Rapid game design ideas

[zoombapup]

Hi guys.

I'm trying to figure out a bunch of different ideas for "behaviors" for objects. Behaviors are a new feature in TGB that I'm trying to evangelize because its a great example of composite class design.

I'll be posting a video later today showing how you can create geometry wars (sans some of the flashier graphics) using NO programming and I'm aiming to make it in less than 2 minutes.

The idea of composite object behaviors I think is a very powerful one and I want to show that with a few more games. So I could use feedback on potential game ideas.

The way to think of behaviors are "small units of interactivity", so for instance, I have a "mouseshoots" behavior, that when it is attached to an object, will cause the object to fire a projectile (identified at runtime) when the mouse is pressed.

The key to these things, is that the runtime binding allows you to create quite complex behavior from these building blocks. Add in the editor interface for them and you get a very powerful toolkit. So basically, you create games using behaviors at runtime, no coding required (so with a good library of behaviors you can recreate plenty of different games).

So what other games?

I've thought of pacman (TileMove behavior, Eat behavior, AIWander behavior).

Space invaders (LinearMove behavior, MovePattern behavior, RandomizeChoice behavior)

Anyone else use behaviors? (in coding terms, using something akin to the decorator pattern)

[Moose2000]

The aliens in Star Monkey (http://www.smallrockets.com/pc/starmonkey/) are built by plugging together components in the editor. There are components for things like 'point at the player', 'fire when the player is in within the field of view', 'follow the spline', and they can be combined arbitrarily to create some pretty complex behaviours.

The system started out as a method for simply laying out the articulated sprite parts of the aliens. Using the system to apply behaviours came later, and is possibly the thing I was most pleased with about the game.

The editor all but shipped with Star Monkey - it's there, but can't be used because the files laying out the ui are missing. However, Ultra Assault (http://www.smallrockets.com/pc/ultraassault/) (which used the Star Monkey engine) did ship with the editor enabled, so if you get that you can play with the editor in both games.

If you're interested, you can rummage through the aliens in the game and see how they're constructed, and build your own from scratch. (Or just modify all the existing ones so that when they explode their fireballs burn swear words into the landscape).

[Philippe]

Anyone else use behaviors? (in coding terms, using something akin to the decorator pattern)

I'm making use of behaviours for my GUI classes and I'm thinking of applying the same principle to my game's background elements. The idea was to provide a means of quickly creating effects and of chaining them together in a modular manner without touching the core classes. I've currently implemented stuff like different tints and zooms on mouse over and alpha/color/zoom fading when bringing up UI windows.

[Dreamland]

so this means people who are bad at making games can make those classic old style sidescrollers with few work :P

[LilGames]

*off topic*
Star Monkey has a great difficulty balancing feature. The more fire power you have, the more enemies appear. This is great for when you die and lose all your power ups. The amount of enemies scales back down to at least give you a fair chance.

[Agent 4125]

This sounds similar to what I have for Joystick Johnny, but my system isn't necessarily behavior-based. It's mainly about spawning, timers, and boundaries.

It makes some assumptions for 80's-style miniganes, but the variation is pretty wide and I can make a basic minigame in about 5 minutes. Right now I have 40 minigames that are mostly of the dodge-and-shoot variety, like Tapper, Paperboy, and Robotron.

[Indiepath]

One of my small "written in under 24 hours" games makes good use of steering behaviours.

Here's the game : http://360shooters.com/

Here's the resource : http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/

Another game that makes use of steering behaviours but applies it to random generation of paths : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ipHcv3lvQ - I've not finished this little gem yet, it's another written in under 24 hours job.