margreet | 
01 14th, 2008
Last weekend we had the first workshop for the Apricot project. Frank Richter from Germany, Pablo Martin from Spain, Campbell Barton from Au
stralia,
Dariusz Dawidowski from Poland, Marten Svanfeldt from Sweden, Jorrit Tyberghein from Belgium, Brecht van Lommel from Belgium, Margreet Riphagen from the Netherlands, and Ton Roosendaal from the Netherlands met at the very nice and new Blender Institute Location in Amsterdam. There we discussed plans, ideas, and practical arrangements for his ambitious Open Game project. In the mean time we also met with the Peach team and saw the amazing work they have been doing so far. The work they did and are still doing will provide the perfect foundations for the Apricot game project.
1. Type of Game
One of the first things that we have discussed is what the type of game? After seeing the first version of the Peach animatic the team got a nice idea
about the story and setting. The nice thing is that the story lends itself perfectly to adaptation in some kind of game format. Still there are several options. In this meeting we discussed several possibilities and came up with five realistic possibilities:
Idea 1: Platformer style
The objective of this game could be to collect nuts for example. Remember that we’re in a cartoon setting.
- Pros:
- Relatively low technology on game logic side so less work on CEL side.
- Well known concept. Easy to get into.
- Very extendable. This kind of game is ideal to create a community adding new levels and stuff to the game even after the Apricot project has officially finished.
- Not much competition in the Open Source world right now.
- Cons:
- Relatively big levels. Lots of work to create them. Heavier on the engine.
- Many great commercial games to compete against.
- Lots of models to make.
Idea 2: Shooter game
Again, to stay in the cartoon style and theme of the movie this could be a shooter game based on shooting nuts for example.
- Pros:
- Same possibility to create a big user community modifying and extending the game later.
- Smaller maps are possible (compared to the platformer type).
- In a smaller map it would be nice to concentrate on detail to make really nice scenery. In faster games or games with bigger maps that is not as possible.
- Cons:
- Overused concept.
- Lots of Open Source shooters already.
- Relatively violent.
- More work to make computer AI.
Idea 3: Racer game
No nuts this time 🙂 But still it is possible to make a racer type game that fits with the theme of the Peach movie.
- Pros:
- Relatively low technology on game logic side again.
- Well known game concept.
- Almost the same extendibility of the game.
- Slightly less competition in the Open Source world.
- Cons:
- There is a need for rather big levels again. So harder to create for artists and heavier for the engine. On the other hand, the levels don’t need to be as detailed.
- There is at least one great game (Super Mario Cart) to compete with.
- This type of game is more suitable for game consoles and Apricot will not be for consoles.
- This type of game is slightly harder to fit with the story of the movie. The theme could be the same but other than that the match with the story is not as good.
Idea 4: Trap/puzzle game
Here is the idea is to have a more strategic game where you have to plant traps and solve puzzles in order to win against the computer opponent.
- Pros:
- Nice possibility to extend again although this time slightly more complicated since levels have to be created with traps and puzzles in mind. You can’t just slap in any odd level here.
- This game can be a perfect fit for the movie. Both with the theme and story.
- This kind of game has good replay value.
- Maps could be made smaller (compared to platformer).
- Again the advantage of having more detailed maps.
- Cons:
- More work to make the computer AI.
- Like said above a bit more complicated to make fun levels because of the traps.
- The game is not as easy to start playing with. First you have to learn a bit more controls (like how to set up traps and so on).
Idea 5: Party games or collection of mini-games with one bigger game combining them in a central theme
- Pros:
- This type of game is easier to extend and the advantage is that when Apricot runs out of time we can simply drop a few mini-games.
- Cons:
- Harder to come up with different game concepts. Instead of having to think about only one game you actually have to think about multiple (smaller) games.
- More artwork needed.
- Probably more suitable for consoles instead of PC gaming.
There were several other possibilities that we talked about like adventure, RPG (or even MMORPG) but these types of games are really not possible given
the limited timeframe and resources we have. In the end we didn’t decided the type of game yet given that not the entire team was present at the
workshop. The type of game will be decided during the first week of the Apricot project. But we already have a preference for either a platformer or trap/puzzle game or maybe a combination of those two. Like a platformer with smaller levels where you have to concentrate more on solving puzzles,
placing traps and things like that.
2. Technology Discussions
Depending on the type of game there are a number of technology improvements that we have to make in Crystal Space, Crystal Entity Layer, Blender, and
Blender2Crystal. One of the most important results of this project should be the improvement of the Open Source game creation pipeline using Blender
and Crystal Space. One of the basic principles of this pipeline is that it is the artist that creates the game. Not the coder. The coder provides
the tools, the logic blocks, the scripts. The artist then creates his art, assigns logic to the level or models and assembles the game.
