So, the compo has started. The sort of ideas I have:

• HUD editor/library. Basically, this would be a GUI editor/library with no support for direct interaction, mostly just pretty ways of displaying data.
• Start work on a multithreaded scriptable game engine. I kinda want to learn some multithreading and scriptability, so I’m thinking maybe I could start building an engine that does those.
• Library for making replays of a game. This requires close integration on the game’s part so I’m not sure if I could quite make this into a reusable library, but I think this would be an interesting feature to implement. The idea would be that this would be useful for both debuggin and as just a nifty feature on its own.

Stuck with no ideas to roll with? Not enough whiteboard in your life? Uncle Brian wants YOU (points finger through your screen at your face) to make the games he wants to play. Or see played. Or read about in the news. In a bad way.

Don’t blame me for that one, blame the person at Walgreens who sold me the red expo marker.

If you’re still stuck, you’re kind of screwed. You might as well give up. But if you really, really need more inspiration:

get up teh tower (via wjordan)

The creator of this video’s non-ironic video comments include: “me working on anew one with music ok” and “well ur face if crappy i was only begginer so shut the hell up”

Well, I spent all last night thinking up VS ideas, then watching TV and thinking of more, then when TV was over I said, “that’s it.  I’m going with Schrodinger Vs. Pavlov”.  I thought it’d be cool, an army of dogs that you can steer around with a bell cursor, vs. a guy who can place boxes that contain pop-up cats that may be alive or dead.  Then I was thinking it would be like a board game, where the Pavlov guy has cards with various dogs and bells and things, and the Schrodinger guy has dice with 3 alive-cat faces and 3 dead-cat faces.  The closest I got to an actual idea was that Schrodinger could commit his dice to various battles, and hope they were enough when actually rolled.  It didn’t actually make a game, though.

So this morning I woke up still with no ideas that worked, and finally decided it had to be the very first idea that struck me as solid.  I didn’t want to do a platformer, but here I go anyway: Miyamoto Vs. Yamamoto.  You’ll hop from ship to ship, bouncing on their various parts to sink them, then hop off before you sink with them.  It won’t be Mario, because you’ll be dodging fire directly aimed at you by the cannons and other oddities, and the ‘defeat each ship’ motif is a little different.  Got some ideas, anyway!  Time to build a ship editor!

I made a list of the probable theme winners yesterday and I pretty much had ideas for all of them.

Except Minimalist.

So I’ll probably just take one of my other ideas…. and minimize it.

Oh well.  Time to get crackin’.

So, I had a premonition that this theme might win, and have been thinking of games that would work well in it. Not going to reveal much yet but I have a very clear direction and I’m looking forward to being able to put this game together!

So for now I’m going to write up all the things I think the game should do, and come up with some scheme to ensure they all get done. Onward!

I got nothing but ideas… Well, I also have a black screen that you can press ESC to exit.  But anyway, none of the ideas are really kicking it.  The most unique one, but one I am not at all sure I want to do, is something like this: You’re a old prospector type guy, carrying a keg of gunpowder.  It has a hole, as they always do, so you leave a trail behind.  You’re in a place filled with explosives.  After a set time, the end of your fuse lights and begins chasing after you.  It blows up any explosives it gets near, and of course if it gets to you, it blows you up too.  You can put the keg down any time, so the goal is A> blow stuff up without getting killed (put the keg down and hide before the flame gets to you), and B> blow up as much stuff as possible.

The chain reaction is that obviously all the explosives blow up other explosivs near them.  So the strategy is in putting your fuse down well without getting blown up along the way.  Seems kinda fun, but I don’t know about actually making it… well, after writing it, it’s strongly considered.

Other ideas include a Bangaio-style shooter where guys who explode blow up other guys near them, so you want to cluster them up and destroy them.  Also, a guy with a chain who smashes enemies, sending them flying into other enemies for a chain-based chain reaction (but chain physics scares me).  Another is  something along the lines of pool, shoot out a ball that hits enemies, and they go flying and hit other enemies.

But behind all that stuff is the idea that I kinda wanted to make a turn-based thing, like a board game or card game.  I don’t know, though.  So many ideas, so little interest in them… maybe the prospector thing.