Annelids
A bunch of us in another thread were kicking around ideas for basically a Worms clone called "Annelids" (originally the idea of @Xom Adept). But I don't want to take over that thread, so let's move further discussion of this game to here.
I've volunteered to do the coding, but I don't want to also wear the hat of game designer.
@FloffleWaffle FlooferWoofer volunteered for the art and sound roles (thanks!), and also wrote:
collabs are more of a challenge than you may think....
Oh for sure. I've seen them fail. That's why I'm not cracking open a code editor until we have a team that seems both serious about it, and competent enough to pull it off. :)
@ZomBCool wrote:
I could help out with the Sfx. I have a ton of ideas :) I can propose a game design. Others should too then we pick out the best ideas that work ;)
Agreed, brainstorming's for everyone, but somebody needs to be in charge of the design. Otherwise, our otter ends up looking like a platypus (metaphorically speaking).
Game designer is probably the hardest job. It's easy to think of lots of fun little ideas, but to put it all together into a coherent whole, limit scope creep, maintain balance, and maximize the fun -- that's not easy.
(And don't look at me. I'm just the coder!)
maybe the game designer is best as the same person as the coder actually, it doesn't help much if the designer's ideas can't be implemented by the coder to begin with. Not to put extra work on you of course, but then at least the designer should be familiar with the engine you are using?
I don't think that's necessary. I've worked on lots of teams, sometimes as designer but just as often not, and it works fine both ways. I can explain the capabilities of the engine, and would certainly participate in brainstorming sessions.
I just don't feel like I have time to wear both hats. Game design is important, and I'm only so-so good at it. Also I only played the original Worms games a handful of times. Better to keep looking till we find somebody who loved the original games, has clear ideas of where the fun is, and can put all our ideas together in a coherent way.
I guess there's another role I left off the list: Project Manager. But that's less important on a small project like this, and where project management is needed, I'm willing to do it (unless the designer wants to do that job as well, which is pretty common).
well.... I played the original worms a lot back in the day and also many other of the worms games, but I'm just so terrible at the designer role....
I wonder if we can find anyone for that...
True that. I have mucho enthusiasm but zero experience so I will chip in wherever I can :)
It may require patience. But enthusiasm is a valuable asset! Once we get going I know you guys will be making valuable contributions.
So let's keep looking for that designer. Somebody will step up, I'm sure!
We should probably point out (since I'm now directing people to this thread) the collection of potential assets that Xom Adept has started.
I'm not sure how I really feel about making the game from a mishmash of stylistically different assets, I guess it can work though.... let's just see about it, I guess.
I've got a lead on a game designer who may be able to join us. We should know within the next day or two. (But if somebody else reads this and wants to step into the role, please speak up!)
@FloffleWaffle FlooferWoofer, as art lead, do you want to start roughing out some ideas for the worms? I know we're looking at this pack for inspiration, but we'll need worms moving around, worms grimacing menacingly, etc. (I'm actually a little vague on all the things the worms in Worms do, but as the stars of the show I imagine there's quite a bit of variety to it.)
so that means you want to make this now? not for the game jam? then I've misunderstood something=´?
Spring wrote:
Absolutely agree. It's the job of the art lead (@FF) to take the initial mishmash and create a unified, sensible set of art for the game. Hopefully there's some stuff in that collection we can use with only minor tweaking; the rest can be just inspiration.
Oh yes, definitely not for the game jam! I was proposing to make it just to make it. Rather than the short death-march typical of game jams, I'd much prefer a slow burn for maybe 3-4 months.
But maybe I'm the one who's misunderstood something. What do you all think about it?
well I just think, if this is not for the game jam, then the annelids theme isn't as important anyway? because it was meant to coincide with the "brought to life" theme?
I think the Annelids idea preceded the "brought to life" jam theme. In fact it was just the first idea in an idea-brainstorming thread that began as Xom Adept wrote:
So there you go. He put this idea out there in hopes that somebody would pick it up and make it. Nothing to do with game jams in particular.
Now, some of us are doing exactly that!
I felt like it fit in logically with the game jam but maybe that was never actually implied :p well I was hoping that because I don't really feel ready to start right now anyway ^^
OK, we have a game designer! His name is Tom W, and I expect he'll be introducing himself soon. A couple of assistant game designers may be helping out too, and for that matter we can all contribute ideas, but ultimately the buck stops with Tom.
I'd like to set up some real-time communication. So, a quick poll: what do you guys prefer?
