Ok... i've decided, since i am -slowly- working on this project now to post in here the message about it I had sent to Zetr0, to see if he was interested in being involved.
This is something Graham Humphrey and I were going to work on together. I know he's been a bit busy of late, but it would be great to have him still on-board. It's a project i'd like to collaborate on, in order that I can learn Blitz myslef (with some guidance) ... Ive never even managed to get a nice comfortable working setup of BB2, so that alone would be a nice start!
Title: Serious Aliens
Team: 2012 - As appearing on the game credits:
Game Design, Coding & Audio: Hungry Horace
Production Support : Skateblind
Programming Advisor: BooBoo
Game Graphics: Osiris37 [provisional]
Artwork: Kitty [provisional]
3D Modelling: Emuchicken [provisional]
Playtesting: Anemos
Online Host: FOL
Genre: Top-down Shoot-em-up
Graphical Style: Sensible Software (in-game) , Graphic Novels (cut-scenes etc)
Language: Blitz Basic 2 AMOS
About: It's effectively an Alien Breed / Chaos Engine clone, but in the style of the Sensible Software games. An homage to the film 'Aliens' but with my own nods to Dr. Who, star wars and Asimov thown in ... being the multiplayer obsessive i am, i had also dreamed of the game being 3-4 player... and even better than that, i'd love it to multiplayer over TCP/IP, but that is a dream way beyond my abilities!
Game-wise, my idea was to build a kind of 'generic' game engine from which one could build maps, and with simple customisations you'd have endless options. TBH, i'd like to know this is firmly in-place and being developed before even thinking about menus/overheads etc.
The game would use a similar mission objective system to Cannon Fodder (i.e, a number from certain possibles; destroy all opponents, or bases, or key points like power generators etc, or activate a number of triggers) ...
it might even be worthwhile building some kind of trigger/event system similar to the one i discovered in Bloodwych, as I'm sure this must be how CE largely works. (eg; event 1, toggle, door open/close @ x20y03 ... event 2, remove wall @ x02 y12 etc)
The game engine could be largely built up using Cannon Fodder sprite rips (they are easy enough to obtain) , but it is the importance of getting something as smooth running and as 'active' (read; decent number of sprites) as that which has stopped me from making this game in AMOS. BB2 i feel will cope with it much better.
this game has been a dream of mine for about 5-6 years now, and i'd love to get the ball rolling on it. Alas, i cannot do it alone without BB2 knowledge!
References: Inspiration for other artwork, design etc , as well as coming from Sensible Software, comes from my own 'space art' which you can see some of here:
http://www.djcresswell.com/live/media.htmland i have a lovely book which i could scan some of showing Giger's concept artwork for Alien.
i also have a zip file i sent to Graham of lots of bits and pieces (largely gfx rips) although i think much of that would be better off taken 'from fresh'.
Music: The music is mostly done in MED format, now being converted to Protracker Mod. I have three tunes; menu/intro , mission screen and game over... the only changes i am making are the addition of more variations.
Sound FX: i started some speech for in-game but i will have to re-record those. They are just 'snippets' like the ones used in Dune 2. Obviously, this is something i'd like to do myself, but it's not that hard to build up a small FX library for a game like this anyway.
System Requirements: 1 meg ECS is possible, but perhaps load times would be massive. 2 meg AGA might be preferable and give a lot more options. It would be a consideration for further-down the line i think. I write for HD usage anyway.
Storyline: i also have a storyline drafted, but i wont go into that just yet. It's nothing too clever, but enough to have some Asimov-esque social/political commentary as i think all good sci-fi should do.
Here on
www.ultimateamiga.com where i would like to build, not only a project team, with diaries , logs etc, where it is well known am always looking to expand information for a developer base. Anyone interested in being a part of this, please feel free to post in this thread