The first technology we discussed is character animation. The movie is a cartoon. In cartoons you need really good character animation. Also in the
game we want to have really amazing character animation. Here a short summary of how this technology affects the four projects:
- Crystal Space:
- In Crystal Space we currently have two skeletal animation systems already: one is based on the external CAL3D project and the other is a system made in the past. Both systems are usable to some extent but don’t live up to the standards we expect for this game.
- So the idea is to start a new animation system. To that end Marten Svanfeldt will work on a new design and document where all the requirements and concepts are documented. After that is done this document will be discussed in the team and at some point implementation will start by another team member. By the end of March we should have a working system here so that the artists can start exporting their animations into the prototype game and see how it will really look like.
- Some of the desired features are:
- Bones (obviously) with the possibility to have vertices being attached to multiple bones.
- Morph Targets would be *very* nice to have.
- Define transition animations. For example, to go from walking to standing there should be a transition animation so that the walking animation doesn’t suddenly change into standing. Could be done with a kind of matrix describing how to go from animation A to animation B.
- A good way to specify synchronization points. These are specific frames in the animation where it is good to switch from one animation to another. For example, if you want to switch from walking to standing it would be great if that could happen at well-defined points so that you don’t see disturbing jumps in the animation.
- Good animation blending system and the ability to play multiple animations at once (like head/ear movement together with the normal walk cycle).
- Perhaps the possibility to have the animation adapt to the environment somehow? For example if an actor moves on uneven ground it would be nice if the right foot didn’t sink in the floor when the ground level at the right foot happens to be higher than the ground level at the left foot.
- Perhaps also the ability to have the secondary animations be controlled by physics (for example, a tail flapping around as controlled by the physics system).
- Crystal Entity Layer:
- The movement system needs to know about animations so that the object only moves just as far as the feet are able to move it. That way you can avoid the skating effect you often see in Open Source games. One way would be to use a callback system in the Crystal Space animation system that would send a callback to the CEL movement system every time the foot hits the ground (that callback could also be used for the sound system for example).
- We have to think about what we can do to allow for climbing. This is something that affects movement and animation system as well. Perhaps some way to place and use feet/hand constraints on surfaces (ladders, trees, …).
- The movement system needs to know about animations so that the object only moves just as far as the feet are able to move it. That way you can avoid the skating effect you often see in Open Source games. One way would be to use a callback system in the Crystal Space animation system that would send a callback to the CEL movement system every time the foot hits the ground (that callback could also be used for the sound system for example).
- Blender and Blender2Crystal:
- The artists need a very good way to make their animations in Blender and see how they would look like in the game. We have to see what we can do about in-blender preview in a way that is really compatible with how the game engine does it (in this case Crystal Space). Probably the best way would be to have a fast way to export the current animation and then have the game engine have a window in Blender itself where it can show the animation as it will work in the game itself. Also the ability to see how physics reacts with this and how the animation works on uneven terrain.
- We also need the ability to specify more complete animation sequences in Blender and export them as complete scripts. These kinds of animations can be used for cut-scenes or predefined places in the game where a very specific type of animation is needed.
Then we talked a bit about physics. One thing that we decided is to try to avoid to use physics for things that affect game play. It would be better to use physics only for secondary visual effects like parts of the scenery animating. In cases we need physics for game play stuff (like some of the traps or puzzles) we have to consider to use of fake physics because that is usually easier to control and make behave like you want it to behave. On the other hand the Bullet physics plugin is mostly working and can be used already. We just have to extend it whenever the need arises.
The next subject was rendering, lighting (shadows), materials, and shaders. The new renderer is in a good shape right now and is progressing well. Using the new renderer it will be possible to create really great effects for the game. Frank Richter will be the member of the team responsible for working on shaders and more advanced rendering features (among other things). As one of the main authors on the new render manager he is the right person for the job. At this moment the new renderer is not yet completely ready but we estimate that we only need the full feature set of the new renderer about three months after starting the project. And even before that the team can most likely already use parts of it. Similar as with the animation system we will
also need an in-blender preview (possibly using an integrated Crystal Space window) of materials and shaders.
Given the theme of the game we will also need good looking trees and possibly a forest of trees. The easiest way to solve this would be to just use manually created trees (manually created in Blender by one of the artists) and also have manually created lower detail versions. At the lowest detail we could let Blender generate billboard clouds. Depending on the status of imposters in Crystal Space we could also try to use a more automatic approach where imposters would be generated at runtime by the engine. This is less work for the artist of course. Automatic generation of lower level of detail for the trees can also be considered.
Other things to do are features like fur and grass. At worst we can always fallback to using a regular texture for fur. But if we can find a nice and usable technique to make fur that actually looks good in real time then of course we’ll use that. Same for grass although using a texture only for grass that is nearby is not really a good option. In this case we will have to find some better technique. Perhaps instancing or something similar could be done.
To make the scenery really alive we probably also want to use various things like nice water (ponds), falling leaves, bugs that walk around, dust that appears at the feet of a moving actor, footprints, and stuff like that. Most of that can already be done with existing Crystal Space technology.
