Hey all fellow game designers, At a first glance this might look like it belongs in the help wanted section, and I considered it, but most of the posts over there was moronic and I think I will receive way better response over here. When I last posted here I discovered that a lot of you guys here are really damn creative. As some of you may remember, I am working on a game that is inspired by good old X-COM. My role however, is put on hold until more art is finished (why the hell come art people are so slow? I want to work! :D) And as you may have guessed I am looking for something to do in the meantime. So did y'all ever have any idea sometime that did not require much art but that would still offer a decent programming challange? Anything you wanted to see made but just didn't feel like or couldn't do? Also if you are a designer and not a programmer, see this as an opportunity for possible collaboration with a determined workoholic, who wants to get things done and not just talk about them! Best regards, Sebastian Jensen MAIL: sebastianjensen@nielsjensen.se AIM: SebIsBlergh ADRESS: Folkungagatan 96, 116 30 STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN TEL: (+46)87020453

Well the kinda ideas i always ponder over are things like:

- graphical tic tac toe but have the computer as a simple learning machine. The computer would get better and become unbeatable.
- i like working on font engines and consoles so finding new and better ways of doing this is always fun.
- I'm currently writing Simon Says.

Lots of others too, but those are a few.

ace

a couple of really simple arcade type game ideas:

1) Pong -in the round- basicly take out the top and bottom walls in pong, and make the players paddles travel around in a circle knocking the ball around. If the ball leaves the area within the circle, the player's paddle that last touched the ball gets a point. The player controls the slightly bowed shaped [would look something like "("] paddle with the mouse, the left mouse button "flips" the paddle around [so this "(" becomes ")"]. and the right mouse button makes the paddle jump strait across to the opposite side of the circle...could have a lan/online multiplayer option with 2 or more players, obsticals for the ball to bounce off of, "inner and "outer" circles for multiple paddles to move around on...its simple, and could work well with just basic programmer art.

2) a variation of Asteroids...players control a alien flying saucer out to defeat the Earth forces, problem is that the alien race never gave you any weapons...however your engineer was able to modify your saucer's antigrav engine into something suitable for combat...basicly players control their craft with the arrow keys or a gamepad/joystick/mouse [unlike Asteroids, pressing up moves up, down moves down, etc.] and the spacebar/joy button/mouse button fires your weapon...that weapon is basicly a big electromagnet...press and hold the button and all the asteroids are pulled to your craft, while the Earth force ships are pushed away [when the weapon is in use the players ship moves at half speed, and the longer the button is held the more the ship slows down]...the object is to defeat the earth forces useing only this weapon [make them crash into each other, or an asteroid] while dodgeing asteroids, earth force ships, and thier weapons.

Why not start coding your actual project with some placeholder art? It can be used quite succesfully (see this interview)to allow you to get some work done before the art is ready.

Otherwise, I think some kind of arcade or puzzle game could probably suit your needs.

Well I got loads of ideas im putting to work right now, but your question was a little vague cause i don't really know what X-COM is :P

But anyhow if your looking for a 2D type game then I highly recommend you visit www.gamemaker.nl it has a seriously easy program to make almost any 2D game (some 3D), or you can just check out the games they've made to get some idea of what you REALLY want to make.

If it's a 3D game then, well, transform those 2D games to 3D. Just like Rockstar North did with Grand Theft Auto :)

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Lets bounce ideas off each other
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