Game Design Log - Entry #1

Hope nobody minds -- I'm gonna take a sidestep on this blog for a while. I'm taking a "Game Programming/Design" class at the local college this quarter, and part of it is keeping a log of what I'm doing for the game we're supposed to be making. I figure my blog's as good a place as any, and people might comment on it and help refine some ideas.

The assignment for the first week is to come up with some ideas for the game we'd like to make. So far, I've got two ideas. The first is a platformer of some sort. Been done to death, but it does cover a good deal of the "basics" of designing a game. This particular idea hasn't been fleshed out much.

The other idea I've got is a mix of "Lunar Lander" and a little bit of a platformer. You have to land your ship on the "moon", then get out of the ship and go gather a few things(Artifacts that have been located on the moon, ship parts... Something.), then return to your ship and take off again. Kinda like Pikmin, only without the pikmin.

This second idea is the one that keeps coming back to me, and is probably the one I'm going to end up going with. It needs some more work(What is it you're retrieving, and why... Where are you going when you take off again(Which brings with it, what happens after you take off again)... I know there's other questions that need to be answered, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind.), but I think it could make for a decent project.

It would need gravity(Landing/taking off, jumping), collision detection(Landing/crashing, collecting items, possibly spikes or something after you've left the ship...), might be able to work in a random number generator for level creation(Probably not for the "surface" segment, but for the landing segment it's definitely possible)...

This is mostly just thinking "out loud". This will become more and more detailed as I go on, probably.

Anyways. This is Entry #1, on 4/4/2012, right around noon.