₦airaland Forum

dueal: Let me break down d implementation of d fighting game to d best of my knowledge. WE will need. human structured models for each character...rigged for d variation of moves. we will need to animate moves for each character at least to a believable standard. we will need to implement an arena camera, and the parser to determine input from a gamepad to an animation sequence...also...combos, effects, gui...e.t.c.......question...do we hv d capacity?

We have the capacity.

dueal: first draft for d mercenary goat.

Great!

I think that is where the concept artist comes into play. We would need an artist for that.

[quote author=CODE-EATER]Wait o...we'v been doing way 2much talking... let's c some 3d modelling na... even if its nt d full thing...at least something...


N by d way...wat platform r we targeting?[/quote]We are targeting just PC. We need a story concept first which we would then expand through game design and that would lead to modelling after we have an idea of gameplay. We would decide on a story by weekend and then start designing the missions of the story(i.e (development of the story)/ Game Design). Each mission will then give us an idea of the necessary 3d models needed.

Bulldog: i love you man. you are the most creative thinker in this thread so far and your concept is epic. A successful game have to be funny, original, a simple story line and mostly fictional. Just take "angry birds" for example . Dreamworks or EA suppose employ you. Lolz

lol. Thanks

Ajibel: Rotflmao i'm trying to imagine a goat wielding a gun to shoot. Your idea is crazy buh i have my reservations.

Sincerely, i think the yoruba myths is the best we can have nau. I just finished with Efik n Hausa myths and i just couldnt get sth- an idea to draw from them.
Buh while reading, i thought of another => There was a gang up by the elder gods to overthrow the main god, they succeeded buh one of the elder gods lemme say esu tricked others and imprisoned them and took over leadership. The main god gave up his power to conceive a demi-god to fight esu and his men. Along the way, the demi-god would fight monsters, release humans held captive and also rescue other demi-gods who'd then offer to give him their powers or help him fight as the case may be.
Okay...am having a conflict of ideas

The ideas to come up with include:
+ special powers
+ weapons
+ monsters
+ scenes/places
+
+ etc

Special Powers/Weapons: can be upgraded
Consider the following:
Lightning Blade
Blade of Fury(Fire)
Fire Ball
Mini Sand Storm
etc

Monsters:
Bush Baby and Bush Baby Mama,
Actually, monsters would be more or less the underlings of the main boss and can be diverse

worldbest: LOL, I like this story. But still think the Sango,Amadiorha etc is better.

lol, but we can add Nigerian elements like " thunder fire you". All those kind things when the Goats are fighting. Think of a chicken with pistol hiding behind a wall saying stuff like “Nor be today I dey die”. Or Cow saying “Bros, I dey feel your swag”.

Here is a new game story idea. I think it can be improved upon. However, let me know what you think. We can mix in Nigerian elements
into the game like language etc.

Goat’s Revolt
Goats have been oppressed by men for years. They have been slaughtered for food.
General Goaty, the protagonist will take this injustice no more. Goats have a life too. On Xmas eve. the goats led by General Goaty assisted by the Big-Eyed Goat, General OverSeer went on riot against man. They formed an alliance with other Xmas – eatable animals such as Cow, Chicken, Turkey etc. Together, they go offensive against man fighting for their fundamental Animal Rights. They acquired all sorts of machine guns and assault rifles and waged a war on man.
Eventually, after several dangerous mission which almost led to the end of the world. They defeated man and they celebrated their victory.
As they were celebrating, General Goaty woke up from his dreams in the abattoir and next thing he knows, a knife goes for his neck.
In other words, the entire Game is General Goaty’s dream on Xmas eve.

The mission is to defeat men.
The language is pidgin English with interpretation for other languages.
The game is first person shooter and/or third person shooter.
the goats can walk on two legs (It does not have to be realistic)
What do you think?

Bulldog: is this a yoruba movie? I'm lost

Its not Yoruba but if no inputs based on other culture comes, We have to go with it. Also, other story lines are still welcome. We would conclude on the story we would eventually pursue by the weekend.

