Looking to hire a minigame maker

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The Wobbler
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Looking to hire a minigame maker

Post by The Wobbler »

I'm looking to add some goofy retro extras to the Kaiju game. There are two arcade machines in the player's headquarters, and I figure it will be more fun if they're actually playable.

What I'm not looking for:
-Graphics. Don't worry about them, I'll be drawing the graphics for these.
-Anything story driven. Just need simple, single-screen games.

What I am looking for:
-Two simple, score-driven arcade games. I'd like to have each made by a different person if possible!
-Something in the spirit of Sega's Pengo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hdDKxfrAbs
-Something in the spirit of Burger Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ2T6e4NObE

I would design the levels (or work together with you to design them). Both games would need:
-Score keeping.
-Progressively aggressive enemies as you complete stages.
-Decent controls. Tile-based is fine for Not Pengo, but Not Burgers would need pixel-based movement.

Ask me questions or whatever! Propose ideas. Tell me how many dollars you'd need.
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SwordPlay
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Post by SwordPlay »

I would love to contribute an arcade game (for free)

I think I can pull off a Pengo-like, and I would like to try. I also have a few other ideas, maybe I can pitch them to you?

Is it okay to discuss in thread? Maybe other people would like to contribute.
Or perhaps it is better discussed in private?

How about a Not-Dig Dug. It works well with tiles. It already has a load of clones, but we could add some extra mechanics to distinguish it, like powers/pick-ups for the player and add new kinds of block/object/terrain that has (simple) behaviour

Or slightly more complicated, but what about an action game like a fighter or shooter? Can still be done reasonably simple with score based gameplay.
This could be like an "Arena" type gameplay where the player stays in a room and enemies move towards them.

Realistically, for any of the games, I would want to implement procedurally generated levels and some kind of twist in the game mechanics that will make it a bit more "fun" and less like a straight rip-off or clone.

Perhaps you could ask the authors of the megallennium project to use one of their games? They are pretty good and are like what you are asking for already (owlbears, ultra frontier, xoo)
Last edited by SwordPlay on Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:01 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Post by guo »

I'd love to see a "promo" minigame in Kaiju, where the wrestlers take turns berating each other in amusing ways.
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Post by The Wobbler »

Public discussion is great! I like all of these ideas so far. Feel free to repost the ideas you PMed me and we can discuss them as a group. There's a lot of good stuff in there!

The only thing to keep private would be payment details for anyone who wants to discuss that angle and screenshots, because I'd like to keep that under wraps until it's done.
How about a Not-Dig Dug. It works well with tiles. It already has a load of clones, but we could add some extra mechanics to distinguish it, like powers/pick-ups for the player and add new kinds of block/object/terrain that has (simple) behaviour
I love Dig Dug so I'm up for this too! Kaiju has a whole series of Martian characters who don't appear in the game's story, so it would be fun to use them here, with the player digging around on Mars.
Virtuous Sword wrote:Or slightly more complicated, but what about an action game like a fighter or shooter? Can still be done reasonably simple with score based gameplay.
This could be like an "Arena" type gameplay where the player stays in a room and enemies move towards them.
I think something like a Not Robotron would be very fun, but unfortunately messy to play on a touchscreen for the android version. I want to avoid anything that requires much in the way of high twitch reflexes, because I know how imprecise phone controls can be.
guo wrote:I'd love to see a "promo" minigame in Kaiju, where the wrestlers take turns berating each other in amusing ways.
I actually just added a boss fight that's pretty much this, it's all goofy dialogue commands in a custom battle engine. I'd like to use it again in another place.
Last edited by The Wobbler on Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by SwordPlay »

OK. It might be a good idea to spin each game into their own thread, depending on how busy discussion gets. It might gets messy is what im saying.

What is the timeframe for development? How many games do you want/need?
Last edited by SwordPlay on Wed Dec 27, 2017 4:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by SwordPlay »

guo wrote:I'd love to see a "promo" minigame in Kaiju, where the wrestlers take turns berating each other in amusing ways.
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Post by The Wobbler »

Virtuous Sword wrote:OK. It might be a good idea to spin each game into their own thread, depending on how busy discussion gets. It might gets messy is what im saying.
That works, whatever helps keep it organized.
What is the timeframe for development? How many games do you want/need?
I'm hoping to release the complete Fighto Fantasy by the end of March 2018, but I don't know how likely that is. Most likely it will be later, but not by too much.

I'm just looking for a total of two legit games. I'm making a third that's an intentionally awful joke game.
Last edited by The Wobbler on Wed Dec 27, 2017 5:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

This is probably beyond the scope of Kaiju, but I don't know if it'll be a complete Super Walrus Land game without a cooking mini-game. I mean, if the potato guy doesn't put on a chef's hat at some point...
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Post by The Wobbler »

That would certainly be the easiest for me, because I could reuse a lot of code. I just need to avoid doing anything that would require more work for Soda, so the simpler, arcade style games would be best.
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Post by Spoonweaver »

I’d be up for doing one or more of these if the time restraints are casual.

