Help Wanted! - Making a Gunbound-like game for Linux. Wanna help? :D

[DARKGuy]

Hey guys!

Well, some of you might be wondering what the hell happened to GP3D... well, what happened is that I don't have the enough experience yet to handle myself in the advanced 3D world, handling other things than just textured cubes. But, I don't want to leave OpenGL/SDL/C++... I want to keep learning and go on... maybe the experience will then grow in me and maybe I'll be able to stand against a bigger project... I guess I was too ambitious with GP3D >.<...

Those aren't bad news though! while GP3D is stalled until I can work on it as I'd like to (understanding 3D-model loading even better) I began working on a 2D version of it. That's like, a 2D-OpenGL-accelerated engine. It'll still use stuff from GP3D (in fact, it does) so GP2D will benefit from GP3D and visceversa, which is the most important part... 2D stuff is important in 3D games, and I haven't worked on that part as much as I have now, and I'm glad I did... I've learnt a lot .

BUT... I wanna get to the point: I like Gunbound. It's a game with cute graphics and highly addictive... too bad it doesn't work under WINE/Cedega because of GameGuard... that's for one thing. The other thing is that I'm thirsty for other kind of games that are seen in Windows but not in Linux, such as this one, or games like Lineage 2 / World of Warcraft / Warcraft 3 / etc (No, Regnum, Last Chaos or Warzone 2100 don't cut it for me, even though they're really impressive as games I admit, made by people with great programming skills that could take me years to learn).

Because of these reasons I decided to start a Linux Gunbound project. I want it to make it like that game - if not better - both for Linux and Windows. This is a good chance too, to make GP2D suitable for quality 2D-OpenGL-Accelerated games, and we'll all learn lots of stuff and have fun at the same time (yes, multiplayer is on my mind).

What about legality? I don't know really. I don't think they can sue me because I'm making a game like that - I'm not gonna use the graphics, nor the music, nor anything from it. In fact, Gunbound is just a multiplayer version of the same genre that started back when you could play Gorillas in QuickBasic, throwing bananas at each other (or at least, that's as far as I can remember XD). So, I don't think there will be any problem at all, as long as we're not using their media.

I'm gonna use the old GP3D site for hosting the GP2D one, since both are GamePower-related and benefit from each other and I wanna keep everything organized. I need to make the site and all that, but I wanted to gather the people first and start working on the project. Considering we're not loading 3D models or complicated stuf in the 2D OpenGL world, it shouldn't be hard to create (though I feel the network, collisions and physics part are going to be a true hell, but that can be solved! xD... it's 2D, right? ).

If any of you want to help, you're more than welcome!!! I'm looking for art/graphics/music more than anything - Gunbound-style if possible -. For now, if you want to help, make it public here and send me a PM. Once I get the site online we can coordinate stuff from there.

If you read all this through here... man, you deserve a big star xD... nah really, thanks for reading and comment on this!

News:

I'm looking for people who can help with physics, preferably with projectiles, taking in account gravity, mass, force, wind speed/angle and people with math knowledge which can assist us in making the players "tilt" according to the terrain they're on, just look at some GunBound videos on YouTube and you'll see what I'm talking about... that involves doing some calculations and modifying the pixel collision routines heavily, since it's using the sprite's angle now.

Of course, you must have some experience in C++/OpenGL/SDL if you want to help code these routines, or at least some C++ and maths, and I'll implement your functions into the game and test if they work correctly for you .

* We have a temporal site here thanks to Jorgerosa!!: http://www.via2b.com/iteam/
* OMG, we're in Free Gamer's blog! -> http://freegamer.blogspot.com/2007/0...nd-soulfu.html
* Soon, we will be in UGA too! YAY
* Also, there's a (VERY EARLY) gameplay video in YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJsUsvwu43s
* We have a wiki too! -> http://iteam.wikispaces.com/
* And an official IRC channel!

Server: irc.freenode.net Channel: #iteam

Note: We have an official forum for the project which you can reach here -> http://www.iteamgame.org/forum/ . So, all the iteam discussion should go in there instead. However, we'll still be monitoring this thread to keep the community informed and new people who wish to join or support us can post here too, but just to let you all know that there's an official forum now .

[Cresho]

well, if you are interested in the music part, i can cough up some tunes out of my keyboard. I would'nt mind creating some musical scores for your game.

With the current state of synth tech out there, its extremely easy to create musical scores at extremely low cost. (NO VOCALS!).

[jorgerosa]

I can help in graphics, artwork stuff, etc. no costs, only my time is limited. (Im pro in windows ) Cheers.

[charlieg]

Ok...