Ajibel: Like naruto

Oduduwa is vexed and wants to destroy the world cuz of the sins of man. Sango rises again to plead for his mercy to spare lives, oduduwa says he has to defeat eshu, shokpono and co and retrive a black-boxed yiippeess thingamabobs else the world would be destroyed. Sango is to act as the world's savior and....


*erm, i'm not making sense* just finished watching wrath of the titans and clash of the titans

Lets develop on this story and probably combine it

RationalDude: How about this for a story line?
...................................................... ....

After many years, it is discovered that Sango fathered a child secretly with one of his maids (who he loved more than his wives). This child is preserved in a secret tomb and he is destined to one day rule the kingdom of Oyo. You are one of the warriors given the task to protect this child until the predestined time.

However, Oba and Osun, the wives of the god, get to learn of this information and are angered. They decide to make an unholy alliance in order to eliminate the child. With their god-like powers, they begin to terminate Sango's mortal warriors until you are the only one left.

Being warned by a diviner, you are able to escape death from the angry goddesses. But all is not safe for you yet, you have to make a treacherous journey to the secret location of the child to do what you were meant to do, protect the future king!

......................
shey I try?

Lets combine these story and develop on them.

Current Characters

Osun
Oba
Oduduwa
Sango
Bush Baby
Lady Koi Koi,
Amadioha

Lets get more bad guys into the eventual story and then build up the story from there.

I found these helpful resources:
https://www.nairaland.com/781645/yoruba-mythology
https://www.nairaland.com/226465/fulani-hausa-myths-mythology-legends
https://www.nairaland.com/373140/cultural-myths-around-nigeria
https://www.nairaland.com/772398/myths-realities-ijaws-destiny-rivers

Posted to Culture Section
https://www.nairaland.com/1487347/nigerian-myths-story-line-development

Hello Nairalanders,

Based On this Forum: https://www.nairaland.com/1482286/game-development-next-gen-3d.
We are trying to develop a storyline based on the Nigerian Myths (Sango, Amadioha etc). We could use some help
with the contribution of various cultural myths.
We are trying to develop a fictitious story mixed in with the actual history behind the myths.

Thanks

RationalDude: Many thanks to @Wiegraf for linking me to this thread. @Jivi, kudos for starting this and if you can successfully follow through with your plan, it will be the beginning of greater things. Now, while I don't have any programming experience, I've always wanted to do something like this (was planning to do so in my next life sha). I could probably contribute with some story lines but I would prefer to be where the action is so would it be possible for me to learn programming while working with you on this project? (please, reply)

Yes, you can learn programming while working on this project.

I just posted to the literature section:
https://www.nairaland.com/1486344/nigerian-myths-story-line-development

Hello Nairalanders,

Based On this Forum: https://www.nairaland.com/1482286/game-development-next-gen-3d.
We are trying to develop a storyline based on the Nigerian Myths (Sango, Amadioha etc). We could use some help.
We are trying to develop a fictitious story mixed in with the actual history behind the myths.

Thanks

Ajibel: Like naruto

Oduduwa is vexed and wants to destroy the world cuz of the sins of man. Sango rises again to plead for his mercy to spare lives, oduduwa says he has to defeat eshu, shokpono and co and retrive a black-boxed yiippeess thingamabobs else the world would be destroyed. Sango is to act as the world's savior and....


*erm, i'm not making sense* just finished watching wrath of the titans and clash of the titans

Nice concept. We should develop on this. I think the Sango story is already a nominee for the final story plot. We are still open to other ideas though.

elvis10ten: @jivi, how will the warrior fight the spirits. It would be with charms i guess, which will be so boring without a fight.

Well, its not going to be super-realistic. The charms will enable you to be able to fight them physically and they will have special powers too. That is why it is a game.

elvis10ten: We can check some Naija films out for more ideas. Lol.

Yeah, Do you have anyone in mind?
That would help a lot with prehistoric sort of story lines with a warrior character having to accomplish
a mission by fighting spiritual forces.

