City of Amnesia

Well...first I'd like to say hi and thank everyone for enjoying my past Big O works.  I'm not really sure if anyone remembers or heard of another Big O project I started over a year ago, but I've been continuing work on it off and on.  Originally, I had two game modes in mind: a story-based mode and mission-based mode, but seeing as how I suck at storytelling, I decided to recreate a few battles featured in both the Manga and Anime series.  This game will feature a much bigger cast of characters, multiple playable characters, more levels, more challenges, a DRIVABLE GRIFFON, secret modes, destructible environments, overhauled control-scheme, and much, much more.

Here's a few videos and screens:

BigO Demonstration:(old video;BO's been modified since)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcDBKQRd2Io

BigDuo Flight Test:(a test that's now fixed and ready to go)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzmMA8I1uoY

Mansion: Living Area:(well...it's one of Roger's interactive Mansion levels)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMovP_o--Y8

Screens:
Current Cast so far; more to come
(http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/2613/bocast.jpg)
A Few Enemies **Note: The Megadeus on the left is NOT Big O, if you've read the Manga you'll know who it is; the two on the right are the same Big, one in the "Negative" & the other "Normal".
(http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/8774/bocastenemy.jpg)
Two versions of the Griffon
(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/3753/bogriffon.jpg)

Update:
Here's Big-Fau:
(http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/5603/bigfau3d.jpg)

Gigadeus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc5tbAuEzaU

Chromebuster + Other attacks: (I've fixed his Hip Anchors since uploading this video so now you can grab the enemy and pull them closer to you; I'll upload another video and a sample tutorial to demonstrate shortly)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r1Eh5CeW0k

I remember you from the days of SaveBigO.com, in fact I still have all the Big O games (and demos) you released from way back when.

I've been following your progress (the little bits that you've shown on YouTube) and I really cannot wait until you've perfected this one ;D

Awesome job so far.

Long time no see.

Drivable Griffon sounds good. I always thought the Griffon would be an awesome car to drive around in.

Wow, very well done. Impressive work!

Looks fun, do you have a demo up and running? I'm learning the basics of programing and I'm good with technical stuff, so I can be of some help.

You inspired me to e-mail him. I hope he responds. It's pretty amazing that he still works on these projects, considering all the years have passed since he started.

Also, programming? Cool. Female programmer, doubly cool. Stick around for long enough, and I might have a request. :)

I'm just learning the basics of Alice, which many of my male programing friends find annoying, so I should be able to make tiny programs to run stuff like apps and Microsoft Word.
Apparently it takes 500 lines of directions in Alice to make a stick figure run up a wall and do kung-fu moves.  :-X seems like a lot when you can get the stick figure animator for free and just mess with that.
However that doesn't mean I wouldn't be able to find mistakes. Mistakes are usually misspelled words and can take up to about 10 minutes to fix, which is very little time considering it can takes up to 3 hours to write a program.


I hang out with computer nerd guys too much.

American McGee? First thing I thought when I saw that.

awesome.
unfortunately no. I wish they taught classes based on video game lore, or story lines based of classic literature, but fat chance of that ever happening.
I think there was supposed to be a second game in the American McGee Alice series, but I may be wrong.

American Mcgee's Oz. Judging by the name it was probably less a sequel and more the "zomg so dark" design aesthetic applied to Wizard of Oz

It's been cancelled, though I think McFarlane toys released a couple of figures of it back when it wasn't. Or I've seen pictures of them anyway, jumped the gun on that one I suppose.

McGee decided to set up some sweatshop of programmers in China or some such thing, and make the appparently god-awful "Bad Day L.A."


Or in lieu of a class on this (which..how would "videogames based off lit 101" even work) You could go read the source material then come up with something from there.

That doesn't seem like much of a programming related thing as much as a conceptual thing, then again if the computer doesn't run on vacuum tubes I pretty much just assume tiny gremlins live in it and conspire to make it fail on me at a bad time. Guess who's replaced a bunch of computers in their lifetime.

If you're really interested in learning how to spin a good plot or story, I could offer suggestions.


Similar to a "Books to Film" class, probably.

First thing you typed: yeah I could use a little help. I have ideas, but organizing them is hard.
Second: yeah something like that, but most games based on books are usually closer to the original literary work, unless you count the new JRPG's based off books.
"Hello Dorothy and friends (insert speech here) now I need you to go get these 'egg' things that are on the four seasonal witches property and beat the shit out of them while your at it, when you are done well go kill the frost witch.....".

that's from "the Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellowbrick Road". Sorta twisted what the Wizard says, but that's the speech he gives in two line.

