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[Dariush]

snip

Damn, I hate it when other people express my thoughts better than I am able to myself. :-/

But yeah, what (s?)he said.

Heh, alrite. I didn't really want to pull the "I know what I'm doing" card but that's exactly what I'm doing.

Then why do you need us? This isn't a rhetorical question, intended to piss you off and get you out of this forum, I'm genuinely interested.

I've studied, practiced and researched this type of development

And what do you have to show for it?

and this type of development is changing the whole industry as we speak - agile, lean, iterative-incremental, and the rest of the buzzwords

And you know that how? From what we see, it's just a bullshit excuse used to postpone important things until the very end. And then push them off the schedule entirely. Who cares about the buzzwords?

If you don't want to be a part of it, fine.

I do want to be part of it. I've always wanted to be a game designer, or at least part of a creative process of some game. Why did you think we (or at least I) don't want to participate?

I don't know what types of backgrounds the two of you have

Gamers. Dunno about Girl, but I would classify myself as a hardcore one. Your point?

the decisions I'm making are based both on modern understanding of how software engineering and project management works.

Nobody cares about that. Show me solid proof of your opinion.

What are you basing your opinions on?

On logic. You base them on buzzwords.

[Girlinhat]

Mine's based on actual programing - not programing management.  It's one thing to be a boss and tell someone to do something, it's quite another to actually do it.  We're also (or at least I am) speaking out of experience with pretty much every game we've ever played.  Find any game with any userbase and their forums will have "We want X" with the developer responding "X would be too difficult to work into the current system."

Although if you want to be a pretentious prick and spout about how much better you are than everyone else and how we have no right to speak because we're aren't more holy than though, then why the fuck did you come on these forums looking for opinions?  You know what you're doing, you know it so well that you can talk down to us about what we know.  You come looking for ideas and then shoot down ideas instantly because you have no forethought.

[Tuplis]

Stuff...

Sorry, I had to cut that off, I just couldn't work with it. I'll explain the things this way.

It seemed to me like you took offence to me telling you I know my shit and implying you don't. That was foolish of me. Sorry.

You said you're a hardcore gamer. That's excellent. That's exactly what I need you for. I need you to play our game and tell me what will be done to improve it. That's what I need you for. You wanted a game design project. Great! You have the correct role. I on the other hand started this experiment as a coding/project management project and I'll want to run it with the methodology that was presented to me as the best one at this point in time. I'll have to endure the results if I make the wrong calls so can you live with me making those calls?

I'm not going to axe stuff like random generation - but the simple fact is that in this state of the game it's no use making one. It doesn't matter how good the maps are - if all you can do is hit green Z pinatas, it's no use. I do have foresight on the type of things that will be added later on. I won't make commitments code-wise that will work against achieving those goals. For instance, I'm not going to implement anything that will make it extra hard on generating random maps.

We good?

[Girlinhat]

I'm voting on next feature to add.

10/10 random maps.  All else is good right now, I'm content :3

[Tuplis]

Although if you want to be a pretentious prick and spout about how much better you are than everyone else and how we have no right to speak because we're aren't more holy than though, then why the fuck did you come on these forums looking for opinions?  You know what you're doing, you know it so well that you can talk down to us about what we know.  You come looking for ideas and then shoot down ideas instantly because you have no forethought.

I'm sorry if I misrepresented myself but I have yet to shoot down even one idea. I only said I won't implement some things next. I was sceptical about the item integrity concept simply because it is way too early to think about that. Until zombies can attack you, what's the point of having stronger/weaker armor? I came on these forums to look for people that are willing to design my game. If you think I'm here to shoot down ideas, either I have misrepresented my position of you misinterpreted it. In fact, as I made clear in the original post, I'm looking to have pretty much all of the design done by other people. I'm sorry I came across as an asshole, I just felt at the time that I was being told I don't know about the one thing I've spent a lot of time studying and practicing.

[Tuplis]

I'm voting on next feature to add.

10/10 random maps.  All else is good right now, I'm content :3

If you can convince me the game will benefit more from random maps than what I was going to work on next (zombies that can see and attack plus inventory and items), I'll do it.

[Caz]

You add the currently 'useless' things like random map generation and z-levels because if you don't do it now it will be much more difficult later. How hard is that to understand? 

Not sure why you come here looking for suggestions then pull the "I am game creator so be quiet mortals!" card.

Add level spheres/themes that determine the nature of the surroundings and enemies of the level. Stuff like gore, or water, plant, industrious etc. Think Silent Hill-ish terraforming.

[AlStar]

I'm voting on next feature to add.

10/10 random maps.  All else is good right now, I'm content :3

If you can convince me the game will benefit more from random maps than what I was going to work on next (zombies that can see and attack plus inventory and items), I'll do it.

While it doesn't immediately go to random maps, going back to the idea of 3d maps - if one of your first tasks is getting zombies to see, when you code them to see, they will be seeing in 2d, yes? If you then go and add 3d, you're going to have to recode the sight code to account for 3d. That's the kind of back-end people are getting at.

[Tuplis]

While it doesn't immediately go to random maps, going back to the idea of 3d maps - if one of your first tasks is getting zombies to see, when you code them to see, they will be seeing in 2d, yes? If you then go and add 3d, you're going to have to recode the sight code to account for 3d. That's the kind of back-end people are getting at.

That depends on how you solve the problem of 'seeing', doesn't it? There are right ways and wrong ways of implementing seeing. The wrong way here would be that they can see in two-dimensional space and when we add the third one, we're fucked. The right way to implement is that they can see in n-dimensional space and we just input the number 2 in the equation. When the supporting data structure is there, we change this number to 3.

