Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

[Gunroar:Cannon()]

I'd personally like to see the code being more organized into objects instead of having createobjects.lua, drawobjects.lua and the logic being in main.lua. I get the argument that self might be a bit complicated for total beginners but having stuff organized into their own files doesn't mean you have to use self or code everything with OOP in mind.

Regarding visuals: I made something simple that could be used as inspiration for the game.



The UI elements are borrowed from an older unreleased project of mine.
The terrain is made out of tiles and 3 separate tile layers.



Implementing tile based terrain might be a bit too much of a stretch for this type of game aka too hard to implement with collisions and random terrain generation - but I thought it looked cool .
Also Imo the gameplay could potentially be better with smaller sprites and terrain and slower gameplay overall - a bit more like the original game, but not too slow.

For more diverse gameplay I could imagine the game having some simple random encounters or events on the way like the engine struggling to fire (rarely), random astronauts appearing that need to be taken to the next base, a tornado that has to be avoided or asteroids.

Yeah, that's really cool! You're on a waaay high level! I really dig that low res art style, maybe you could do art . I see maybe I could have made the lander some kind of standing thing ...hmmm. And I like the ideas on gameplay.

[MadByte]

Yeah, that's really cool! You're on a waaay high level! I really dig that low res art style, maybe you could do art

Thanks, I dig your stuff as well. I mainly do lower res stuff because I s**k at drawing larger sprites, sooo.. it's more of a compromise then a design decision. And It also saves some time...
If there is a need for art like this I'd help out here and there for sure. We surely could work something out to work together on this.. if this doesn't interfere with the vision of the other contributors of course.
One thing to note is that the terrain is stylized using tiles. It could be a pain in the a** to add terrain like this, so looking for alternatives might be a wise idea.

[togFox]

Your terrain looks really cool and I'm going to make a note to change the terrain in Mars Lander from grey to something more red/brown. Terrain collision would be harder I guess but if someone thinks they can do it then there is no harm starting a branch on github and then abandoning it if it doesn't work.

In terms of random encounters - we can have weather phenomenon. Good idea. I think if we have a co-op/SP mode then rescuing civvies and each other might be fun. I'll put those ideas into github.

Buy all means help with the art. You clearly have some experience and you'll get credit of course. I actually like your lander and rocks and little man. So clear considering low resolution.

Thinking out loud, we have some buildings and gas tanks. We need a lander. Gunroar has proposed a left/right side-view but I don't think that will work. The lander will nearly always face up with the thruster/engine/flames facing down but I'll let GR think about that. I like the steam-punk feel the gas tank and his proposal has but that's just me.

Meteor storms? I actually thought when a ship crashes too hard (but is not destroyed) then a little man jumps out with a spanner and repairs it for x seconds before jumping in and taking off. This can be a sprite sheet with frames that can be animated. That might be fun.

Tornado's? Never thought of that. Not sure how that would work with the game.

Things to fly over. We have two buildings and I hope to make a 'cityscape' from those two buildings that appears randomly. That might be - idk - 150 pixels wide and shows a 'Mars city' that scoots by as you fly to the next base.

What about concept art? Doodles on a page that describe how something might look? The game has a rangefinder that is really just numbers? I don't know what a rangefinder should look like so maybe some suggestions?

We have 'gas tank bases' to land and get gas but what about a different type of base that you can land and get repairs? That would require a new graphic like a garage or a crane or something like that.

Don't forget that we can use sprite sheets to animate anything we want - like the landing lights and smoke puffs.

This link shows all the github cards that are tagged with 'graphics' (don't need a github account):
https://github.com/togfoxy/MarsLander/p ... 3Agraphics

You can see there are lots of ways to help.

[Philbywhizz]

I'd personally like to see the code being more organized into objects instead of having createobjects.lua, drawobjects.lua and the logic being in main.lua. I get the argument that self might be a bit complicated for total beginners but having stuff organized into their own files doesn't mean you have to use self or code everything with OOP in mind.

I agree with this. I'm looking at the code now and having a think of the best way to organize it. Already I'm jumping back and forwards between the different files to work on something specific.

