Commercial Game ideas

[kevansevans]

I've been toying around with the idea as well of making a commercial game. It's what I've been gradually doing with my current mod, slowly turning it into a TC that I hope some day Soon(tm) can be put on various game markets. Count me in if you do decide to start something, might be willing to offer my project as the base for the game, under the premise we don't fall prey to everyone leaving like what was mentioned earlier.

Though I don't know personally how flexible enough GZDoom is for a commercial game. As an example, standalone TC mod it works fine, but when considering steam updates, any time we'd have to fix something, the main iwad/ipk3 would end up being redownloaded, which makes updates unnecessarily bloated. I don't know how flexible the load flag in gameinfo is, but my OCD will hate me if we can't separate asset files into different subfolders.

Then there's the issue that collaborative map making really really sucks. I pitched the idea on the GZDB-BF thread to have a special option to save maps unpackaged so github doesn't throw a fit when someone makes a pull request, but it was shot down due to how people typically work on collabs in the past, which is one person focuses on one map at a time. If a commercial game is to be made, imo, we can't have people focusing on one map at a time, as it can cause levels to clash with each other in terms of design and flow. We're all familiar with how games are meant to be played, so I'm not too worried about conflict of interest, since we all share a love for Doom styled gameplay.

[Marisa the Magician]

Ah damn, this looks like it could be fun but I already have a project of my own I'm working on...

Still, to those who wanna do it, I wish you the best of luck.

[Rachael]

@kevans:

It's possible to have an ipk3 load separate assets. So you could theoretically have a "gamename_art.pk3" and "gamename_sound.pk3" etc.

I attached an example that does exactly this with the retail Doom wad sets (with the exception of TNT/Plutonia). This is, in fact, a mod I made purely for myself for playing any Doom wad. It uses some assets from the forum.

Seeing as how I never intended to distribute this, this doesn't have proper credits anywhere - my only purpose for attaching this is to show that it can be done.

[Reactor]

Um....

I know, I'm such and old-fashioned bloke, but I'd never play a game which has no purpose whatsoever, and is just a mindless massacre. This recipe worked for Pac-man or Tetris in 1983, but now it is 2017.
Alternatively, you can have an extraordinary multiplayer with worldwide servers and a huge fanbase. If you have any good suggestions, I'm all ears...um...eyes for them.

[Clay]

This does indeed sound interesting. My wife and I are currently playing around with a puzzle game concept. I have been working hard in blender to learn what I can. She will be refreshing on C++ and learning to use UE4. I am not the best doom modder. I can however do models and some graphics. My interest in all things 3d has been almost exclusively in a capitalistic sense. If my abilities become needed/wanted, I will give this a second look.

@shadelight Of course doom had no real story I think the point being made was that people seem to want/need one in this day and age. I may have misread you though...

I also agree that a test game would make for a great team building exercise as it could weed out the unreliable people and peak the interest of the more reliable. We also face the issue of work speed vs work quality. some people can only do great works when not under any pressure. The nature of a team often means the someone is waiting on someone else's work to be finished. One would think that games like this, being retro or nostalgic, means that a deadline is not the biggest issue but one cannot ignore the team dynamic.

Good luck guys!

[Dr_Cosmobyte]

mods like kreigsland

Thank you, i am flattered! User Groovy worked some months to bring some maps on a project called "Black Sun" for both Kriegsland or Brutal Wolfenstein. He started it again, so make sure to follow his progress on his Instagram page, listed on my main post.

Now on the the real thread:

Most users said everything, so i'll just add my 5 cents:

Why not try a online-oriented game?

Sorry, i know it sounds ambitious and hard as hell, but it seems a step towards what FPS gamers really seek these days. Of course, it would need lots of testing and feedback, but if we want to keep it humble in terms of presentation, well, that would be a shortcut on the real hard work.

[Sgt. Shivers]

Why not try a online-oriented game?

Does this community have anyone active that does netcode anymore?

[ibm5155]

I could actually make a terry wad and sell it on steam, and I bet it would still be better than half paid steam indie games out there

[Rachael]

I could actually make a terry wad and sell it on steam, and I bet it would still be better than half paid steam indie games out there

I can't even begin to go into the number of things that is wrong with this idea. My best advice is - don't do that!

[Nash]

A question that has been lingering in my head for many, many years (for as long as I have developed my standalone) which I had hoped to ask at the very last minute... but since there is the possibility of another commercial product with the interest from community heads, I figured now is a good time to ask.

Re: Saved games and future updates

As we all know, when you change too much of the base resources (engine code, changing maps, changing actors), saved games don't work properly anymore. If you are going to put a game on Steam, the experience must be as invisible as possible - Steam automatically downloads updates, your saved games "just work" after that.

I imagine customers will be VERY angry if they find out every update breaks their saved games. What solutions are available for this issue? I think for a commercially-sold product, this is a valid and very serious concern...

[Rachael]

If we were to use GZDoom as the engine of choice, GZDoom tries as much as possible to migrate saved data. In fact, it's rather rare ever since the refactoring of the save system to use JSON internally, that this has been a real issue.

[Nash]

True, but GZDoom still cannot handle map changes (say there was a bad map that prevents player progress, OR perhaps you want to make an expansion pack that edits the previous maps a little, geometrically)... if you edit the map, the old save won't be loadable anymore (it just crashes the engine). It's impossible to push out a map update.

IIRC actors also won't hot load their new actor code, it seems the old actor is baked into the save game some what (I may not be 100% right on this since the last time I tested this was before ZScript existed but I can't imagine things to have changed that much since then)

[Rachael]

We can do a patch archive where fixed maps are labeled i.e. "map01a" "map01b" etc and simply modify MAPINFO to play around said maps. Actor changes are rather gracefully handled - the text is serialized out, and only what changes from the base definition is saved.

Open a savegame with 7-zip and see for yourself.

[Nash]

We can do a patch archive where fixed maps are labeled i.e. "map01a" "map01b" etc and simply modify MAPINFO to play around said maps.

Okay this will prevent crash when the user loaded a saved game on the old map after an update, but the user is still stuck on the old (defective) map.

Also would MAPINFO re-routing like that actually work? Care to post an example? I'm guessing this would still require the user to leave the map and re-enter it in-game?

[Dancso]

Consider me interested but I'm not sure how much use I would be.
I've got a decent chunk of experience with GLSL and Java through the JMonkey Engine (LWJGL) and I've dabbled in most other categories but I'm master of none.
I enjoy UI design, creating non-organic assets, special effects and the occasional sound, but I'm limited by theme and art direction.