When people say that I will definitely run into problems when I'm going to implement feature x, they assume I've solved problem x in the code. The idea is, when appropriate, to solve problem y of which x is an instance. I'm not saying I'm perfect and can anticipate all of these situations but I am saying I can anticipate the Z problem and random map generation and many others.

[getter77]

....Running a sideline here a bit for some levity:   

Tuplis, what Roguelikes, or even games along the broad umbrella of "Zombie themes",  have you personal experience/enjoyment of/aspirations to some part of that might be challenging to wrangle when the time comes?  Rogue Survivor, Cataclysm, hoping that San Muerte comes back from unlife to have a public release, etc?

I would think such info might help take some of the edge off as to the feel of the situation, as I'd reckon there are reasons likewise as to why you went this this theme versus, High Fantasy, Sci-Fi, etc...

[Tuplis]

....Running a sideline here a bit for some levity:   

Tuplis, what Roguelikes, or even games along the broad umbrella of "Zombie themes",  have you personal experience/enjoyment of/aspirations to some part of that might be challenging to wrangle when the time comes?  Rogue Survivor, Cataclysm, hoping that San Muerte comes back from unlife to have a public release, etc?

I would think such info might help take some of the edge off as to the feel of the situation, as I'd reckon there are reasons likewise as to why you went this this theme versus, High Fantasy, Sci-Fi, etc...

I'll answer your question and also talk more broadly around the game project.

The theme of zombie apocalypse (and other post-apocalypse scenarios as well) fascinates me, I've played many games around the theme, seen many films, I love the walking dead tv-series (didn't read the comics tho). Rogue Survivor is an excellent game too. Also, zombie apocalypse is much better in focusing the scope of my game. High-fantasy and scifi tend to have much more going on in them; magic/technology which permits all kinds of mechanics I necessarily don't want to tackle in my first game. So i chose zombies because it's more about survival and I feel I can tell a much better story about survival than about wizards and warriors or space marines.

The reason I decided to make a game now was because I'm finally at a pointin my life where I have nothing I "have" to do outside of work/career. Up until fairly recently graduating was my ongoing project (in fact, education in general had been the focus on my life for almost 20 years) and I was reluctant to take any time away from pursuing that goal. Now is a good time to start developing a game. Why a roguelike? Because I want to focus on the good stuff; story and learning to be a better coder instead of having to meddle with graphics.

[Springare]

I have a question to the "Zombie Apocalypse"-Theme:

Is it more like "I wake up in the morning, want to get my coffee BAM Zombie in the fridge" style (the apocalypse just started right now... like 5 minutes ago) or is it more "My parents killed Z's their whole life since the outbreak 50 years ago. everything is fuked up and now its my time to pull the trigger"?
Freeworld or tunneld is just a question of where your game happens in one of the above situations.

What I would add:
-diffrent kind of zombies 6/10
-eating/drinking 1/10
-somekind of crafting 2/10 (maybe skill-related?)
-skills 3/10 (first some basic stuff, melee, shooting, looking smart, whatever)
-npc's 7/10 (vendors, other survivors)
-quests 4/10 (ok, this may be a little out of line, but a red-string leading to a awesome bossfight like a mother of zombies, mad scientist who created the virus, situation depended of the above)
-weapons 8/10 (melee or ranged, but melee for the start is fine, maybe "ranged melee" like a poky stick of wood that can poke Z's over a tile away that the player don't get bite in the face)
-a complete list of mentioned points 10/10 (in the op or a google-doc?)

[Tuplis]

I have a question to the "Zombie Apocalypse"-Theme:

Is it more like "I wake up in the morning, want to get my coffee BAM Zombie in the fridge" style (the apocalypse just started right now... like 5 minutes ago) or is it more "My parents killed Z's their whole life since the outbreak 50 years ago. everything is fuked up and now its my time to pull the trigger"?
Freeworld or tunneld is just a question of where your game happens in one of the above situations.

What I would add:
-diffrent kind of zombies 6/10
-eating/drinking 1/10
-somekind of crafting 2/10 (maybe skill-related?)
-skills 3/10 (first some basic stuff, melee, shooting, looking smart, whatever)
-npc's 7/10 (vendors, other survivors)
-quests 4/10 (ok, this may be a little out of line, but a red-string leading to a awesome bossfight like a mother of zombies, mad scientist who created the virus, situation depended of the above)
-weapons 8/10 (melee or ranged, but melee for the start is fine, maybe "ranged melee" like a poky stick of wood that can poke Z's over a tile away that the player don't get bite in the face)
-a complete list of mentioned points 10/10 (in the op or a google-doc?)

We haven't discussed the story yet. That's something that doesn't have to be locked down yet. Originally I thought something along the lines of "I'm chopping firewood at my cabin, suddenly a rotting man attacks me from the woods. I behead him." So I was thinking more along the lines of the first scenario. But as I said, it's mostly up to the people I'm designing with.

As for the points you made, I will have to work on the backlog really soon when I can no longer count all the items with my fingers. Also, I'm working on the item system atm, in my version items can be picked and dropped, soon equipped too. After that you can attack with them. After that it's improving the zombies by letting them see, move and attack. At that point I'll probably pick your idea of different zombie types (the system is basically already there, just have to produce content). So that's the plan for the next release(Ill release droppable/pickable items later today), which is hopefully before weekend. So that's the current plan.

[Tuplis]

Alrite, I made the backlog and a small text file for the keybinds. Implemented a couple things today that you might wanna try out. Feel free to add stuff in the backlog. If someone is good with spreadsheets, you're also welcome to style up the backlog I'm using openoffice, I don't know how the compatibilities are with excel. Saved in excel format for now.

Is there a good way to let a certain bunch of people edit and/or commit files onto my dropbox? If no, you'll have to sent the edited files to me somehow and I'll update them.

[Dariush]

Why not use Google Docs?