Okay I've spent waaay too much time off doing absolutely nothing lately. I've kinda fallen out of drawing for a couple months and need a good project to keep me fresh. I'd hate to lose what little I've gained in flash over the past couple years. Sooo I figure why not take on something a bit bigger than I've ever done before.

I'm wanting to make a full fledged side scroller/beat em' up. Maybe something similar to Castle Crashers (obviously not as long though). Right now I'm kinda digging an old western theme, but I'm open to suggestions. I'd kinda like to keep the thread running as I progress to get further ideas, and suggestions.

To start out I was thinking of something kinda along the lines of Metal slug as far as weaponry and bosses ect. go. I want it to be a bit overboard. For instance I was thinking one boss could be the work of some mad man that made an ole' timey locomotive mech type dude. Goofy stuff along those lines.

I'm still up in the air for just about everything. Other than the fact that I'd like it to be western setting, and castle crasher/ Metal Slug game type. Where should I start? Do I need to go with a Story line first, create a nice main character, sett up some locations? What do ya'll think. Help a brother out, unemployment is BORING!

Here's what I doodled up for a main character, but it needs a lot of work. As for the background I'm kinda liking the paintery look, perhaps with a little more time put into the effort, and some detail...
Give me ideas on anything, anything you think would be cool, would like to see ect.

UPDATE:

Current progress: http://i200.photobucket.com/album...

Enemy Ideas:
-Giant Cactus
-Steam Powered Train Mech.
-Al Swearengen
-Mad Prospect
-Giant Spittoon

Stage Ideas:
-a distorted stage where the character has taken some Payote
-Vehicle stage including covered wagons (old timey Wagon Race?)
-Mini events. "precision spitting", "drinking games", "banjo hero", ect.

Other:
- Alternate endings (ending career) based on events through the game.
-Snatch the garter off the whore mini game ( I likes )

Play Earthworm Jim on the SNES (or Sega CD), incorporate 99% of that into your game, and it'll be amazingly unique . Seriously though, there are lots of elements to that game that make it wacky, humorous, and badass at the same time. If you could make something sorta like that (obviously with a different theme), that would be awesome!

And who took a bite out of his hat?

Walking cacti with hats and scarves.

Someone hurling tumble weeds

Goofy looking horses with big teeth, perhaps a talking sidekick horse. (or donkey)

Speedy Gonzales rip off boss.

Lots of other crazy steam powered technology besides trains.

He needs a quirk for his health-up. Like, he's insane for swiss cheese, or something.

The story could parallel yours. He starts out unemployed and gets various wild west odd jobs, that go terribly wrong. He's got a temper and in a small vignette at the start of each stage, something funny happens to make him go on a rampage and leave/get fired from his job. The stage is him fighting his way up and out of a coal mine, along the rails where people are driving in ties, through gold country where prospectors are picking away at mountains, etc.

Ha, I love the idea of the bosses of each stage being the bosses of the jobs he looses, or figures out are only for panty wastes. Maybe in the end he winds up the Sherrif, or the owner of an extravagant brothel. Ha, he could even have to whoop Al Swearengen in the end. This is good fellas.

For now I'm going to set up a game layout. Heath meter/image, Image for selected gun, and what ever else the hub should show. Does anyone have some imput on that? And while I'm at it, any suggestions for redesign on the character. I figure a good hub, and main character would be a good place to start. After I get that down, I'll start on some basic animation.. Jump, duck, shoot, run/walk ect.

I love the other ideas too dudes. Thanks, I'll definitely be incorporating some of your stuff Patrick.
Also have to brush up on my EWJ, I haven't played it in ages.. definitely along the lines of humor I'm going for though.

Awsome stuff Fris! Great ideas so far guys! Another game you might want to look up is Skulmonkeys or the Neverhood, both are by the creator of the EWJ series and have similar humor and a unique artistic style.

I'll try to come up with some interesting character ideas for you. Really lookign forward to seeing the end result to this project!

This could be really cool Fris! I like the job/boss theme.

Maybe have the ending be based on stuff during the levels. Like if you rescue enough damsels in distress, you press them into servitude and have a booming bunny ranch business. If you kill enough bad guys, you get to be the sheriff. If you take enough gold you can become an outlaw...something along those lines.

Maybe a boss could be a giant spittoon:



The thing has gained so much energy throughout the years feeding off of people's chew spit, and now it's evolved into a monster that uses chew goo as ammunition. Yeah, it's pretty gross, but I think it would be cool.

^^^ That would be great!

This would look cool, especially with your style of art. Don't quit on the drawing stuff I'm still looking forward to seeing mine (me).

Hey gary duder, i sent you a PM my brotha

I got the character split apart, and ready for animation ( I had it set up horribly all on one layer). I also drew up some extra stache/chin combos for conversations. I figured I would have the head shot and text at the bottom when he interacts with people. Like on Phoenix Wright. I'm not sure if the heads shots mouths change on that, but I'd like a looping animation anyhoo.

