If "we" were to make an Indie game, what would it look like?

Neirai the Forgiven

Neirai the Forgiven

Christian Guilds List Manager
I'm just tossing around ideas. If "we" (as in, members of CGA with the skill and gumption) were to make an Indie video game, and that video game would be played and enjoyed by members of CGA who hypothetically would play it together, what would that game look like?

Ground rules:
-it needs to be multiplayer or cooperative.
-and feasible by modern technology standards.
oh, and
-feasibly within budget constraints.

Discuss :)
 
Which platform are we talking about?

Because I have a basic design document for a touchscreen puzzle game I wrote in 2007 ready to go. The game would also work with a mouse.

EDIT: As for a new game, I'd like to see a Christian game without the usual "Christian soldier/Armor of God/vanquish demons with a sword" theme, instead favoring a modern setting with characters living out the Christian faith day-to-day.

Alternatively, I think a stealth/hacking game where the main character is a technical genius paid to help defend the persecuted church against government authorities in foreign countries (think Watch Dogs but with a different genre, scope, and motive) could be interesting.
 
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Well since the budget would most likely be 0 I'm thinking the smaller the better.

You could look at moding an existing engine like Unreal to make something but that would require a modeler, texture artist and at least someone who knew Unrealscript. You could go with the Source engine which I know a bit about but I don't recommend it. With Unreal you could actually sell your game for half the profits not to mention it just being a better engine.

I'd expect making your own engine or putting something together, with Ogre for example, to be right out.

I've also been thinking lately any reasonably produced game made with in HTML 5 is bound to get press due to the lack of games made for it yet. Due to being related to HTML I'd imagine some people would have a little experience in it as well. I believe something like this would be the best option so you are looking at making a 2D game (without additional components involved). Thing is I don't think multi-player is feasible with just it so you are back to a packaged solution like Unreal.
 
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Tek7@Work said:
EDIT: As for a new game, I'd like to see a Christian game without the usual "Christian soldier/Armor of God/vanquish demons with a sword" theme, instead favoring a modern setting with characters living out the Christian faith day-to-day.
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Yup what I've been ranting about for decades but then you know I do.

Tek7@Work said:
Because I have a basic design document for a touchscreen puzzle game I wrote in 2007 ready to go. The game would also work with a mouse.
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I too am thinking a simple game like a puzzler would be best but is it multi-player? Since he added multi-player as a requirement a lot of the simple things go out the window.

Neirai could it be local multi-player or could score challenges rate as multiplayer?
 
I think a puzzler/adventure would be relatively simple to make, would be a lot of fun, and would have a good shelf-life. I'm biased because I've made them before, and they're also a genre I really miss.

So I'm thinking like a turn-based cooperative adventure that's somewhat linear, but allows room for replayability and randomness. Story would have be important, but also it needs to be relatively simple.

Oh, also, it would have to be a PC game. It could be an applet in a browser (javascript), or it could be made through an existing engine (StarCraft, Unreal), or coded from scratch (which is feasible since we wouldn't need stellar graphics or physics).

I like gamepad support, but it's not a must for me. :) :)
 
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I always thought a Israelites vs. Philistines strategy or FPS would have been fun. Following David and his Might Men into battle. . .Or perhaps clearing the Promised Land of the "current" inhabitants under Joshua's command.

Modern day seems a bit hard as far as storyline/gameplay goes. You risk either making it no fun by removing too much action, placing it into the morally questionable category by adding action at the expense of moral integrity (Why is the Christian running around doing these things?), or end up tacking the term "Christian" on a game that really could stand just as well without that nomenclature.

As far as game design goes, the furthest I have gotten is a top-down space sim with 1 dynamically generated solar system and a little space craft that you can fly around (C++ w/ hge181). No interaction with planets or the asteroid belt or the sun. No other ships flying around. No shooting. Really, more of a proof of concept than anything else. I had envisioned creating a universe that generated dynamically as you traveled to different systems, interacting with other ships (trading/fighting), interacting with planets, experimenting with gravitational pulls, randomly generated events in the universe, etc. Similar to "Escape Velocity: Nova" but more expansive if anyone has ever played that game.

Of course, it sits unused at them moment waiting for the proper motivation to strike my fancy again. That's how my art projects work. I start them, then lose interest. Later I wonder why I never finished them and wrap up the majority of the work before losing interest again. Finally I come back and wonder why I didn't take the 10 more minutes it would have taken to finalize the project before finishing it up.
 
The Mighty Gerbil said:
I too am thinking a simple game like a puzzler would be best but is it multi-player? Since he added multi-player as a requirement a lot of the simple things go out the window.
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The puzzle game I dreamed up would have been multiplayer exclusively, with a single-player campaign featuring A.I. bots (like classic puzzle games such as Money Idol Exchanger, Puyo Puyo, and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo).

EDIT: And I think we'd have to seriously consider using middleware like Unity to keep development times reasonable.
 
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I'm a software engineer with lots of game engine experience both 2D and 3D, and this project sounds interesting to me. I do have a significant lack of skills when it comes to modeling :) You might want to look into the XNA platform or SlimDX.
 
The issue I have with "making a game about Christians" is, in addition to great points from Patriot above, that Christianity is reality, not a game. Christians live not by bread, lives, or "faith points" but on the real word of God.

I refuse to script prayer, script miracles, and script salvation.

That being said I have no problem with games with Christian characters (especially Christians who are not hokey bigots) or with Christianity as a realistic and revered backdrop.
 
To answer some questions:

1) I'm not sure about platform, genre, or langue. That's why I'm asking around.

2) The answer to "is X viable multiplayer?" is "would you play X with or against your fellow CGAers and actually enjoy it?"
 
