Just interested to hear what projects are on the way
from the ppl here and how they are going to fund it.

I'm working on a simple 3d-arcade game,
problem is that i excel at programming and not the visual arts.
I had to hire a Graphic artist to do my GFX, i fund it from
my job at Burger King :(

what's your project, where do you find money to fund it?

I'm working on a logic games collection. There will be Reversi, Go Moku, Checkers, a version of two player Chinese Checkers, Connect 4 and a few others. It will have two players multiplayer, hotseat or TCP, good enough AI, a nice user interface. It will also cost nothing except time, since I can handle the visuals for such a game (I think).

http://www.geocities.com/mman76dev/MyGameProject.html?1032578081020


Here is my action game where you have to think fast and move even faster! I haven't thought of a name for it yet. You play the role of a dolphin on a quest to bring order to chaos in the underwater world. You can see there are two meters at the top right corner, the air meter tells how much oxegen you have - because dolphins need to come up once in a while to get air. The other meter is the health meter of course. The screen shot shows level two. Each level has a unique challenge you need to overcome besides your enemies, in this level you have to dodge shooting arrows. I'm about 80% done, all programming and graphics were done by me. The number on the top left corner is the frame rate :) God I hope Dexterity will like it!

Good topic!

The dolphin game sounds cool. I'll be interested to see it as it comes along. I like games with dolphins, I guess, and the need for air throws an interesting limitation on what you can do in the game.

I'm working on several games. One, Cave Dweller, is a game where you're a cave man and you have to find a source of fire and get home with your torch lit before sundown. Unfortunately, there are rain clouds, geysers, and mastodons (who squirt water) trying to keep you from doing so. It's an arcade/puzzle game.

I've submitted this one to Dexterity, but haven't heard back yet. We'll see how it goes. We're also tossing around some less twitchy/time-based variants of this game, using the same art and underlying engine.

The other two games that I have in production right now will be done soon. One is of the same general type as Tetris, but it's in no way a clone of anything else. It is a fast-paced game though. The other is not twitch-based at all, and is more of a puzzle game. I'm currently evaluating online, PC, and PDA versions of these.

And then there's a longer-term game that's still in the concept phase, not even in pre-production yet. That one is a ways off yet. In the meantime, if I can get one of these others to strike, I've got a few more small games in various stages of design that could be implemented quickly.

Right now I'm funding this myself. I'm fortunate that I'm able to hire contractors and professional artists, but that doesn't make it easier really, just faster. A lot of biz-related things come down to time vs. money (OTOH, the artists I'm using -- New Pencil out of San Francisco -- are really great in what they produce!).

Yes, this is a good topic; I'm quite interested in what everyone else is working on and how they plan to be a success in doing so.

Inspired by the success of Dweep and Fitznik I set out to create a puzzle game to kick off my independent game development carrier. I actually had this crazy demo of a game with little veggie guys jumping down a plank toward some water slides, the more consecutive similar veggies that went down together the more points you got. It was a reasonably fun game but when I gave it to Steve for some feedback (he was getting a lot less submissions at the time). After several long emails from Steve he tactfully convinced me that a game of this nature was better suited as a web game because it was difficult to add anything to the game that would motivate buyers to purchase it.

Thus began my quest to develop a puzzle game that was sellable.
What I ended up with was a little off the mark but not so far as to cripple it. The game does have a FEW reflexive type elements though for the most part the game play is very puzzle gamesh. We (my designer friend and I) wanted to add some value to the genera to differentiate ourselves from Dweep and Fitznik while not alienating the nice market niche that Steve has stumbled upon.

We also didn't want to end up working on something that was too childish, or not cool enough. We wanted to be inspired by our content. So we ended up with this puzzle game with a story about a (non violent) ninja without weapons set in a medieval Japanese setting.

It's an odd mix I’ll admit, but so far we've gotten positive feedback from those who have bothered to send us mail about the project.