Given the philosophy of letting the artists make the game we need a good foundation on which the artists can actually do that. To that end we decided to use a mix of C++, python scripts, and CEL quests to handle the game logic. C++ would be used for parts of the game logic that require a lot of cpu intensive code. For example, AI could be one of those things. If C++ modules are generic enough they can of course also be put in the CEL or Crystal Space projects but if they are very game specific we’ll keep these C++ modules as part of Apricot. The python scripts would be used for most game logic and the CEL quests would be used by artists so that they can control and edit a lot of the game logic parts from within Blender
itself. To that end blender2crystal has very recently been extended with a very nice quest editor.
We also need sound effects and music of course. For the creation of the sounds we are going to depend on external contributors. We already got a
few offers here. The actual coding of the sound system will be done by the team itself and most likely it will involve some kind of property class in CEL to control when and how to play sound effects. One example of this could be the sound of footsteps. If the animation system sends out a callback every time the feet hit the ground then this callback can also be used by this new property class.
Most of the discussion above focused on improvements in Crystal Space and Crystal Entity Layer. But to improve the game creation pipeline we also will have to do a lot of improvements to Blender and blender2crystal. Here is a short list of improvements we already came up with during the workshop:
- Extend the Blender Python API to make it easier for external tool writers (like blender2crystal) to access certain parts of Blender.
- Especially around user interface the Blender API could be extended considerably. Currently there are lots of small problems in the blender2crystal user interface.
- We need an easier way to interface Blender with an external game engine so that it would become easier and faster to program an engine specific preview. Not only for Crystal Space, but also for other game engines.
- Billboard cloud generation would have to be improved.
- We have to examine all the things we can do to help improve the animation tools available in Blender so that they are better suited for game animation. This also includes the ability to define, preview, and export full animation sequences for cut-scenes (for example).
- With such a preview it would of course also be nice to be able to have that animation preview work in a semi-realistic environment so that the artist can really test his animation cycles (for example walking cycles) against a real environment (like walking on a sloped terrain for example).
So it was a very productive weekend and I’m really very excited about this new game project. It really will be a very ambitious project and I think the Open Source game development community will benefit a lot from it.
Great to see some progress on the project! Personally I hope that you’ll at least avoid shooter type game as there is a whole lavine of such games. A puzzle game sounds really fun and challenging and there is not many such game around really.
I wish you good luck! Looking forward to the GE enhancements 🙂
Very interesting! I’d vote for the racing game. You could probably make it a 3rd person semi-bird’s-eye view type of racing game and allow the players to mess with each other. For example, you could place nuts all over the race course and allows players to pick them up and throw at other players. You could also have banana peels that would make players slip out of control. You could also have NPCs such as birds and stuff to randomly mess with the players, etc.
Anyway, it’s great to see the progress, please keep up the good work!
The party games/mini-games would be PERFECT! The community could provide the game concepts, so it would truly be a display of a lot of innovative new concepts like we are only used to from Nintendo. I think you can trust the community to come up with exciting new ideas.
And using an internet connection, or just a local network, I think it would very much be suitable for the PC. Average games can’t really rely on that, but since everyone can just download and install this game, a local network game is an extremely viable option!
Please do realize that 😀
Nice to see progress int his project. I’m really curious what features it’ll spawn in blender/CS.
Please no shooter (although it ‘could’ be fun as well if made right), everything else on that Pro/Con will work out much better for this type/style of game IMO.
Werner
I’d vote for platformer. But I’m definitely against a shooter and party game.
It’d be interesting to see what the Blender/CS engine will be capable of. 😀
I wish y’all the best of luck!
I would like to see it as a platformer i think. With some new innovative features.
Glad to see people are against shooters, and I too vote in that direction 😉 We have quite enough of them already
GO GO GO GO!
im glad to see an update. im looking forward to the outcome
Only game I don’t want to see is a puzzle/trap style game.
Really, from the picture it reminds me of the cartoon “Pinky & The Brain”. Maybe it could be some type of puzzle, adventure, shooter highbred, that did not get too in depth with any one aspect of those types. Maybe it could be the leads attempt to TAKE OVER THE WOODS 🙂 In combining the three types the levels may not have to be that big, but just well thought out. Connect the different parts of the games. Maybe a puzzle part of the games that requires to build a nut launcher, that would require you in the adventure/platformer part to collect nut, then in turn use the launcher/nuts in a shooter part. Just ideas, good games start with good ideas, and follow with good execution.
Josh
Great!
You inspired me an idea:
how about a racing game with nut shooting: like Mario Kart but with little puzzle and different environment in forest— hope it can instead of SuperTuxKart on graphics…
Furthermore, hope there are little games for kids, thanks!
I think that a combination of a platform and puzzle games would be best. For example a puzzle game at the end of every level of the (surrounding) platform game.
