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The best idea for a game I have ever had.

This is the best story I have ever come up with in my entire life:



Well, it starts with bears attacking a convalescent home, but there turns out to be a demon in the basement who wakes up because of all the commotion and is really angry, so he gives the oldest man in the home super powers to go stop the bear stampede that is sweeping over the countryside, but the demon says he can't rest until all the bears are extinct, which makes the bears afraid so they start hibernating early and they hire cyborg bodyguards to try and stop the old man, but he's had worse before so it doesn't work and all the bears end up having to make a formal apology to the demon and they even decide to sound proof his basement tomb free of charge.

And then the second half of the game you play as a seahorse that blows magic bubbles whenever he drinks cheap wine, but he lives in a classy neighborhood and cheap wine is hard to come by, so he goes on a journey into a lower class neighborhood but his arch nemesis keeps improving peoples' living conditions wherever the sea horse tries to go so that he can't find the right kind of wine, so he ends up having to grow grapes to make his own wine, except it turns out that sea horses are actually really good at making wine so he just starts a profitable high class winery and gets rich, until one day a thousand years later he drinks some really bad wine again that accidentally had the wrong label and he remembers that he has magic bubble powers and gives up all his wealth right then and there and goes back to the ocean to tell all the other sea creature about how much better he is than them.

And then the last part of the game is where the sea horse and the old man meet each other when they are going to a really exciting tennis game but the old man crashes into the sea horse's Porsche and so the sea horse makes him chauffeur him around all day and even all night too, and then one day the car runs out of gas so the old man has to try to push the car with his elderly brute strength that only gets stronger with age and it works for awhile, but then the old man needs some help because he is trying to push the car up a really steep hill and so he wakes up the demon again, except this time he gets the three greatest chefs in the world to make the demon breakfast after they fight each other to the death so that there is actually only one chef who is tough as nails and makes really good omelets, so of course the demon isn't mad anymore after that and he helps the old man push the car and even changes a flat tire, until they make it all the way up the hill and it turns out it is a volcano because that is exactly what the old man had in mind so they push the car into the volcano but the sea horse jumps out the window just in time and they all have to run away while the volcano explodes except for the sea horse because he can survive in lava just like if it was water and that gives him the idea to turn the whole ocean into hot lava, so he makes a magic potion in an old wine bottle that will make it happen and he hurls it into the sea but it gets swatted out of the air by the old man and it flies up into the sky and hits a cloud and the cloud starts raining brimstone and shooting lightning that is half lightning and half lava, and the sea horse realizes he made a big mistake and the old man forgives him, but the demon goes and lives on the cloud because he thinks its cool and everyone is happy in the end.



You are impressed, yes?

-CM

Recruiting help on your project

In my opinion, if you are going to recruit people to help you with your game, you are going to need a very solid demo to generate interest. But I am curious, even if you have a demo, do people really jump on-board? Has anyone here ever successfully recruited game making help from other people they didn't already know?

-CM

Working in teams: Yay or nay?

I would love to work on a team, but I think I would most prefer to recruit people who could accomplish the things I can't, like drawing sprites or composing midi. I love the idea of different people working on different parts of a game and getting to share with each other what exciting new progress they have made. The thing is, it takes some time working with each other, and I think people overlook that. If I were coming up with a story with someone else, I wouldn't want to do it through pm. I would want to be able to call them up or at least IM them with ideas and Qs.

-CM

Wanting to make your game difficult.

Since I am using a touch encounter system, I have different enemy sprites to represent how difficult an enemy is. I also give the player items that can help them avoid enemies (like stunning the enemy's touch sprite). Should work pretty well. And also if you die it isn't game over, just a setback, so that even if content gets a little rough the player is still making progress even if they die.

-CM

Wanting to make your game difficult.

I personally like difficulty to vary. Sometimes it is fun to obliterate guys like when you get a new spell. If it wasn't then I wouldn't find myself grinding even in games where I don't have to. But I like the challenge too. Especially when you have a deep bag of tricks and tactics for different situations.

And Clest, I like your idea of balance for your game!

Wanting to make your game difficult.

I see lots of people around here posting how they want to make their games hard. I'm not convinced it is such a good idea.
In general, people are not going to be as enthralled with your game as you are. So if you make your game tough because you want it to really feel epic and challenging, people aren't necessarily going to want to take that challenge. I think difficulty should vary within a game as the story and location changes. And if possible, a game should offer content to satisfy those who want a normal game and those who want a hard game, probably in the form of optional content.

What do other people think about hard games? Try to think of hard games you have played that are not your own!

-CM

Encounters & Dungeon Design

Yeah, its not too hard to just find ways of varying encounter rates and difficulty.

And definitely no encounters during most puzzles, or at least make them easily avoided.

You should always be willing to adjust encounters based on other factors. Think about a game where the encounters are just way too frequent. You probably remember that as a major part of the game. Now think of games you really like. You probably haven't even thought about how many random encounters there are.

I also use items in my current project for statuses like invisibility.

-CM

How long should a game take to make?

Cool Radnen. Cliff hangers are good. I am considering cutting my demo in half too after reading your post. You and other people who have responded have got me thinking about the length of the demo. I probably won't cut it though, since it will be sooo long before my project is out that everyone will probably have forgotten about the demo by then.

-CM

How long should a game take to make?

Hey Radnen. I've been working on my game for over three years now (hate to admit it has been that long) and I plan to have a demo up some time the first half of next year. The demo won't feature everything I have programmed though. By making more than you release in a demo, maybe the project won't go into "doomed forever" land.

And as for the demo, make sure it is a work unto itself. Don't just release a section of the game. Calculate it so that the game leaves the player wondering what happens next and excited about things yet to come. Make sure it is polished and that you feel it is worthy of release in a similar way you would want the final product polished for release.

I know this advice lends itself to long development times, but after reading what you have asked I think it might be good advice for you. Maybe for someone less patient I would offer different advice :)

Just be sure you keep making progress!

-CM

What are you working on now?

Just finished some simple stuff. A bridge feature that you can go under from below and over from above while making sure that enemies don't suddenly "jump" from top to bottom when the passability changes.

I also revisited all my Common Events and reworked things to take care of some minor lag.

-CM