It was quite a difficult decision to decide weather to self publish or to attempt to get dexterity to publish for us. I think we will try our hand at marketing our own game and supporting it. We are ASP members and have plenty of good old fashioned ambition.
If it doesn't work out for us Dexterity will defiantly be the first publisher we try to pitch our game to.

Looking forward to hearing from more of you..

I'm working on my game development business plan, which should set the direction for choosing my next project. Like Dan, I will probably consider Dexterity for submission (and even if I do submit there's a high reject rate) so I'm devoting considerable part of the BP to the self-publishing contingency.

I'm doing this full-time. I got my funding from blowing off my plans to buy a house and using the down payment money instead to live on for the next year. So you can tell I really want to be successful at this. :D Steve was right, burning the ships also burns a fire under your ass. And I did burn the ships, heheheh.

The game will be 2D, but until I finish my market research I can't say what kind of game it will be. Speaking of which, I had no idea GameHouse and PopCap had gotten so huge...

Im currently finishing up my space shooter/strategy game planetary defense

http://www.positech.co.uk/planetarydefence

And I am also half way through a puzzle game (which I am finding quite hard to get motivated about).

I have a half abandoned project to do an isometric Tycoon game, and also the begginings of a space RTS.

I can see the difference between people who choose
a product they can finish (something that is feasable
to a one programmer/3-5 ppl team) and those who are
going for a commertial rated project like FPS/RTS/RPG
not to mention MMORPG which i never saw completed
among non pro team.

even so, watching from gamasutra postmortems
(http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.php?category=5)
ive seen that they have a budjet of 1-2$ mil, not to
mention 30-60 pro team members.

i think you can also spot a projects dead end just watching
a MMORPG with 0$ budget and 3 team members.

on the other end, I myself didnt want to aim too low -
ending up with a simple clone. I'm aiming toward a
niech i *know* i can:
1. finish - which is most important
2. do no 1 with style, and having enough resources to do so
3. making the game better in a way that it will be more fun
to play than others in that niche
4. not to make "just another <put your genere here> game"

that's it for now.

oh, Mman,
watch ECCO the dolphin I & II, i believe it can inspire you.

(Gil slipped in while I was posting)

One thing I want to point out is that it's great to see that everyone posting thus far seems to have a good grasp on reality in terms of their games, and an actual game project or two they're working on. There are no guarantees in this industry, but with talent, planning, work, and a bit of luck it is possible to be successful.

So this forum is a welcome change for me from the noisiness gamedev et. al., sort of like a more focused part of the ASP (yeah, I joined too ;-) ).

I'm working on my first game ' APHOMA' (will be available soon at www.yupgames.com) and I'm funding from my non-games shareware www.lottohat.com ; www.p34lotto.com

Nedzad

Alchemist, thanks for your interest, I'll try to keep people updated as much as possible :)

Gilzu, Ecco the dolphin IS the game which enspired me! Good 'ol Sega Genesis, I believe there is a PC conversion too. Although my game will be very different from Ecco, it will be more fast paced action then a long quest in search of things.

lol
i thought it was...
contact me if you'd like the PC emulator+mod for it,
theyre giving it as a freeware.

Thanks, but I already have it on Sega:) and I believe my friend has the PC version whcih I can borrow - I don't think they sell it anymore. I have a little problem however, I'm having a hard time deciding if I should make the levels scroll like they do in Ecco. At this moment the playing area is stationary like in most puzzle games from Dexterity. I tried making scrollable levels, but the frame rate drops down considerably(around 25fps) and thats on my 800Mhz, 128MB, GeForce2 comp. I want this game to be targeted at users with lower end machines. So my question is, will making the area scrollable add a lot more fun to the game? Is it worth the frame rate loss or perhaps I can extend my due date in hopes of getting a good frame rate but it is not guaranteed. What do you guys think?

i believe that diversity helps a great deal, therefore
scrooling is a good choice (25 isnt such a bad fps)

but try to use what they did on Dexteriti's Pharaohs' Curse -
make "rooms", so that each time you move to the screen lim,
you go to a different room.

also, consult gamedev.net about how to optimize your code.
i did a 75 fps RTS demo (you can see it at http://www.gamedev.net/community/gds/projects/default.asp?projectID=586),
this surly means that you can optimize your code too

You should definitely be able to get a better framerate. The Tile Engine I made runs at ~80 fps with two full layers of tiles (about 210 tiles at 800x600) AND about 200 particles on screen at the same time. And this is on a Pentium II 350 with a Voodoo 3 card (I'm using OpenGL for the graphics, "fake 2D"). And there should be no difference in ramerate whether you're scrolling or not. At least that's how I designed my engine.