I’d definitely vote for a shooter game, in such a forest landscape. Nothing is more community oriented like a FPS and it will help build a bigger and bigger game the more people contribute. There are not many shooter games in the free software world. Either they are severly limited, like cube or they build on some former proprietary software. A FPS game opens up for some serious character animation, which is lacking both in the free software world and in the proprietary world. A first person virtual reality world is also infinitely extensible and can incorporate any other game.
A platform game! a platform game, pleeeaase 😀
given thought especially to Esbens post orientated to community viability, i think that some 1st/3rd person perspective derivative game would be better for the project..
and like others i also have though up some random idea i wish to share naively in the hope it will be listened to.
check it..
3rd person adventure/puzzle. you only really need a small environment, but lots of laughable story. perform action to push the story along, collect items, solve puzzles.
it wouldnt require much modeling assets, probably a ton of animation assets and audio assets. and have a good sense of humor(which i believe you have already).
its hardly original at all.. but it does offer a way to create a good pipeline and have a small enjoyable game.
it could push any style of gameplay u feel like through the tasks one must perform to push storyline.
depending on camera angle could also have a short platform style section.
so in summary, i vote for 3rd person adventure/puzzle as i see it as the most flexible
I’d personally like to see a third person platform game. There’s nothing like that in the open source community and I think it’d be really unique.
Please avoid the FPS idea though because there are already so many OSS FPS games.
Have you thought about making a strategy game? I really miss good quality open source RTS games =/
Looks like you’ve thought of a vast number of things to look into. Given limited time and resources, I’d recommend sticking to a game that doesn’t require ground-breaking thought on how it works.
A platformer, for example, can be extended to be very complicated, but can also be playable at a very basic level. Even a racing game relies heavily on implementation of controls and physics to make it fun (thinking of Club Silo here), although it might not be all that hard to recreate SMK with cute graphics, which would be fantastic!
Loads of luck. Should be a lot of fun.
Thanks for posting the updates!
I too vote against a shooter. As far as other game categories, I’m honestly not sure what the best options would be. I’m of course interested in seeing the game be multiplayer (preferably networked), but I understand that such things can be hard to write in such a short amount of time.
If it’s going to be a platformer, then it needs to have more jump modes than just a standard jump / double-jump. Wall jumps, edge hangs, power-up jumps, etc, are all things that I would be interested in seeing.
I think a good open-source racing game would also be a lot of fun, especially if it is made networked-multiplayer. If not, then I don’t think it’s a very good option.
I of course love minigame collections, but I understand the work involved in coming up with a wide variety of well-designed minigames. Still, I love the multiplayer aspects that are capable with this.
I haven’t fully wrapped my mind around the puzzle/trap idea, though it sounds promising and ripe for innovation — the trouble with this is that it’s so risky to make the game balanced and fun for a variety of skill levels. As such, this idea runs the risk of losing general appeal.
At the heart of this all, I think my main question for the developers is this: Who is the intended audience of the game?
Answering that could help us figure out what kind of game to make.
For the widest appeal, I’m intrigued by the idea of a platformer with small minigames built into it — whether it’s collecting nuts on a timed basis, finding all of the special hidden nuts in a level, or a small running racetrack against AI opponents, I see a Mario 64 clone as being a good option for a wide array of audiences.
Thanks for the update!
–clint
I like the idea of Clint, a mario-64-like game would probably fit perfectly the mood and style
Clint
> Who is the intended audience of the game?
Everybody. It’s specific project. We don’t aiming specific group because we don’t need to sell many copies. It’s space for innovations and experiments. Of course everybody expect high playability and we will do our best, but always someone will be disappointed and someone else will be excited.
Please create a 3D platform game! Some inspirations could be games like Crash Bandicoot, Rayman or Spyro the Dragon. They are all comic like, funny and challenging. As far as I know there no open spource games in this genre.
awesome post!
one question:
system specs? like for example you guys gona go down for a pixel shader game, or for a simple textured one? or a merge between the two? (i know cs is capable of both)
A little hint about the type of game: there is another options that may fit better: adventure (action/puzzle) like Monkey Island, Sam & Max (or even better: the Zack & Wiki for Wii)
PROS:
* Somewhat unused game style (specially for FOSS)
* Easy on hardware requirements (even if its visually pretty)
* Relatively low technology on game logic side
* Basic AI
CONS:
* Level design can be tricky
* Not casual (no replay factor)
* Big number of models (but many may be static/non-interactive)
In the technical point of view, its one of the best options on programming and art difficult and good game
I vote for platformer with some puzzles built into it such as collecting all the nuts to open a new area in the level where you find a powerup which allows you to do something entirely new in the first area…
It is levels like these that made Tak2:Staff Of Dreams(I didn’t play Tak1) a remarkable game for me…
Somehow the concept art so far makes me think of CRASH BANDICOOT.
Vote+1 for a 3D platformer for me. It would be easier I guess to have platformer-on-a-path (a la Bandicoot) rather than a free-world-platformer (a la Jax)
As for me the platform game is the best choice,but to be honest FPS would be perfect to compete with Valve’s TF2.