Javanian: It is very easy, you would love it. since you already have experience in Game Dev. it would take you few days to grasp it . It took me about a month and i had no prior experience in anything 3D.

Actually, I can use it already.

Elvis10ten, Ajibel and jjk24.
Great Game Story Inputs.
I will compile them all.
Crime Fighting, the Civil War and the Real time Strategy ideas seems good.
We could make a Nigerian centric Scifi.
The Sango Idea seems nice if we can expand on it along with the history of the Yorubas during the reign of Sango as the Alaafin I believe.
Sango could be god of war-ish in nature as Ajibel suggested.
checkout this blog
http://tia-thisisafrica..com/2011/04/sango-god-of-thunder_17.html
Based on the Real time Strategy(RTS), we could create different cultural groups with diverse strengths and weaknesses warring against each other like ages of empire and Rise of Nations.
Thanks for the input
Keep the Ideas rolling.

PhenomenonVFX: Inasmuch as I would love to see something like this being done with Unity3d, we shouldnt overlook the fact that the OP says he has written his own game engine. Especially the bolded argument in the post I quoted. He does have some point there.
You should ask him to convince u why his is better for the project he has in mind than more general engines like Unity. Maybe his is more lightweight and require a little less hassle.
Also, he wrote his own engine! We dont know why he did that or how long he spent doing it. Maybe it is just his hobby. Or maybe he wants to be more of a world class game developer and he would like to be designing game engines in the future. He probably wants to use this project to test his limits and improve in the process. That is probably why he wants to embark on this project I am sure it will be a true testimony to his abilities.
We shouldnt just ask him to throw away his game engine that he probably spent years and hardwork learning how to make just because we all love Unity3D and probably lose his ambition thereby.

@OP. You should probably give us a much more lucid idea why your game engine is better based on points such as ease of use, platform target, user-base target etc..
And, just as everybody else has adviced, u should try and check out Unity3D too. U may fall in love with it and prefer it just like everybody else here. Because I no go lie u, my guy, me sef like Unity3D.

I like Unity too. It is easy to use. Right?

wiegraf: A question if I may, is demonstrating raw technical prowess, not just say world building, novel gameplay mechanics, etc, important to you? Is that one of the reasons you'd rather use an in-house engine as well?

It's a lovely initiative btw, hope it's successful

That's not the point. The truth is using an in house engine makes those who would work on the project way smarter technically after the project as against using a 3rd party software which shields you from most difficulties and keeps you in the dark. From a programming point of view. You would be a good programmer before the project and after the project, you are still a good programmer who used a great tool and you really would not gain additional knowledge. One of the main points of this project is to ensure everyone's knowledge of core techniques improves tremendously making for great professionals afterwards. In other words, your time gets well spent.

Thanks all (wiegraf, Javanian, worldbest, jjk24) for the Input. Unity 3D Game Engine is a great choice. So, we should use Unity for the project. Unity uses C#, JavaScript and boo. C# is similar to Java and C++. So, Java and C/C++ developer can still contribute immensely to this project.
However, a tutorial for gameplay programming will still be organized to explain the design patterns used for proper game development.
Thanks All.

wiegraf: Random thoughts.

Next gen is unrealistic, in as much as competing with anything that looks remotely like an AAA title is concerned. At best, making/targeting the indie scene is a better option. Note how most indies are; short, low budget. What makes them standout usually is they come armed with a lot of heart and sometimes, creativity. Resources involved in building anything high tech is in no way comparable to say making a decent music album with just a pc, just look at your list of staff. And even with that, imagine the amount of manhours that will be involved. It's no trivial pursuit.

Building an engine may be superflous as there are many free ones available, quite a few even opensource. And there are affordable commercial offerings as well. Even at that, assessing which would be ideal for the project at hand, I believe you should be experienced with such tasks, still remains an ordeal. You don't want to make your choice then half way through development you discover you're limited in some way or the other

Your target group. If you're building for 9ja, you cannot expect us to be armed with ps4s or even 3s.

The above 2 points would lead me to thinking adopting an engine like unity, which works across mobile platforms and the pc, is very extendable, supports various languages, has a large community/support structure, etc etc, would be prudent.

