NOTICE! Due to some feedback on Newgrounds and here, I decided it might be best if I just use Mega Man sprites and tilesets. It's obviously not at all negative to production, aside from the fact that I already started with my own art with the tilesets and such. But I want the game to be authentic Mega Man style. It's still going to follow the concepts that I thought up, and include some well designed OC's. I just want to focus on actually making the entire engine before I go too deep in it's development as far as sprites and stuff go. The actual game matters more, that's the point after all.
Hello all! It's bit a while since I've last posted any information, and I guess it's mostly because life has become a severe pain. So, I thought I'd bring to the table of the Scirra community a question regarding teaming up, and one of my works in progress. The particular WIP is a Mega Man inspired game, and is quite similar to the actual, original game. You're free to take a look at the source:
[attachment=0:3cguud0t]Retro Boy WIP.capx[/attachment:3cguud0t]
If you want to see it in action, you can do that here:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/654335
Retro Boy character concept:
[attachment=2:3cguud0t]Snapshot (2).png[/attachment:3cguud0t]
[attachment=1:3cguud0t]Snapshot (3).png[/attachment:3cguud0t]
So the original .capx that I'd uploaded didn't work correctly, this is now fixed.
Retro Boy will be similarly if not identical at the base as the gameplay of the original Mega Man series. It's quite similar, but incomplete, hence the WIP state of it. Right now, I'm working on getting everything working the way I want them to, and within a day of work, I think that the state it's at right now is pretty good progress and motivates me to keep working on it, even though it's actually my side project. The player sprite is filler, as it's not unique to the game and possibly copyright protected. I plan on including sprites that resemble the Mega Man games, but not identical to them. The only thing I want identical is the fundamental gameplay, everything else, even conceptually, will be different.
I have some plans for the conceptual make up of the game, but before I go about talking about that, allow me to list what it already includes:
-hand made tilesets
-basic platformer controls
-wall grabbing
-ladders
-different rooms
-not redundant, allowing for a quick process of making non-unique maps (as in maps with rain, or something else, which may include extra programming from the base of the event sheets "Global Map Events", "Player Controls", and "Scenic Events". Otherwise, you'd just make a map and include those sheets in that maps' event sheet.
-Toggling for dynamic lighting (off by default)
-Static lighting and shading, for complicated maps
Things I plan to include soon:
Things with single event sheets:
-Weapons that can be changed on the fly
-Weapon design, using a level panel like the Navi Customizer in Battle Network 3, which you can find here: http://lparchive.org/Mega-Man-Battle-Ne ... 80x320.png
Basically, it'd every weapon would be based off the Weapon Customizer, we'll call it, and the Suit Ability block (which will only be added once) will override the current suit Retro is wearing, kind of like the different armors in the different games.
-Ranking, based of player's skill in the game.
-Complicated, strategically placed enemies, that force you to maximize your platformer skills in order to beat a level, in memory of the classic Megaman enemies.
-Bosses, each boss would have their own event sheet that controls their actions, and when the player access the area in which that boss controls, their will be variable to determine whether or not the boss had already spoke to the player, and if so, the dialogue is skippable the next time through (if you die or play through the level again, which you can do an unlimited amount of times to earn chips for your weapon customization), events for the dialogue, events for the battle and dialogue during the battle (if any), and then ending dialogue.
For bosses, their will be an event sheet called "Common Boss Events" Which have functions that are called to determine what the boss says, so if you make a unique boss sheet you'll call a function (IE "BossDialogue") which will take the first passed property as the bosses' portrait, the second as the name, and the third as the dialogue to be displayed, which will go back to the "Dialogue Event Sheet". There will be a Character Family which only contain instance variables, which will include their name and other status's. This being the case, bosses will also be part of this family, and their name can be set this way inside of their unique event sheet, and called by using boss.name
-Dialogue, a sheet the controls the display of Dialogue. In order for this to work, a GUI layout MUST be present in a map which will include all the elements of the dialogue section.
Portraits in the dialogue will work by using the Portraits object, which will include all the portraits of the game in separate animations.
Name information will be included within the Character family.
-Characters, the Character Family will come with a "Common Character Events" sheet, which will cover a couple different things in terms of movement, alliance, etc. Unique characters will reference back to the "Common Character Events", if unique in a way that is not included within the "Common Boss Events" (Bosses aren't included here because of combat, they're too different), and then each character may contain their own unique event sheet. If they don't, they'll act according to the "Common Character Events". As I plan to add dialogue for all characters, there will be a Dialogue string, which will allow the character to say one thing and then end dialogue after.
-Multiplayer, similar to an MMO. Rooms will be set per layout in the game, to control bandwidth needed to run the game. The game is playable online and offline, it will be completely seemless. All players in the same room can team up on enemies and receive seperate loot, but players will not be able to battle bosses together. They can also talk to eachother, drop items to share, etc. I have no plans of making multiplayer a big thing in the game, but it will be pretty nice. I will add an option in the settings that allows you to turn it off though. Multiplayer is great to have, but I don't want the goals for this game to be distracted by making multiplayer a basis of it's concept. I still want it to be like classic Mega Man, mixed with ZX's adventuring concept, where you have to walk from place to place, not make it a hardcore MMO.
So, that's about it as far as concept goes. I outlined the way I plan on setting the game up somewhat, but I have even more to do in order to get it to work the way I want, obviously. I just listed the things I wanted to include as a basis of it's actual gameplay, not things that are standard to a game.
I haven't really planned much after this, but the game will be open source to the very end, so if you want to keep with the updates, you have the freedom. It's pretty fun to make honestly, and easy too, so it won't take much of my time. The funnest part is going to be making a real adventure/story with it. Plus, it's like Mega Man. XD
If anyone would like to team up (especially anyone wanting to make some custom Mega Man sprites) just PM me here or email me at TheChayed@gmail.com.
Also contact me if you'd like to learn more of the concept of the game.