Boys like Girls

[pjvdg]

It worked for Tomb Raider and now many new games are using it aswell: a girl as hero of the game...
And those games are mostly popular.
Are we(male) so low that it only takes a cute female face to buy a game??

Ask yourself this question:
Would you have bought Tomb Raider if the hero was a guy?

I'm asking this because I'm thinking about making a game with a girl doing the main role.

Tell me what you think...

[Fox]

I didn't buy Tomb Raider because for me it's crap. I'd rather buy the original, Indiana Jones (didn't buy it though) and btw I don't like miss croft at all.

Yes, men are that base. I did not buy any of the Tomb
Raider games, because, well, they are crap. If you are
thinking of doing a game with a female in the main role,
dont make it 3rd person, or people will compare your
game to tomb raider. Im pretty sure you dont want
that =).

Z.

[edit]
I'd also like to say that Miss Croft's face, well, its quite ugly.

[Sastraxi]

And they're coming out with a Lara Croft movie too.. *ack* I think I'll will die the moment one of my friends wants to go see it :P

[kedaman]

i agree, i once downloaded the third one, and played it a bit, didn't even complete the first stage, got bored and deleted the thing

[Jotaf98]

Ok, ok - maybe having a female hero helps a bit, but a game also has to be good!

Also, Lara Croft's model wasn't THAT well modeled, I think we all agree on that. I'd rather buy a game with a big robot with an even bigger gun blasting some other robots away

[Sastraxi]

Better yet, blasting away Lara Croft... I can see it now:

Lara Croft vs. Battlemech... who will win?

(Lara Croft of course )

[MoMad]

hey I downloaded a freeware of the game at http://www.download.com/ but the damn thing was so complicated, it has no manual, no goal, no anything... just some chick with a gun in the middle of a jungle...

really, I like Multiplayer Games but how about this, try something new, like Apes!!! lol. I mean my favorite game to this time besides UT is Worms Armageddon!! that game was intensly fun. But, for your question ill agree that a female face can sell, but the game has to be a bit more interesting and focused... has anyone played sin before? they have a female character... (in the multiplayer mode). BUt the game has to make sense and have a rule... not just run around and shoot at trees like Toumb Raider... err what was i thinking? ..o0(mmm, juicy)0o.. or maybe not!

BTW: the movie looked great!! sandra bullocks (sp?) is ok in my dictionary.

That reminds me, Is the game based on the movie 'Planet of the Apes' already out?

I loved that film!

[Chris]

Check this out buddies.... http://www.tombraider.com/flash.html

[Fox]

So you want to make a female hero in your game? This is ok I think. In every fighting game I play I take the woman because they're mostly faster and can jump higher and of course they look better

However, this Lara Croft thing just sucks because of the game and the model. If you have a good game and a good female model this will work fine I tell you!

The best example (as mentioned above) are 1st person shooters like Unreal, who cares how you look like there? The game's fun and you take a model you like, that's it.

Conclusion: People like female heros, but if your game looks like Tomb Raider in any way it will automatically suck.
I personally would prefer a manga model (like Yae in Mystical Ninja / Goemon ^_^ She even looks better for me in 3D than in 2D!) but it depends on the game... Always remember the game is the main thing why people buy it, a cute model just underlines the personality of your game (like in Oni, Konoko perfectly fits in her role as fighting japanese agent).

[Jotaf98]

Hey Fox, it looks like you really like Manga and all that kind of stuff! Maybe you should meet my cousin 'cause he spends 2 hours a day on that

[MoMad]

hmm, maybe a Manga type game with apes and chicks, like Dr. Winslow?? err?? the diamond Apes in the Simpsons?? lol.

do something like this for a game:
--a cross between Dragon Ball Z and The Simpsons

You have homer and he supercharges into the next, which is kind of weird since the moon causes the sayans to turn into Apes, so you have this Game with switching characters.

it should go like this... you are playing the game, and at some random point in the time line, your character turns into an ape, and you have to learn to controll him and if u'r good, collect its power and use it for ur own good...

well thats pretty rough, but its the best i can come up with?

Tribes was a nice Game, and im looking forward to Tribes 2... houw about Unreal Tournament 2?? neh, besides Half Life wasnt so bad either... all the great Games happen to be 1st person shooter for some reason. And if you can "switch" from 1st to 3rd, all for the better. Quake for example, WOW. but i hate it since all these quake fanatics always bashing newbies!!!!