There's also microsofts xna framework/network, and sony has strong support for indie studios as well (not sure how it works, but easily rivals microsoft considering their catalogue of games).

If you're going to build something, I would like to suggest it be imbued with our own culture, just as japanese are influenced by theirs, even if not blatantly so. I know who amaterasu is and what you can buy in akihabara(?), I even know that japs from osaka have an accent and are stereotyped as loud. I doubt the average jap geek knows what sango is.

Blah blah blah

Edit: ah, I should read the full op before posting. Nicely done with understanding the physics involved (you're on your own there, one of the reasons for my preference of an established engine). Most of the above though, I would say, still stands. I wouldn't recommend throwing an inexperienced team into the deep end even if you, as the lead, are experienced. Also, are you considering kickstarter?

I respect your analysis and opinion and I think you are right from your point of view. However, from my point of view, I want you to know that Next Gen is not close to unrealistic. It is infact very realistic and also, we are not competing with AAA title. They simply should not exist in our mind. We are just going to do our thing and we would do our very best and be the very best we can be. There is a common saying "Shoot to the moon, If you miss, you land among the stars". The next gen of today will be the games of tomorrow and that is why we cannot afford to aim low, otherwise, we would remain behind while the world moves forward.
I think its high time we caught up and trust me its not as difficult as you may think. We just need a team of people with diverse talents, (not necessarily geniuses), the combination of which makes for genius level work.
The Custom game engine I am proposing supports recent rendering techniques and has Nvidia PhysX engine integrated like any other game engine and new features can easily be built in for a period of three years running. We can add the latest hardware enabled techniques as they come rather than waiting for an established engine to make the change if they ever make it or trying to master the huge code base which definitely takes time in order to make such a change. Also, I wrote the engine and since I am part of the team. They get first hand knowledge if they run into problems and I think that is a very big advantage to using such an engine. Also, new features requested by the team can easily be added on time. However, I am opened to people's suggestion concerning the game engine.
We are building for PCs (Windows, Mac and Linux) only and not consoles(PS4 etc) or mobile. Also, we are only targeting next gen graphics hardware, (naija or not). We cant limit ourselves on that basis. Like I said, we have to move forward.
Experience does not matter in this context. This a three year project with training involved at least on the programming side for now. In a year time at most, the lack of experience would be a thing of the past at least for those that are going to be actively involved in the project.

Thanks a lot for your analysis.

Ajibel: Storyline: The synopses -
A racing like (downhill domination) buh to be on ice skates. Reach the end of the finishing/rescue line before the ice melts and the time elapses while dodging obstacles on the way and gaining pythonic boosts and scream a yiippee if u come 1st... That's the game i wanted to create buh couldnt continue cuz i sucked in 3d animations/modeling. I do have other game stories buh this is just incase u guys havent come up with a story.

Sounds interesting. Could you share some of your other stories?

csharpjava: I would recommend "Csharpjava 3D" which is still in development https://www.nairaland.com/1458405/animation-creation-3d-join-team

I would check that out

[quote author=d-hammer]Whats the engine[/quote]Actually, We should use a custom game engine. I have one already down and I will organize an online tutorials on how to use it for the programmers. The tutorial would not be a webinar. It would just be a blog post with source codes of each tutorial and the game engine library. I will answer all the questions posted on the tutorial blog.

codeaddict: Is there room for Java programmers?

Yes, there is room for Java programmers for prototyping and tools

[quote author=CODE-EATER]Ehen....this is what I have been waiting to see....


My guy,I de ur back...

I can:

Contribute a gud story lin(as an art student)

Help in d voice ish... as a theatre arts student..


Contribute in character design..



And if the need arises... a web site....[/quote]ok. Lets come up with a good story.

Hi Nairalanders,

Let us form a team of game developers to develop a very solid 3d PC game based on Nigerian People and Culture with next gen graphics.
You dont have to know everything and you dont have to be very smart. You just have be able to contribute something relevant and be competent at what you do.
So, we would contribute our individual strength to the team. I know we have the talent.
What do we need.