Yeh, I was thinking the same thing, Dexterity needs more scrolling games. I don't really like the "room" style because it can get confusing and you don't know which room you've been in and stuff like that. I'll try optimizing, read some articles and hopefully I can pull it of. So hopefully my next update on the game will be scrollable levels!

If I remember correctly, this article helped me when I was making it: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article743.asp

I'm currently working on a scrolly game. I tried lot's of tests to see what I could acheive speed wise. and came to the conclusion that there were two good options.

If you are going for slower machines use 256 colours. (I come from an Amiga heritage so 256 still seems like plenty). You end up with much less memory to move around, and you you can do all sorts of blending effects with lookup tables. Artwork needs a little more attention though.

If you are supporting faster machines go for 3D acceleration (not neccesarily for 3d images). You eliminate a chunk of slower computers but you get blending modes and fill rate to burn. Nice rotation and scaling are a bonus.

The type of backbuffer can be a bit of an issue too. If you are doing rendering with blending in software many video cards take a huge speed hit when you read from the framebuffer.

[now to be on topic again]

My next project is a scrolly platformer. Atually I'm doing a tetris-ey game at the moment but that was just a brief diversion. I'm going for a style that I quite liked in Commander Keen 4. (I've tacked a shrunken screenshot to this post).

It's a 256 colour game. I quite like the engine that it has now (with scripting and everything) . Most of the work now is in adding lots of monsters and levels.
Making levels for platform games is harder than I imagined. You don't notice the amount of effort it takes when you are running your cutesy character past lots of pretty scenery.

Oh, and there's Fitznik II. Mostly done, just more levels to make. I try and make each level to use some new idea that makes it different from all the rest. When you are making a set of 63 levels that's a lot of new ideas to come up with.

I just finished a little mini demo of how my game will work using DirectX 8 with hardware acceleration instead of 7. I made scrolling levels and the frame rate is excellent too! So the cpu speed required would be 250-300Mhz minimum, but then I thought about it and wondered who would have a 3d graphics card on a Pentium 1 or 2 300Mhz? I don't think a lot of people with lower cpu speed have 3d cards. I'd be interested to know how well Strayfire sells, probably well if Dexterity chose to publish it. So I can require 3d card and have scrolling levels with superb frame rate or keep my game the way it is now and only require dx7 because I use DirectDraw only......hmm.....

1) Scrolling levels + 3d card = good frame rate = fun = good chance of publishing = loss of customers without 3d cards.

2) No scrolling levels + no 3d card = good frame rate = not so fun = not so good chance of publishing = gain of customers without 3d card = loss of customers who look for a funner game.

I think I'll go with option 1:)

Mman: there is absolutely no relationship between DirectDraw and scrolling code. Other than cache and memory issues, and if implemented correctly, scrolling has no impact whatsovever on graphic performance. Whether you're drawing a tile at an offset of 0 or at an offset of 203, it's all the same to DirectDraw - "fill-up the current back buffer with whatever you're sending me".

I suggest you review your scrolling code as I suspect there's a serious flaw in its implementation if that feature alone raises the minimum system requirements for your game. :) Remember, we had scrolling games way before being spoiled with Pentiums and DirectX. :)

Is there any chance your poor scrolling frame rate could be due to a lack of culling? When the world is broken into rooms, the culling is natural (either you draw room A or you draw room B). But when the world scrolls, you might be inclined to just think of everything as one big room and try to draw everything (and let clipping take care of it all). Calculating and drawing a large number of off screen items can be costly, so make sure your scrolling code determines the boundaries of the screen and ignores anything that is completely out of that range.