Well, not too long ago I went to American McGee's website, and the Oz project did get canned, but Alice is returning to Wonderland, and it's going multiplatform. What kinda bothers me is that EA is rumored to be in on the idea. I'm not sure if that's good or bad...

When you put it like that, now I wanna see a game based off "The sun also rises"

The only two maps are Paris and part of Spain, and all you do is wander around drinking heavily and struggling with emotional baggage you accumulated during world war 1. (quick-time event: "Wiggle left thumbstick to feel wound act up")


This is a good enough time as any (but probably not at all) to mention or reiterate that "No country for old men" has to be one of the closest adaptations I think I've ever seen. They sort of glossed over maybe one or part of one chapter, but for the most part I was sitting there watching it and going "Okay this essentially is just the novel if it had moving pictures inset into it"

(Not a criticism, I like that movie a lot. And that guy that played Chigurh, wonderful. Even knowing how that one scene with the coin would end, it still had this great sense of tension and dread.)

One of the problems that I had, and which university-level writing courses only partially fixed, was that I didn't even know what a plot really was. If you're having trouble organizing your ideas, then you should see how successful people have organized theirs. To that end, get your hands on a couple of books and publications. You're looking for plot summaries, literary criticisms, and very short stories: things so digested, or pre-digested, that you can see the skeleton, but there's still enough meat on the bones that the plot, names and events still have some meaning to you.

Get:
1. Some Reader's Digest Select Editions (previously, Condensed Books),  (http://www.rd.com/selecteditions/) a volume from Magill's Masterplots (http://www.amazon.com/Masterplots-Magill/dp/9998938627), or a book of literary criticism. This book  (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933330104/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1880656647&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1D348A7G4M42AK8V0AH3) is awesome.
2. Fairy tales, or its modern incarnation, "magic realism." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism) These tiny stories have brisk plots, rarely any embellishments, and the crazyness of how things shift in their essence or role is liberating.
          A. Read Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the New Millenium (http://www.amazon.com/Millennium-Charles-Lectures-1985-86-International/dp/0679742379).
          B. Buying a book of Grimm's fairy tales is also a good idea. After around a hundred of them, you'll get bored because certain trends develop. Most of the stories are poorly structured, too. But the way things are often willy-nilly, you'll familiarize yourself with new ideas. You'll notice the cool ones and remember to avoid the bad ones.

The whole point of this is to get your brain jogging. The only way to make a good plot is to experiment, and experimenting often feels like betrayal or destruction of your most treasured creations. In reality, however, I've found that most transformations are beneficial.

Start writing things that would make good episodes or chapters. Don't think you can decide the entire book or movie from the outset. If the individual chapter or episode is interesting, then you have succeeded. When a chapter in the sequence is not interesting, then you have failed, so just change it.

This Q&A probably deserves to be in a separate topic.

Actually I passed eng 101 with an A+.
If I'm writing a paper organizing my ideas is incredibly easy. All the info I have on the paper comes to mind and flows from my fingers to the keyboard. It seems so easy.
However when thinking of how I should formulate things, my brains get a little confused. For example I have ideas on how to write a 10 disc rpg (like anyone would buy that). I have tons of races, battle tactics and exp gains in mind, but it is hard to word it just right. I can type out the idea, but then my brains hurt, because of all the thinking to word it just right. And then some how I still screw up what I meant to say. Sometimes I do that when I'm typing as well.

And I so want to get that book, but I can't afford it right now. Maybe with my next paycheck I can get it used.

Wait, are you having problems with crafting a plot, or with explaining technical concepts? With your talk about classic literature and videogame plots, I thought you wanted help with crafting a plot. It seems that I wasted my time and effort giving you my hard-earned experience.


Okay? We're all rather intelligent here, and I assume that includes you, too, so you don't have to defend your honor or try and impress me, or whatever. Anyway, from what you're saying, English 101 hasn't helped you very much with what you really want to accomplish.

With that said, congratulations.

what I have problems with is formulating new concepts when I type.
I can type up any old rpg's battle and exp type gain, but I want to make my own and make it work.
this is sorta how I want to say it "at the end of each battle the experience is counted as such: total damage to enemies, less damage to you, no damage=special extra exp, battle types + magic types= exp toward skill used, use of basic attacks or party death= -exp to an extent, limit attacks= limit exp and rage skills= rage exp."

Doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm trying to write that in English, but I tend to get this gibberish instead. I know what it means, but few other people will make sense of the gibberish about experience gain after battle. It's worse when I try to write about exp gain during battle and on the world map, or while adventuring. It's completely gibberish at that point.
I also have the beginning, first chapter and end of the rpg I'm trying to make already written up, but what I want to come between is hard for me to write about.

Good lord, you're frustrating me. I ask if you want help writing plots, and you say yeah. So I write a detailed post with helpful suggestions that share my experience, and you don't even acknowledge it. Instead, you imply that you don't actually don't need any help because you got a good grade in an intro-level English class (wow, amazing!), but oh actually what you wanted was advice for writing technical papers.

Gah! Do you understand the problem, here? Cuz I've just had an epiphany. The problem isn't that you're inconsiderate or dense, or bad at organizing your thoughts. It's that I care waaay too much about these forum posts, or this forum in general.

Ohhhhhh...I think I see whats going on here. Or I believe I know what yuko is driving at, anyway

Theres really no tutorial or instructions for coming up with ideas, sorry.

To entirely contradict that, read the four articles written by the author of this http://www.channel101.com/articles/article.php?article_id=11

It goes into all sorts of stuff like Campbells theory of the monomyth, and it's written in a style directed towards people who wanna make 5 minute long shorts, but the basic tenants probably can be applied universally. (Also I for whatever reason was just skimming these earlier so it popped into my head)

Oh wait some of that post seems about game design.

...Uhh...for actual game design go look up interviews with...I dunno, warren specter or something, I guess? I have none on hand. I thought you explicitly meant plot.

That link still might be helpful, I mean cause in the rpg the levels all have to further the plot..so possibly would be designed in a manner reflecting the stages of the story.

I know nothing of programming and have never written anything of value (well..nothing literary in nature. Ask me to write a history paper and according to grading and such you just get the trumpets out and throw a parade. But fun creative stuff I never have done) so I dunno..but you asked for suggestions.

Sharpshooter, I followed that link and stayed glued to the six-part story tutorial, with brief intervals to write notes, for about two hours. On this Friday night with nothing to do (sob!) you have saved this young man from destruction. Inflammatory sometimes, but a real smart-guy genius just as often, is Sharpshooter005. My hat's off to you.

OH. Well pleased it helped/interested someone. Figured it'd be good to bring up considerig the conversatiom

Insulting yet smart..thats how I try to play it!


..Sorry, as usual I'm drunkposting. I'm glad I helped with that link, it made me almost wanna become creative.

But again Yuko...plot is hard. Sorry.

Plot..or a GOOD one....yeah if you wanna write something, I'd say read my link and then do it.

But if it sucks, or if people give criticism...listen to it.

You dont wanna be B^U

Hey guys... could we perhaps move that particular line of discussion to a new thread? This is supposed to be a thread for Shn275's animation work.

kthxbye

Sorry for the lack of updates.  Been real busy.  Anyway, quick update posted.

The forum is basically dead except when I drink and then insult people, and thats like every other month.

So you're not missing anything

An update was posted? You don't mean in the first post, do you? I don't see anything new...

Yeah, sorry.  It's just a couple of videos at the bottom showing off the Gigadeus and the Chromebuster demonstration.  To keep people interested in the project, I'm getting ready to release a playable tutorial that demonstrates a few of Big O's actions (i.e. movement, jump mechanics, hip anchors, defense, melee combat/projectiles, etc.).

Oh man, hip anchors. I forgot those things existed. I'm always excited by the underused or unsung abilities of things.

Except for the machine cannons. Those are boring. Missile Party would be awesome if you could somehow control their pathing, à la the RPG in Half-Life.

Did you post your video of the Solarium demo? That was pretty sweet. Nightgown especially.

Considering that I click on the link to obtain your games from SBO and get a fail message, is there any other way to obtain the Big-O games?

And I concur with R. Dan, the Nightgown was a nice touch.

I have the old demo's and the complete fighting game. I'll have to figure out a way to get my Terra-byte to work with my sis's computer, mine computer died so I can't use it.

Wait this is now about making a big o vidjya?

I played the demo of Shogo, which was about a big bipedal robot, you should make it like that