Zako Themed Lightgun game template: Thoughts/feedback (1 Viewer)

[horatiojones80]

As a result of hearing a lot on this forum about old lightgun games and making my own artwork styled in the trashy 90s movie theater cabinets, I decided to make a crack at making my own lightgun game, but I want it to be more than that. It's going to be a template that will have the basic logic and object oriented design completed, then anyone here with a bit of know how will be able to take it and use their own assets and make their own game with it. I'll be using Godot, a free and open source engine that is pretty well documented and has tons of tutorials on how to use it. So far I have the basic hit detection, health bar, and spawning logic down. Tonight I'm going to finish up the main gameloop (start menu, game over screen) and hopefully a reloading system as well. I'll make sure to upload another demo reel to this thread to show my progress. Here is my idea of what I want it to be

-Fully 2D: There will be a background image, some foreground obstacles (for bodies to fall over) and the enemies will be 2D sprites. This makes it easier on myself any anyone else developing assets. The scenes will end with an arrow button where the player can progress to the next scene. Ideally i'd like more of a 2.5D situation with 3D first person walking animations for the transitions (think Target Terror), but that will come later. For now I'm going for edgy flash game
-There will be 2 or more enemy examples. One that slumps over an object/railing, one that falls on the ground. The animations with the template will be super primitive, maybe 2 or 3 frames max, but will allow for anyone to easily put in their own animations/sprites
-3 levels. One where the enemies spawn at random and the bodies dissapear, one where the enemies spawn at random but the bodies are persistent (there will be set spawn points to prevent overlapping) and finally a level with pre-scripted enemies for more complex animations like body piles, railing kills, falling in pools, falling down stairs etc (which will be the basis of my eventual game)
-The experience won't be codeless but hopefully anyone with the ability to get through the first 2 or 3 Godot tutorials will be able to pick it up.

Just wondering what anyone's thoughts are. Are people here experienced with using game engines? Any ideas/suggestions? More importantly does anyone have any spritesheets you want me to put in the template? because I'll tell you the two sprites I have right now are kind of crap.

GAMEPLAY DEMO

 

[Weoooo]

I'm very glad you're doing this, and I think it must feel good to do it. I have no real experience with this stuff, nor do I have or I think even capable of making sprites that you'd like, but I do have a few questions.

1: The animations! So, does it work like the characters are a big button and when you click them an animation plays? Or are there states that they go into? This is mostly related to
2: Sound hooks, how would you get sounds to play at the right time if you wanted more than one to be there in a particular sequence?

 

[Snow]

Someone directed me to this thread as I've made some fake mockups for female fighting games in the past. I can probably make a sprite or two if you can tell me how large they need to be, if they need a transparent background or a solid color, and what you'd like them to generally look like. No nudity or sexual content please.

This is five years old and is a concept for a first-person fighter I just made as a test, but you get the idea.

 

[Kopamon]

If I understand correctly, the final goal is to make a game with a static background, like this:



It may be an idea; I hope it will materialize and I am ready to help as much as possible.

The problem with these games is that the player simply had to do one thing; wait, move and shoot, endlessly.
I don't know if Godot is powerful enough to add some elements to make the game more varied; for example, moving enemies, objects thrown to hit on the fly, or even scrolling levels.
Anyway, if the graphics are accurate enough, even a simple project can be fun.

 

[horatiojones80]

I'm very glad you're doing this, and I think it must feel good to do it. I have no real experience with this stuff, nor do I have or I think even capable of making sprites that you'd like, but I do have a few questions.

1: The animations! So, does it work like the characters are a big button and when you click them an animation plays? Or are there states that they go into? This is mostly related to
2: Sound hooks, how would you get sounds to play at the right time if you wanted more than one to be there in a particular sequence?

I originally rendered the animations by just rendering big invisible buttons in front of the sprites, but after reading through the entire 2D game tutorial on the website I changed it up to use signals and events. So basically you define an area and then you'll have a predefined function called _on_area_entered (or something like that) then I'd trigger a variable of "targeted = true" Then write another function that detects a mouse click and if targeted = true, bang, zako dead. Most of that stuff will be taken care of when the template is finished. The animations themselves are easy to set up. You can drag and drop frames and group them into names by state (so multiple frames for "walk", then another group of frames for "die" etc.) then you can call them in the code like this

# select animation frames $AnimatedSprite.animation = "shooting" # play them $AnimatedSprite.play()

Sounds work the same way, you drag the wav files into an audioplayer object, name it something (ie "gunshot sound) then just call it in the code when you need it "$gunshot.play()"

If I understand correctly, the final goal is to make a game with a static background, like this:



It may be an idea; I hope it will materialize and I am ready to help as much as possible.

