Evolving gamplay aspects with technical limitations.

As we progress through final stages of development in Edward Nigma: Fantastic Fanboy, we experience new challenges and limitation while working with relatively advanced hardware. The limitation we face is due to the fact that we work within the sphere of the homebrew development, so most of the resources used are not official. We can get around these problems by using relatively simplistic gameplay in a fresh way. 

Presentation is essential to get the play involved and committed to playing the game. What was first concept is now practice, and in practice some concept are not as effective as they once seemed to be. I must admit that the once simple turn base game has turned into something more complicated with visual tutorials, multiple options, custom soundtrack and the possibility of adding episodic chapters.

My original train of thought is that if we produce a visual stunning game while at the same time offer a decent story and presentation, we can capture the players attention and thus increase the experience of the game. Turning a relatively simple game into a complex world of characters and themes. I often have seen absolutely wonderful homebrew games die out because of a lack of graphical refinement and presentation. Games that showed innovative game-play aspects have been crippled by horrible GUIs and bleak graphics. If we can set the bar higher for presentation and visual game-play then maybe the rest of the homebrew community would also put more effort in that aspect of game development.

Another thing I want to make more of a trend is to allow homebrew development to become something more of a group effort. Where a game is not made by the individual but rather by the community, they make or break games. So games can literally have an infinite amount of creative potential and refinement,  if the gamer has the ability to create or edit his/her gameplay experience then they also feel a responsibility to create and support something they may be apart of.

The idea of the having a youtube of gaming is not something new, but it is something has yet to be achieved. Games that are turning into community made gaming is id, bungie, bioware, microsoft, sony and others. However the rate that this is moving is at a turtle's pace, this may be due to several factors. One being that the development house and/or IP owners being protective of their product and the question of possible profites. I believe that the best way to create a youtube of gaming to give the player to tools to create and customize their own environment. Allowing people to then share creation would be create community fueled gaming. The greatest challenge would be development a set of tools that would make game creation/editing easy. Phil Harrison once made a presentation of Game 3.0 but now with his split from SCE WWS, the true potential of this concept is still in doubt...

[Pre-Production]Shadow of the Creator: Chaos

This is a project that is in Pre-Production and planned for a late 2008/early 09 release. At heart this projects takes a lot from the M.U.G.E.N. fighting engine for windows/linux. But focused to take advantage of more modern technologies, the original version is planned to be produced for the PLAYSTATION PORTABLE system. While some function will be focused on the system, such as ad-hoc multiplayer, others will be based current game standards, such as downloadable episodic content, user produced content, online play, and support.

The fighting system planned is to be very simple in order to allow for easy content creation. This is heavily influenced by SmashGP which was released for the PSP/GP32x. The problem by these versions released is the lack of refinement in the graphical interface and the programmed code. While at the time of its released it was herald as a great proof of concept. Although it lacked to have enough support by the creators to reach its full potential. This project intends to expand and improve on all the things presented before, while allowing for a maximum amount of user created content. This idea of community fueled gaming isn't new or fresh but we hope to add a standardized system to it. A system which would allow the player to have complete control over their gameplay experience.

Still in pre-production the original concept over how this fighter will work is based on platform-fighting while having the ability to have standard fighting perspective. Level design is based on "free-roam" fighting levels. The fighting system will be simplified to have a 2/3 button attack system, with a standard grab and defend buttons. We also plan to allow for a special finishing move to be created for each character by the creators. Things are still in the development stage so some features are not final but we have a clear goal to create the greatest piece of homebrew possible.