Sorry, kinda more of the same, but you can see I have it all set up nicely in seperate frames, and everything is labled nice for future linkage ID. Yippie.

Still lovin' the ideas dude. Giant spittoon will be a new addition for shizzle!

http://i200.photobucket.com/album...

Heck of a long way to go. But it's getting to the fun part.

Check out the link
http://i200.photobucket.com/album...

Still need to add 4-5 more various mouth frames to make believable talking. after that I'm going to work on run/walk cycles. The gun to the left will change as you pick up new weapons. I still don't know what to add for guns, or even if thats a good idea at the time. Should there be melee attacks too?

EDIT: I really need some help figuring out what should be in the HUD, and what it should be made of. Hrm... I'm not really even sure what all should be listed down there.

I love the animation of your character. Very cool so far! As for ideas, maybe you could have a level where you fights Indians and the boss is some giant Indian chief that throws tomahawks or uses a bow with flaming arrows or something. Or the boss could be a huge totem pole with several faces that each have a different method of attack, like blowing fire or shooting arrows or whatever. Just a few ideas.

I'll re-ask my question from the Homebrew sprite thread. I like the style/animation. I feel like I've seen this style before... what are your inspirations/references? Or is this just your unique style.

I keep trying to think up ideas to help out, but all I can think of is Back To The Future 3 and that part in Tombstone when Doc Holliday is spinning that empty shot glass around his finger in front of Johnny Ringo.

great idea with the peyote level, you have got some great ideas. Ill try and think up some random off the wall ideas. You should definitely include a saloon stage.

How about:

-Snatch the garter off the whore
-?

All I can think of is whores. If it's a western, you need whorehouses.

spoken like a true king.

Yay for swiss cheese health bar!

He should walk with a slight limp towards his gun belt. I also imagine it should look hard for him to stand up after he ducks because his back's bad.

I'd ignore ammo for the purposes of this game. In the tradition of Sunsetriders, it's real arcade fun to just keep shooting and occasionally get powerups/bonuses or upgrades, but never have to resort to fists. Fists aren't fun in a shootemup. So that's one thing eliminated from the HUD.

Your percent complete could be the top of a paycheck stub with old "wild west" font (think wanted posters), showing a dollar amount that goes down through the level. It's the goal of the level to reduce it to zero at which point you get to face your boss and "get fired" So if you just cruise through the level and ignore things, you might need to go back -- but not necessarily. There could be "minigames" -- fun little things you can discover throughout the level to wreak havoc and reduce your paycheck even more. Like letting a mouse loose in the whorehouse, or lighting a powder keg deep in the coal mines. But in each level, if you just kill most of your coworkers, you should be able to make it to the end.

Apart from the lifebar and the "countdown" though I can't think of anything else you really need. Like you said, you can put the weapon on the belt.

Different weapon ideas -- a high-pressure squirt gun (fed by two big over-engineered wooden tanks on his back), a crossbow (easier to conceptualize in a game than a recurve), and Kirk's bamboo Gorn-cannon (come to think of it, a diamond mine level would be more visually interesting than a goldmine level)

^^^ I'd disagree about the ammo. He could do this like a highly stylized version of Rolling Thunder or Code Name: Viper. Both of those had basic ammo as well as special weapon ammo. It adds an extra skill/strategy element to the game when you can't necessarily kill EVERYTHING.

You could have him eat a plate of spaghetti and go into "Spaghetti Western Mode" in which he has unlimited ammo for a period of time, while bad guys keep coming out of nowhere (and some kind of kill % bonus associated with it).

HAHA i couldnt help but laugh at the awesome idea.

Hey dude, sorry about that I never went back to that thread.. totally giving up on NES development for me.

I don't have references per-say, well perhaps. But my inspirations would be... if only
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genn...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_... (Dan Paladin)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step...
and most recently
http://themrock.deviantart.com/ga...

It's early for me.. I just woke up Time to get started on the game dudes.

 Loving the suggestions. I'm thinking that I'm going to go with unlimited bullets on this one. I don't want a single thing to slow down the action. And I don't know if someone had mentioned it (thought i read it in the thread somewhere) but the HUD at the bottom being in the image of a old western belt would be pretty neat. With the little carvings and such. Be back soon!

I would do unlimited ammo, but still make you have to reload the 6 shooter. Also you can have different ammo types.That would be cool.

6 words: Steam-Powered Robot John Wilkes Booth!

Edit: I see you already have a steam-powered mech. Well Played.

Mini update

I got side tracked with other drawing projects, but I finished up the HUD, backdrop
Rather than just flat brown, I made it similar to an old western belt, or for you tennesse'ans
its a belt like the fellar down at the flea market will make ya for $15.

It looks a bit better up close. (3 frame mouth movement)
http://i200.photobucket.com/album...

^click that thar!