

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Video games and art is a discussion I've had a lot, actually. I'm not here to talk about whether or not all videogames are art or not, or what it takes for videogames to be artful, but i like to think i have a grasp on what the next step to take for a video game to be artful would be, or at least, in theory. Which is, believe it or not, part of the direction I'm taking Balderdash in. But I'm not going into that right now.

OH NOOOO HES TALKING ABOUT ART AGAIN AGUAUGHAUGAUGHUAGHUGHUGGUHGUHGHGGHGHGH

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y a w n

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