I might make an attempt tonight if I have time to refactor a few things and see how it looks/works (and how easy it is to work with).

[togFox]

...I'm looking at the code now and having a think of the best way to organize it. ...

Maybe we can start a new folder on github and we can convert the code over into the new folder? It can take as long as it takes to convert the functions over.

[Philbywhizz]

Maybe we can start a new folder on github and we can convert the code over into the new folder? It can take as long as it takes to convert the functions over.

That's not really the best way to do it. Git allows you to create branches for that kind of thing then merge it back into the main branch when you are done.

Reorganizing will take some time and thought and some testing first.

[MadByte]

Terrain collision would be harder I guess but if someone thinks they can do it then there is no harm starting a branch on github and then abandoning it if it doesn't work.

I think I have an idea for the random generation - I'll try to work on the tile terrain generator a bit in a separate branch.
https://github.com/MadByteDE/MarsLander ... in-testing

What about concept art? Doodles on a page that describe how something might look? The game has a rangefinder that is really just numbers? I don't know what a rangefinder should look like so maybe some suggestions?

hmm.. I tried something like this based on my concept with numbers in the boxes and the arrow pointing in the direction of the nearest base:



But I think it wouldn't work well in-game (too big and possibly distracting). Maybe it would be enough just having a pretty font that matches the overall visual style of the game hovering over the player.

Regarding concept art / doodles: I can try, but most of the time I just draw stuff that could be tested in-game instead of concept doodles because I never really worked on a game with that much visual fidelity and detail that it required me to make doodles for it.

Tornado's? Never thought of that. Not sure how that would work with the game.

I thought of the wind force pulling the player towards the tornado with the force getting stronger based on the distance between the two.
If the player collides with the sprite of the tornado itself, the ship will get destroyed. I had something similar to the black hole level in "Space Taxi (C64)" in mind.
https://youtu.be/cEcxgPvmQqU?t=811

[togFox]

Terrain needs to be deterministic if possible so multiplayer has the same terrain without passing it over sockets. I don't think deterministic tiles is terribly difficult.

Doodles = rough draft for comment before investing too much time.

The current thing called a rangefinder shoes direction and distance. We need to somehow show that graphically. I think something always on (once purchased) and always above the lander might be distracting. What do others think? We can try it I guess.

I like the tornado idea. Shouldn't be too hard to code either.

[togFox]

Are you guys able to make branches off the real github? Does that work? When you guys fork and do commits on your fork I don't get visibility unless I inspect every fork.

Would you making a branch off the main github mess up your workflow?

[Philbywhizz]

From my understanding of git and the way github works (someone else please point it out if I am wrong):

You have your repo hosted on github (togfoxy/MarsLander) and a local copy of it on your machine. You push and pull from your local copy to the github copy.

I (or anyone else) can fork your github repo into their own copy (for example I did this into: philbywhizz/MarsLander). Both repos are now treated as seperate repositories. They aren't linked, but they share a similar base and history, but that's where the likeness stops. I can now run away and code my own stuff and the 2 repos can drift away from each other (hence the name fork).

To see and connect repos together you use pull requests. I write some code in a branch, publish it to my github and send you a pull request saying 'hey look at this, you want my awesome code'. The github web interface makes it easy to do. I currently have about 8 private branches in my local repo, for my own experiments and tests on ideas, which I don't want people to see so I don't push them up.

If you want to pull in other people's work into your own local repo manually, you have to add their github repo to your local repo. Either learn the command line or get a good git client that will make it easier. Connecting to remote repos manually I think is an advanced topic and takes a bit of headspace to understand if you aren't used to it. I suggest reading more about remote repo management here if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

I think the simplest way for you now is to let people create pull requests and use the github interface to get the code. Your repo should be the 'master' repo and what everyone would submit pull requests to. It also has all the issues and project cards, etc.

I think there is also the option of allowing more than 1 person to contribute to a repo, but you really need to setup rules and governess on how it should be managed etc otherwise it will end up a big 'free for all' mess.

Confused?