Bay 12 Games Forum

For years, they've been ruthlessly ruling over the galaxy, turning simple worlds into planet-wide penal colonies and slave worlds. Installing planet force fields and restricting access to any technology, they have strict control over who flies through the outer space, and even if one would manage to steal a small shuttle and fly off into the cold void, they would eventually start to drift eternally due to lack of fuel or be hunted down.
The planets are cells, solar systems are cell blocks and the galaxy is a prison. And nobody can stand against their domination.
...
But who are they?
They call themselves the "Void Children", who have conquered the civilized galaxy in a very short timespan, despite their deceivingly low numbers. Some say they have godlike powers, other believe they had a massive army of robots backing them up.

Whatever the case, they have captured and put you in cryosleep. You were being transported on relatively small prison ship towards one of the slave worlds and you have entered the star system to be dropped off in when the ship's systems have gone haywire, deactivating your cryopod and seting you free again. Two others prisoners have been set free as well.

There is only one way out of this cryopod block. You should probably hurry, since the guards can be here any moment now, since the hack has also triggered a ship-wide alert. Your best bet is finding the escape pods or possible the hangar bay and taking a shuttle to get you out of here.

We all have high hopes for the next release (to varying degrees), whenever that's gonna be.
But once it's finally out...What do you expect the first 24 hours to be?

Chaos and total anarchy?
A whole waterfall of threads across all sections of the upper boards?
What about the wiki?

(or you know, nothing's gonna happen because the server will outright melt and won't be available for the first day or so...)

It was a normal day in the [X₁]. A relatively normal day, that is - an avian skyship crashing down from the sky in the distance, a band of human bandits riding through the rough wastes on their motorcycles and faint sounds of explosions far away.
Your group didn't pay much attention to them, though. You are almost ready to journey out to the Mecca of Guns - San Francisco. The city that has recently reached an almost-mythical status, with countless tales of unseen pieces of pre-war technology and really big guns still existing there. You just cannot miss out on such an opportunity.

Most people think that putting frogs, humans and birds in one place would only leave only one of them alive. But to you, the differences between you don't matter. You've known each other for a very long time now, and the only thing that really matters now is getting to San Francisco.

However, you aren't going to get there on foot. The wastelands are a dangerous place, and most of the mutants you will see are inevitably going to try to attack at least one of you.

After wandering for a long time on the side of the road, you notice [X₂] in the distance. A perfect target to aid you in your odyssey, provided you can fight it back from its current owners.


But before you jump the gun, you have a few questions to answer.

[X₁]

• North - northern wastelands are cold, frozen completely and blizzards are commonplace. Birds make up a bigger portion of this region than other mutants.
• South - the south is a single giant, hot desert, full of giant worms and occasional sandstorms. Frogs are more common than other sentient mutants here.

[X₂]

• A bird skyship - a fully-functional, autonomous flying fortress, capable of staying in the sky for a very long period of time, safe from the dangers of below.
• A frog mobile fortress - those enormous, tracked metal monstrosities can move through almost any terrain, gunning down everything standing in their path. They're also really slow and so are susceptible to bandit raids and other attacks.
• A human convoy - a group of various, armed and armored vehicles, convoys can move relatively quickly through the wastelands, and the existance of multiple vehicles allows the convoy members to split up in case of an attack.

Most importantly though, who are you and what weapons do you have (pick one primary, one melee and one explosive weapon)?

Basically I am just going to be storing all my ideas, concepts arts and other wumbo-jumbo (maybe even prototypes if I stop being lazy and learn to code ) in relation to a game I've been brainstorming recently.



Anyway, what is this game about, you may ask?

I tried to make this post like 5 times before, but something kept distracting me.


For those who care, this game ain't be dead yet.
Granted, it didn't have a life to begin with, but it is not to be forgotten. Not now.

And it has a name now, too!
Gentleladies, men, dwarves and everyone else, I _totally present to you...

GUN FRANCISCO

Why Gun Francisco, you might ask? Why make fun out of one the bigger cities in North America and turn it into a title for a video game that may not even come out within the next 5 years?
Well, let me give you a little bit of an insight into the game plot...

After the Nuclear War, Earth was left in a state of chaos, destruction and anarchy - mutants roaming the frozen and dry wastelands alike, fighting for supplies, land and power.
In the wastes of North America, three races fight among and within each other for dominance of the continent - the mighty Frogs, the crafty humans and the elusive Birdfolk, are all locked in a bloody war stretching over the entirety of the United States and Canada (or what's left of them).

