Game idea #1 (current project):

Bustaballs

Artifact Armor
Adventurer
Joined
Nov 12, 2004
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1,490
Age
39
Location
Kansas
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Windy
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Beastmaster-Male
Secondary Job
WhiteMage-Male
Third Job
RedMage-Male
Server
Quetzalcoatl
FFXIV
Bustaballs
Story concept:

You are an American high school student who recently transferred to a Japanese school as a result of your move due to your parents' business related issues. Everything seems fairly normal at first but you eventually begin to notice people around you becoming more and more confused during conversations. As the days go by, people use less and less words while speaking. Less than a month later, no one can write, read, speak, or understand anything outside of general body gestures and emotion. For some strange reason, you aren't affected. You begin your quest to search for the reason behind this as chaos surrounds the land.

You meet up with others like yourself and team up. Among them is an old man with a few answers. A horde of monsters led by an unknown force are stealing every letter and word from the Japanese and English languages. With some guidance from the old man, it's up to you and your new friends to learn the language of Japan in order to weaken and defeat the enemies who threaten the world as we know it.



Gameplay concept:

The game will play similar to traditional 8-16bit JRPG style. When monsters attack or defend, you will need identify various letters of the Japanese alphabets along with some simple words (initially in Romaji) in order to deflect, defend, or weaken monsters. Many different types of study games will be introduced in battle as you level up. Also, the time you are given to complete identify the letter or word will decrease as you level. The more difficult monsters become, the more letters and words will be introduced. Hopefully, toward the end of the game, you should be able to read each letter of the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets and read (not necessarily understand, just pronounce) them when written as words. You should also be able to understand enough words and sentence structure to speak very basic Japanese. Other misc things may be included, such as numbers in their kanji format.




Other notes:

Upon nearing end of the project, I may decide to continue the work on sequels for more advanced Japanese study. The source code will be released to other developers who would like to expand on the idea or convert it to other languages. Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments.
 
Sounds like a pretty kool idea to me, would definitely help a lot of people remember it.
 
Grind in an RPG and learn while you do it. =)
 
I love learning games like this. They really help teach things to kids (and adults ;;>_> ). I think this is a great idea Busta, good luck with it!
 
Sounds tight, I'd play it. Let us know more about development and release as it goes along. BTW Have you started yet? Or how far into dev are you?
 
The game is still very much in design stages. I'm currently working on a very basic engine. All it can do at the moment is load 20x15 tile(32*32pixel, 640*480) single layer maps that are made from my VB editor. I'm tinkering with little pieces of code that will be included, section by section, until I get it right. At the moment, I have a very basic code of loading NPC dialog from external files, but that's about it on that part. I also have some separate code for player sprite drawing and input movement that is already properly animated.

Once I get the engine in such a state that I think I'm skilled enough to just bust out a game on it, I'll do so. I'll be working on the design of the game at the same time as the engine is being developed. Test graphics and music will be used for alpha stages until I can find some artist+musician help.
 
Is the code VB?
 
No, only the editor. When I need to whip up quick, useful programs, I do it in VB for the easy interface design. I'm no fan of MS but I <3 some RAD. The game is being developed in a language called PlayBasic. Think darkbasic with focus with very fast 2D.

http://playbasic.com/
 
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