Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sunako:

If Jin says it is then that's good
enough for me. Don't argue with it.

Vincent:....right.
IRL I'm currently building a game. We're in the planning stages right now and we're trying to come up with some ideas by Weds 1/20 to start actually making a prototype. The only problem is that the game's basic concept has to be something innovative that nobody's done before.

We're going to be using game maker 8 to build it
http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker
It might look complicated but it's actually pretty easy to use and no programing experience necessary to use it
Here's some games that were made using it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdgQyOIyWPY&feature=related

Sunako: We're just putting this out here. If not, maybe you guys can test the prototype.

Sure, once we have a working prototype we'll have you test it. Remember it only runs on game maker so you're going to need to download it.

We're still only in the planning stages so if you could bounce ideas that would be really great at this point in time.

Sunako:

It's good to see you learning patience, Jin.

Vincent: Okay what here's what we're planning so far.
You know those stories where you're suppose to save the princess?
We decided how about we reverse that?
How does Bowser manage to kidanap princess Peach all the time?
Did he break into her castle and kidnap her, or did he come in with his minions?

Moving away from Bowser, you play a villain(name suggestions?) that can summon minions to his side to do his dirty work as he breaks into the (castle or Mansion?) to kidnap the princess (we might replace her with a plate of brownies instead...mmm brownies). How to summon minions is up for debate right now.
Right now I'm thinking of something similar to Fable 2 where you hold a button down to charge a meter. The longer you charge the meter the more powerful the minion you could summon (charge to rank 1, rank 2, etc). I was thinking of using slots. Let's say you have 5 slots. You can put the minion into the slot rank1, or rank2, etc, so you can spam whatever rank 1 you choose and thus adding a layer of customization.

Unfortunately there's a slight problem. Me and my partner agreed that this should be an action game (Side scroller? Platformer? Both?). If we have to charge the meter it might interrupt the flow of the game. Anybody got any ideas to work around it?

One of the things I was thinking to workaround it is to instead charge the meter by performing combos (Hitting the enemy so many times)

Another was to earn titles. If you've played Street Fighter you might have noticed the funny captions or titles the give.
"First strike, 3 hit combo, Back attack, etc"
or we could earn titles doing certain things (You earned the title Hero Beatdown, Army of One, Elite commander, Evil Destroyer. You Mastered summoning all minions. You mastered "Ignore Monologues" like the end of this video)
That way you can unlock minions instead.
Then again I only get 2-3 minutes to demo the game, so it might take too long to demonstrate.

Feedback would be great please.

Cooooool, a video game X3
A different plot then most games, I give that two thumbs up!
lol, names, i agree with jin but here's some anywayz for a default: Schatten, Breyting, Dimmur, Cefn.

I vote on mansion! But it's up to your taste and the overall atmosphere of the game. Castles are cold and creep(opinion) yet inspire awe. Mansions are warm but can also be haunting. Both can have many hidden features.

Do you get to customize the character? Put little items on your minions?

I like the concept of titles. Is it possible to get better minions with higher titles? Are there secret minions?

However, the charging system sounds like a concept from certain fighting games, you charge and are only able to do certain attacks from how much it is. It also reminds me of DMC 4 when you revved your weapon. It is possible to charge a weapon without interrupting game play. Break or collect certain items/objects, killing enemies, consuming items with a shortcut button, just holding a button but being vulnerable during attacks,
or even the health of your enemy being absorbed.

ONLY a 2-3 minute demo???

i see, well im intersted and because of i am also impatient.
....great.

I had my own vision of what the minions were going to be but my partner kept making revisions. Apparently the minions I was imagining weren't what he was imagining at all, including some of the actions of certain minions. Now I don't know what's the official minion.

He's also changed the story.
You're Lord Evil (he's now sticking with that name) and you're angry because Ms. Goodybaker only gives brownies to good little boys and girls, so now you're going to storm her factory and steal all the brownies.(sometimes he says cookies instead) Why? because you're evil. There's still going to be hero parodies, but now they're just....there for whatever reason.

The original minion ideas or at least what I envisioned them to be.

The meat shield(protect the president. Drains MP at certain rate. Longer you have it out the more it drains)
The grunt (runs forward and kills the guy in front of him with a melee attack)
The zombie commando(The guy with the rifle but can only stay there for few seconds)
The guy in the background(rains down fire)
The tower (an arm pops out of the ground and lifts you up. It becomes a temporary high ground that can also allow you to reach higher platforms
The commando(our buddy that fires a rifle and stays out, but drains your MP)
The sapper (he runs forward and suicide bombs anything in the way. The explosion can kill multiple enemies)

My partner's version

The sappers and grunts were the same thing to him.
It charges forward and kills one enemy by blowing up.
(carries a bible in prays that he doesn't have to blow up)

The companion is a copy of you and runs around on it's own killing things with melee attacks like you and dies with one hit...like you.

No projectiles whatsoever

Things that stayed essentially the same:
The guy in the background
The meat shield
The tower

Does anybody know if any of my ideas survived the revisions? Seriously.

What I'm going to try to push for is changing the story to
The Lady Goodybaker has been supporting the heroes with her delicious brownies. You break into her...factory and kidnap Lady Goodybaker, steal the brownies and cripple the heroes in one fell swoop. You get to kill some of your enemies, get some goodies, and get some @ss. You don't even like brownies. You're just doing it to be a douche. The heroes of course love their brownies and do whatever they can to stop you from kidnapping the girl who makes them.

Also hoping to rename your character to Lord Vile.

What did you guys imagined the character to be?
A jerk?
An incompetentant villian?
Pure evil surrounded by shadows?
A quiet grumpy villian?
A chaotic one like the Joker causing trouble because he can?

Battle system wise it appears we're settling for cycling through minion using two buttons. A button to charge MP, a button to summon the selected, and a button to attack.

We've decided to put off how the character acts for now in favor of focusing on the game engine right now.

Confirmed minions and enemies
The meatshield
The guy in the background {side note possible banana slug with lazahs}
The high ground
The death: Walks around slowly and anybody around him dies. He moves towards enemies. Last only a few seconds.

The kamikaze: Runs from off screen and blows up when he runs into someone he blows up. AoE

The Grunt: Follows you around, kills stuff with a melee attack. Let it run off on his own. Dies in one hit by anything. Spawns from offscreen.

Heroes:
Security Guards: Shocks you and you can’t move.
White knight: Slowly walks towards you like death and he drains your MP
Expendable marines: Shoots randomly at you
Captain Falcon: Falcon punch. Bit tougher.
Factory worker: Enemy grunt.

We've decided to call the main character Lord Evil Von Angst
Here he is walking


Here's grunt


Here's a marine


Art not final.

For a working prototype I've manage to get Lord EVA to charge MP+summon minions and built a primitive cycle system to select minions.
We're moving to phase 3 of the prototype which means we're combining sprites and backgrounds with the game mechanics to build a world