And were is those apricots(health packs)?
Definately a platform game. The movie I’m guessing has no shooting or driving anywhere so how is a driving / shooting game keeping in the spirit of the film? There are a million shooters out there (OpenArena,Nexuiz,Quake,Doom,Saurbraten,Warsow,Alien Arena etc) while there is NOT ONE single flossw platformer.
A puzzle game would be easy to pull off, but remember the real strength here: As well as a handful of dedicated artists/coders, you’ve got a whole readymade comunity of 3d artists trained and ready to contribute. Focus the team on the parts that are more difficult for the community (integration, story, cut scenes) and just make it easy for everyone else to contribute (a good level designer, an open online request list for models etc). With a good game to contribute our graphics and level ideas to, and a bit good bit of community promotion, we could turn out an amazing game. We can also mitigate the need for larger levels with good level design (ie more inside levels, fewer tasks per level, etc)
Daang, this is going to be great! 😀
I like the Mario cart race game idea because there are plenty of good FPS, Strategy games, minigames and simple puzzle games all over the open source community already but very few racing simulators (or flightsims but that would be far too much work)
I’m already dreaming about the courses i could make in blender:)
Oh and from the early peach stuff i saw it looked like it contained a chase scene so it could fit in perfectly with the film. haha and if i remember correctly it involved running up a tree so maybe the game could have some wacky3D courses.
gaalgergely > system specs?
Hard to say at this moment. But probably we will make a couple of detail levels for different cards. Entry point should be around GF 5200 or Intel GMA 950.
I vote for a story driven platform adventure. You don’t need large maps perse by utilizing more puzzles. Another option is to built very small parts of the map in Blender and go with a top-down 2D tile-style map-editor.
This will allow you to make huge easily and still have a 3d platformer with high quality environment. The repetiveness (by for example only having 4 types of trees, 3 types of rock, 5 types of grounds, etc.) does not decrease quality. Rather it fits nice with a platformer.
A simple 2d tile-based level editor also makes it easier for users to submit extra levels. You can even hold a contest this way to get some of the actual maps.
This tile-editor would also be the place where you define the logic. You could allow in the tile-editor to ‘tag’ a buch of tiles. Tags as ‘auto-jump’, ‘start-cut-scene-1’, etc.
If it feels too limited you could also go with a 3d tile based editor. The ‘grid’ effect of tiles should make it much faster to ‘lego’ a map together.
Finally, to take away the feeling a the raster/grid effect of tiles you could turn a map into a small planet. This would give a nice, though extreme, horizon of a small planet.
Just my braindump, i hope it helps.
In short, the biggest shortcoming of the crystal space engine is the lack of easy tools to build a level using reusable components.
The type of game most missed on the opensource front are 3d platformers. We have none I as I understand it.
I can imagine such a game, with an easy level-editor, to create a huge ecosystem of all kinds of open 3d platformers.
This has already happened with 3d MP shooters and 2d platformers because the artists already have that toolchain read. For example (supertux, warsow, nexuiz, urban-terror), etc.
Please take that into consideration. The sort of toolchain most needed is for the 3d platformer genre.
I truly think investing time to make it easy for designers to create beautifull animations that easily interact with the environment, and to create huge maps using a palet of building-blocks, will be the most welcome addition..
I agree with most others here about making it a platform adventure game.
I can’t wait to see how this will work out. Keep us posted!
About the game type, I think that one of the main goal of the Apricot project is to demonstrate to everybody that Blender and CS are good solutions for making games. Therefore, Apricot doesn’t really need to be innovative and/or extremely fun, but on the contrary, should show that common game types are perfectly feasible. As such, the really common FPS game type is an interesting choices (although Crystal Core is already a good demonstrator). Moreover, if you want to make a really great and fun game, you will have to take a lot of time on thinking about your gameplay and therefore you will loose this working time for other aspects of the project.
About the animation system, I’m a bit surprised that you plan to start a complete new system from scratch, because it seems to me a quite complex task, and again, by doing so you may loose many working time for other important aspects of the project.
And at last: network games are really wanted today, and it is therefore an interesting feature to be added to Apricot. I am the guy who wrote the network plugin in CEL 2 years ago and I’m really sorry that I never found the time and motivation to finish that work, especially since most of the work has already be made. But I think that no many time is needed to make it work if the network needs of your game are not so big (no many players, no big optimization needed, no strong latency dependencies, not so many property classes to be distributed,…). And if you decide to use my network plugin, I’m absolutely available to help you in that task, and it may, at last, give me the motivation to finish my work 🙂
thanks for the reply darek!
best wishes for the whole team. 🙂
I’d personally like to see a Mario Kart esque racing game, that’d be fun.
The reason I’d vote against Mario-kart style is because there’s already SupertuxKart that is currently being worked on by new maintainers.
yet another +1 to Crash Bandicoot style of a game!