I've worked on a scrolling game using the DirectDraw of DirectX 5 a few years back. Turned out the overhead of blitting a suraface was significant, and drawing a full screen of tiles (about 1000 of them, give or take) would drop the frame rate a lot.

Applying the buffering technique described in this (http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/advimgpan/default.asp) article basically removes this overhead, dropping the average number of blits from 1000 to maybe 10, at the cost of an extra screen buffer.

"Remember, we had scrolling games way before being spoiled with Pentiums and DirectX. "

Good point:)

LordKronos, you are probably right. I'll try clearing only the visible area of the screen.

That article is down, I'll try later.

"Remember, we had scrolling games way before being spoiled with Pentiums and DirectX. "

Ahh yes. back in the days when the public would accept games in 320x200 and we knew everyone had a VGA card that ciould do ModeX.

640x480 is 4.8 times the pixels. You can't rely on hardware scrolling. If you run in 24 bit colour then you are talking 14.4 times the memory to move around.

Remember, it's computational speed that obeys Moores law not memory bandwidth. That's why we have such cache heavy chips these days and some of the old 16 bit processors only used the bus on one in 4 cycles.

Having said all that though. 3d cards do some amazing things with their cusom memory layouts.

I am working with a team of 4 here in Australia. We have the unemployment thingy here that keeps us alive durring the development process for our first game. I think in the USA you don't get this. So at the moment we have no funding at all. But we want to work for ourselves and want to establish a little game making company.

If you want to have a look at our progress you can check out my site.

http://www.gplgames.com/B-Games-Main-1.html

I am the artist and lead designer for this project. It was orgianlly my board game and short cartoon movie. To much transformers.

I am not a professional artist I have only ever made $ 5 buck off one of my drawings. If you need basic graphics to be generated I could possibly help out.

Involved in my own project. Writing the Design Document at the moment. Yep, you guessed it from the tone of my fingers, eh? Its an RPG. I plan on making a shareware singe player version. From there one day I would, hopefully, move on to an online forum where the game can trully meet its destiny.

Here is the rough background story for my game (Needs work):
(Please note that this story is copyrighted in my name - John Swenson) ;)
************************************
United Galactic Security

Military report [EL847933021]:

In response to enquery on 8/5/2180.

The device known as the "Rift Infusor" was not found, but further investigation uncovered clues pertaining to the nature of the technology. Although much of the area was incinerated, we hope for more evidence shortly. A comprehensive report is forthcoming.

The following voice file, among dozens, was confiscated from the Worx Basin Laboratory computer network deep within the Martian soil before the absolute and total destruction of it therein. We hope this provides some resolution as to the whereabouts of Mr. Blake Edwards.

File: Update: 6/2/2180
************************************
"Lucky for the new security, hmm? If it weren't for that I'd wager UGS would have had a workaround. They might have been able to tap into the Infuser, if it weren't for private teams like the IronClads. We knew that there would be a hack eventually, following the trail of clues we must have left behind. How many instances have they wondered why Worx Laboratory was using slightly more surge than required for their work? How many missing colonists do they need for a hint? And consider the bursts, completely unexpected. Perhaps they detected those to?"

"Doubtfull, Mr. Lake. The possibility that they detected the bursts is at best remote. They would need the Rift Infusor itself, which I believe is out of the question. Last I was there, they were still simulating photon coil operation. I figure we have 4 hours tops to get everyone through the gate. On top of that we need to loop the inducer, resulting in a catastrophic explosion minutes after we gate. The Titus colony should be fine. But our project, everything, will be gone. There's so much more we needed to know. What if we're wrong? The problems that have cropped up recently are cause for concern. Nonetheless. Mr. Lake, setup the Inducer on a loop ASAP. Mr. Thorn, you better be listening. Gather everyone together and Gate them immediately, got that? Follow the project plan people, you all know what to do.

"Thorn here, 10-4 Blake."

