Now Hiring! (Megaman Fangame)

[LlamaHombre]

Let's come up with levels before we break our minds over songs, Freeman.

That can be saved for later.

One thing that could be done rather well is a cavernous level reminiscent of the likes of Crystal Snail and Skull Man. Occasionally you'd get glimpses of a stormy outdoors, but for the most part you're in an eerie, dimly illuminated cavern with emphasis on more ghostly enemies and hazards. There could even be signs of previous mining efforts abandoned because of the spectrums, like hard hats lying around. Some could even flip themselves over and act as ghost mets. Enemies could be more focused on messing with the terrain ahead than messing with Mega Man himself, like flipping platforms or dropping boulders from higher levels or so on and so forth.

[Dr. Freeman]

Let's come up with levels before we break our minds over songs, Freeman.

That can be saved for later.

One thing that could be done rather well is a cavernous level reminiscent of the likes of Crystal Snail and Skull Man. Occasionally you'd get glimpses of a stormy outdoors, but for the most part you're in an eerie, dimly illuminated cavern with emphasis on more ghostly enemies and hazards. There could even be signs of previous mining efforts abandoned because of the spectrums, like hard hats lying around. Some could even flip themselves over and act as ghost mets. Enemies could be more focused on messing with the terrain ahead than messing with Mega Man himself, like flipping platforms or dropping boulders from higher levels or so on and so forth.

That's mostly what I meant with my second sentence, I could have worded it better.

Though I am fond of that idea.

[Heat Man]

For organization's sake, it might be best to have a forum or Google document accessible by everyone. That way stage and boss themes, enemy ideas, robot master ideas, etc can be kept in their own place for reference, and this one thread won't turn into a sprawling mess.

Also, I kind of hate to say it, but one or two people really should be "on top" of this whole deal. Especially when you have more than three or four people involved, projects like these can fall apart with everyone wanting to go in their own creative direction. There really should be someone helping to bring together a unified vision, and settling disputes. I am definitely not volunteering for the task. Ideally it would be a programmer, since they're the most integral members of the team.

[PressStart]

For organization's sake, it might be best to have a forum or Google document accessible by everyone. That way stage and boss themes, enemy ideas, robot master ideas, etc can be kept in their own place for reference, and this one thread won't turn into a sprawling mess.

Also, I kind of hate to say it, but one or two people really should be "on top" of this whole deal. Especially when you have more than three or four people involved, projects like these can fall apart with everyone wanting to go in their own creative direction. There really should be someone helping to bring together a unified vision, and settling disputes. I am definitely not volunteering for the task. Ideally it would be a programmer, since they're the most integral members of the team.

Totally agree with this. I don't mind setting up a document and organizing some things, but the lead programmer will have to take charge. Whether that's DonutYoshi or someone else, we just need someone to start exploring a project idea THEY want to do, and then we'll see if everyone is on board for it or not.

[DinnerSonic]

I realize the whole idea I came up with was basically "Wily Wars with NGPC character sprites" and made a cheap mockup with a shaded Mega Man from a canned project of mine and some scraps. Far from perfect but it gives an image to my text dumps.

16-bit characters and tilesets while keeping in the general 8-bit collision boundaries, bosses can be a bit bigger than 8-bit for more character, HUD that's close to 8-bit but with some of the extras of 8 showing you how many shots per weapon and exact HP.

I also made it pseudo-iPhone half resolution because it was a "real" resolution that wasn't the traditional NES or SNES ones. Also because if MMF2 did come into play it could be exported to iOS/Android theoretically without too much issue. What can Game Maker export nowadays, does it have any similar multiplatform things now? HTML5 exports or whatnot?

[Donutyoshi]

Right now for engine. It's best to work with 8.1, because Studio is ridiciously expensive. Like $499?

[NemZ]

Well then, I guess we're ready to get down to business, eh?  Excellent!

It seems that classic megaman is the overwhelming favorite choice here, so let's just assume that's the series we're going with for now.

I'm definately in favor of keeping the 'feel' of 8bit, but ramping it up in quality at the same proportional size to the screen resolution.  7 looked great but it just felt wrong because the sprite's scale was much larger than we're used to as well as everything feeling sort of slow.  I'd also suggest that sticking with bright and friendly color schemes is a big part of what makes classic feel classic.  The best way to stand out here is probably with high quality animation (lots of frames per action in an expressive style, perhaps like SF Alpha as a model?); doing a simple thing well is better then and making it wild and crazy.

As far as the bosses go, maybe we should style it on one of the sidestory sorts of games and make the RMs based around some common theme such as the stardroids or constellations, not 8 variations of (something)Man?  Coming up with such a theme would help guide the process of creating RMs and stages.  

I'm fine with taking an organizational leadership role but whomever is the lead programmer should definately be front and center in terms of concept approval, if nothing else than because they're in a better position to tell us what is and isn't feasible to pull off.

[Donutyoshi]

still not if nows a good time to consider concepts.

i'd think about stuff tommarow, hopefully we'd get started

[Hallan Parva]

work with 8.1

I will cry because Beed and I are stuck with 8.0 and I don't want to pay maney for something that likes to break

[JaxOf7]

16 bit sounds overly ambitious and hasn't really been done successfully before.

[Hallan Parva]

Alright, now I'm a little confused. Is this a Mega Man game with Cutstuff flair? A collective representation of the Mega Man community? Just a generic fan game with nothing to do with "inside jokes" or community references?


Knowing which direction this game's background is going would help me come up with stages and what-not.

[Dr. Freeman]

I believe it's the third, though I could be wrong.
Except replace generic with sorta kinda different sorta kinda...?

[PressStart]

I was thinking it was just going to be a high quality Mega Man fangame, made for all Mega Man fans. There could be little in-jokes and stuff, but the focus wouldn't be on including stuff about the Cutstuff community.

edit: Thinking it might be best for everyone to consider what we've seen so far, then have all serious-programmers give a "pitch" so everyone else can vote on their favorite concept or idea. (Programmers would have to show portfolio proof they're capable of programming a game, just anything they've finished in the past.)

[Korby]

As far as the bosses go, maybe we should style it on one of the sidestory sorts of games and make the RMs based around some common theme such as the stardroids or constellations, not 8 variations of (something)Man?  Coming up with such a theme would help guide the process of creating RMs and stages.  

I'm just going to throw Greek Mythology out there because it is hella cool.

[DarkAura]

What about my idea for Rockman World VI that includes those Stardroid (or Astraloids I call them now) I've been making That I currently stalled on?