Ice Cream Showdown
Community Forums/Showcase/Ice Cream Showdown
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Here's the latest mockup of Ice Cream Showdown: The color bleeding and stuff that looks like it was painted in two seconds is from my editing the shop to show the artist what sort of look I want, but this is about what the next version of the shop he gets me will look like. I decided that the shop didn't look western enough the way it was before. The blue color and the lack of western decorations really didn't fit at all with the theme, even if they were realistic. So I decided that a tan shop has a more western feel, and the artist painted a western looking backdrop for outside. I added the horseshoe, adjusted the colors of the benches, and asked the artist to make a new poster with a cactus shaped ice cream on it to replace the one on the right. I'm not sure if the door and window will change. The area above the shop is still being worked on, and the counter section is going to be redone. I've also found some new music which I'm considering using. What do you folks think of these songs? http://pbtmlive.com/demos/2306.mp3 http://pbtmlive.com/demos/2304.mp3 http://pbtmlive.com/demos/2310.mp3 http://pbtmlive.com/demos/2302.mp3 http://pbtmlive.com/demos/1812.mp3 I haven't decided if these are right or not, and I really can't decide till I figure out what exactly I'm going to do for the gameplay and what the pacing will be like. I think Tapper used one or two of the above songs, but I don't know if this game will be as fast paced as that. Speaking of gameplay pacing, I'm still not sure how I am going to make this game play. I've been considering making the player follow the mouse around, or stay out of the way of the mouse, snapping to one side or the other as neccessary to keep from blocking the player's view. They could do that AND follow the mouse as closely as possible, but I don't know what the right thing to do is yet. I'm thinking though that making them transparent is not the right thing to do. I'm also still trying to figure out basic gameplay mechanics. It's hard to figure out what will be fun. There's any number of different ways I could make the game play. I haven't decided if more than one person should order at once or what. I also haven't decided whether the people should list one flavor at a time in their thought bubble, in order, or if they should simply show a picture of the entire cone or other item they want. Or they could show an animated picture which shows the item being built in the correct order. Unfortunately I don't know of any games out there which have gameplay like this which I can look at to get ideas for what works and what doesn't. Does anyone know of any? |
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| wow, looks different but good. The ice cream man is still the butch "gay" dude I see. |
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| I can't stand country music. That's what I think of those songs. BTW, I'm pretty sure that Tapper didn't play any of them, or else I wouldn't have tolerated the game... Your shop is looking a lot better. The floor looks a bit too clean though considering the rest. |
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| I would like to post: With all the talent you have - why waste it with this sort of bland, uninspiring stuff. Come on sswifty you are much better than this !! Do something proper !! But what I end up posting is : Comimg along nicely ! |
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| wow, looks different but good. The ice cream man is still the butch "gay" dude I see. ROFL - "Camp Cream Cones for Butch Boys" Maybe the player should *mince* around the screen *camping* it up! Unfortunately I don't know of any games out there which have gameplay like this which I can look at to get ideas for what works and what doesn't. Does anyone know of any? Shawn, does this not compare to Wild West Wendy of Diner Dash? Or dare I say it "Tapper". I know this next statement is like "teaching granny to suck eggs" BUT should you not get the mechanic sorted before you worry about art and music? Personally I'd brainstorm the thing to death then create a proof-of-concept, IF it works i'd move forward. Don't you agree Grey ;) |
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| Wolron: "I can't stand country music. That's what I think of those songs." So what would you reccomend I play in a game with a western theme? :-) Smiff: So I take it that means you like it. :-) Indie: "Shawn, does this not compare to Wild West Wendy of Diner Dash? Or dare I say it "Tapper"." In Wendy, customers yell out orders, and you click them to fill the order. Or they get into fights, and you click them to stop the fight. And if you find you have a free moment you can choose to fill up your mug to pre-prepare yourself for the next customer. I don't know for sure but I think in later levels you may even have to clean up the broken bottles the customers throw on the floor. In diner dash, customers stand in line and you click them. Then you click on their table. Then they order, and you click them. Then you click on the chef. Then you click on the food. And then the customer again. And then the customer again when they're done, and then on the dirty plates, and then on the washer. In Wendy a lot of ordering is going on fast and it forces you to click a lot of things quickly. But you only really have two things to click, so it's just a matter of trying to keep up. In Diner Dash you have to click a lot too, but the things you click change a lot. There's a lot more of a decision process about what to click in what order. In Wendy, the most difficult decision you make is to refill a glass when you have some spare time. In diner dash you choose where you seat people, whether you bring them coffee or not, and try to chain things like bringing food to two tables at once and cleaning up dishes from two tables at once. The thing which is different about my game would be the element of having to get the order of operations right. In Wendy, there is no order of operations to worry about really. In Diner Dash there is a long chain of events but it is always the same for a particular customer pretty much. In my game there would be the element of having to get the order of the ice cream correct. I suppose some items like sundaes would not change much, but the ice creams could have a certain order for the scoops you have to get right. Of course, I could forgo that and just make you get the colors right and not the order. But it would still involve clicking different things for each customer. One big difference though is that in Diner Dash and Wnedy you have lots of customers ordering at once. My game