Hey Mike it's not you making games is a hard project when you have no one with awesome donkey kong experience.

photics says,
Flash is much easier to use and brings a happy medium to everyone although you won't be able to make money off the contest because they want you to use their editor haha. Don't be sad Mike you will still make a pretty mean flash version. If you don't mind me asking how many books of Photics did you sell so far I actually read it and found it interesting but it's hard to score high because some of those choices are tricky hehe.

P.S .FBX stands for Filmbox and as far as .X goes your guess is as good as mine.

I haven't given up on the PC / XBOX version. I'm thinking that would be a lot more popular than a Flash version. Maybe I'll make both, just to be sure. Ha.

My answer: 6%

I'm not planning on writing a sequel until the goal is met. Right now, that number is at 6%. Well... it's closer to 7%... but I round down. You can see http://revisions.photics.com for the "Sales until sequel" number.

"Your purchases encourage the continuation of this epic saga."

Right now, I have some unanswered questions...

1. Is anyone (with the skills to make this happen) going to volunteer?
2. What's the Dream-Build-Play competition going to look like?
3. Is this really worth buying an XBOX 360 for?

Today, I took some time out. I wanted to feel productive, so I'm working on bonus mission guide for Guild Wars: Nightfall - Two maps down, 18 to go.

__________________
Michael Garofalo
Webmaster - http://photics.com

Count me in.. I haven't used C# yet, but I do have a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Pro. and I've heard it's kind of a cross between C and Java. Given I'm primarily a Java programmer and have some experince with C I should be alright. I'll start looking at XNA in depth today.

Are you planning on making Revisions into an Adventure game or an Action game? How are you going to tie in the storyline?

YEAY! NEMI! I'm glad to see that you're interested in this project!

I think it depends on the number of people that are involved in the project and the amount of time that we have. We should know more in January. Maybe we can win the competition.

It should be an action/adventure game. I'm thinking like Knights of the Old Republic, Dungeon Siege or Neverwinter Nights. Heh... or even like PvE Guild Wars. I'd like to see the entire book converted into a video game. But, I realize that's an incredibly difficult task. I'd like the main character to walk around, have choices to make and interact with the other characters - just like in the book. But, I'd also like the fight scenes to be in there. I realize that characters are incredibly difficult to animate and move around. If we're short on time, it could just be a space scene. This is not directly mentioned in the book, but the ship draws it's fuel on converting matter into energy. I was thinking on having them harvest rocks from asteroids. Heh... you know, like "mining" in Freelancer. There's a problem with that idea. How do you base a game around that idea, without it being boring?

If a single scene had to be focused on, I think to should be the battle with the rock monsters. To tie it into the book, the difficulty level could be determined by the weapon you pick. The boss would be Casandra. The final cinematic would be in the middle of the atlantic ocean, with the sad sad scene.

For those of you that don't know what I'm writing about... buy the book!

I'm not too tied to the format. Try out XNA and let me know what you think works. We can make it a turn-based RPG, Strategy Game or Racing Game for all I care.

__________________
Michael Garofalo
Webmaster - http://photics.com

I would suggest having it be similar to KotOR, where it is third person (I think, either that or second person) view and have the storyline choices in the same way as KotOR. It's the best system I've seen so far without having a Dungeon Master running the whole thing like in normal D&D.

How about a side-scrolling shooter? A smaller ship (piloted by you) has to protect the bigger ship from the Asteroid field. I could easily write an addition to the storyline to incorporate this idea. It doesn't have to be side-scrolling, the flight could be in 3-D. Fly around the ship, protecting it from all sides. That would make the game A LOT harder though. (Maybe a radar circle would help?) The point is that they're piloting through the asteroid field to save time. That means the ships would have to be moving foward at all times. You know, like the classics from the 80's: R-TYPE and Gradius. (I think the graphics should be 3-D, but the controls should be 2-D.)

• Asteroids could drop minerals, that can be tracker-beamed for power-ups.
• Characters could chat with you on-screen, offer advice or yell at you. ("Don't shoot at us!" or "Watch out for that one!")
• Bosses: Larger asteroids, but you'd have to target key weak-points to destroy them.

That idea seems doable. Not only does this seem possible, it's a game that I'd want to play!
(This could also be made into a Flash Game, so we don't forget our roots!)

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Michael Garofalo
Webmaster - http://photics.com

Wow! I love that idea .. kinda like a cross between Asteroids, Space Invaders, and R-Type except in 3D!

Top Down shooter, with a moving ship to protect and asteroids coming from all sides.. sounds fairly easy to set up and could look good too

We're going to need some artists.. My artistic talents are decent at best, and I haven't really attempted any 3D modeling.

I was thinking side-view, like in the Photics: Revisions banner ad. Asteroids would come from above and below. I think side-view would work better. Why shouldn't those who plunked down the extra cash for widescreen get a slight edge? HA!

