Nebraska Newton Devlog #1 - "Intro"

I'm going to diverge from my blog-a-week trend for a while, so please bear with me. I have a good reason for this, and besides, who wouldn't want more F13 goodness? :D

Prologue

Okay, so what do I usually do when I make a game? Well, I usually keep it shrouded in secrecy, and then release it one day. This, however, doesn't always work, so I'm going to try a more open (read: hyped) method this time, and see how it goes.

Chapter 1 - "Premise"

What is Nebraska Newton?

Nebraska Newton is my entry for the YYG comp. It's an adventure/action platformer starring Nebraska Newton, the world's most mild-mannered adventurer/explorer. The name is an obvious ripoff of Indiana Jones.

Nebraska's one dream in life was to become an accountant. It suited his boring personality. Unfortunately, he was too stupid. He failed out of university, and his dream was never realized.

Nebraska needed to eat, so he took the first job that came to him: the dangerous, but glamorous job of an explorer of ancient ruins. He is now on his way to the newly-discovered tomb of an ancient Amaghulean (fictional civilization that fictionally lived in the Kalahari desert) king.

Chapter 2 - "Conception"

How did Nebraska Newton come to be?

That is quite a long story. In fact, it's so long that I've divided it into two sections: The Engine and The Game.

The Engine

The engine used is my UnEntered engine. Some of you may remember the story of this engine's creation. For those of you who don't, here's a quick run-through:

My friend wanted the $1000 prize-money for the YYG winter comp. My friend can't program. My friend asked me to do it. I poured my heart and soul into it, doing more than required, sacrificing two weeks of my life to it. My friend was unable to do level-design or graphics, the two things he had committed to. He has excuses, but I maintain that if he cared as much as I did, he would have done what he had to do, despite such excuses.

So, at the end, I had this half-finished game I couldn't bring myself to finish. So I tore it down to a basic engine, and I added features. Here's a feature list:

- FPS-style weapon system.

- Health that can have its max increased.

- A freeze-ray.

- Basic enemy AI with flying, grounded, melee and ranged enemies.

- Wall climbing (think Knytt).

- An AI companion.

- Crouching.

- Melee combat.

- Slippery ground.

- etc…

Not all of that stuff works as well as it should, and not all of it will actually be used in Nebraska Newton.

The Game

When I heard about the Ancient Civilization comp, this idea popped up. I didn't plan on using it though, so it went to the back of my mind.

That's when ESA persuaded me to make the game during a conversation on Google Talk. He offered to do the graphics, and so I decided to do it.

Now I have an engine, a premise, and someone else to do the graphics. This will probably work.

Chapter 3 - "Goals"

The point of this devlog will be to list my goals, and to get encouragement. Also to give ESA his lists of graphics to do. So here goes:

Goals For Today

* Get switches to work. Switches are a game element I just came up with. At the moment, all they do is turn lava streams on and off. This is so that the player can pass the streams, or so that the player can incinerate enemies. This also gives the player an idea of how advanced the Amaghuleans were.

* Design at least two levels Levels are very important. Without them, there wouldn't be a game. I plan to design a bunch of levels, and then decide how difficult they are, and put them in that order in the game. So, I won't necessarily design the levels in the order the player plays through them.

Epilogue

I'll be back tomorrow with more goals, and an update on the ones above. Bye for now.

F1ak3r