LÖVE

Haha, well...even though I'm not good with programming (yet!), I've had one wish, and that is to make a side-scrolling mmorpg, that's why I started learning now, and hopefully...I'll manage to make something in the future. So...even though I might not be able to make what I want, I was still thinking about systems for my game, if I ever made it, and stuff like that.

Well, first I wanted to have a template for characters, a simple one that can be easily updated to wear different gear and stuff like that...well, I pretty much just drew a stick figure...and made it fat, but I think it will work. Got inspired by LaTale's character models, it's pretty much the same, just sprited, and a bit smaller.



I was bored today, and decided to make a little "would be character creation screen", if I was able to actually code it xD
I didn't really finish it, it took longer than I expected...so, it's not really something, but I really wanted to talk about some ideas, so I'll just post this and move on to that.

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/9819 ... mplate.png (too big, can't display the whole picture on the forum)

Well, there it is...since It's not finished, I'll just explain what I was going for...

Well, the waterfall is supposed to be surrounded by vegetation, and I would drop some big shadows over it all, so that it looks like there's some kind of jungle behind the waterfall. Um, the house...well, I just wanted a japanese house there too fill the empty space. Also, the waterfall would be animated.

Oh, in the middle of the picture, you can see my first attempt at using the template, it could've been better, but it was a quick draw.

oh, and the red/blue thingy on the top is a hp/mp bar, I was just messing around ;p

Anyway, I wanted to talk about ideas that I had for my game...

So, obviously, it is an idea for side scrolling mmorpg (like maple story, latale...) only a bit more fast paced, going more towards megaman kind of gameplay, but not as fast as that

Anyway, the basic classes would be:

[Orange icon with 2h sword on it] Berserker
[blue icon with sword...weirdly stuck into a shield xD] Guardian
[crimson red icon with 2 daggers] Assassin
[yellow icon with staff] Mage

Berserker would obviously be a offensive warrior, he would use rage, instead of mana, build up rage kind of system (example: warrior in WoW, tryndamere/renekton in LoL)

Guardian would be your defensive warrior, high hp, defense, a lot of CC skills.

Assassin, well, you know, very fast, trickster of the game.

Mage, ranged, magic damage dealer.

and I'm thinking about a support class.

Special Dash for Every class (toggle)
So obviously, in a side scroller, you just have to have dash, well...at least in online side scrollers. So I was thinking of adding a different kind of dash to every class, like...

Assassin's Dash - Assassin vanishes into shadows, and appears few steps in the direction he dashed to. He could use his dash to avoid enemies, or just run through them, if he's in a hurry.

Berserker - Dashes forward with high speed and if he hits an enemy along the way, it is an instant kill. If it's an elite monster, boss monster or a player in pvp, it gets stunned instead for a short period.

Guardian - Leaps forward, and bashes the ground with his shield, enemies that are hit with the shield take some damage, get knocked back a short distance, and get taunted for 3 seconds.

Mage - If the special dash is on, he can dash 3 times in a row, without any waiting period, can dash while in the air, and those 3 dashes have increased distance.

Those would pretty much be a, kind of...erm, like racial skills, but you gain it here with your class, instead.


Secret skills
So..you have skill tree of your class AND skill tree of your element. Now...all skills passive AND active have ranks that are gained by putting points into them. However, all active skills also have levels that are gained by using that skill often, meaning, active skills have experience of their own, and the more you use them, you gain experience, and levele them up when experience is full. Now...

Secret skills would be a mix of an elemental skill and a mix of your class skill, when they gain a certain level, and they wouldn't be specified anywhere, you would just have to play and discover them. Leveling skills would be slow, and something to just do along the way, and get surprised by an awesome power that you gain, as you build up your character.

For example: You leveled up a skill named "Wind Blast" (just an example) to level 3, which would be an elemental skills, and you leveled up a skill from your class, let's say...Furious strikes (again, just random name) to level 4, and there's some secret skills that requires you to have level 3 wind blast and level 4 furious strikes to gain it, and you do. This skill would be stronger than both wind blast and furious strikes, it would be a combination of those two skills, not just some random new skill.

Let's say that furious strikes was a move that makes your character attacks really fast 5 times in front of you, and that wind blast was a ranged blast attack that did some damage, and made your target bleed. The new special skill combined would be something like, to make your character move forward while attacking fast 5 times with his weapon, dealing extra wind damage with each hit, and once those 5 strkes are finished, he attacks once more, 6th time, with a different animation that makes you move even further towards your target, and if you hit the target, you cause a bleed effect.

In any case, these skills would always make sense, it would be a combination of effects of the two skills combined, and not just some random new skill.

elemental stones
You could equip 6 elemental stones - 2 offensive, 2 defensive and 2 utility stones
offensive and defensive I think are self-explanatory (damage, armor penetration, magic penetration, defense, hp, elemental resistances...and so on), utility would be stuff like movement speed, increased xp gain, increased chance for drops...and stuff like that.

Eh...and that's that for now. Those are the ideas that I had if I were ever able to make something like this...but anyway, I've been daydreaming about it, and I just had to let it out somewhere xD

EDIT:
Now that I've written what I want...it feels impossible QQ

You have a lot of ideas, but as a beginner, I strongly recommend you don't jump into something that complicated. It's best that you start out making simple games at first like pong, tetris, etc so you don't have huge ridiculous expectations. I know, I know, its sad that you have to put a hold on your dream game, but you'll have to be realistic about it. Once you get more comfortable with programming, you can do the more creative stuff in your head.

