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My game idea that I don't have the motivation or skill to start:
2 player co-op. One player pilots a tank with a forward facing gun. The other controls a turret with a big gun, small gun, and grappling hook. Power ups can be grabbed by the hook, as can terrain and enemies. View is top down arcade style. Gameplay is shoot em up style with weapon and tank power ups. Tank would have shields, and an energy system that can be allocated to shields, repair, guns, or engines, in various proportions. Pilot controls this allocation.
Enemies wouldn't use the same formations and paths each run, so you can't learn their patterns. Gameplay could be as fast or slow as you want.
Feel free to steal this idea, or pour scorn upon it. I've had this idea for 35 years now.
I think there's still a ton of good stuff like this to be mined out of asymmetric multiplayer games.
I like the idea. Hell you wouldn't even need co-op at the start if you can implement a decent pathfinding AI and be able to swap between tank/turret. Would even be a bit more depth since you'd have to think about both things and make decisions when to swap.
Not an exact equivalent, but there is some interesting designs to draw from:
https://youtu.be/FD5ug5jD-q4?t=44
oooh, that attack where the second player has to time the damage is really cool.
I wish I could keep all the verbs for that sort of game in my head. It feels like every game I completely forget I have an ability, and miss opportunities to use it.
That's probably why I stick to counter strike and it's 5 actions/verbs: shoot, scope, jump, move/walk, and throw. (and maybe buy, but that's getting into the weeds...)
No need to outsmart my enemy when my crack hands can just out-react them ;P
I'm tempted in implementing this idea. But don't be discouraged: you should make this game anyway!
I don't want to fuss with a feature filled game engine. Does anyone have any suggestions of a code-based game engine that waaaay simplifies and restricts you in some way?
I really want to make a game based on strict limitations but to write it in code and not some graphical editor.
I'm two hours in witu phaserjs and I've just done boilerplate with cameras and scenes. It looks great but it's overkill for me.
Edit: thank you all. So many great leads here.
Sounds to me like you might be interested in fantasy consoles like
* LIKO-12.........
* PICO-8..........
https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
* Pixel Vision 8..
* TIC-80..........
I also second PICO-8
I second PICO-8
Love2D is not a bad choice. As far as restrictions go, I'd say Lua is a pretty limited language lol.
This might be the opposite of what you're looking for, but p5.js[0] is a decent candidate if you want to build a barebones game (physics) engine yourself. It may sound like a lot but you may be surprised to see how far you can get depending on what your end goal is, and you may just create something novel as a result. See here[1] and here[2] for a rudimentary example.
[0]
[1]
https://dev.to/soorajsnblaze333/how-to-create-a-simple-physi...
[2]
https://dev.to/soorajsnblaze333/how-to-create-a-simple-physi...
And P5.play is an expansion library for P5.js that gives you sprites, collision detection and a virtual camera, while still being unminified and reasonably easy to read.
https://molleindustria.github.io/p5.play/
I did have to pin p5.js to v0.5.4 as apparently p5.play hasn't been updated and didn't play nicely with newer versions of p5.
Pico-8?
https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
Or PuzzleScript
Pico-8 (or one of its knock-offs like Tic-80) is a great choice for just concentrating on making something. Built-in gfx, map, and audio editors: 8x8px sprites. Very limiting, but very fun. I prototype everything in Pico-8 now.
Bevy is an up and comer code-only engine (in Rust) that's still very young but has a decent collection of examples:
"Bitsy is a little editor for little games or worlds. The goal is to make it easy to make games where you can walk around and talk to people and be somewhere."
Play some Bitsy games here:
https://itch.io/c/90743/bitsy-games
I quite like nico:
It's got similar functions to PICO-8, but instead of lua you write it in Nim, and instead of an integrated editor, you use whatever editor you want.
Perhaps most of all though, the author also wrote some pretty cool games with it, which are also open source, so it's proven tech and you can learn from them.
> I'm two hours in witu phaserjs and I've just done boilerplate with cameras and scenes.
I feel like Phaser is interesting as their samples/demos feel very "single page"[1] but can be inverted into something with scenes like you mention. It's often the first thing I reach for if I want to hack something in 2D, but often those hacks become larger things so quickly!
[1]
http://labs.phaser.io/edit.html?src=src\tweens\single%20prop...
supersmall lib.
However, you will probably enjoy Phaser the most of all listed once you get comfortable around it. It's not that complicated.
I'm trying. Really fighting with the coordinate system. I want to spawn things into a world where the coords aren't screen coords. So on a smaller screen everything shrinks rather than gets hidden.
But you're probably right. I just like being able to make toy games in a weekend without dealing with the plumbing a lot.
If you are looking for strict limitations check out the arduboy:
It's a credit card sized game system which you can program with the Arduino IDE.
Pyxel:
https://github.com/kitao/pyxel
Solar2d
Turtle space is 3D Logo with dozens of primitives to make game making easy
Turtlespaces.org
For something a little different, there's code.world
Coincidentally (maybe), today also marks the end of perhaps the most popular game jam event, Ludum Dare.