"I have to comment, Blake. I doubt very little that our initial formula will prove wrong. I'm concerend with the new flood of data. I've spoken to you about this, but the RGS system processes twofold more projections. If there is another band we're missing here, this might explain it. I know that we have no time to prove one way or another, but we could be moving more than just those who've joined The Welcome. This could be far worse. Remember those people we saw inside the spacial rip? What the hell was that? Science? Give me a formula that can produce energy at that level, and I might as well be God. They were like ghosts. And then you have to consider the extra individuals that arrived. They were not on the list. No bugs detected. We had the bots swarming them, but found nothing. Our only choice was to send them through. And about the Doctor. I spoke with him, we had a long talk. Blake, those people had no IDF signature. Every known lifeform has an IDF signature! And there is something else. Doc couldn't work his reader on these people, it was spitting out garbage. This may seem out there, Blake. The very fabric of our soul might very well be in danger. The Ricardo Science Foundation did studies on some new evidence, this is all suggesting we have a native matrix of rift particles inside us. It worries me dearly. I keep seeing those ghosts, god. Ripping souls from the continuum would be dirty. Blake I mean that."

"Understood, Will. But we know so little about the continuum. There's nothing more we can do, however. No time, and we have to complete what we set out to do. You know it, I know it, once this is done we're gone. Period. On the other side, there's no real way to know if we can figure any of this out. As far as we know, its likely that our memory will be wiped out due to the matter conversion. Thats that. I'm going to finish a farewell note for UGS and seal it up. The rest of you follow the project plan and get everyone out, little less than 4 hours and counting.."
************************************
End File: Update: 6/2/2180

File: Farewell
************************************
What is the "Rift Infusor" project? It started small, between a group of us down here. We knew that with diligence and our expertise combined, we could compile this project together, ahead of its theorized counterpart. 3 geniuses of our time put their blood into this project, under your noses. They to are gone, forever. Endless years trained by, a sweaty spell in all manners of the thought. Well this spell grabbed us by the throat! Dreams and overnight brainstorm. This was more than a vision! We were putting together something unmentionable. Something so wrong, but unstoppable. You cannot expect such vigour to die away. This project started for reasons I cannot fathom, to this day. They say the Devil is in the details. Where did God go. Where did we go?! Nonetheless, things happened. Low and behold one day a surprise was upon us. The inducer succeeded, we had a gate. The day of welcome was near.

This is a timeless void we live in. Never have I believed this more than I do now. We succeeded in opening the fabric of time, the tissue that cradles us. Isn't this the place we were born in? We played as babies? We grew into adults and henceforth built ourselves pretty kingdoms? And now I've reduced it to the smallest of fabrics, a figure deep within the blood of our universe. A pulse strong, beating without condition. Every day, every night, nothing stops this!

One day. It was one day. I've named it The Welcome. On this day 100's visited, a meeting we had arranged. Strangely, many others were to arrive. The "unmentioned". Straight through our security. A security breach? No. The computers never noticed the additional individuals. This was the strangest thing of all. We didn't know it at first. The first clue that something was odd was the laboratory doctor and a following head count. The laboratory doctor was stone cold that day. He had run a series of tests because of "abnormal readouts", to say the least. He looked like a ghost when I later prodded him for answers. All he could manage was, "Blake, just keep the ball rolling. There's something larger than us at work." I know him well, I trust that his judgement is strong. What is of even greater concern is that we rechecked the computers. The "unmentioned" are not listed, but there is nothing at all wrong with the security system. Like they were ghosts. And we're the inventors of the Rift Infusor, of all things?! And we can't explain this? I do admit there was a strange air. Stale? I can't say. Maybe the UGS knows something about this? Yes, all of this under your nose! God forbid that you ever find yourself real senses! Real power isn't given, its taken. I know damn well. And thats why the UGS is where it is. The UGS is going to choke on this one, for a long time.

