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LGP Announces Game Development Team
Ronald Hymer writes "Linuxlookup.com is reporting Linux Game Publishing has announced the Linux Game Development Project team. The eight winners of LGP's game development company initiative were announced last evening and Linuxlookup's very own resident programmer Matt Wilson was granted one of the eight positions on the team. Along with project information, they link submitted code samples along with the team member URL's." See our previous story about this. Hey team: no penguins in your game, okay?
Looks like they haven't got any game to develop yet tho. Perhaps they can hook up with some other game designers and make their games more linux-friendly?
Maybe we should help! Perhaps an approach similar to how we pick interview questions: take the top ten moderated ideas and send them the link!
Of course, they may have some vague ideas already. Personally, I'd like to see something combining the storyline of a good RPG with the action of a good FPS. Open ended would be nice, something like Privateer or Freelancer but in a fantasy or military setting rather than as a space sim.
Yep,
And, hey, if they MUST use first person, why not a first person multi-player game WITH a story... imagine king's quest first person where you walk around a 3d environment... what if you took your friends along with you for the quest? That way you can chat with them and you can all cooperatively solve problems / puzzles / decide on things?
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
I agree that the old *Quest games rule (personal fav is Heros Quest, or "Quest for Glory" as it used to be called), however, it was found that adventure games simply don't sell anymore. There was a sharp decline in adventure game sales as soon as FPS became popular.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
In the past ten years, people having been flocking to get MFAs in creative writing. There are tons of writers out there. However, it always seem like game developers think that it would be better if they wrote their own stories and scripts. Writing is not a trivial business. I mean, everyone can write, but everyone can sing too. Why not get a writer to write? I understand it becomes a matter of control, and that the developers want to put in their own birlliant anime-influenced ideas, but its like letting the programmers draw the graphics. I suggest getting a writer to write the story, and let them run the story.
Make one of those, please. The dependence on the 3D card of the user will be minimal. The influence of Linux will be huge. It'll be a new new thing, not a copy of the old new thing. It'll be a challenge.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
- Quake III Arena
- Unreal Tournament
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein
- Unreal Tournament 2003
- Doom III
What part of "Yes, there are blockbuster games available for Linux" do you not understand? All of these are Linux-native. No WineX needed.Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
You know, I don't think this criticism is correct. Look at games like Pac-Man, Asteroids, or even Nethack. They're all quick, short-attention-span games (get in, play a couple games, get out, you've only wasted 15 minutes). Now compare that to games like Half-Life, Max Payne, Halo, Deus Ex, the Thief series, the System Shock series, and so on. You're lucky if you can really get much done in an hour's play time with these games. They have story, they have plot, they have atmosphere, and they have action. They're not "twitch" games with short attention span.
I think the thing to realize is that games, like all other media (books, movies, music), are about 80% shit to 20% cream. The NES had something over 500 games (and I'm sure that's a low guess), but how many of them do you really remember as being good (because some terrible games are memorable for being terrible)? Maybe 100, if you're really thinking about it. Same thing for PC games. Do you remember all of the Doom clones? How about the Wolf3D clones (and yes, there were several)? Or what about all of the different Quake clones? Of course not. You remember the games that were good. Things only seem worse right now because you haven't had sufficient time to weed out the good from the crap, and forget the crap.
I think in the original contest document, they stated that they'd purchase the required devlopment tools, eg. the torque engine (I think they should have called it the Newton-Metre engine, har har). Torque is a pretty nice engine really, good enough anyway, games aren't built on graphics alone. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing a game with some Tribes-like aspects. I found Tribes fun mostly because of the challenge, and freedom. The challenge comes from the speed, and funny physics they employ (most people don't slide down hills at 100kph ;)). Whenever you shoot your weapon at speed, just like real physics, it takes on the velocity you currently have. Aiming at your target isn't enough, or aiming where you think he'll be isn't enough, you have to aim such that you compensate for speed! It's really great fun, not to mention the fairly large map sizes, which give you pretty well all the running around room you could want. To make a game fun, I'd say you need a few things (from my point of view as a gamer anyway):
-it has to be hard enough, that you can be horrible at it to begin with, but eventually 'master' it and have some sense of accomplishment
-it has to have some innate sense of fun, all the typical fun qualities apply here: explosions, high speed, tension, humour, excessive brutality (not gruesome, but just enough for you to say "jeez, that was awfully painful looking")
-you should be able to play it for short periods of time, no sitting down for 2 hours just to make some marginal increase in progress. that's not fun, that's just repetition (everquest reference here really).
-if it is online, it should be VERY easy to be social. if people have friends in the game, they're more apt to play it, more apt to buy, etc.
-directly linked to the previous point, teamplay is important if it's online. online games really shine when you pretty well FORCE teamplay, because it makes people talk to each other, be more social, and overall have a better time! (which is what games are about right? having fun?)
-having said all that, it should have some sort of innovation. no one is expecting revolutionary work here, but at least make something that stands on it's own. dont' let anyone say "well, it's really like q3 and counterstrike put together" make them say "well.. uh.. well, it's really just like it is, hard to compare it to anything". I think that's important, because if they are forced to say that, THEN you know you've given them something they can't get anywhere else.
These are just what I can think of at the moment, but that's briefly what I find when I look at the games I really really played a lot, and truly liked. I'm actually quite excited to see what they can come up with, should be very interesting!