Hey Everyone,

I was thinking sharing ideas and maybe helping people find inspiration would be a nice and as the judges can see this I feel we won't have to worry about people taking ideas from here as it will be clear if they copied it entirely.

My opening thoughts where that the person who made the base project clearly had an idea of a game in his head but the whole thing seems to be a confusing collection of scripts and give no direct indication of a idea behind it.

My current idea is to utilise the magnetic theme of pushing and pulling objects to form a 2 player sports game, similar to a top down 1v1 rocket league except you control the magnetic force of your car being able to drag the ball without then swapping to repel to fire it into the goal. Although I hope to add a lot more to it, a multiplayer network version along with a single player v AI would be fun to add in. This idea requires massive changes to the base project so hearing everyone's thoughts would be great!

It would be nice to hear what everyone is thinking! Although we are competing, networking during Game Jam events can be the most important part!

Thanks.

Calum.

Hi Calum!

Nice idea. I agree best part of a Jam is seeing what everyone is up to!

What Uni you from dude? :) Would be cool to know where everyone is that's taking part!

Nice idea! My initial thoughts are a space title. The floaty controls of the player would lend themselves to that. Throw in some parallax, particle effects and it will look pretty! I'll reveal more on mechanics later down the line. ;) I've also been thinking about going down the multiplayer route, and some procedural generation work. My idea requires me to tweak the flocking code to more gravity/orbital mechanics, so hopefully that's OK! It'll largely be the same. I have a plan for the repelling mechanic so that will stay untouched!

Good look with your project! Maybe we could throw up some screenshots when we've made some progress?

Cheers,

Dale

University of Huddersfield, BSc(Hons) Computer Games Programming

Hey Dale,

I am from De Montfort University in Leicester doing BSc(Hons) Computer Games Programming.

I agree with both of your replies. I have been a network programmer several commercial games unitising unity's multiplayer services before so I was hoping to show off that experience while keeping the game simple due to the time frame, network code will take up half my time and I am trying to fit this round my course work which all due in March as well!

I would say the current mechanics are lacking in most areas, the current set up has objects to small / seems zoomed out for a playable game. The flocking mechanics are a little bit useless with the default speed of objects, in the pre-made scene repelling the red box pushes it so fast that near by blocks don't get a chance to move, but I assume this was to make sure we change as much as possible otherwise they would just get their code back!

I am playing with many ideas but none that fully utilise the original code, primarily I like the idea of reversing the magnetic code so that the player can control it. Mixing that with the fast pace arena style would make for a fun game, but completely remove the object grouping and require massive changes to the magnetic code. The other option is to a game similar to asteroids and using the attraction mechanics mixed with softbody physics to allows blocks to join together like jelly!

I think I may be here a while coming up with an idea haha. I'll post on here as soon as I get started.

Good luck!

Calum.

Hi guys,

Wow, this topic is really helpful and I hate it.

Magnetic spaceship collecting little magnetic doodads was my leading idea; collecting not goal scoring so completely different there.
What's worse is I also planned to add remote multiplayer, procedural levels and ai as technical parts to show off- I guess that won't cut it here.

My now leading idea involves changing (upgrading?) flocking into more ai driven boids how this will be a game I know not, yet. However it occurs that this is also pretty derivative I might even have to try the whole imagination thing, very annoying.

-Jim

Hey Jim!

I feel the same way haha, coming up with creative game ideas has never been my strong suite.

I feel that keeping within our bounds would be a wise decision, one impressive system that is perfect compared to many systems that are not entirely complete may be a better option. Local Multiplayer is what I plan to stick to for this but building alone side a single player mode while keeping the AI simple enough to fit into my time frame. Although I wish I had time for all of it!

But it seems I am up against some good minds! I will have to try and prove my worth haha!

Good luck!

Calum.

Hi guys,

I'm from the University of the West of England, Bristol doing Games Technology.

It must be that great minds think alike because my initial idea was also on the line of magnetic spaceship attracting and pushing objects around but I think we will end up with very different games in the end... Now i'm also playing with the flocking mechanic a bit and trying to find out how many boids i can have on the screen at once, just to get an idea.

Anyway, Good Luck everyone!

Gualtiero

Hey,

I'm a student at the University of Hull, Computer Science with Games Development.

I'm going for a move traditional type of action game, sorta inspired by Zelda.

And yeah, I don't have alot of time to be working on this between all my other stuff. Mostly been working on it late in the evenings.

Good Luck, and See you around,

Robert

Hey everyone,

I'm a final year Computer Science student at University of Bath, this will be my third time entering the competition!

It looks like everyone's got some really creative ideas, it's interesting to see what you all think of the skeleton project and how differently each person is developing it, I've done like Josh and made some heavy alterations to the project, but the core mechanics and infrastructure are still there. I think there's no harm in taking a few liberties with the skeleton project if you feel that's going to help to demonstrate your game development capabilities better.

What I've got so far is basically a grid of rooms, the player can shoot stuff, and there are giant snake-worm-things that split in half when you shoot at them, it might turn into something procedurally generated but essentially I haven't quite turned it into an actual game yet, it might turn into something board game related. If anyone's interested, I'm putting GIFs of my progress up on my Twitter @Jindont every so often.

As for general ideas, I'm always a fan of collectibles, I think that giving players something to collect helps a great deal with the longevity of your game. My previous entries were both infinite runners, but you would earn coins from getting far in them, and that would allow you to unlock more levels with cooler obstacles (multiple environments and obstacles is also something I would suggest, if that's a direction your game can go in).

Currently I'm in the same position as Calum, I have a major deadline a few days from now so I'm only spending a few hours each evening on my entry, hopefully I'll get to put more time in once that's over though!

Good luck everyone, I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!

Oli