The problem with these games is that the player simply had to do one thing; wait, move and shoot, endlessly.
I don't know if Godot is powerful enough to add some elements to make the game more varied; for example, moving enemies, objects thrown to hit on the fly, or even scrolling levels.
Anyway, if the graphics are accurate enough, even a simple project can be fun.

Yeah pretty much exactly like that game example except the bodies don't disappear. Godot is powerful enough to handle all the things you mentioned. The question is whether I am. Moving enemies and randomly spawned enemies is easy. Side scrolling the levels would also be easy, forward movement on the other-hand would not. I was thinking of maybe using a still screenshot, then adding a video of forward movement (taken from Garrys mod which is where all my backgrounds are from) then freezing on another screenshot, but I'm not doing a 3D engine so it would be some trickery. My final level is going to be me doing my best to go all out with custom animations. I want zako falling down stairs, into pools, falling out of cars, off railings, falling face first into the buttcheeks of another zako (this one will be hard to pull off but oh so glorious if I do)

 

[AesVann]

I made game like this using multi media fusion 2 as well, though was ages ago, I forgot all of it... shame. Looking forward to your success!

 

[Weoooo]

I originally rendered the animations by just rendering big invisible buttons in front of the sprites, but after reading through the entire 2D game tutorial on the website I changed it up to use signals and events. So basically you define an area and then you'll have a predefined function called _on_area_entered (or something like that) then I'd trigger a variable of "targeted = true" Then write another function that detects a mouse click and if targeted = true, bang, zako dead. Most of that stuff will be taken care of when the template is finished. The animations themselves are easy to set up. You can drag and drop frames and group them into names by state (so multiple frames for "walk", then another group of frames for "die" etc.) then you can call them in the code like this

# select animation frames $AnimatedSprite.animation = "shooting" # play them $AnimatedSprite.play()

Sounds work the same way, you drag the wav files into an audioplayer object, name it something (ie "gunshot sound) then just call it in the code when you need it "$gunshot.play()"

Ah, that's what I was hoping to hear. Sound plays a huge amount into this, for me at least. Controlling what is played and when is super important.

 

[nonniemouse]

Someone directed me to this thread as I've made some fake mockups for female fighting games in the past. I can probably make a sprite or two if you can tell me how large they need to be, if they need a transparent background or a solid color, and what you'd like them to generally look like. No nudity or sexual content please.

This is five years old and is a concept for a first-person fighter I just made as a test, but you get the idea.

View attachment 139196

These are amazing! Do you have a gallery somewhere? I'd love to see more of your first-person game mock-ups. It's a surprisingly under-explored genre!

 

[Snow]

These are amazing! Do you have a gallery somewhere? I'd love to see more of your first-person game mock-ups. It's a surprisingly under-explored genre!

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There are only a couple of first-person game mockups though, I mainly make 3D fantasy art. Look in the "Other Art" gallery for my non-fantasy fighting pics. Thank you very much!

 

[Phaohao]

I like to imitate this kind of game! Look at my imitation.884.4 KB file on MEGA

 

[Phaohao]

Andthis.11.45 MB file on MEGA

 

[horatiojones80]

Andthis.11.45 MB file on MEGA

Either of these would be rather easy once I get this engine done. I just need to fix a bug then it's just organizing/cleaning up files

 

[Infil123]

Andthis.11.45 MB file on MEGA

Hey can I ask where you got that gif from? I think those are black roses zako and I’ve been looking forever to find more:) (sorry I know it’s off topi)

 

[Phaohao]

Andthis.11.45 MB file on MEGA

Hey can I ask where you got that gif from? I think those are black roses zako and I’ve been looking forever to find more:) (sorry I know it’s off topi)

I'm the author.

 

[Phaohao]

Hey can I ask where you got that gif from? I think those are black roses zako and I’ve been looking forever to find more:) (sorry I know it’s off topi)

Either of these would be rather easy once I get this engine done. I just need to fix a bug then it's just organizing/cleaning up files

Beautiful, I hope to see your work soon!

 

[Weoooo]

I'm the author.

I hadn't seen it before either! I'm glad to see you did more.

 

[Phaohao]

I'm looking for someone to make a GIF audio work.

I hadn't seen it before either! I'm glad to see you did more.

 

[Weoooo]

I'm looking for someone to make a GIF audio work.

Like a voice actress? Or a sound library? Or just the ability to make it?

 

[Phaohao]

Like a voice actress? Or a sound library? Or just the ability to make it?

I can dub Black Rose, but she can only speak Chinese, but the dead moan doesn't matter.

 

[Infil123]

I can dub Black Rose, but she can only speak Chinese, but the dead moan doesn't matter.

I think Chinese is fine, it doesn’t matter the language tbh. The dead moan is the important part