Wuzzi - Game in Development

[foody]

@marco pedrana

But macro it is not matter of trying it is matter of getting things organized and done correctly at first shot. My project is designed a test to see if we are well organized, handle situations, handle pressure when such arises, be able to communicate with each other at a specific time set, plan things correctly and accordingly and follow the schedule correctly. If we fail to do any of these at the most simplistic project as mine and let us be honest, my game is nothing more than a high school or first year project university for Computer Science. I am not creating something that not been done before, in fact my game is so simple that other clone games like mine have better AI, interface and so on. The reason why my game comes in motion really is to see if I can and now if we can do what we say and not say and drop it when the real reality kicks in.

We have to do this right, we have to know what programming language we are going to be using, who is going to do what, where do we meet, we have to set schedule, and so on. If we do this right on a simple project like this and we follow it thoroughly it will not take more than a week to complete, but what we would have done is created the basic and correct backbone structure for something bigger. If we do this right, when it comes to YOUR project, all we do is we follow the same routine we did with this project and before you know it is half way done and you will not face problems and easy to follow and complete. Order is the key here.

So let us start from the begining
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Simple really, we take the letter O to represent the frame and char \ represents the internal of the
sprite
OOOOOOOOOOO
O\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\O
O\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\O
O\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\O
O\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\O
OOOOOOOOOOO
Now \ will have the elegant wood look of it. Same applies for the players but instead of the elegant color of a wood, it would be an elegant wood but one is colored blue the other is colored red. I don't know exactly how the wood looks like nor the color of the board, so couple of samples for it would be nice to determine exactly how it is done.
We haven't decided yet even at the type of programming language, we should decide on that first and
become official and comfortable with it before we do any further step. With honesy I am comfortable
with any language you can throw me except assembly language. I have some suggestions I can throw your way:
1) PureBasic @ http://www.purebasic.com <- Highly recommended, suited for games much more than any and very easy to use
2) C++/C @ Also recommended but suggest 1 as a choice due to the fact while it is the most powerful language in the world it is also long and difficult to use if one is not comfortable with coding
3) BlitzBasic I would only advice it if all are more perferring blitzbasic, old language though and while suited for games it have some limitations
4) Others

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Don't forget the reason why we came here because of the first project we applied for, so to see if we can handle work till the end my project is designed as a test. So I suggest we finish my project fast and good to see if we really can handle working until the job is done. Ones my project is finished which should take no longer than 2 weeks really if we put good work and time on it, we return back to the main post and prooved ourselves we can finish a job and not some talk and start working on the main project. I am not the one here to take over someone else's project especiall when that person's project is way better than mine.

Game Objective:

I will tell what the game is about first so you get the general idea of what to expect. The game is composed of a board with two players (no AI is included), this makes game development even easier. The mission of the game is to defeat the other by getting the most winning point. The amounts of rounds are determined by the setting configured in the Option menu in the title screen.

What have been done?

Title is not complete, needs revising and needs to change the way it looks, but the code behind it is complete and can be easily changed to meet the new setting.

What needs to be done?

Game engine needs to be done, we need to revise the credit (least important thing), and we need to add the Option menu. The title has to be revised to look like a Commodore Amiga game and not something made out of PowerPoint presentation.

What we need to make it happen?

We need is a 32 X 32 single sprite that composes the board which would have dimensional size of 8 X 8 (64 pieces) and that looks like it is made out of an elegant wood. It has to look like 3D and by the 3D I mean not flat nor 3D like Doom 3 3D, but it has a frame look and not flat square. The player sprite is composed of blue elegant square; the second player is composed of red elegant square. The background has to look artistic and change the way it looks each time a new game is played or a new round is played, sometimes it looks wave, other time bubbles, and so forth. (Again this is the least of importance we need to get the core of the engine first, where it can be playable).

In terms of sound, the game doesn’t have sound so that is not very important now, in terms of music, we need title music, in game music and winning music. That is it. I am going to put down the tasks and if you can handle them type your name underneath it. But only right it down if you know you can handle it. (REMEMBER: GAME IS 100% AGA, IF POSSIBLE HAM8. Oh in terms of video type it is PAL/NTSC)

Programmer:
Fahed Al Daye

Title:

Sprite:

Music:
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This is all the information you need about my project from A-Z, you know what to expect, you know what it is, you know what I need and you know it is a most lowest possible difficult and expectations for it. Let us do this right so we DO YOURS right. I have said all I could say, I am just going to observe and see if there is a good project manager around, if I find that we will end up in a chaos and disorder like I said before, I cannot handle such situation, I will raise my hand and say sorry but this is not for me. Not for me in a sense in terms of order and organization.

