The Achavela Project - a proposal for free, open pokemon-style game

[Minkovsky]

The monster development games (aka Mon games), such as Pokemon or Digimon are very popular and lots of people play them. However, as I browsed the Internet, there seems to be no mature free and/or open Mon games. Enter The Achavela Project.

The Achavela is a project I invented and sketched on boring lessons in school and during my free time. It's supposed to be a free and open Mon game, made in Blender/CrystalSpace and work (quite) well on netbook computers (for the same reason most of the Mon games are on handheld consoles). I even made a more specific plan for the project, in the form of a project proposal document (written in formal language, just because my English teacher was looking ).

So while most of the stuff is explained there, I just want to make a quick note: I'm not experienced in creating games, so I'll need some help. Shall the project succeed, I'll try to contribute the most, but for now, I only can provide you with some ideas and concept art, until I learn Blender and the other stuffs.

Link to the project proposal: http://ompldr.org/vNmJzZA/

Regards,
Filip

[Cousjava]

I would be happy to contribute. I am more of a programmer than a graphics designer, and have some experience with C, C#, PHP, MySQL, (X)HTML and Java, and have been planning to learn C++ for a while anyway.

Great idea. As a suggestion as this is a collaboration project, is Git/GitHub. I've just started using it, and it is easy for people to share updates in coding, branch out, merge etc.

[akromm]

Hi, I would be happy to contribute as well. Although I also only have experience in programming, (no art skills). I have experience in C, C++, C#, Java, and PHP. I have experience doing 2D (allegro) programming and a little experience doing 3D (OpenGL) programming.

-Adam.

[Minkovsky]

Right. I'll set up a github repo soon, and post the concept art I've created. There's not much of it anyway. However, I'd kind of need some artists, once the work on the engine has begun.

The first thing to do will be to make the battling engine. As the mons will be in 3D, the battle should take advantage of it. I'm talking about full 3D battlefield with some camerawork.

So, any artists out there?

[DangerOnTheRanger]

A bit of advice:

People are more likely to help you with your project if you can also show them something they can currently run/play, i.e, a demo.

Why?
Because it shows them that you yourself are putting your own energy into your project, and you'll not just let them develop your project, and then take full credit.

It shows them that you've thought your project out, and know what it takes to finish something this big. What you want to accomplish is huge. There's nothing wrong with that. It just means you'll have to devote more time and energy to your project.

Also, I probably can't help, at least right now. I don't really like C++, and I'm just a beginner with Blender. Perhaps in a few months, when I get my current game programming commitments out of the way...

[Minkovsky]

Hi! I'm back. Here's some concept art for you. Includes 4 mons and a mon storage/catching device. And no, it's not a ball. It's rather some kind of a remote control with three buttons. The mon is stored inside, just like Scotty was stored in the Transporter buffer in that TNG episode. Has two modes: Catch and Release. Catch works in two ways: when used on a wild mon, it tries to catch it. When used on your mon, it just switches it out of the battle. Of course, this will be all automatic, just like in any other game.


These are 4 concept mons. They're in XCF format.
Clawtato - a potato with claws!


Domefelix - psychic cat



Fridgefish - A frozen fish - Starter Mon



Serpentysth - Cool snake.



That's all for now, but I will work on more stuff, such as the world and other mons.

Hey - I have an idea. Instead of making up something to go before the mon, why not just keep them called "Mons," and name the game something like FreeMon or OpenMon (too obvious) or VelaMon or AchaMon? Which one is better?

[akromm]

Any of them sound good to me. It's up to you.

[Minkovsky]

So it is decided then. The name would be VelaMon. And, as you noticed from the first map in my previous post, the region's name would be Acha State. So technically, if we were to do more games, they'd all be codenamed "[region name] + vela".

I'll try to model out few battlegrounds and add concept animation to them (using placeholder velamon, such as Sphere, Sphere2 and Ellipsoid ). But now, I have a project open for my IT classes, about internet security for 9 year olds :/ - so I won't be able to do much this weekend.

[Zero2Nine]

My advice, more an idea actually (as I have little experience with big game projects), would be to start with a balanced battle and scoring system and to first make data models of the *mons. Not graphical data but just text.

Make a list of objects in the game (only abstract object no instantiations yet).
- mons
- battles
- trainers
- worlds
- tournaments
- rewards
etc.

What are the properties of these objects?

Mon
- Name
- Hitpoints
- Level
- Attacks
- Defenses
etc.

Do this for all the objects and then decide how these objects interact, what are the rules of the game?

Once you have a balanced, challenging, battle system (IMO that will determine the success of the game) you could move on to the fun part of designing the mons, trainers, worlds etc.

Good luck with your project!

[Cousjava]

I've created a Github organisation for it with a repository at https://github.com/AchavelaProject/Achavela. For my own thought on doing, etc. I have my own fork at https://github.com/Cousjava/Achavela. If you tell me your Github username then I will add you as an administrator of the organisation.