Dudes forget the “film spirit” pointed out by Bunny Madness! They are going to haunt your game lool…:)
Everyone knows: there is no good games made from movies.
Focus on documantation and clear logic, The oldschool “BlenderGameKit” for example, i love this book it is one of my favorites, but its logic bricks… What a mess! Impossible to expand! Because its logic bricks setup looks like a spiderweb. Don’t forget the past.
I hate to post links but pleeeease! Open your minds…! “avoid physics for gameplay”? Nowadays physics is everything! Let thousands of “fur and leaves” to the movie. PLEEEEASE check this out:
http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/
http://www.grumpygamer.com
Sorry to do this it.
I agree with 3D adventure game, and a mario-kart could be a mode of a 3D platform adventure. Leave the kart-style after, I supposed.
And what about to create the combination of all of them.I don’t mean racing game with story, gun in the left hand,during solving quests and all packed in party style.
Take Half-Life 2 (it is a little different type of game, I know) -It is mainly shooter game but with combination of all game types.
– you drive a car (and shoot).
– use your head in some situations (and shoot).
– play with gravity gun 😀 muhahaha (and shoot)
– and many others…
All is connected by strong storyline but it make sence (to me definately) and it’s fun……
To sis@: remember that we only have six months with six people. We like to aim for a realistic goal.
Kickvb:
Great post! 🙂 I think you summed up the networked multiplayer pros/cons pretty well. I think it would be great for this Internet-founded community game could be played by together by the geographically distant Apricot supporters.
I agree about not needing to make this game incredibly experimental, but rather needing to hit wider appeal. If we want to show off the Blender artwork, I think that a nice blended animation system might be one of the best ways to do that. First-person shooters often don’t work very well for seeing a lot of character animation — a more relaxed-paced platformer might be better for showing off the artwork.
It seems that the goal of Apricot is not so much to bring innovation to the game-development industry, but rather to say to the rest of the commercial development tools, “Me too!”
In summary, I think my (current) position is:
If the game is intended to reach as wide an audience as possible (kids to adults), then unless someone has a really solid mechanic up their sleeve, I’m against the idea of a primarily puzzle-based game, as it can be tricky to balance it properly for a wide appeal.
If the team thinks it worthwhile and feasible to make the game network-multiplayer capable, then I would support a Mario-Kart style racing game. However, this is still a toss-up in my mind with the next option…
If the team thinks that networked multiplayer is too much of a stretch right now, then I vote for a 3d platformer with minigame-ish elements (Mario64). This can have optional high-skill-level sections for advanced players, and a low-skill-level for basic game completion for beginners. As time is permitting in the project, these “minigame sections” could be added and culled while still maintaining a complete base game.
I recognize that there are many technical and creative difficulties with any of these options, and I’ll still fully support Apricot whichever way it goes.
Thanks to the Apricot team for letting us participate in the discussion!
–clint
Very nice indeed!
I hope that the final game will be a quality game(i.e. an addictive game that you will always want to play)
just one remark : online or multiplayer. I know this a very different affair on programming and game engine. But i just wanted to mention it gives a game much more fun and no need for AI so complicated.
Just my 2.45 cents
o
o
A platformer would be good! Actually, there is one (supposedly) open source platformer already, in the form of srb2 (sonic robo blast 2), it has great gameplay but it’s very under developed and the graphics suck, which is obviously quite an important point in this OSS game! I think that an up-to-date OSS platformer would be really good as a starting point for developers wanting to create other games in this vein! (especially cross-platform ones)
Big levels and lots of gameplay good, especially levels with lots of hidden things and alternative routes, as well as some simple puzzles! Puzzles involving observation go well with platformers so they would be great to see! (e.g. find the hidden switch to unlock the door to the next part of the level! Or collect all the nuts to get a powerup that allows you to break down the wall blocking the ‘enemy’ bots in so you can destroy them all, which then lifts a cage so you can push the switch that is hidden in the first place!)
Another style of game could be platformer/shoot the other (multi)players. This requires virtually no extra level design, and is all handled by the game logic! Or maybe a combination of them all!…
~epat. 🙂
what if a combination of all game type ?? heheheh ^_^ after all this is a showoff of what blender and crystal space can do. sorry if i’m asking too much, but one game type with one level is fine with me. i can learn a lot from lots from them.
I think best choises are: a) Platform Rayman-alike (free 3D) or b) Platform Crash Bandicoot-alike (path 3D). If possible, I’d suggest mixing them. That’d be astonishing. Also, starting game as “cartonish-2D”, next level on option b) and lastly option a), so you can feel as if game itself were “growing” with you (character could also “gain” powers… free imagination 😉 ). I know this could take a lot of time and coding, but… I’ve some spare time to imagine/think ’bout something “unusual” 😉
Can you remember Fury of the Furies??
http://www.serial-gamer.com/Fury_of_the_Furies/
It would be great if you could create such a adventure game like this… in 3D of course 😉
And if you created a Map Builder like Blizzard always offers for their games, then it would be really living and self extending project!
