[pygame] Buried In Game Ideas

[Kris Schnee <kschnee@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Ethan Glasser-Camp wrote:
> I'm interested in the curious use case Kris posts -- checking for
> object identity as part of a sea adventure? I can only imagine. :)

Heh! About that...

<http://kschnee.xepher.net/code/070521ShiningSeaDemo.zip>

This is a demo release from a few days ago. It's got the basic 
interface, game logic (switching between screens), main "wandering" 
screen, title screen, dummy options screen, and fast-travel screen, with 
enough of the "edge tiles" drawn (go north) to give you an idea of what 
they should look like. WASD, RShift, and Enter are the main keys.

I've got a problem though. Well, several, but regarding the game 
specifically:

I rejoined the forum GameDev.net 
(<http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/>), wanting to brainstorm some 
game design ideas. I basically said, "This ocean thing is what I've been 
working on; what should happen in the villages?" And the (much more 
polite and useful than given here) response was, "You have a bunch of 
disconnected systems, but you don't actually know what your game is about!"

That's not quite true though. I'd sketched out how it could be a 
coherent game. The way I'd planned it, I was looking to buff up the 
engine and build a simple open-ended RPG, where you wander mostly 
aimlessly through random islands and caves, then maybe use that as a 
springboard for a more complex idea I have in mind. The appeal of the 
simple RPG would be that it's procedural rather than truly random, so 
that you can say to other players, "Check out the island at (42,0); it's 
got neat stuff," and it'll be the same for them as for you. People would 
end up mapping the game world together. I've also got old code for a 
battle system I could use for it. But would it be fun in its own right?

Meanwhile I've got a couple of other ideas I'd like to work on:
-A Joust clone with a little plot (probably not too hard to do)
-A storytelling game based on the Arabian Nights (requires AI to do right)
-The long-neglected AI (which can use the existing ocean-game code as 
its "world")
-A base-building RPG (simpler than an RTS) which is the other half of 
the complicated version of the ocean game. (Have some neat code already)

None of those are especially high priorities. I'd like to build 
something that's within my skill level, that I can finish in a 
reasonable time, that I can learn something from, and that's fun for 
people to play. I'm content to work in 2D, and have no intention to do 
an online game. Any thoughts?

Kris

Hedley: "My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought 
careening thru a cosmic vapor of invention!"
Taggart: "Ditto."
-Blazing Saddles