Aye, that article is quite correct, however, I think it's referring to 3D mmorpgs for the most part. But either way, this would take a lot of time, as well. That's why I'm just trying to make something like "Super mario" with this first, and then slowly change it, as I learn. It would be a progressive project, starting small, and trying to kind of upgrade it, as I go.

Being 3D has little to do with the difficulty of making an MMO. As for a "Super Mario" game,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari0#History

Let's assume Maurice worked a typical 40 hours/week. That makes 15 months * 4 weeks * 40 hours = 2400 hours spent on making Mari0.

It's a trap that a lot of new programmers get into: underestimating the difficulty of a project and/or overestimating either their skill, ability to learn, or own personal dedication to the project.

You can do whatever you want; more power to you. I'm just trying to give you fair warning that it is not easy.

Maurice didn't work 40 hours/week most of the time I believe, however Mari0 was not his first game. See also http://yourgameideaistoobig.com/
Many people who say they want to make an MMO don't understand how much trouble it is to efficiently network things in a manner that's as lag-free as possible.

Yes, but that is the creation of the all levels, I assume?

What I'm talking about is making a mario-like gameplay first, one just one scene. That's pretty much the only thing I want to accomplish now with this. Everything that I want now, that I posted above were just ideas, you can think of them in a matter of seconds, and scrap them even faster. Whatever I make now, it's going to be a single player first, and probably for a long time, not have more than a player and few entities for enemies and platforms, just core gameplay on one little scene, where I would learn programming and test everything that I write - this could last for years

As I've said, I was just daydreaming and was suddenly full of ideas, and it was overwhelming to me, so I felt like talking to someone about it, rather than keeping it all to myself, because it was very distracting, it was hard to focus on job at hand - learning basic programming.

Making a mmorpg was the reason that I wanted to start learning programming in the first place, so it's normal that my ambition is just that. However, my goal at the moment is very simple.

Either way, I'm not sure why I'm talking about this. Why I opened this thread is...pretty much to talk about ideas, even though they're ideas that I can't even start coding with my current knowledge. I just needed a way to get it off my mind, so I can focus on learning programming. I found myself starting to write a simple code, to test it out, to see how it works, and what it does...and suddenly idea appears in my head of a very complicated system for a game, and I start thinking about it, and stop doing what I was doing, and spend most of my free time just thinking about an idea that in programming sense is out of my reach.

So I thought that sharing ideas and talking about them, and hear ideas of other people could make my head get out of the clouds.

EDIT:
"Start small and grow from there

I always encourage people to implement the smallest vertical slice of gameplay possible. E.g. one level, one enemy, no menus. If it's fun enough you'll be motivated to continue working on it and add more features incrementally. Plus, having something playable early is nice to show off to friends and fans.

If you can't get the core gameplay fun, you'll find out quickly. Take what you've learned and try something new."

This is exactly what I am going for at the moment. To make something small, work on it, and add new features as I learn (hopefully, features that I am now just imagining)

Anyway, this little speech - http://youcanmakevideogames.com/

made me kind of snap out of the dream world, I'll just use this every time when I start learning lua. It's so hard sometimes to forget about ideas and just work on something. That's exactly the reason I opened this thread..I was kind of trying to vent, you know, what is in my head, so I can just keep working, rather than just think about something that I can't make at this point.

Thank you, Slime - http://yourgameideaistoobig.com/ helped.

I just wanna say that whatever your ambitious is or dream is to make a game like this.

First you have to be idealistic not realistic Because realistic people can't make new things because realistic people think what is not, it can't be but idealistic people think that what is not, it can be, So you have to be idealistic

And you have to work in the direction of your dream with continuity until success because success comes after along time.

Once Albert Einstien said that " I try and fail then i try and fail then i try and fail and after 100 times i get success"

and you have to learn what is needed to make this game then grab it by it's experts or books then just believe in yourself. You can do it.

sunnysherry wrote:I just wanna say that whatever your ambitious is or dream is to make a game like this.

First you have to be idealistic not realistic Because realistic people can't make new things because realistic people think what is not, it can't be but idealistic people think that what is not, it can be, So you have to be idealistic

And you have to work in the direction of your dream with continuity until success because success comes after along time.

Once Albert Einstien said that " I try and fail then i try and fail then i try and fail and after 100 times i get success"

and you have to learn what is needed to make this game then grab it by it's experts or books then just believe in yourself. You can do it.

This is really bad advice to give a novice. You don't get to be idealistic until you have trained your craft. Being a novice programmer with unrealistic idealistic goals will usually cause nothing but frustration and walls. This is a good way to turn people that could become great programmers into people that hate programming.

TechnoCat wrote: This is really bad advice to give a novice. You don't get to be idealistic until you have trained your craft. Being a novice programmer with unrealistic idealistic goals will usually cause nothing but frustration and walls. This is a good way to turn people that could become great programmers into people that hate programming.

Agreed.

Alber Einstien? wrote:Once Albert Einstien said that " I try and fail then i try and fail then i try and fail and after 100 times i get success"

You have to use some sense and critically analyse your efforts.