And please don’t forget about on-line experience for gamers 😀
To Chainz: as has already been told before, online or networked game is really a bit too much given the limited timeframe. We want to concentrate on what Blender and Crystal Space can do in the area of flashy graphics and nice animations (while of course trying keeping a fun and enjoyable game). Adding any kind of multi-player capability is simply stretching our resources too much. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be done later. The game is OSS anyway. Anyone is free to make extensions.
Hi, guys.
Should you decide for the racing concept, I’d suggest to take a look at an old masterpiece called “Wacky wheels”. It was too a cartoon-like racer and one with hellish playability, most likely thanks to the ‘split-screen mode’.
Good luck with your project anyway.
Another two cents.
I perceive two main focuses to this project: to extend the backend, and to showcase the frontend. Making it easier to create future games, and drawing attention with quality entertainment.
Because the Peach project seems to be more focused on the quality entertainment part, I hope that apricot will lean more towards developing tools.
Reading through the post I became exited by the talk of easier extendability, and making game creation more accessible to the artist. I’ve had many game ideas rolling around my head for some time, but have been somewhat daunted by the idea of building from scratch, and disappointed by the small scope of tools like Klik and Play, or Blizzard’s map creators. I hope that something will come of this that walks somewhere in between. A set of tools I can play with for a couple weeks and be able to make a basic platformer with models and animations I already have. But also a high ceiling for innovating other game types from that.
The platformer style game can create a -cough- platform to build other games from. I can picture simply changing the camera placement and controls to create a FPS or Racer within the same environment as the platform, if the physics engine can still make them work.
And an AI to build off of would be totally hot.
I vote for the platformer/puzzle combo game type thing. I think it would be the most fun type of game you coud choose. also if you could add a few mini games to it somehow, that would be nice. Good Luck!
is there a way to make a texture that changes based on the angle? this could be used to make 3D looking grass with low processing power.
Man, a Mario Kart type of game would be great, those games are always so much fun, instead of coloured boxes you could use the nuts to get the stuff you throw and you could also add some secret characters for when you’re done with all the circuits, etc.
Keep on the good work guys.
i think people will work more with the material of this project than with orange or peach so the game type should encourage modifications. things like doing additional levels should be fun which probably is more the case with something like a platformer or a racing game and not so much with a puzzle game or with a mini game collection. what do you think?
Great work on the planing I’am in the making of my own game using the blender game engine and a external (due to its limitnations lol open gl…). I love how simple yet complex the current game engine is, but i would love to to see the game in both direct x and open gl. Good luck with the game guys!!! Blender 4 life!!!
I like the idea of a platform game.
their could be ‘bonus’ areas, like shoot the nut into hoop, quick race & solve the puzzle. Also this could be extended as some genre work would have foundations laid down. So the mini games could be extended & maybe evolve into games in their own right, if the framework is already there.
Thinking like mario bros bonus levels, with ff7 style bonus games, simple yet fun. It would also show off many different capabilities of the BGE & CS.
whatever you decide I’m sure it will be great. Best Regards. Brendon.
A platform would be nice!!!!
One suggestion that I should point out is that it may be a good idea if the engine is not genre specific. One of the many flaws of some game engines is that they sometimes tend to focus at a particular game genre. If you make the engine more flexible, it would leave room for making games of other genres as well. I would vote for a 3D level editor. It would offer more flexability to what you can do with it and you could edit entities and other elements a lot easier than it would be in a 2D game engine. I have compiled a list of pros/cons:
PROS:
– Would make it possible to make a game of a different genre (RPG. FPS, RTS, etc.).
– It would benefit those who don’t want to make a game of your chosen genre.
– Offers better flexibility
– Wouldn’t worry about modifying the engine if the design changes on you.
CONS:
– Would take a bit longer to make than just making it specific to the chosen genre.
To spaceseel: a 3d level editor? It is a bit weird to do a 3d level editor project with Blender as a partner as the idea is to use Blender for level editing. Also we’re not developing a game engine. The game engine is already there (Crystal Space) and is already generic and flexible enough. We will have to make improvements to it of course.
Having modded for a couple decades now and believe its end is near heh I can urge you to consider what is both not out there and of great interest to modders so please consider 1. keeping it third person and 2. giving it a melee based interaction with objects & mobs and 3. magic (beautiful particles lol)
To jorrit: I thought that was a decision being made (guess I was wrong) to do that. And I guess I wasn’t clear enough to say now that I already know about the engine. What I should have said is the tools and all the components that would be developed with the engine to make the game. Dang…this is the second time that I’ve said something that I haven’t thought through before sending and ended up having to explain myself better. I’m sorry, this is the first open source group that I’ve really talked to (ever really). I was just making sure that the tools used to create the game itself should not be made to a spacific genre, so I could benefit from it with my own game project when the game gets released.