[woody57]

If I read your decription right Foody the simple impresion below is simlar to your game view description



Now OBVIOUSLY it is NOT a standard square grid I have used & I left the player pieces in BLOCK colour instead of the wood tones.

Is the aim of the game to move the pieces across the board to a top line finish point like snakes & ladders overcoming obstacles or help along the way ?

Or does it follow the BACKGAMMON principle of starting from diagonaly oposite corners the winner being the first to land on his opponents START POINT ?

How are the number of squares moved to be determined for each players turn ?

Using a random number generated DICE with AUTO move or will the number moved be the MAXIMUM spaces a player can move for TACTICAL reasons in the game ?

Or is it using the above principle of random generated number of moves per player turn except the tile landed ON generates a DIFFERENT FATE/BONUS with each NEW turn so the board has no FIXED safe map ?

I watch & take your proposal of a simple game very seriously as our ANCESTORS of the Victorian era created some VERY complex GRID BASED GAMES that today would be simplified by AI being built into the play area to remove the NEED for additional CARDS {as in monopoly} to increase the RANDOMNESS potensial of the game.

If all the above HAS NO CONECTION to your idea, then I am lost too !

[foody]

I am sorry Macro, I did not know you were not a programmer if you are a graphics designer by all means go for it, I would like to see some of your samples I ment no offense there.

Woody57 it is simple, the game is composed of two players, each player have one round to move his/her piece. Now assume this is the board

--------------------
--------------------
--------------------

First player will be presented with the letter X, but in the game would be square blue (elegent looking square blue wood with a nice frame around it).

Now the player moves his/her turn:

--------------------
---X----------------
--------------------

The second player will be presented with letter O but in the game would be red square.

-----O--------------
---X----------------
--------------------
The point of the game is to form 5 lines
like this
OOOOO
or
O
O or
O O
O O
O O
or O
O O
O
O
O
O
and so on, ones the player forms the 5 lines in any angel that player wins and gets to the next round. Naturally you cannot put your piece on top of the other player's piece and you cannot put your piece outside the grid, so here we have to inform the computer about these, but ones again these are for technical things for programmers. I hope this is clear

[foody]

* Rub s hand together * Right, shall we execute this simple project and see if can do this correctly with order. Truly the point of this is to see how we manage projects and the best to do it is to do a simple one, like mine, if we did this in order and fashion and completed then the light for the bigger project, for macro's project will be a successful one. I am positive if we finish my simple then it just matter of time, that is it, before we finish the bigger one. We just take basic core concept of how we do the organization, scheduling, task and handling and preserverance and take it to bigger tasks that is it.

I know this sounds over execurated but if we don't do it this way and follow it for any project no matter how small or big it is, there will be chaos, disorder and lots of dropping out. To take my simple project we need to follow these steps:

1) Assign a suitable and approriate programming language for that task.
2) Write down the objective of the game, what needs to be done and so on. Like what I just did here.
4) Assign each person their tasks for that project, again like what I am doing here (waiting for people to assign themselves for my simple test project)
5) Write down all the necessary functions required for the game, in this case we need a private form were we can type them down. Such as:

Private Sub Score()
Private Sub PlayerTurn()
Private Sub CheckLegalMove()
....
and so forth.
6) Set tasks for people to do each week or depending on the level of difficulty
7) Set schedule for people depending on the difficulty of the task
8) Have a person who's main purpose to merge work from all people and glue them together. That person must try his/her best to be available when the time should arise.
9) Write down each task that have been done and what is left to be done.
10) THE CODE MUST BE PLUG AND PLAY RELIANT and easy to change, add and even reusable for other projects if it should arise. (HIGH LEVEL OBJECT ORIENTED LANGUAGE is essential here)

That is all I can think of at this point, but the main point is crossed. Organization and done things simple and approriately is really the key here. We need to do every single function every line of code as simple as possibe but easily called from other sources, and it just a matter of gluing them together to form something big. System Analysis is the biggest key here for Macro's project, for mine just following what I have typed above is more than enough, bu we take what we do here and merge it with System Analysis for macro's project, because his is the biggest of them all and require the most serious thoughts, organization and problem solving at paper before entered in the computer. Trust me, while it may seem long work and tedious even a chore, in the end it will save you ALOT OF aggrevation, and frustration and even dropping and quitting.