The war seems to have reached an ultimate stalemate when great amounts of energy, radiation and other suspicious anomalies are detected in the ruined San Francisco - and everyone is willing to do everything to get there first to claim it, turning the war into a deadly race to the city that knows how.

Gun Francisco is waiting. But your enemies are not.

So there you have it, Gun Francisco in a nutshell - follow the story of humans, frogs or birds in their hard struggle to reach San Francisco, in one piece, and conquer it for yourself.

In essence, it's a 2D retro-styled (read: pixel art) sidescrolling shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans, frogs and storks try to fight for the domination of the dry, frozen and sunken wastelands, using a (not-so) wide variety of weapons, equipment and mutating new powers on the fly. In storks' case, literally.
Jumping, running, gunning, wall-jumping, crouching, dashing, it's all here to spice up the gameplay.

While ideally it would be a mostly online game, a singleplayer campaign may and probably would happen first.

Before the game starts, the player can customize their loadout that they're going to be heading out into battle. The customization options are as follows:
- race (human/frog/stork; more info about them below)
- primary weapon (dual SMGs/shotgun/sniper rifle)
- melee weapon (shovel/knife/spear)
- explosive weapon (grenades/cherry bombs/mines)
- utility (not guaranteed - teleporter/health pack/sentry gun)

As well as 3 primary weapon upgrades, 3 melee weapon upgrades, 2 explosive weapon upgrades and 5 character mutations. (numbers not final)

After the player has chosen their loadout (possibility of a save system for quick loadout management) they can then head into battle against other players online or play a mission in the campaign.

The campaign would follow the fates of the three races in the struggle for survival in the harshest times the Earth has been through yet.

What are those races you might ask?
Now that you know the general overview of the post-apocalyptic world (sorta) and how each of the races plays, I can get into more specific regarding gameplay.


Remember when I've mentioned weapon upgrades and mutations?
Before you start a game/mission and pick a weapon, you'll be presented with a list of upgrades that you have unlocked (by playing through the campaign/completing achievements/playing online) for that particular weapon. You can then choose a few specific upgrades and see their overview, which will be then available for you to purchase in the shop/find once the game starts. All upgrades would be equally viable and not mutually exclusive (although each weapon has a specific set of upgrades that cannot be used on other weapons), letting you mix and match to suit your playstyle.

Want to run and gun and not have to worry about anything but making sure that your enemy stays dead? Pick SMGs with Extended Magazines. Too many enemies, not enough bullets? Explosive/Piercing Bullets, yo. Want something fancier? How about Homing Bullets?
Or maybe combine all of those and become a killing machine...Assuming you have the money for it. And how do you get money? You can find some randomly in the maps, by killing enemies and capturing objectives.

What about mutations, you ask?
Well, you might already be a mutant (unless you're a human), but that doesn't mean you can't be changed further. By collecting Radiation (which you a gain a small amount of passively) from killed enemies and also certain areas of the maps, you'll be able to choose one out of 5 mutations you have picked before the game. (Mutation = Experience)
Those mutations can vary from increased movement speed and health to gaining an ability to stick to walls to gaining health back when attacking enemies.

And now, a lot of concept art, some of which you might've already seen.

Keep checking back for more! (in fact, I'll be adding some extras today, since most of those were made at school)

Yes, this is all very conceptual right now, but I don't think I have a clear enough vision yet to start a reasonable gameplay prototype yet (I probably should though), but I dunno.
I'm a one-man company, its head developer and simulatenously its Idea Guy. (well kinda, at least I can art semi-properly)

Well, at worst I have Game Maker Studio license that I have never really bothered to use (last time I used GameMaker it was v7, lol), but apparently this thing is getting a shitton of flak, so...

SO, if you pay any attention to my Microscope RPG report thread (link in sig), you may also know that apart from the main, Polish game (which for the moment seems to be in a coma, but we shall see) I am also playing the so-called Awesomescope, which is essentially a Microscope game set in the glorious Awesomenauts universe, where me and three other pals from across the world (a Pole, a Brit, an Aussie and a Romanian is a weirdly chaotic yet surprisingly epic mix) create a collaborative headcanon on the events predecessing the (fairly loose) lore of the 80s cartoon 2D MOBA.

One of the advantages of Microscope is that it can be used as a great base for other roleplaying-or-not games, and today I'm going to do exactly that. Except not really. Let me explain.

One of the problems we have when playing Awesomescope is that at best we can afford roleplaying one scene per session simply because they take a lot of our game time. While they're pretty fun to roleplay it's not feasible to have more than one non-dictated scene when we gather around on our Google doc.