1. C/C++ Programmers
2. 3d Modelers
3. Concept Artists
4. 2d Artists
5. Animators
6. Sound Designers
7. Game Designers
8. Level Designers
9. Voice Actors
10. Game Programmers

There are more roles to be filled up but this is what I can up with for now.

I envision this project will take about three years. So, there is no rush. What we need right now is more of talented Game Designers, concept artists and 3d Modelers. So, we can start up with a story line and develop the environment from there.

This is not going to be a small project. We are not trying to create a demo. We would be developing a world class game only targeting next gen hardware. This would not impede game designers, concept artist and 3d modelers who would start the initial development phase.

If you think you can contribute or if you are interested,
Post your detail here and I would contact you

Once, we have a solid enough team, we can startup. I will coordinate this from start to finish. So, you do not have to worry
that this project will stop at any point in time. I am very sure we can do this.

Edit - 27/10/2013

Story Concept Phase Completed
We have been able to bring our heads together and develop several story concepts and finally, we have chosen the Goat's Revolt story
since most people like the story

Goat's Revolt
Goats have been oppressed by men for years. They have been slaughtered for food.
General Goaty, the protagonist will take this injustice no more. Goats have a life too. On Xmas eve. the goats led by General Goaty assisted by the Big-Eyed Goat, General OverSeer went on riot against man. They formed an alliance with other Xmas – eatable animals such as Cow, Chicken, Turkey etc. Together, they go offensive against man fighting for their fundamental Animal Rights. They acquired all sorts of machine guns and assault rifles and waged a war on man.
Eventually, after several dangerous mission which almost led to the end of the world. They defeated man and they celebrated their victory.
As they were celebrating, General Goaty woke up from his dreams in the abattoir and next thing he knows, a knife goes for his neck.
In other words, the entire Game is General Goaty’s dream on Xmas eve.

The mission is to defeat men who eat goat.
The language is pidgin English with interpretation for other languages.
The game is first person shooter and third person shooter.
the goats can walk on two legs (It does not have to be realistic)

Current Missions

-Escape from the Abattoir
-Acquire Cutlass and Fight.

The humans get to pursue the escapee goat, Goatie with cutlass fiercely.

-Release Other Goats, Ram, Cow, Chicken etc.
Armed with a cutlass, Goaty visits several abattoirs to release other animals.

-Infiltrate Military Base to acquire tanks - Acquire Advanced Weapons – Ak47, Sniper etc

_Shit just got real. Information has leaked that the goats have rebelled against man and pose a very dangerous threat to citizen's life. In no time, the government deployed troops of mean and hungry soldiers.
General Goatie along with Ewu, Ebili and Gwon Gwon go on a top secret mission to acquire weapons of war fare. In the process, Gwon Gwon got killed. Then, the human Military Commander then said, Omo, see meat. Mek person go prepare Isi-Ewu make we chow.
But General Goaty thought differently. They had to retrieve GwonGwon’s body for appropriate burial rite as a worthy hero and patriot.

-Retrieve GwonGwon’s Body, Get the weapons and capture the military commander.

-Rescue Goatie's Mom.
Goatie did not find his mom after releasing other nearby goats because she has been sold.
During the course of the game, intel came on her whereabout. and then, he had to rescue her before she gets slaughtered.
Also, cutscene of Goatie remembering when he rescued a fellow goat from a very wicked bully goat and goatie's mom told him
"Goatie, I know say one day you go make me proud"(lol).
Also, we can give names to character based on the animals popular names or anything close in sound or meaning.
for example
Cow - Melu, Mumu etc
Goat - Goatie, Overseer(Big Eye), Ewu, Gwon Gwon, ScapeGoat etc
Ram - Thuram(a very strong ram)

We are currently in the process of polishing the mission and developing gameplay elements.
Great Work everyone for your efforts, contributions and critical analysis.
We are moving on to the next phase which would be developing Mission One
which is actually goatie's Escape. We would develop the gameplay elements/concept art and
engage in Level Design.