I slightly prefer Slack because it does threading, but I'm on both Slack and Discord all day, it really doesn't matter that much to me.
Any of those programs would work for me, but like I said, I don't know about starting right at this very moment ^^
Spring wrote:
Doh! I just now realized that you are the user formerly known as FloffleWaffle FlooferWoofer! When you first said you weren't sure you could start now, I was thinking "well have all our roles covered now and I never saw you actually volunteer to do anything anyway, so..." :P
But yeah, now I see we have a problem. Can't do the game without an art lead. Hmm.
When could you start? Note that I'm not expecting game-jam levels of time investment. I'm taking 2 classes, doing 2 research projects, and maintaining an (almost) full-time job, so I'm spread pretty thin too. A handful of hours a week for a few months is sort of the pace I was imagining.
So, is that something you think you could commit to?
Hehe yeah I change names sometimes, it's a little confusing xD apologies for any confusion that may cause. And yeah I think I can certainly spend as much time as you can, I just don't want people to think I'm lazy or anything...
Hello everyone!
Tom here, just introducing myself.
I met Joe through CodeBuddies, and he told me about the project you're working on.
I'm experienced in Game Design and Development and I'm happy to join this project as a designer.
Let me know if you have any questions for me.
~Tom W~
No worries. We're all volunteers; nobody can expect us to put in more than we're able.
But also feel free to recruit more artists to help, if you think that would be useful. :)
Communication is key, so just to further be clear about things...
All this is just my current thinking though. Feel free to share your own thoughts (everyone)!
Google Docs works for me. Do we have a high level concept/elevator pitch I can run from? I'd like to try to align with what you all were thinking before I showed up lol
~Tom W~
Nothing so coherent as an elevator pitch yet. Here are comments collected from the other thread:
Annelida using the cute colourful worms would be awesome. I imagine a bright game world and maybe cuter weapons also to match.
1. A rainbow that shoots out over a certain distance like in rainbow islands.
2. "sun" grenades.
3. Star rockets that shoot straight.
4. You can aim for a cloud that is moving back and forwards. When hit it rains on / lightning bolts multiple worms.
The music would be bubble bobble style :) https://opengameart.org/content/mushroom-dance
...Hmm, it seemed like more before I gathered it all together. :)
So we should start brainstorming! ZomBCool and Tom, any preference on Slack vs. Discord vs. other?
Either Slack or Discord work for me, I have both of them running most of the time.
I'll start getting some of these ideas gathered in one document. That way I'll have something that we can read over and discuss.
I like the theme, it sounds really interesting. We can play more with the use of the elements. Possibly wind could be added to make the aiming/shots harder.
I think the camera should be able to move pretty freely, possibly with a "snap back to player". This allows for better planning by the player.
The colors being bright and pretty flat make sense. We could use bright pastels or watercolors. I feel like animations are going to increase the "cute" factor way more than the color scheme will.
The Annelids should be highly animated, with idle animations really accenting how cute these little guys are. Maybe some winking, head scratching, foot tapping... stuff like this. When they're animating for attack sequences and such, they should look angry but still cute.
The HUD should be minimal, with just counts of what the player has/can be used. Possibly even disappearing when certain things happen (once the player shoots, when the player is scrolling around the game world, etc). And the menu system should be highly animated. Buttons should grow and shrink, even when idle. Again. This will add to the cuteness of the visuals.
The sounds should be similarly cute, I'm thinking almost minion-sounding critters. The sounds should be jibberish but sounds like words.
Let me know what you guys think so far. I'll work on the Doc over the next couple of days, but we can discuss a few things in the mean time.
~Tom W~
Hey Tom. Nice to meet you! The concept hasn't really been discussed as of yet. It's a worms clone sure but what would make Annelids differ?
the fun of worms is a combination of strategy, aiming skill and humour. There have already been variations that expand upon the original gameplay like real time strategy instead of turn based for example.
That was actually my first thought but it's been done already. With that said plus the mention of online multiplayer by joe my next idea is a battle Royale which seems to be all the rage these days :)
the player could parachute into the world map and go searching for the other worms or even link up with team mates. All done in 2d side view of coarse.
hello @wiscombetom!
I'm not sure what level of artistry you are generally expecting, I mean I can draw, but not that well.... I guess you'll need some sketches of some sort to be able to evaluate though.
Nice to meet you too! This is going to be fun!