And then I got this idea - why not take the most professional (clearly) roleplaying forum community and our fairly well-established canon and play some sceness without the struggle of waiting 5 minutes between everyone's reactions (this is less of an issue on the forums, thankfully)?
It could even be a win-win, and the scenes that are going to be played here can potentially end up as canon in Awesomescope for our future games.

If you're interested, take a look at our glorious spreadsheet for the insight on the game world.

If you're willing to participate, feel free to drop by here and suggest a scene that we'll be playing next using the following format:

[PERIOD AND EVENT]: In what time period does the scene take place and to what event is it tied to? (This is essentially a Microscope game but you are only allowed to create and participate in Scenes)
[QUESTION]: What is the main question we'll be trying to solve throughout the scene ("Did the king survive the siege?", "Why did the robots attack the station?", "Who assassinated the captain?" etc.) The scene ends when there's a definite answer to the question.
[LOCATION]: Where does the scene take place? (If you have some rudimentary Awesomenauts lore knowledge that's amazing, if not, it's not a problem, hopefully)
[CHARACTERS]: What kind of character do you demand to be participating in the scene? (A mad scientist, a four-armed squirrel mercenary, Ted McPain etc. - try to avoid demading specific characters unless they already appeared in the game (Spreadsheet has character list on the main page) and would not have to time travel to end up in the time period the scene is taking place in) You don't need to demand any characters at all, but try to not go overboard with them and demand a whole novel worth of people. 1-5 seems reasonable enough.

EDIT!
When making a scene, you also have to keep the current Focus (visible on Main page) in mind - the scene that you're trying to create has to tie in to the Focus in some relatively direct way. You also cannot make a scene if there's no event to put it in.


After a certain scene gets enough votes from others, you can then choose one of the demanded characters (and flesh them out a bit if they're ambiguous) or make your own (as long as it doesn't break the common laws of physics, even if Awesomenauts universe is fairly soft as far as sci-fi hardness goes).

After that, I'll try to get in touch with the creator of the "winner" scene via PMs and ask for some extra details. After all, I am your GM here and I need to know a little about what the person in question has in mind.

Also, assuming there's no contradicting scenes happening, I'll be updating the spreadsheet after our regular Microscope sessions, thus giving you more periods, events, scenes and characters to work with, as well as a new focus.

*phew*
I'm done rambling.
TL;DR Suggest small(ish) scenes taking place in the universe in the link above which we'll then roleplay which can then become canon.

Essentially, this is a game in which we simulate the various game patch notes threads/whatever, adding new content, fixing bugs, improving game balance etc.
I think you've seen a changelog/patch notes before.

The general versioning is:
Major (increasing this number indicates a huge change within the code, like a complete re-write, a massive re-balance etc.) ie. 1.0.0, 2.0.0 etc.
Minor (medium-sized patches, like an addition of new (but major) features etc. Basically everything that isn't big enough to be a major version and not small enough to be a release) 1.1, 2.34 etc.
Release (small patches, like an addition of something that was delayed from the minor release, a couple of bugfixes etc.) - 1.1.3, 4.54.5 etc.
Hotfix (indicated in small-case letters rather than numbers, these can be released after any of the above versions, indicating the versions released to fix major game-breaking bugs present in the previous version etc., starting at b) - 1.0b, 2.4b, 3c.24e.1d)

Also feel free to post your "opinions" on the given release below them in your posts if you want to, discussing the changes, hinting at potential future versions, asking questions etc. etc.

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Team Fortress 3 1.0.0 update released
Hello guys, PotPlant here, the main developer of TF3!
We've just finished the beta tests of the game and are happy to announce that the game is now publicly available to the world!
We're not stopping here however. Expect many regular updates, bringing you fresh content, fixing old and new bugs and keeping the game awesome!

So grab your shotguns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and hats and head out there, there's war to be had and you're needed!

You are [??₁], the proud soldier of the [??₂], who has been sent drawn into this strange, new, unexplored world, known as Blankland.

You're holding your [??₃] weapon, which upon closer investigation turns out to be a transparent set of outlines that you can somehow hold with no real other function.


Blankland itself too looks confusing to you, with nothing but a (not-so) flat black line and pure, eye-searing white everywhere with nowhere to go.


You don't remember who sent you here and why, but all you know is that in order to do anything, you need to pray to the ominous, omni-present entity known as Game Master and his unnamed army of Players who can determine his actions and in turn, your fate.

₁ What is your name?
₂ What is your army called?
₃ What is your weapon?
What do you do?

(Don't ask as to why the main character is purple, but let me just say that it ties into what I used to draw when I was younger.)