doesn't neccessarily have to be like that. I could have one customer order at a time. That would change things a lot. It might make the game boring though. If I have multiple customer order at once though I guess I'd have to have them show the finished cone so you could see what they want. If they only showed one bit at a time it might be too confusing. I guess I could have the player click on the particular customer that ordered the cone after they are done making it. Hm... Then the customer would appear in front of the register with cash in hand and you'd clcik them there to take the cash, then clcik on the register, then on them again to give them the change, and then they'd give you a tip in the tip jar if applicable. There's one problem though and that would be a lack of ability to chain events. Diner Dash has a lot of this. Two customers finish their meal at the same time and you can get the bill from both and then cash them out at the same time, or something like that. Wendy doesn't have that though really. It does have chaining events, but at most you can fill two glasses at once to chain together giving two people their beer at once. Here though I don't see how I could chain events at all. You'd be stuck dealing with one customer at a time. Except... well... I guess you could give multiple people their ice cream and have them all stand in line at the register until you are ready to take all their money. That might be a balancing act though because they would get tired of standing in line and give you a smaller tip. But it would have to be slower to serve each person individually then get the cash from them to make this worthwhile. I guess it might be faster to do just by the fact that you don't have to move the mouse around as much though or hunt for the item to click as much. Hm... Maybe that could work. |
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| Oh and I don't have time to play around trying to come up with the whole design first and then get the art. I've only got a few months of cash saved up to develop this. And as for making sure the gameplay is fun by making a concept... Making a concept takes a long time to do. At least if it is complex enough to prove the game is fun. I can imagine playing the game and figure out if it would be fun or not. Or I can do what I did above and analyze other games that people find fun, and duplicate those elements which contributed to the fun, even though it makes no sense to me why people would find a game that is essentially whack-a-mole, fun. :-) There's really no way to be sure something will be fun even with a demo if you yourself isn't really into that sort of game, and I'm not really into diner dash myself. If I was making a game I found fun it would be a shooter or something and that's not very creative, and might not sell well because there's so many games like that to compere with. |
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| Wolron: I just checked and Tapper does indeed play "Oh Suzannah". :-) Oh, and the floor will not be seen through the ice cream freezer so much as it is now. It will be mostly covered. So it would be pointless to dirty it up with so little visible. |
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| Good, I'm glad my little comment made you think a little more about the gameplay element :D |
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| I'm a bit concerned about the stains on the seats, waht kind of "parlour" is this? ;-) But yes, I do agree with Indie that it's worth sorting out the plan and doing a proof on concept before doing the graphics and music. Doing the art/music first reminds me of how movie execs plan the movie with art mockups etc before even having written a script! However at least we have something to look at and discuss so it serves as a useful brainstorming tool, to a certain extent. |
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| That 'butch' guy does need some reworking. Apart from the ripped back muscles, his ears are huge and too high up on his head, IMO. From behind, it looks like he's got the head of a chimp! :) Hard to comment on the game mechanics as this type of game really doesn't interest me much. |
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| I would like to see some random mice or rats running around in the ceiling :) since you've already given us a look into it I mean. |
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| Heh i misread the title as "Ice Cream Slowdown" and thought it must be something like throwing ice cream at passing cars and slowing them down. What a great game that would be. For teenagers. As for music, i also wouldnt play a game with country music in it. Put some usual run of the mill funky game music. |
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| I know you see this as a 'showdown scenario, but I don't really get the whole 'Western' theme... ... as the Italians are famous for their icecream, wouldn't it be better to go for an Italian (mafia) theme and you can then go for 'Godfather' inspired music instead of country (which I think will kill your download --> sales conversion rate.) In the UK, the coronet style cone is inextricably linked with Opera (O Sole Mio), as a result of Walls using this in a long-running (years) campaign. The theme "Just one cornetto!" sung to the tune of O Sole Mio is instantly recognisable to a British audience. The Walls Cornetto advert about 9th fom the top... {check out the 8th one too} ... other products can even riff off of this (e.g. Boddingtons real ale did a gondola-based skit off this where the camera pans down to reveal the creamy top is actually the head of their beer - and the canal is in Manchester.) |
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| spaghetti western. Problem solved. Oh, and for music - http://www.emusic.com/artist/10556/10556436.html |
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| @BlackJumper: the italians are famous for their icecream? I've never noticed, you probably have to live in italy to notice. I haven't listened to the music, but I think the graphics will rock ^^ |