I mean everyone;s a newbie sometimes!! unless ur something else! so, ur game could have something such as a mission, or a setting... Worms- they have a landscape and the point of the game is to kill the other team, Bomberman- there are 4 corners, each player is at one corner, the point of the game: kill the other 3 and u win. there are also team tags and other modes, which brings me to the next big thing in gaming, you need differnt modes of play, you dont want the same crappy "lora-croft-in-the-jungle" mode, you need different modes, like Unreal--that was a fantastic game!

also, you need to have a range of weapons, Worms Armageddon has over 50 unique wepon sets and Tribes has a little something they call MODs which means that you can add your own levels and weapons... not that you have to do all this, it would be nice if you have a selection whether set, or the ability to load new ones... like Street Fighter for instance, you never know what moves they have untill you play them at least a thousand times

but u know what would be mighty awesome and godlike???

is that Unreal, was not only able to compete with Quake, but it kicked its ass!! Unreal is better than Quake in many ways, there multiplayer, there Smart Bots, Quake has the lamest and dumbest bots in a game, it looks more like animation than AI!! but the fact of matter is that you need some sort of AI, unless you have an all online Game like Tribes, then you will get into a different problem.

Unreal came out of the blue and started compteting with the best 1st person games industry --the same ones that were making quake and doom and so on.... but the ironic part is that Unreal was able to compete and get the best of the contest at some point... that hardly happens in such industries, since quake is perfected by "the hardcore" fans... the one's that are so newbie unfriendly and bestow/condemn any1 who dares to enter their portal.

I just dont see tha point... it only takes a simple piece of mind to get started yet confidence all the way. Remember what I said because you might come across this sometime

And a completely awesome game doesnt take a single person to do.... its something that takes months, even years... hey i know, we can help you with the game, i know im free... also, think about the engine... AT first, i was thinking about "Pinky and the Brain's world Domination!!" kind of game, but then i Realized with all due, i'd be competing with Microsoft Age of Empires and Warcraft, and many others... this was my original vision (see it with me here)...

[vision]

• *Game Consists of only Robots, there are no lifesources....
  *Game takes place in a plantery space... maybe mars or some weird galaxy far far away??
  *Game starts out with a "smart bot" that will guide you through your quest for world domination
  *First you need to build a mining center where you will extract enoim and metal or crystal from the earth...
  *Then you will build a unit controll center...
  * here comes the best part;
  You will be able to build and train new robots with awesome and powerful AI. You will be able to "Program Your Bots" with either an inline script or an external file... this might be new to some but its been done... many games such as Tribes and Unreal have a scripting language they use for their Bots, and u'll know what I mean if you were able to host a server on these...
  * Last but not least, the game is a 100% online game... ticks happen every 15 mins, and the game is set up so that the majority are the ones who controll not some overpowered jack... there is a political system which makes the game so interesting... and it is able to switch from 1st to 3rd at the press of a button. It is all Graphicl Gui and very hard if you dont follow the manual... but im sure this sort of game will attract at least an audience of some several thousand europeans, and some other several thousand canadians, australians, and americans...
  * The game is purely programmable... the players controll the future of the game... just give them a piece of land to conquer and they'll go on from there... there are some people that were meant to be rulers and tehre are those that were meant to be ruled. the game simply demonstrates the concept.
  * also, the game is skinning intensive, each bot can be skinned... and the skinnig should be similar to that of Unreal...
  * for weapons, each user starts with absolutely nothing and is expected to go on from there and take the course of survival ... users find ION elements and become inventive with their weapons and maybe mix in some crystal and then some...

That is the view of the game so far, alas its more than "my $.0002" and would take at least 3 years or so to complete... (by myself, without any $$$, no artists?,etc)

so u sort of need to start thinking of those concepts.

this is the best site on game dev:
http://www.gamasutra.com/
http://www.gamedev.net/

good luck mate, let me know if u need help... also, check out:

http://sourceforge.net/ --oops
[/vision]

so its said and done... now i gotta go to class... cya l8tr g8trs.

[Jotaf98]

Hey, I could help you with the scripting language. I made a new scripting language for my games, and all it needs to work is the basic functions that only a real game has! (create unit, remove unit, show image, fire bullet...)

Here are its features:

* Ability to implement more functions JUST BY ADDING THEM TO A MODULE 'As Is' (!)
* Built-in AUTOMATIC recognition of string variables WITHOUT DECLARATIONS (!)
* (And the best one of all ) NESTED BLOCKS: real IFs, LOOPs, FORs, CASEs, and of course their corresponding ENDs, but NESTED like in VB (!)

Ok, I really can't remember any more really new/cool/original features it has. If you need a scripting engine, hum, I might even make a DLL with it so anyone can use it

[MoMad]

wow thats awesome jotaf!!!!

is it in vb or c/c++? wow. Im also working on a 3d winapi game project... or wait... i think ill be using a game engine i downloaded from ALLAPI.NET to make a "basic" representation of what the game should actually be like! Hey, I already started working on this idea last jully, but i never got around to anything beyond "ideas"... but yeah, i can also help out... pjvdg, are you really serious about this? we can pull this off in 3 months or less (just the beta) then we might get some money and make a official release

[MoMad]

I just realized that im not the only simpsons fan around here... cool

[Jotaf98]

Hey, I like the Simpsons too. Does anyone here watch Futurama too, it's by the same author and with the same layout?...