[Galahad/FLT]

Whilst this might limit the number of programmers because of experience, that doesn't equate that other people cannot contribute. For instance:

Coding an intro sequence
Coding the title/attract sequence
Coding an interesting hiscore table

Basic programmers can still contribute where speed is not essential. PC's hide the fact that C+ and Basic aren't as good as they should be, because of the bruteforce of the processors. You have to remember that we should assume that 14Mhz with 2meg of chip ram is the base specification and work around that. Any extras we can do for fast ram or faster processors, well thats further down the road.

We need to get the skeleton of the game working so that it encourages others to get involved. We really shouldn't have to worry about what programming language we are going to do it in, we need to make progress to maintain interest.

[foody]

Alright then I agree with you. If we are going to do my project using ASM count me out in my project in terms of programming where speed is a factor but I will input myself in this project in some other areas as well. For example, if you need questions about my game, what it suppose to do, follow the rules, etc. Anything you need to know about my game I will be it. I will be helping in the design of the game, how the title looks like, how the option looks like etc, get the approval of the sprites and background, etc. I will be doing coding for macro's project when this one is finished. Let us finish this one right.

Now while this all clearied and sweet. Let us start. The question is, how we are going to start this? Are we going to do this here or we wait until a private channel/form is provided for us? I already posted in the previous posts what my game is about, so we need to set tasks for people and give each other emails to communicate with each other privately. My question is, how are we going to approach this?

[Galahad/FLT]

Ok, well, basic functional graphics are needed to get the project rolling, so that a programmer has something to work with, instead of the programmer doing some graphics.

Ideally, graphic blocks should be 16x16 pixels in size, just faster for Amiga to write this size and also helps to make the game an economic size without being bloated.

A name, misc graphics, a logo. Lots of functional stuff can be done so if someone wants to code the intro/title attract sequence, they can crack on and do it.

[foody]

Alrighty then let us get the basical 16 X 16 sprite, we need one white to represent the board, one blue to represent the first player and one red to represent the second player. Ones we get the main engine rolling it will be replaced with the real sprite graphics. I suggest we do the engine first, but also have it easily revised when we give the user the option to set how many rounds. What do you think?

I agree also about someone cracking on the intro. I did do the coding for the intro in blitzbasic that can be converted into what ever language, only problem is I need someone to do the title correct.

The title is composed of the title, credit underneath the title and the three menu choices: Start, Option, and quit. It have to look like a Commodore Amiga game title. Who can do the drawings of these would be greatly appreciate it? It have to be complaint with PAL/NTSC though. Can we merge assembly and blitzbasic together? If we can I can do the fency looks of the title using blitz basic. Is only language I know how to do with? What do you think Galahad?

[foody]

The name of my game is called "Wuzzi"

[Galahad/FLT]

Ok, so now we need graphics around that name.

[foody]

Anyone volunteering ?

[Marcuz]

i'll work the logo / splash page, but i cannot do it before sunday

[Galahad/FLT]

Ok cool. If Foody could do a rough picture for us of what he thinks the splash/title/attract page should look like, then that gives us more ideas.

[foody]

I will start working on it today at 12:00 PM, this is my launch time and if I find I need more work done on it before posting it, when I go home at 5:30 PM my time (live in Canada/Montreal) I will further developing it and then post it.

[Galahad/FLT]

Grand

[foody]

There they are, sketch for Title and Option. You want sketch of anything else ? Description about what to expect is in the picture it self.

[Marcuz]

is there something specifical to do about the title for it to be animated or i can just provide an iff to be separately animated? also the background is an image, the cells background or a clean colour?

[foody]

Wavey title and rainbow are all coded you just provide the approriate sprites and the title engine will be coded in order to do all these eye candy effects. I was thinking of having the background to be black, but I don't know myself, maybe ones we get the all the sprites for the title and glue them together and to form the right title, we can then decide all of us and agree on an approriate background. Macro, if possible, just provide all the sprites, that forms the title, and then I will put them together leaving the original sprite of cour, in the simple paint program using Windows, then I will post it here and we ALL have to agree on it, if it is ok, then we all have to decide on an approriate background, if not then give me suggestions and I will move them again according to the suggestions until we get the approriate style. But remember it have to be designed to fit on an PAL/NTSC output and not on a VGA for example resolution 1026 X 768 and so on.

[Galahad/FLT]

Yes, first colour in the palette is your background colour so we can do effects.

As soon as I have a Wuzzi title pic, I will quickly knock up a title screen so that people can see whats happening. Marco, do whatever you want, I can use it

[Marcuz]

i've done a logo, if you like it; the original file is layered so i can easily change colours and stuff or i can do a more regular one to apply sprite effect better; also a couple of mock-up of a background for it if you don't want use a flat colour.
(res: 320*256)
[marco: edited away, game published, logo unused]