During the welcome, one man asked me, "Why is God?" I couldn't respond. In his eyes I saw. Such a secret we have kept. We've played with fire, for sure. But a success I knew, but cannot trully understand. I will confide with you for one moment about an angel I saw during my accident on the Titus colony. An angel called my name, I almost died. Its given me nightmares ever since. In that mans voice I heard this voice, again. "Why is God?" Not so much a voice, but a thought. Why? Who is this man? This man, who is he? Little time I had, and nor did I want to attract any attention to my experience on Titus. Might think me crazy? Don't need to remind me. And you, I just wanted you to know about this episode. Yes, I'm devouted to God. In all its mystery. Whatever happens of The Welcome and the project itself, thats for God to say. Gods word lives. In his angels, in us.

About the visitors. More came. In total, 9500 entered the gate under the eye of the UGS. This was all planned beforehand. Using the latest in teleportation, we were able to port many from a Corser Transport Ship in orbit around Mars. Some very rich individuals played a large role. Noeone is left, though. Hard to believe it was only days ago. Privacy counts, and here it is life. Many souls now, gone. Gah. They're gone for good. Another place. A place I've named Praxis. Universes away from you or I, deep within a galaxy teaming with life. Here a new world brews, and it is phenomenally beautifull in its entirety. Due to the affects of Gate Walking an individual never dies. Their matrix is retained within the continuum. Much of this isn't well understood by us. Very dangerous. But there is more to this aspect than I would ever admit to. This whole ordeal has been quite taxing.

My time is nary an hours worth. This writing, gone. Be left for you sure, but me. What about me. I am sorry for toying with such native forces. I am hardly alone. But the secret is that I did not do this alone. Not one member of my team is aware of the true nature of this project. A garden of souls, it is. This secret will die with me? That is the Lords decision. It is not my decision. There was something far greater than us at The Welcome, moving these people like the hand of God.
************************************
End File: Farewell

Wow, nice story Johny25. I'm guessing you are going to need a lot of in-game cutscenes to explain the story because I don't think a lot of people would finish "reading" something so long;)

Anyways, I almost fully converted my dolphin game to my scrolling engine. I still have to find another method of animating waves. Here is the screen shot (Notice the x and y position).

http://www.geocities.com/mman76dev/MyGameProject.html?1033398532130

I get about 100fps on my 800Mhz computer on Win 98, while my friend gets about 60fps on his 1.2Ghz comp on XP. Don't know why the difference is there. I'm thinking I'll release a demo soon so that some people can try it out and maybe report any bugs or give comments/suggestions:)

Well, I'm working on a game called Monkeys Odyssey, a space shooter game. It's not a game of big hordes of enemies, most of the levels have between 2 and 5 enemies. Im still tweaking gameplay a bit, but the game is almost finished, maybe I'll add more powerups. Im also making a web site which you can look here: http://monkeysodyssey.servegame.com (its still under construction) and you can download a playable beta from monkeysodyssey.servegame.com/game3.zip
The music and sound effects are not final ones (the menu music is, the rest is not). :)

I just finished a game called Rocknor's Bad Day.

http://www.monolux.com

It's a scrolling puzzle game in the style of Fitznik and Indy Desktop Adventures, but of course with it's own twists and unique elements.

Although the free version is available for download and I'm selling the full version, I am re-working the demo levels that are provided in the free version. I'm tweaking them to show off a little more of what the game has to offer.

I think an important aspect of making a successful game is getting feedback and making tweaks as needed. I got a lot of feedback during testing but even now, when I'm shipping, I'm getting a lot of interesting comments that are helping me tweak.

~Hanford

One thing you might want to fix on your web site is that your 30-day satisfaction guarantee is in conflict with your return policy page. Your return policy page tells people they can't get a refund if they simply don't like the game, while your guarantee says they can.

Thanks for spotting that (and telling me) Steve.

I have 2 policies -- the new one, and the old one.

I left the old one on it's own page for historical purposes, but the idea was to link to the new one exclusively.

However, I missed that one link. Thanks for the head's up on it.

No problem. It always amazes me that no matter how much time we spend working on our web sites, someone else can come in and find a mistake in the first 60 seconds. :)