Game Idea: Crazy or Cool?

Okay. So I have a game idea that sounds crazy, but I think could be really fun. I have no idea how I would go about making it, so let me tell you and you can give me your ideas and suggestions. Please bear with me. It may take a while to explain.

The game opens with a start screen that is divided into eight sections. Each section is for a player (there is room for eight players).
Each section contains:

1. A picturebox that displays a read-only color (the user should not be able to edit it, colors can be blue, red, green, yellow, pink, orange, cyan and silver)
2. A checkbox to determine if that color is going to played (that way any number of people can play, you just check a color for each person playing)
3. Two buttons side-by-side. (e.g. you click the left button in the red section and a message comes up that says 'Press any key on the keyboard", do the same with the right button and those two keys become the method of steering for the red player) In addition, the button will display the character for the key you pressed. In case that was confusing, let's say the red player pressed N after he clicked the left button. The left button now displays the letter N. Next he clicked the right button and pressed M. When the game starts, he will turn left with N and steer right with M.

There is a strip at the bottom that has a numeric up-down box and a start button. You enter the number of points you're going to play to in the numeric up-down box and click start to begin the game. For our example, let's say three people are playing and they selected colors blue, red and silver.

The start panel fades out and a black screen appears. The program starts drawing a blue line, starting a random point. One second later, a red line starts drawing at another random point, and the same happens with the silver line. When red presses the N key his line begins to curve to the left and the M key curves it to the right. The same goes for the other colors, just with different keys. Every 20 pixels, each line turns black for 5 pixels, but keeps drawing. The goal is to curve your line through the black spaces in the lines. Everytime you successfully pass through a black gap, you get a point. But, if you curve your line back into your own or someone else's (the colored part, not the black gaps), your line stops drawing and you are out for the rest of the round. Every ten seconds, the lines start drawing a little bit faster, adding to the challenge. It can get pretty competitive if you start trying to cut people off. When it gets down to only one person left, a 10-second timer starts. At the end of the ten seconds, the round is over. That insures that the last person left can't gather too many points without the others playing.

When the round is over, a form appears offering an "Exit Game" button and a "Proceed To Next Round" button. The game continues as I described until someone reaches the number of points set previously in the numeric up-down box. Also, Esc will pause the game at any time.

So, I hope I did a good job describing it. If you got a good picture of how it works, please let me know if you have any ideas. Especially about getting the program to draw the lines.

Kitty Softpaws

1. You are lucky to have 8 friends

2. 8 sections... are the lines drawn in all of the boxes or just 1, or is there a Large game field box in addition?

3. Sounds like an extremely easy project to me. I could write it in a single night.

4. If you are lucky enough to have 8 friends to play this fun and simple game with you, then wow.

5. Let me know if you need any help. I don't know about it being popular, but perhaps it is more important---
that it's popular to YOU folks! Enjoy this time of your lives!

Joe

Hint: Use API to get the keys asynchronously, and loops to draw the lines with small random vector values to control line direction. Picture1.point(x,y) will return color values.
Turn based is a good idea since not all keys can be pressed at the same time (max of 4-8, I think...)

Wow, this looks like a game that I would play! If you manage to make it, I want to see it! Even better would be to make online multiplayer

Easy boy. Online in VB6? Taint' so easy McGee! But if she can do it, then cool.
Whoops! I forgot what an old fart I am --- Assuming she IS writing in VB6... Now VB.NET I dunno.
Sounds like light cycles, there were a million versions of this written.

:) Between friends and family, I have plenty of people to play with. (and when I say "friends", I don't mean people that I know by a Facebook button click) And besides, you don't even have to have eight players, that's just the max capacity. You could play just one-on-one. And, don't worry, I'm not going to try to market it or anything, so it doesn't have to be popular.

To clarify about the forms, there are two separate windows. One is the "control panel" in which you can decide which colors are playing (and which keys they will use), while the second window is the "game field" where the lines are drawn.

I didn't think it would be very easy, but I'm glad you have some experience. If you have time, could you post some sample code that draws a line, starting at a random point?

Kitty Softpaws

I quite like the idea. It's basically a take on a standard Worm game. Scoring for passing through gaps is a nice twist and with 8 players I could imagine this could get pretty frantic - and frantic is what simple games like this thrive on. I can't help feeling 8 people around 1 keyboard is going to get pretty crowded though so maybe re-think that a bit.

I'd suggest, as a start point, just look up how to program Worm. That's essentially what you're doing and then adding a few twists of your own. It's a fairly standard first game for people to write so you should find plenty of examples on the net. In fact there's probably one somewhere in this forum's code bank.

edit> here's a worm game by plenderj. His is VB6. If you want a .Net version Lord Orwell has linked one from that thread.

She's probably aware that multiple USB keyboards/keypads are usable - I'm writing your sample application now.

Here ya go!

So... Ya like it??? Heh. :D

You might want to consider game pads instead.
Keypads/Keyboards share the same keys, and that would make the game turn-based because you can only press a few keys simultaneously
(regardless of which keyboard you're on - I've already tried it with a multi-play I was making a while back)
DirectInput could be used to read the game pads/joysticks.
I know you were trying to keep it simple and cheap, maybe.
I read your original post more carefully.

Slightly better version for you with score keeping and better crash handling.
Hit space to start (the button), then use the numeric pad to move, you should be able to move through the grey zones.
Watch that white line --- he's tricky!

Think I'll quit here

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mikorians

Think I'll quit here

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I'll try it When I come home from work

(Kicks up feet)
Yeah...
I can keep poking at it if you like it and want to see more.
It's still very primitive, and I don't want to go through what it would take to polish it into a FINAL PRODUCT. :eek:
But primitive can still be fun... :)

On the subject of fun but primitive games...
I have an old silly comedy application called 'The Never Ending Poem'.
If you could tell me your opinion about it, it would be hilarious to me to hear your response.
I also have an old unfinished generic RPG maybe you could enjoy (no plot, just a map loader and a sample map)

I do want to dust off the old RPG a bit, you can make your own maps and tiles now.

My apologies for taking so long to say anything. We had a lightening storm early last week and our internet antenna (we have tower to antenna internet) was struck. The internet immediately dropped. We had a technician come out on Friday and he replaced it, but found out our router was fried when it struck. So, I went to town today to get a router, and am back online now.

I haven't had a chance to check out your prototypes yet, but promise I will check them out soon. Thank you for your ideas.

KittySoftpaws

Um . . . I downloaded your project file and realized that I can't open .vbp files. I'm working in Visual Studio 2010. Microsoft used to have a converter available, but doesn't anymore. If nothing else, you might be able to post the .exe file and code separately.

Sorry, we are not allowed to post .exe files here.
Good luck!