Team Project Update

Sorry about the delay on this, by the way. The original meeting never took place, scheduling issues I suppose on part of the other programmer. I sort of anticipated that, but it's a busy time of the year, so no hard feelings. In the mean time I've been thinking about various game design ideas and some of the basic utility classes that any game may need, and how I may implement them.

I had planned on coding the game in C++ because, well, it rocks, I love it, and C++ sits atop the Kingdom of Game Programming throne and shuns non-believers with it's 7ft scepter. The other programmer seemed fine with this, but now he's suggesting we use Java with some 2D graphics lib he's found online. Meh. I checked it out, seems alright I guess, but it is Java and that's usually a deal breaker for me. It does however offer us the ability of fast iteration of ideas and whatnot, so I'm willing to do it. I'm really not too stubborn on this stuff, but if I can use either C++ or Java, I'm almost always choosing C++, but I don't want to even get into that...

He didn't seem to have any details on how "involved" the girl from the Music department wanted to be, so we'll see how that unravels. Along that note (get it, note?) though I have thought more about my idea of a music-driven gameplay element.

The basic abstract concept is to have a simple 2D world which is very stage oriented such that you only see the current area until you complete all tasks or whatever it may be. The visuals would be very vivid. The vision I have for one stage is that of a very drab and dramatic village which is actually more like a small neighborhood. The view is behind the little character and it's viewing 3 or 4 huts. The huts would be very dark colored with really intense colors and the sky would share that sentiment. Just picture a sky before a really terrible storm. The music would coincide with this of course. The gameplay concept I've got in mind is that the music in each stage (coupled with the look of the scene) would lead the player to perform their tasks. Changes in tone, speed, etc... should be evident enough as the player moves or does something that ideally it would be apparent what they need to do. I've tossed around the idea of the character needing to save the inhabitants of these small villages, whether they be creatures or plants, or something. It would incorporate some sort of time incentive which would be pushed by the music, so as you were running out of time the music would get more dramatic sort of like in a movie. An image that comes to mind is as the clouds roll in for a storm more and more of an area is covered in shadow. I think something like that could work well with my idea.

Game design is a process, so I'll just have to keep working it out, but I welcome any comments. Oh, and sorry if I just described someones favorite game that they've played for 30 years, I don't exactly "get out much". Oh, and, don't steal my idea =p