Also, SergeantDerp, can you give me a brief run-down of XNA vs SlimDX vs Unreal vs Starcraft? I have familiarity modding on both Unreal (albeit very little) and Starcraft.

I own Starcraft II, which gives me access to the Arcade and SDK.
 
Neirai the Forgiven said:
The issue I have with "making a game about Christians" is, in addition to great points from Patriot above, that Christianity is reality, not a game. Christians live not by bread, lives, or "faith points" but on the real word of God.
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While I agree, I also recall being greatly encouraged by seeing Christian principles lived out by characters in books written by Christian authors. (Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings immediately comes to mind.)

EDIT: I understand books are static while video games are dynamic, but most video game NPCs (non-playable characters) are also static. I understand and agree with your point regarding a calculable assessment of faith and the inherent faults thereof, but I also think if games are insistent on introducing "morality systems" (which, in practice, fall far short of the claims) in games, I'd like to see a game that uses a Christian standard for those systems--understanding that Christianity is not a "ladder" by one earns salvation, but rather a life lived out of the result of us receiving God's amazing grace which we could never earn.

My idea of a game where the protagonist is charged with helping protect the underground church would cast a non-Christian in the player role and have that character witness a sincere faith in almighty God demonstrated by Christian characters' words, actions, and sacrifices. If the GTA games can highlight the effects of greed, lust, and envy, couldn't a Christian game point to (though admittedly not fully represent) how Christ transforms men's and women's lives?

Again, we run into the issue of the cost of a long-form, mission-based, open world game simply being too financially demanding to be feasible, but a man can dream, can't he? :)

Neirai the Forgiven said:
I refuse to script prayer, script miracles, and script salvation.
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While I can understand the second and third points, I wouldn't necessarily take issue with the first. If a Christian character were to pray according to Biblical instruction (say, the Lord's Prayer) and in an appropriate context in a game, I wouldn't take offense at that.

Neirai the Forgiven said:
That being said I have no problem with games with Christian characters (especially Christians who are not hokey bigots) or with Christianity as a realistic and revered backdrop.
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And it's clear we agree on that point. Context is crucial and I'd be very interested to see a dynamic Christian character, written by an author who is a Christian himself or herself with a daily walk with Christ, in a video game setting, if only to see a departure from the stale, "Religion is bad, mmkay?" rot of modern video games.

Seriously, how many times can a Catholic priest character pose as good and later be revealed as the great evil in a JRPG? The trope is played out and I want to see something fresh, both as a gamer and as a Christian.
 
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I always come back to RiverTigress's story about first knowing God's grace through the churches in Arena. The Holy Spirit took the positive image of the church in the game and used it to let her know that churches, the kind of churches that we know and love rather than the evil stereotypes, were real.

I have no issue with portraying the reality of grace, hope, love, and forgiveness. In fact, I have a great interest in them.


My issue with making "a Christian game" stems from a problem of parole. By which I mean, the underlying structure of a work of art from which we derive meaning. If, in a game, a person strives to do good in the face of great evil and therefore overcomes that evil by their skills and choices, and the game portrays this as Christian -- did we just make a game about legalism?

If, however, in a game, the person overcomes evil by "the blood of the lamb the word of their testimony" in a game, will the game just suck? Or, even worse, will the game cheapen the blood of Christ into a game mechanic?

But! If the game IS the word of our testimony, and the blood of Jesus is available to all, would the game overcome evil in the real sense?

I just thought of that. Hmm.
 
Neirai the Forgiven said:
Also, SergeantDerp, can you give me a brief run-down of XNA vs SlimDX vs Unreal vs Starcraft? I have familiarity modding on both Unreal (albeit very little) and Starcraft.

I own Starcraft II, which gives me access to the Arcade and SDK.
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XNA is a .NET wrapper around DirectX 9 and some of the features of DirectX 10. To use XNA you have to write your own 2D/3D engine and build a game on top of that. The great thing about it is its cross platform compatibility; you can build a game using XNA and it will run on Window, Windows Phone and XBox.

SlimDX is a managed wrapper around all the versions of DirectX. It is similar to XNA but can not be ported to Windows Phone or XBox easily.

Both XNA and SlimDX are build for writing games in C#.

Unreal is a 3D engine built in C++, it is extremely powerful and kind of an atom bomb for small indie games when you only need a hammer.

Blizzard's StarCraft II SDK just provides access to their engine and is fairly limited and not really a good candidate for indie games since it requires you to own a copy of StarCraft to use anything you create.

In my opinion either XNA or SlimDX are the best candidates for indie games since you can create some really cool games quickly and relatively easily. I have a 3D engine for XNA that will do most of what the Unreal engine will do, just not as nicely. Plus 2D tile engines and platformer engines can be created pretty easily. Once you have the engine all we need to do is build the game logic on top.
 
I could see a game based on OT. I mean cmon, look at all the awesome things that happened in the OT. If you can't find something based around that to work into a game...
 
I have a couple of questions about game structure:

Shooter? Puzzler? RPG? RTS? Turn-based Strategy? MMO? Platformer? Racer? Sim? godgame? MOBA?

Bullet Hell MOBA with Empire building sim elements?

If you were to sit down and play it with your friends in CGA, would it take 5 minutes? an hour? several weeks? less than 5 minutes?

How many players?

Story? No story? Characters? no characters?
 
Langue (the wrapping around the structure) is really, really, really fun and cool, but it's not ultimately that important at this stage. If the game is a western, a fantasy, a noir, or a Namor fangame, it's not going to change much yet.
 
A puzzle game avoids many of the extras that a fps or strategy game requires (i.e. story, moral relevancy, etc).
 
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