LÖVE

Here is my idea for a game:
You are one of a small amount of people that were selected for a neurological experiment that grant's you psionic abilities. You were the only success. You now undergo special-ops training to essentially become a super-agent for the government
What I aim to do with this game:
A side-scrolling shooter that has elements of stealth and corridor shooters.
The psionic abilities fall into several categories:
Passive:
These are to enhance your normal capabilities. While I want people to choose psionic abilities (they are much more fun) I don't want to force on people. Therefore they can manifest them as superhuman strength or speed.
Active: Things like telekinesis (big and small- I want to allow you to deflect bullets), pyrokinesis, telepathy (mind-control and persuasion), minor future prediction (I see this as being able to allow you to see where bullets will end up and dodge them), the ability to slow down your perception
Mechanics of psionics: You have three meters: Brain usage, stamina, and health. I want to opt for a bit more of a realistic game where bullets actually do a significant portion of your health.
Here is how they work: Active and passive psionics affect your brain usage. The more you have active, the more is used. If this reaches critical levels, it will drain your stamina. Stamina is also used in doing things such as sprinting. When that reaches a critical level, your health will go down very fast.
What this does is make it so that the use of very powerful psionics, such as slowing down perception, will rapidly drain stamina and is dangerous to use constantly. However, short bursts to consistently get headshots is what I envision it for.
I also want to have other, non-psionic skills, such as hacking, lockpicking, explosives use, weapons use, or sword use.

What I need help with: Creating the engine, levels, and the graphics. I know this seems like the entire game, but I have an idea of what I want to do with how the physics works (think Half-Life gravity gun), where I keep track of the masses and velocities of the objects to affect their interactions. I want bullets to have drop-off.

If anyone has any ideas, please share them with me!

I can help with level creation!

Interesting idea for a game. Should be nice to play it.

i might be able to help with some of that.

You probably won't see much bullet drop in a sidescroller game - considering that bullets go very fast, and unless you want to be zoomed out a heck of a lot, you won't see them travelling very far. Maybe rather have things (giant magnets?) that influence the bullets' paths more severely.

Well, it looks like a lot of people want to help you!

Wow. I'm surprised to see so many people wanting to help me.

To answer a question I see already forming: I plan on having ricochets for more complicated shots, and then there will also be things that slow/deflect the trajectories (perks/environments). It will also give more accuracy (pistols aren't known for it) so that headshots are easier. I also plan on having longer corridors that might have enough distance to make dropoff matter. Keep in mind that there are differences between a pistol, a shotgun, an assault rifle, and a sniper rifle. This whole bullet tracking is also defensive, as it can show the path of enemy bullets. Combine that with slowed time and some interesting combinations can arise.

Right now I am trying to make a placeholder thing (just have block move around, shoot smaller "blocks", add a health system, maybe play around with mouse-controlled objects). I will keep people updated on this, as well as see what suggestions people have. If anyone has something I could use (resources, libraries etc.) please let me know!

Garan wrote:Wow. I'm surprised to see so many people wanting to help me.

To answer a question I see already forming: I plan on having ricochets for more complicated shots, and then there will also be things that slow/deflect the trajectories (perks/environments). It will also give more accuracy (pistols aren't known for it) so that headshots are easier. I also plan on having longer corridors that might have enough distance to make dropoff matter. Keep in mind that there are differences between a pistol, a shotgun, an assault rifle, and a sniper rifle. This whole bullet tracking is also defensive, as it can show the path of enemy bullets. Combine that with slowed time and some interesting combinations can arise.

Right now I am trying to make a placeholder thing (just have block move around, shoot smaller "blocks", add a health system, maybe play around with mouse-controlled objects). I will keep people updated on this, as well as see what suggestions people have. If anyone has something I could use (resources, libraries etc.) please let me know!

If you already have the .love ready for testing purposise, dont feel shy to post it here.
Btw json is a good saving lib.

Well, here is the problem. I do not really know how to do most of the intricate stuff yet. I can manage things such as making the blank placeholders appear, maybe get the player one to jump around a bit, get it to create smaller placeholder graphics at the push of a key, get those placeholders to do things on collision with other placeholders, but I really don't know how to go from there. I saw something online about tileloaders for level creation and loaders, but I still would need some way of doing things like mouse aiming, animations (I am not artistically inclined) and using other kinds of abilities besides just shooting and jumping (I feel as a platformer, those should be done first).

This is really my first time doing any realtime oriented programming (I've done some turn-based stuff in Python), so I need help learning the ropes. Is there any kind of library or tutorial suited to my needs?

I will try to get a working version of what I am able to do, so that people can help me build on that.

For animation there is ani8. For collision there is hadron collider.