1. Register a sourceforge project & set up mailing lists
2. Install something like phpBB and/or Wordpress on the site provided by sf.net (yourgame.sf.net) - Wordpress is easy to set up
3. Start putting together info on what you are working on and posting progress
4. Get stuff into SVN and start coding

I can pimp you up on Free Gamer if you have a website (I may even link this forum post depending on my mood tomorrow morning). However ideas are nothing without infrastructure, so you need to get on the above list ASAP so you have something tangible to point to.

[Frem]

No offense, but a lot of games die in the planning stage. Do you have an alpha or something? People will be a lot more liable to help if they see that you've serious enough to have made progress on the code, even if it's using programmer's graphics.

[Sicarius99]

DUDE! I would love to help make the game! E-mail me or IM me in MSN. My e-mail is sicarius99@gmail.com

[DARKGuy]

Originally Posted by Cresho well, if you are interested in the music part, i can cough up some tunes out of my keyboard. I would'nt mind creating some musical scores for your game. With the current state of synth tech out there, its extremely easy to create musical scores at extremely low cost. (NO VOCALS!).

That's great! have you ever played Gunbound before? that can give you an idea of the style of songs I want (they sound like... uh, "cute rock"? XD it's a rare mix )

Originally Posted by jorgerosa I can help in graphics, artwork stuff, etc. no costs, only my time is limited. (Im pro in windows ) Cheers.

That's great too! time isn't a problem - I'm limited in time too - and what's wrong with being pro in Windows? ^^

Originally Posted by charlieg Ok... 1. Register a sourceforge project & set up mailing lists 2. Install something like phpBB and/or Wordpress on the site provided by sf.net (yourgame.sf.net) - Wordpress is easy to set up 3. Start putting together info on what you are working on and posting progress 4. Get stuff into SVN and start coding I can pimp you up on Free Gamer if you have a website (I may even link this forum post depending on my mood tomorrow morning). However ideas are nothing without infrastructure, so you need to get on the above list ASAP so you have something tangible to point to.

1. Done (http://gamepower.sourceforge.net). I need to update the site with the new info though, since it's not only 3D now. I've also set up mailing lists too: gamepower-public@lists.sourceforge.net. Gotta wait for activation though.
2. I installed phpBB in there (http://gamepower.sourceforge.net/forum/), the thing is... it doesn't allow me to send emails through it, so people don't get email notifications... do you know how to?
3. I'm gonna do that in the mailing list... I have a rough idea of the project, I just need to put it down on something "material" and show it
4. I haven't been able to set up SVN correctly... well, I have, but only for me, I dunno how to do it for other users (and it's a pain for me to use, too) so I've been thinking in just using CVS. What do you think?

In short, I have the place where to put the idea, I just need to get working on it and show it. Hey, that's great! it would be awesome ^_^ ... website? the one in point #1

Originally Posted by Frem No offense, but a lot of games die in the planning stage. Do you have an alpha or something? People will be a lot more liable to help if they see that you've serious enough to have made progress on the code, even if it's using programmer's graphics.

Heh, nice suggestion xD.... actually all I have finished with GP2D is some kind of top-down shoot 'em up example. Sounds simple but it features sprites with scaling/rotation and dynamic animation (for example, a "frame" can have a 2-second delay and another one a 0.5ms delay, so it's easy to "program" animations in the sprites) and alpha (both with PNG's alpha and making them "fade" by changing the "global alpha" of the sprite), music (through SDL_mixer), event handling, some kind of FPS controller (can limit it to some specific FPS) and text rendering using freetype (using code of a NeHe tutorial. Hopefully in the future we can make our own font renderer if the author has problems about us using the code).

It may not be much but I think it should be enough to start working on it. I need to comment the code and sort it out for releasing an early version of the engine. You see, the idea is to make the game using my engine as framework, and improving it to meet the needs of the game. That's a great idea both to make the game and improve the engine at the same time, not to mention it'll make it even more gamemaking-directed to.

What I can do right now though, is to show a screenshot of the test program I've been working on to test the engine:

Originally Posted by Sicarius99 DUDE! I would love to help make the game! E-mail me or IM me in MSN. My e-mail is sicarius99@gmail.com

Awesome! I'll be sure to get in contact soon ^^

[jorgerosa]

"and what's wrong with being pro in Windows?" - i mean that i can have trouble using linux software, because im not used to, but seems to me now that will be no problem.

[pixelstuff]

argh! trying to register at gunbound to see what its like but the registration is always down the screenshots look promising though. are you going for anime-style?

[jorgerosa]

Im now working on artwork and graphics for the game with DG. Then he will put online in 2-3 days. We hope.