Edit:removed bits woobles asked to keep private

EDITS: I'm thinking of trying my hand at a burger game
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Sun Dec 31, 2017 3:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by SwordPlay »

okay, here's how far I am at not-Pengo.
Still working out flaws.
Use key sends a block sliding, it can kill enemies for points


EDIT: There are explosive enemies, blocks, and the player can drop bombs.
It's turning into bomberman :p

to be implemented
- stunning enemies
- animations
- figuring out collision problems (you can see a few in the gif.)
- enemy A.I.s
- being able to die
- a timer
- adding contents to blocks
- some puzzle element, like '3 blocks in a row' or 'match 2 blocks', or sokoban/lock+key style thingy.
- generating a map/level according to parameters

I am thinking about reworking it to be a factory with metal crates and explosive things. The enemies would be robots (or aliens) or whatever.
There could be advanced features, like conveyor belts and chutes.

I want to keep the controls simple somehow. Just direction keys and a use button (and 'esc' I guess)

If there are a lot of advanced features I might consider spinning it as a full game.
Last edited by SwordPlay on Sun Dec 31, 2017 8:50 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by The Wobbler »

Cool! Screenshots definitely look interesting so far. I like the idea of using a simple version of the game within Kaiju's arcade, and then you spinning it off into its own larger game on its own.

One of the restrictions I want to go for with all of these games is that I want them to be single screen games. I know that's restrictive with a 320x200 resolution, but I think that's important to the retro arcade style. This would be more work, but maybe using smaller enemies and blocks than 20x20 would be good too.

Always up for brainstorming!
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Post by RMZ »

I tried a push/pull mechanic when I was doing Red & Blue. How do you get around a moving npc not touching the objects you are pushing and pulling? It's looking great by the way.
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Post by SwordPlay »

I tried a push/pull mechanic when I was doing Red & Blue. How do you get around a moving npc not touching the objects you are pushing and pulling? It's looking great by the way.
When an NPC is activated, "npc obstructs" is set to off (while NPC is walking) and if it meets any npc, they die.

There's actually quite a lot of (serious) bugs with the game, but I think I patched the (main)ones that produce errors and break gameplay.

I am seriously considering redoing it with slices. Movement behaviour would have to be simplified.

I am going to attempt to prototype some game ideas based around a 1 screen game which can randomly/procedurally load different parts, objects, rooms etc., so after you kill a boss, it spawns the next event, and some treasure, etc., and so on... until the end of the game (if there is an end)
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Post by RMZ »

Virtuous Sword wrote:
I tried a push/pull mechanic when I was doing Red & Blue. How do you get around a moving npc not touching the objects you are pushing and pulling? It's looking great by the way.
When an NPC is activated, "npc obstructs" is set to off (while NPC is walking) and if it meets any npc, they die.

There's actually quite a lot of (serious) bugs with the game, but I think I patched the (main)ones that produce errors and break gameplay.

I am seriously considering redoing it with slices. Movement behaviour would have to be simplified.

I am going to attempt to prototype some game ideas based around a 1 screen game which can randomly/procedurally load different parts, objects, rooms etc., so after you kill a boss, it spawns the next event, and some treasure, etc., and so on... until the end of the game (if there is an end)
<img src="https://www.redtrianglegames.com/img/de ... oxpush.gif">
I was planning on trying to reuse my code for one of the characters. This kind of illustrates the point I was making and maybe this is best for another thread if it's not relevant to the development of your game (if it isn't, sorry). I was moving the boxes with code, where they're NPCs and it is always checking to see if the npc right next to it was moving. The entire reason was I wanted something more creative for pushable NPCs and the ability to animate them. If I animated a manual pull, well, the push would look stupid with it being the default art. The issue I had when I ditched this concept was it does all of those checks, but then what happens if an NPC moves in the instant right before you move and it doesn't show up? How do you account for moving NPCs?

Is there some fancy collision script you made to get around this? I won't need to use this until spring, but I do want to make a push/pull character and I've already done the majority of the work, just didn't crack the whole NPC moving while I'm moving thing. It feels impossible to account for it without suspending all NPC movement that isn't the pushable object.

if((key is pressed(key:LEFT)) && (herodirection(0)==east))then(

if((NPC at spot (herox(me)--1,heroy(me))==false) &&
(check NPC wall (pushablebox,west)==false) && (check hero wall (0,west)==false))
then(
set NPC obstructs(pushablebox, false)
walk NPC (pushablebox,west,1)
if(npciswalking(pushablebox)==true) then(walk hero (me,west,1))
set hero direction (me,herolook)
wait for NPC (pushablebox)
set NPC obstructs(pushablebox, true)
wait for hero (me)
)
else(
stop sound (4)
play sound (4)
)
)
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