Anyway, my scripting language is coming along pretty good (sorry but I don't feel very modest today... ) . I only stopped working on it because it was almost complete, and there was nothing to add to it except for a game (coming out soon)

Oops, almost forgot to say, it was written in pure VB code...

[MoMad]

yeah futurama is awesome!! but i still cant compare it to the simpsons... the simpsons is the kings of the world!! lol.. j/k.

so how does ur scripting language work anyways? is it like load stuff off of a text file and executes the commands?

hmm, i can help with the game... i also do have an idea... lol. what do u think?

I like futurama, too bad we don't get the new episodes here.

[MoMad]

what do u mean? reruns? we dont get anything but new episodes here.

[SteveCRM]

Well good luck guys if you actually do it!

I think some games could be good in the style of tomb raider if the story and graphics are good enough

maybe something like the matrix?

[MoMad]

whoa hold up a sec there... i think you're lost now because the Matrix has nothing to do with Tomb Reider!!



i have a whole bunch of AI scripting documents, but I havent yet decided what type of game I want to make... but since im just a starter, it will have to be a side scroller of some type or tile based. But it can still be a complex one... just not too complex since im kind of new at this... and it will be my first.

now i have decided to use a database tracking system or some sort of scripting system because its much more efficient... I dont know how to set up direct X in c/c++ yet so im gonna use vb for now... but will later port it as i finish learning windows directx programming using c/c++.

anyways, i still havent completely decided and satisfied with the major components of the project which is the main story and the whole idea... but ill get started soon and i might start on some topic that has to do with apes?? lol... some animal or imaginative jungle sceen... rgb anyone?? neh, i like strategy and action... im also thinking of mixing these two...

any suggestions? comments? help? anyone?

[pjvdg]

Nope, not even reruns, their now doing reruns of star trek instead.....

[SteveCRM]

What I meant was the same type...like perspective...kind of with puzzles, etc.

[MoMad]

wouldnt it be better to change the */ to //??

or /* ... */?
try to be more standard because many people already adopt this system of comments... (c/c++,java,php,javascript,actionscript,python,cobol?)... etc...

also, have something like this:

//Javascript Code
var firstVariable;
var secondVariable;
var arrayOfVariables = new Array("1","2","3","4","5");

funcion myFunction(n)
{
n=SetFlag(1,2);
if(n)
{
Debug.Print "FLAG 1.2 SET!!";
}
else
myFunction(n++);
} //end function

I think there is an option in vb to use external scripting using vbscript or javascript... and there is a way to limit the script stuff.

but im sure its not too hard to make an object that does complex scripting in c/c++ but since you're using vb, we can always port it using a dll??

and then EOF will not be necesary because you will know when the file ends by code. unless you have morestuff after the eof that you dont want to evaluate like error handling and stuff, but if you use javascript style scripting or vbscript style, you know that it will not be necessary... ill look for that option in vb today.

btw: the simpsons is better than futurama because they [still] kick tots!!!!

[Jotaf98]

Ok, ok - I just wanted it to be somewhat different. I even got a name for it, Jotascript!

Do you think sepparating the parameters by spcaes instead of commas would look good?

[MoMad]

well actrually use something like this:

read text [script] file.
get rid of all extra spaces... (2[space]=1[space] and 1[newline]=1[space] untill all extra spaces are gone)
then look for keywords, and then using the apropriate function call, check for the data, then compute and return the result

that should work fine... the spaces and quotes can be used together... sorry if im just confusing the hell out of ya.

let me know what the state of ur script is so far so i can help ya test it. hey, my game is starting to get into shape now im worried about my shietty graphics though oh well... ill go surf for some good looking graphics

[Jotaf98]

Well... this is the third time I'm re-building my RPG from scratch.

Something I picked up with all my "not-very-good"-experience is that you should worry about the details LATER. In my first attempt, I had to wait 2 months until I had some graphics to work with. I also started by making the special effects routines... not a very good start. They didn't work and made my code look MESSY.

Now I'm trying to make it work in DX Windowed Mode (for better debug ) , then I'll implement the tile engine (at least I have the map editor ready from the first version!). Then I'll make the animations, scripts...

So, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE GRAPHICS NOW! Make some crappy ones with Paintbrush, and you'll see about them later

BTW, I have posted something about making a game work in windowed mode in the Games and Graphics Programming Forum (here in VB-World). Please do something about it... it doesn't work and I don't know why!