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| Ash: Actually the artist already did a concept sketch for a rat for just that purpouse. :-) Lenn: Another country music hater! Did you play Super Mario Bros? Many of the levels have country inspired music. Not all country is John Denver. Did you listen to the music samples I provided? I'm sure there's some form of country I could find that people like. Don't you like Cotton Eye Joe? Everyone likes Cotton Eye Joe! BlackJumper: The artist is the one who inspired me to go with a western theme when he submitted the ice cream man looking like a gunfighter with two holsters at his side for ice cream scoops. All the peices then fell into place from there. Also just because you don't like gunfighters and cowboys doesn't mean most people don't. Cowboys and westerns are really popular. Did you hate the third Back to the Future movie? That was my favorite one! I find it hard to believe you would think country music would kill my game, while still liking movies with a country/western theme, even though they use that sort of music. Anyway, changing the plot and theme is out of the question at this point. There's no poiint trying to convince me. Even if I wanted to, which I don't, because I think this is perfect for the theme, I'm not paying my artist enough to convince him to redo the art again. Also the mafia idea is terrible. :-) I don't see any way to work ice cream into a mafia theme and make it work. Here have a guy with holsters. Iconically it would be obvious what he was if I put him standing facing the oponnent in that stance, even with his outfit looking like that. If on the other hand I had an italian city and him standing there like he's holding a machine gun, that just wouldn't work at all. And the mafia works in groups, not individually. So two people facing eachother down doesn't work in that context either. Also there's no way to make the mafia funny. Cowboyws/gunfighters are often made funny. But a key component of what makes a mafia guy a mafia guy is blowing people up with car bombs and killing people in cruel ways. Doesn't go well with an ice cream theme. :-) Also the game isn't aimed at folks like you, it's aimed at people who would play diner dash, and there's a lot of females in that group, and the mob theme wouldn't appeal to that group and the style of game wouldn't appeal to male gamers much, so it doesn't make sense to aim the plot at them. As for the music, I think my target audience will like it. Girls I know loved doing stuff like country line dancing. "In the UK, the coronet style cone is inextricably linked with Opera (O Sole Mio)," I did not know that. In the US, most places serve both the pointy cone and the flat bottomed cone. The pointy cone is called a "sugar cone". It's the kind I always order, the other kind tastes like crap. :-) There's also a "waffle cone" which is shaped like the sugar cone, but is about 3x the size and has a waffle pattern imprinted on it. But I haven't tried that because I'm not fat enough to eat that much ice cream. :-) However, in the US, I think almost every ice cream cone featured in cartoons has been the "opera style" cone, because they're easier to draw. It's the iconic ice cream cone over here I think. A Google image search shows about 50-50 on the cone styles. That poster is going to change to have a flat bottom cone anyway, for my cactus ice cream. But as for what the player will hold, I don't know yet. If he's gonna stack ice creams on the counter than the pointy cones work better for putting into holes to hold them. :-) |
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| Warpy: I linstened to most of the tracks on his spaghetti western compilation CD, and frankly, they suck. :-) Completely wrong sound for the game. Sounds like music you'd hear in a movie from the 60's. Besides, I'm limited by what I can find to license at a reasonable cost. There's not a big selection of country music out there, and I don't think I've heard anything like this guy's stuff. Thanks for trying though. If people have alternatives, I'll be glad to listen to them and consider them. Whatever I choose though has got to fit with the game's theme. At best I think you might get me to consider spanish guitars. :-) |
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| Not all country is John Denver. Whats wrong with John Denver? John Denver was awesome! Not really country though, more "pop". Country is like Conway Twitty, George Jones, Merle Haggard. the flat bottomed cone. That is generally called a "cake cone".sswift: I think you should team up with John Pickford and make Naked Ice Cream Wars and get the guy who did that anime gal in the other post to do the gals for ya. Now that is a game that would sell!! hehe.. |
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| throw in a panty shot for good measure. Fanservice for teh win! |
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| Brice: I like a few of John Denver's songs, and I'm not dissing him, I just figured he was typical of what people expect when they hear "country". That and cowboys singing about how their wives left them. Maybe if this doesn't sell I'll stoop to naked anime babe ice cream wars, I don't know. :-) |
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| John Denver was great. I wouldn't even call his style country. (Trivia fact: My high-school social studies teacher once broke John Denvers arm when they were kids.) I'm not so sure that the female line-dancing crowd is gonna go for your country music. They mostly are dancing to more upbeat/big bass tunes (i.e. modern country). If it works for you, great. But 'I' wouldn't bother with it. |
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| So according to you "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" isn't country music. :-) |
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| Uh, that's country boy, as in, back woods, not music. |
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| sswift, Mario music might be "inspired" by country but is far enough from it to be very acceptable. In fact it is great music in most versions of mario on SNES (which i played). Cotton eye joe? Not sure who that is but i think that the dance-country mix? I hate dance, techno, electronica. Its almost as shallow as country, which doesnt suit individuals like me who tend to "expand their mind" most of the day. |
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| Actually, the orignal mario music was once classified as...um... Jamaican? Okay, i forgot, But it had Steel Drums in :/ |
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| Also the mafia idea is terrible. :-) I don't see any way to work ice cream into a mafia theme and make it work... Also there's no way to make the mafia funny. Dum! Da-dada-da-da. Dum! Da-dada-da-da. "We could've been anything that we wanted to be..." Bugsy Malone ?  Not trying to convince you, just offering a counterpoint. Splurge guns make for a better showdown than six-shooters in every example of the genres i have ever seen :-) |
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| Lenn: Cotton eye joe: http://www.lookatentertainment.com/v/v-507.htm Cygnus: Well some mario levels have had banjo music and pianos that sound like you might hear in a saloon. |
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