FIRST has been around for a long time, and it surprises me that nobody has made a FIRST video game yet. if no developers will do it, maybe WE can. many teams make 3D models of their robots anyway for animations, and the field is made for the game animation at kickoff. if we could get anough programmers together, we could make a video game. if it was good enough, it might get put on a console and that would really spread the word of FIRST
Hm…not a bad idea really. There’s just a lot of things that go into this, not even including the basic programming stuff though.
I might be up for this though for the programming part.
My question: Which game? 2004? 2005? All of them?
(man, I’d love being able to play Maize Craze…but back to the topic)
Hrrm, I had never really thought of this before. Quite interesting indeed. It is just like any other racing type game currentlyon the market: you have a large selection of cars (robots) to chose from and a large selection of race courses (fields/years) to chose from. And the opponent and time limit add a bit of a sports aspect to it.
Okay great its decided! We are making it! Where do I pick up my copy?
I suggested something similar way back, here, and I think that it would go well with this. Any taker’s? If I can get some help, I’ll get started. (note to self: get sourceforge ID)
Basically, the first 15 seconds is auton (My thing), and the other 1:45 is user mode (your thing). But the infrastructure is basically the same.
as far as what year it is, i think it would be best to decide on one game and not include all of them, otherwise it would be WAY too much to program. :ahh: we could pick a game from the past (stack attack would probably be best, no complicated bounce physics to deal with), we could make up a new game specially for this, or we could use Gyrating Jamboree!
if this is goign to happen we need to do several things:
-we need to recruit a handful of programmers and other people for planning and design
-we need to establish jobs, a chain of command, and a plan for how everything is going to work
-we need to figure out what programming language is best, based on the abilities of the language and the number of willing people who know it
-we need to figure out what kind of game it will be - cd? online? download?
i suppose the first thing to do is recruit, so if you’re interested post, and we will see how things go from there.
i am not very experienced as a programmer, but as it says up there^ i am with communications, so i could help coordinate some of this.
Not to be discouraging or anything, but um, you guys do know how many people and how much time it takes to make a computer game right?
I’m not even talking making it good, just making it…
Cory
This does depends on a lot of things. I highly doubt we’d want it be like, the next TRIBES, or anything. This also depends on how well everyone works together (amoung of things).
I do agree half-way here though.
Not to be discouraging or anything, but um, you guys do know how many people and how much time it takes to make a computer game right?
Can’t be that hard can it?
Depends on what you want in the game, and how skilled the workers are.
Not to brag or anything, but I can definitely take on the 3D modeling, specifically the field. If we use Stack Attack, I already have a well-modeled field to work with, including some really good looking versions of the bins.
what about this for a start??
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24104&highlight=video+game
maybe we could make a simpler version of a first game, to make things easier.
maybe we could flatten the 2003 field – just 2 bars and the side walls of the ramp. this way we won’t have to worry about programming robot tilting and flipping and all that other stuff that inclines throw in. maybe that wouldn’t be that much of a problem to do, i don’t know, just a thought.
making simple robots would be benificial too. too many controls to program would complicate things. we should try for drive and 1 or 2 simple functions. maybe have the ctrl and shift keys act as the forward and back funstions for tank drive, the make z and / the two other functions.
maybe car drive would be easier to program, we’ll have to see, but as far as the game, i think stack attack is pretty much definite
Stack attack would be a terrible game from the player’s standpoint. There is no replayability value. Push bins. Push more bins. Push even more bins. Dash for top of ramp. Repeat.
Obviosuly it’s much easier from a programming standpoint.
Cory
there is also the stacking aspect, and knocking over the stacks. i personally think that stack attack was the best FIRST game.
you can bash it all you want, but as you said, “Obviosuly it’s much easier from a programming standpoint.” at this point, we are facing the question of whether this will happen at all. i think the simpler game is the way to go, because it is much more likely to work. i’m going to take a poll…
[quote=afflictionblade]there is also the stacking aspect, and knocking over the stacks. i personally think that stack attack was the best FIRST game.
Just a few thoughts:
-It would probably be run in DOS just for simplicity purposes.
-Language wise, I only know a lot about BASIC, and a little pascal and C. Any suggestions on other languages I should study before this possibly gets started?
-The game would probably have to be released expansion wise. Come out with the main engine and the first ever challenge in FIRST on the very first release. Then release the other challenges via expansion packs.
-I’ve been pondering the thought of a video game, and if this gets off the ground, the FIRST message will have spread to a whole bunch of people who didn’t know about it. This game would do a lot.
Doing graphics in DOS period is very bad.
You should know more C (and/or C++) I think. This is one of the very few contraversal (sp?) programming topics.
That might work for the expansion set idea.
(These are just my comments.)
i have C++… never used it though. my father got it free for something.
i guess one issue we need to resolve is the opponants. do we want 4 people playing on 4 separate computers connected through the internet, or USB or something, or do we want to program AI? i think AI would be WAY harder, but i don’t know how hard it is to program internet stuff.
people really seem interested in this, I guess it is pretty much officially happening. i’m all for it. if nobody else wants to help i’ll make a dinky text game on my TI-83 “YOU HAVE PICKED UP A 2X BALL! PLACE IN GOAL?” lol
so anyway, current issues: game, language, and internet or AI
O.K. Maybe not DOS. :ahh: I was just thinking of “DOOM” graphics, and considering those and others, definitely a bad idea.
As far as programming is concerned, I have a short C tutorial that teaches many basic functions. What other functions in C should I look up? Graphics? Graphics engines? etc.