I can get on board with that, I like the idea of dropping in. With that, I could also see having a randomized world, seeded (for speedrunners). The drop in would get you to a safe area, outside of which the player would encounter small battle areas where there is almost an rpg/RTS feel. These encounters could either be entirely offline against AI, or against another player who enters an encounter within a certain time frame. Upon completion of the battle, they can continue in the game world. This allows for other gameplay options, such as questing, co op play, etc. The only caveat is that if the player is in co op mode, the encounter needs to get another "co op team" or generate an AI enemy co op team. Thoughts?
~Tom W~
This already sounds like an incredibly ambitious project....
Also just saw the art comment, anything you can do is much better than my artwork. I'll be happy if we can make it cohesive. I'm not expecting any certain level. We're going to give the best we can, that's all we can expect from each other. We can always discuss and iterate. The way I usually work is get a bunch done early, then slow down near the end, and really have time for polish.
~Tom W~
I agree with Spring -- we seem to be experiencing a bit of scope gallop.
(I just made that term up.)
On the other hand, this is the brainstorming phase, so it's fine... let's dream big and let the ideas flow freely, as long as we understand we're going to have to then cut away most of them to get a nice little project of reasonable scope. Tom, it'll be up to you to figure out what's at the core of the fun, and focus us on that.
Personally I'm not too worried about what makes us different from previous Worms games... if it turns out to be pretty much a tribute fangame, that's OK. It'll still be cool. OTOH if we come up with a fresh idea that makes us really different, and it's not going to take a full-time team of 6 two years to make it, then I'm all for it!
I feel the same way, we're not scope creeping, we haven't created a scope yet. We want a barrel of ideas to pick from. I can trim it down, even make a few design options, etc. No worries guys, let the ideas fly for now. Don't think of what we can't do, think of what we could do. When it comes time to make a few adjustments and cuts, I have the ability to know what is "too much work" for a team. I'm only going to keep what is realistic in the end. After many discussions, of course.
~Tom W~
Do you think a pixel art style would be better, or some sort of other cartoon style, I figure vectors isn't too practical but it depends on the engine. They each have pros and cons as far as I see, the pixel art might look sharper but can usually not be scaled to any screen resolution which might come into play if you have zooming (only if), it also takes a bit shorter to produce depending on the detail level in most circumstances I think. A style with more high resolution assets consumes more memory of course (again, depends on the enginre whether this is important), but can be scaled easier just using some sort of anti aliasing algorithm, while pixel art will usually look bad when you do that...
Making high resolution animations that are very smooth takes its time but is not too bad, however making high resolution tilesets where the edges of each tile have to meet up perfectly is always extremely annoying, I never found a good way to do that.
Let's make some sort of discord conversation, y'all can start by adding me :
Spring#6354
I just saw the last 2 posts... I already created a Slack workspace.
Annelids.slack.com
I'm trying to figure out how to make a shareable link.
~Tom W~
~Tom W~
I have no idea how to enter that slack group thingy, it says my email address or pasword is wrong but I can use that to enter other slack things just fine?
https://join.slack.com/t/annelids/shared_invite/enQtNzc1NjYwODE4OTAwLTcw...
~Tom W~
There should be a one day expiry on that link, so everyone join today. If you miss it, don't worry. I can make another one if need be.
~Tom W~
Glad to see all of you are motivated by this idea :-)
Good luck, guys !
Hi, guys. Is the development going well?
Indeed it is! We have decided to distinguish ourselves from the traditional Worms games by using a magic system, based on combining eight basic elements. (It's sort of like Magicka, if you happen to know that game.)
If you want, you can try it out here: https://joestrout.itch.io/annelids
Just click on the worm, then click on the elements for your spell, and finally click and hold to aim, and release to cast. Some spells to try:
There's still a lot more work to do, but it's coming along! :)
I don't know Magicka, but I like this idea of combining elements to make attacks, it sounds like an interesting idea.
The link does not work, though.
Sorry, I had the page set to Draft status. Please try this:
https://joestrout.itch.io/annelids?password=miniscript
I like what you have added to this!
But I think you will have to do the rest of the project without me, I'm not sure I can explain my reasons clearly enough to understand.... well anyone who has been in the slack server generally knows what it's about anyway x3
Still looking forward to see where you will take this, not much of a consolation I know xP
Nice prototype!
I like how the worms are designed. Spring did some great work again ! (sad that he can not continue on the project)
And I confirm what I said in my previous post : the "combining elements" concept is a good idea, I liked trying some combinations.
You have my encouragements for the rest of the project.
EDIT :
Something like this would be perfect for the elements selection menu : https://opengameart.org/content/elemental-stonesshrines-pixel-art