To spaceseel: No problem! And yes, we also think it is very important to make everything as generic as possible. We don’t want to make tools that only work for one type of game.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again – Platformer! You don’t have to do mini-games, you can just create different game ‘modes’ like: ‘time-trial’, ‘collect all the nuts’, ‘beat hard-mode’, ‘find the hidden objects’, etc… That’s what makes platformers so fun! They’re flexible enough to make an entirely new game out of the same basic level with maybe some object placements moved around or the objects themselves changed slightly! Obviously, the things I’ve mentioned have been done before, but maybe the fun is in coming up with something that nobodies ever played before!
With the game OSS, people can tweak it and add their own modes, which makes it good for modding, and also enables maybe some bright spark to actually create something that is entirely orignal like I just said, and the best bit is that they needn’t worry about making a whole load of levels from scratch to test out their prototypes or even at all. Some fiddling with objects slightly and a bit of tweaking could render the levels very playable and new twists on old levels are always fun to play!
~epat. 🙂
Please make it a 3D-plattformer. since there would be no other serious open source game in this genre. A Mario Kart like game would be in competition with supertuxkart, wich is already cuddly and heavily developed by a good (even though to small) team (we still look for artists!!). We are just working on implementing bullet physics, what will make the game feel much more natural in the future. We really hope, that with the next release (probably in february) some more artists and programmers will find their way to us, but if we would have to compete with the blender team…. sigh.
A simple puzzler could get boring quickly and there are quite some puzzlers out.
I would really like to see a semi-3d-platformer in a sonic-like environment.
colorfull, fast pased, but not to hard. with a sideviewing semi-3d look you could possibly save some time on leveldesign and it would be easy to set up a leveleditor for further community work. The time you save could be filled with integrated multiplayer-features, good physics and an easy scripting framework to implement puzzles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Taiurn541SE
maybe some ideas from little big planet could be used but i am not sure if the bullet physics engine would be up to this task yet. 🙂
I guess, such a physics-orientated gameplay would raise up the system-requirements enormously. But I must admit, that would be great. A fusion of a sonic-like game with elements of little big planet… great 😉
are you the main programmer of supertuxkart? i just had a look into it. it’s nice!
it shouldn’t be that hard to find artists if you post on the blenderartists forum. i would like to do some tracks too but in february i will have absolutely no time. maybe if you still need someone later. 🙂
No, I’m only one ot the two webadmins and try to help where I can.
Anyone can commit patches or artwork over the mailinglist and if you contibuted some things, you can surely get part of the team when ever you want.
I’d really like to see a game that is based on a story first. I’d like it to be a platform game, where the story advances through interactions with other characters and challenges (quests and mini games). I’d like a vast, open world, with lot’s of places to explore, and bonuses to discover.
it would be nice if the game is built as a “world”, with the ability to add “story-lines” to it. a story-line consists of characters, quests, and mini-games. in this way, the artists will only have to create the world and one story-line, but the game could be extended through new story-lines (or new worlds).
I think I got mixed up about what “platform” means, so scrap it and replace it with something like GTA or Lego Island.
1. Mario 64 puzzle,view,slightly cartoon feel
mini objectives + shooting + vehicles + powerups.
expandable forest, players can download service packs to expand map + new puzzle/objectives.<–(supports claim that game is open source)
2.(a)online version of counter-strike based nut gathering?(for squirrels)
(b)online RPG where you can level up your apricot character?
(GO TEAM APRICOT!!!!!)
(BLENDER IS THE BEST)
(WHATEVER YOU DO, IT WILL BE AMAZING)
Yo creo que lo importante independientemente del tipo de juego que sea el que elijan; plataformas, de carreras o puzzles, lo mas importante de esto es demostrar que con estas herramientas es posible desarrolas juegos de CALIDAD comparables a los juegos comerciales, y dejar la posibilidad abierta para que la comunidad en general pueda hacer contibuciones en el futuro, modificaciones (MOD).
I’m leaning towards the platformer-style game.
However – It’d be neat to make an RTS-style game.
Each of the 3 animals are different races. You could compete for territory or for nuts.
The battlefield could be one of those beautiful trees.
Either way, GO APRICOT!
does anyone remember lost wikings or animaniacs? Since there are 3 very different “heroes”, they could walk together through a 3d or semi3d platform-puzzler, each with different skills. The player could simply switch between them and solve puzzles this way. Multiplayer should be no problem then, either. short singleplayer-interception-levels could be orientated on the skills of a special char and work as minigames like a fast pased jump n run (with the fat chinchilla rolling down ramps), little fps elements with nutthrowing of the dumb ?squirrel? ^^ or brainteasing elements with the evil looking squirrel.
trap/puzzle game It is much more interesting than a shooter(also there are a lot of them)
better tan a racer there are some… but still I don’t like that idea so go for trap/puzzle
==> I like conso’s idea too.
Francisco
I saw the genre but i saw not Rpg and Fighting genres.
but the idea is good
I like the Mario Kart game because it is more challenging as you get to the next level.”;-