Which I find kind of interesting. Even though LD has been around for a long time, I would've thought a Github-sponsored game jam would get a lot more participation. This blog post says that their previous jam had over 200 submissions, whereas the latest LD had nearly 3300 in a 72-hour period.
End of LD 47 to be precise. I thought for a second I missed something that said LD was ending for good.
LD 48 is still scheduled for April 2021
> _Coincidentally (maybe), today also marks the end of perhaps the most popular game jam event, Ludum Dare._
Don't scare me like that!
Ludum dare is a weekend. This is a month, which is a big turnoff. Case in point: I made an entry for the most recent ludum dare jam, but I probably won't enter this one, because it's just way too long.
This year's GMTK GameJam had 5477 games submitted, I think the biggest game jam in history.
When I started programming, it was to make games during middle/high school and I always had the problem of getting them running on anyone else's hardware. I haven't touched that for years, so what are the easy ways to make things that will run on someone else's computer and will still run in 5 years without futzing around?
If you want something simple, restricted, and programmer friendly, PICO-8 is the way to go
https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
And in the spirit of open source, I couldn't not recommend the open source game engine Godot, which is rapidly closing in on its proprietary competitors like Unity and Unreal:
HTML and JavaScript aren’t going anywhere fast
Yes web is where it's at!! And tons of nice gaming libraries
Making something built to run in the Web browser is the only thing we have if your interest is in checking all the relevant boxes instead of lying to yourself in some way. Drawbacks, in order of decreasing importance:
1. Terrible, terrible tooling
2. Hostility from browser vendors themselves
3. Many APIs are still non-standard/officially "experimental", even if implemented
4. Possible performance issues for ordinary programs, likely issues for many games
5. People will make fun of you for this
> Making something built to run in the Web browser is the only thing we have if your interest is in checking all the relevant boxes instead of lying to yourself in some way.
What. Using a mature language and not relying on feature of the day will produce a game you can compile 5 years from now and it will just work.
Use SFML or something to provide a cross platform way to create windows and interface with the system and you're pretty much set.
If doing all the drawing and physics code is too much for you to do, use a game engine or a physics library. Those will also compile in 5 years from now and run on other people's computers (assuming you get the source).
You're ignoring the constraints that define the problem. If you're willing to do that, then any problem can be called "solved" after giving one of these kinds of handwavy non-answers. The thing is, this is exactly what I was trying to pre-empt in my aside about checking all boxes, etc. (You even quoted this.)
Unless I'm missing something, the constraints were
>easy ways to make things that will run on someone else's computer and will still run in 5 years without futzing around
SFML does that. Java does that. Godot engine does that. Bullet physics does that. And yes, a javascript engine also does that.
How is SFML going to help a Windows or Linux user distribute a program that will work on someone else's Mac tomorrow, let alone one that will work in 5 years?
Since we're moving the goalposts, SFML has java bindings and binaries for windows, linux and macOS.
Do you have a non-handwavy response for how SFML is a solution or not?
Moving the goalposts involves introducing new constraints or altering old ones after the fact. That's not what's happening here, except for maybe on your end. You can choose to ignore them or not, but they're right there in the question:
> what are the easy ways to make things that will run on someone else's computer
No amount of handwaving and category errors are going to adapt these constraints or any other constraints of the world we're actually living in to be more favorable to your suggested solution.
I'm interested to hear more about 1 and 2. In what way are browser vendors hostile to games, and what are the biggest tooling problems?
Idea: a game where you fight DMCA takedowns...
Perhaps a dual game setup, where one game is fighting DMCA takedowns, and the corresponding other game is a variant of whack-a-mole? :)
I would really like to participate but I don't have much knowledge in game development (mostly JS stack for me). If anyone is willing to take on a total noob at this it would be awesome. I'm passionate about RTS and would love to build one together (a simple one ofc).
Are there any boilerplate projects providing a demo of an open source 2d or 2d+physics game engine? (Presumably the answer to that is yes).
Bonus points if I can use rust/zig or easily target android or iOS.
Side note:
Does anyone know if there's an Open-Source game store? where I can browse/install games that I can contribute and make PR's to!
https://github.blog/2020-01-14-game-off-2019-winners/
youtube-dl- the game of wackamole
I'm down, in lockdown. Maybe WebGL 2.0 showcase. Or realistic physics with gpu accel. Orther-wise I'd love to try my hand at something classic action arcade style for an emulator, C64 or DOS or Amiga or even GBA. But targeted for running in the browser
Hit me up if you wish to collab ;)
Does the participating game have to be open sourced? Can't find the info on blog.
Yes, with your repo put on GitHub.
Well finally I get the link. GitHub has been sending news about their "Game Off" in their weekly "GitHub explore the week" newsletter with a broken link. I should have known it would be somewhere on itch.io, doh!
Thanks for the heads up. Will get that fixed :)
from the article...
Heck, we’ve even had Commodore 64 and NES games submitted!
I certainly hope those games weren't intended to circumvent the logic of the 10NES checking Integrated Circuit chip as that would be a clear violation of the DMCA.
But can I get a tshirt if I contribute 4 pull requests in other people’s repos?
cool to see the Haskell shoutout :)
Would participate, love game jams, but November is nanowrimo