Although, Top-Down might work too, as you could control the turret with the mouse or analogue thumb stick on the XBOX 360. That would give it a robotron-like control. Yah... I change my mind... I like Top-Down better.

I'm going to give this project a name: Photics: Revisions - Course Correction

I'll see what I can do about the graphics. For now, the XNA kit includes spaceships. Just look at the Spacewar example. You can use that to test things out. Let me know how difficult you think this will be. Here's a list of things that will need graphics...

• Hank
• Philip
• The main character (You)
• Asteroids (All different shapes & sizes)
• Space Backgrounds
• Main Ship
• Gunner Ship
• Particle effects (Engine trails, explosions, hull damage, weapon fire)

I "think" I can handle that. Nemi, this might actually be a two-man project. If you can handle the coding, I'll work on the graphics.

I wonder if the contest supports multiple entries. HA!
Anyone else got a game idea?

__________________
Michael Garofalo
Webmaster - http://photics.com

Ah yes the good ol' simulated 3d side scroller shooter the main stay of the good ol' days. Mike I think you got a winner with this idea just as long as you know the limits. Here are a few tips I ran threw while I was making a side fighter and when I helped out my friend. Try to keep the number of bullets both you and the enemies fire to a minum as well as keeping the enemies to a minium to decrease lag because if you don't you will soon find out that you will lag bad, although you didn't need to be told that right? Second tip I have is that try to keep the movement of the ship to as little as possible, sure it's nice to see the ship turn a little bit when it moves up and down but that just creates more problems that you don't need to deal with. 3rd tip The background, character ship and enemies will make or break the game. Try to get them to look as good as you can because in the end the better that what matters. All in all you should have a pretty easy time creating this game also one more thing to add Geometry Wars . If you can get it to be addicting well who knows how far it can go right you might end up being able to sell the game. I wish you good luck.

P.S. I am going good with Gwen's RPS. I should have it done by saturday we will see.

Just the other day, I was playing R-TYPE. It was the part where you fight against the giant gunship. It's been a while since I've seen graphics flicker like that. Heh, the Wii reproduced the flaws that old games make. Whenever there were too many enemies on the screen, the graphics would blink on and off. So no... I don't need the warning. I know I can't put too many polygons on the screen. I'm sure Nemi will start yelling at me if I do.

With that said... no promises!

Since this is a space game, the PC / XBOX 360 doesn't have to work too hard on rendering the background. If the main spaceships can be kept down to a reasonable amount of polygons, that leaves a lot space for particle effects, weapons and asteroids.

I think the ship should do some banking. Just slight movements, but the ship can't be static. I think it looks boring if the ship doesn't move at all. Airfox is a good example of this...

http://www.flashkit.com/movies/Games...8763/index.php

...and that game should probably be added to the Photics Arcade. The only reason why I haven't done it yet - there's a glitch with the number of lives. The game ends, even though it looks like you have 4 or 5 guys left.


...but ...but ...but the Wii told me that graphics don't matter.

Yes, I'm trying to make the graphics realistic. I'm learning how to create art in 3D. It's surprisingly difficult. I was really depressed this week when I couldn't figure it out. Then, poof! I started getting it. Maybe I'll post up some samples later on. If I can get this down right, it means amazing things for this website. Heh... we'll look back at old episodes of Lost In Ascalon and laugh!

Just so everyone knows, If you submit an idea in this thread, you're giving it to Photics.com for free! Since this is starting to become more like a real game project, I should post the standard copy that all the game publishers do.

By posting a game idea or suggestion in the Photics Forums, you grant Photics.com permission to use that information without any compensation to you.

Basically, I don't want to be sued

If Photics: Revisions - Course Correction is good enough, I might want to sell the game. It looks like I'm going to have to change the title of this Forum too. It's not just Flash Game Development anymore. I'll make a sticky thread, filled with useful resources.

The Course Correction project is pretty much closed. Nemi's gonna work on the coding. I'm going to work on the art. That doesn't mean we should stop! We can work on other projects. Also, I plan on posting updates to the project's status.

Good Physics is important. There was this one game demo where you could shoot everything... I MEAN EVERYTHING. It had no purpose to it, as it was just a demo, but I sure did enjoy shooting the walls and watching them crumble.

I look forward to seeing it. If it's good enough, would you want it mentioned in the next edition of Photics: The Guild Wars edition? If it's not good enough, would you want to open the project to collaboration?

Note: I'm working on a bonus mission guide for the next edition. I'm thinking that I'm going to share the PDF with other fansites, incase they wanted to mirror it. Four maps down, six to go. (I'm only doing the first 10 for this issue.)

__________________
Michael Garofalo
Webmaster - http://photics.com