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Plan for Jeremy Alessi
Plan for Jeremy Alessi
| Name: | Jeremy Alessi |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Feb 27, 2005 | |
| Rating: |  Not Rated | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Jeremy Alessi |
Blog post
Queen of the Hill
OK, since the Torque2D Dev Shot is going to be up for quite sometime I've been advised to go ahead and let my turkey fly in a .plan.
Now before I show my dev shot (it's a sort of comic using in game screens) I'm going to explain a little bit about how this progressed.
Queen of the Hill started out actually as King of the Mountain. I was going to make a game with typical masculine characters such as the Master Chief, Solid Snake, Sam Fisher, or heck the Torque Orc! The gameplay was going to be pretty straight forward and you can probably guess what it is by the title. Basically, it was, and still is, the classic game King of the Mountain (or Hill) that we played as kids, where one guy tries to stay on top and throw all his buddies off. In video game terms it's the same idea as Super Smash Bros only in full 3D with Halo esque explosions knocking stuff all about!
So already it's a fun and classic concept for the core gameplay. It was pretty simple to get this going in Torque. I made a few changes to the C++ core and had to script a few things to get the basic premise up and running but it wasn't too big a deal. In one of my recent .plan's I mentioned the fact that a big reason I'm using Torque is because I thought I could do it with this particular concept ... and so far it's been a great one to get my foot in the door.
Once the basic premise was going I decided I wanted to get some new weapons and characters in the game. I promtly purchased the Girl Character Pack and put Jill in the game along with the new weapon. Now as I've stated in previous .plans the idea behind the game went from being somewhat generic (big guys with guns blasting eachother) to being different ... satirical ... and funny. This shift was promted by having Jill in the game. Now I must admit that it's just as generic to have half-naked girls in a game as it is to have a bunch of badasses. That's not where I get different...
Where it goes lopsided is by turning the typical Go Go Girlie concept (seen in Dead or Alive Volleyball and Rumble Roses) into a satire. Basically, the girls in the game are the creators of a show called Queen of the Hill. These girls aren't unlike a lot of women (that I know) today. They are smart, competent, and educated women. Yet somehow they are unable to achieve their dreams, seemingly because of society and what it expects of women. It really hits me on a personal level due to a few of the women I know. Now a lot of women (again the ones I know) don't believe the ends justifies the means. Fortunately, for my game the characters I've created accept the fact that sometimes the ends do justify the means!
So they create this show to bolster themselves and get ahead using what they have and society craves. It's a theme seen often these days with a lot of reality shows etc... Paris Hiton comes to mind really ... someone who's using what the public will eat up to get ahead. Now I doubt a lot of the people using this tactic today really have any grand plans to better the world but my characters are different because they want the system to change so that the people after them don't have to be degraded to attain their dreams.
How that translates to being funny ... well I want the game to be a satire as I said. Much like how Team America made fun of everyone from the US Military, to the Actors in Hollywood protesting the latest war, to the terrorist themselves ... I want to make fun of the people involved in creating this girlie content.
In the image I'm about to unleash you can see the beginnings of the fun in the black bubbles (I do need a good humor writer to help) which are the thoughts of the girls ... who are going to be constantly ripping on the idea of this show (they hate it). I also want to go further and make fun of other people involved ... for instance when we were younger my friends and I all thought a lot of game programmers were perverts for some of the stuff they did in games with women (oh no! look at me now!!! I'll have to joke myself) ... anyway they need to have some fun poked at them!
I put a lot of description about the gameplay I want to achieve in the Dev Snapshot and I'll get to more of that later. For now check this out!
Now before I show my dev shot (it's a sort of comic using in game screens) I'm going to explain a little bit about how this progressed.
Queen of the Hill started out actually as King of the Mountain. I was going to make a game with typical masculine characters such as the Master Chief, Solid Snake, Sam Fisher, or heck the Torque Orc! The gameplay was going to be pretty straight forward and you can probably guess what it is by the title. Basically, it was, and still is, the classic game King of the Mountain (or Hill) that we played as kids, where one guy tries to stay on top and throw all his buddies off. In video game terms it's the same idea as Super Smash Bros only in full 3D with Halo esque explosions knocking stuff all about!
So already it's a fun and classic concept for the core gameplay. It was pretty simple to get this going in Torque. I made a few changes to the C++ core and had to script a few things to get the basic premise up and running but it wasn't too big a deal. In one of my recent .plan's I mentioned the fact that a big reason I'm using Torque is because I thought I could do it with this particular concept ... and so far it's been a great one to get my foot in the door.
Once the basic premise was going I decided I wanted to get some new weapons and characters in the game. I promtly purchased the Girl Character Pack and put Jill in the game along with the new weapon. Now as I've stated in previous .plans the idea behind the game went from being somewhat generic (big guys with guns blasting eachother) to being different ... satirical ... and funny. This shift was promted by having Jill in the game. Now I must admit that it's just as generic to have half-naked girls in a game as it is to have a bunch of badasses. That's not where I get different...
Where it goes lopsided is by turning the typical Go Go Girlie concept (seen in Dead or Alive Volleyball and Rumble Roses) into a satire. Basically, the girls in the game are the creators of a show called Queen of the Hill. These girls aren't unlike a lot of women (that I know) today. They are smart, competent, and educated women. Yet somehow they are unable to achieve their dreams, seemingly because of society and what it expects of women. It really hits me on a personal level due to a few of the women I know. Now a lot of women (again the ones I know) don't believe the ends justifies the means. Fortunately, for my game the characters I've created accept the fact that sometimes the ends do justify the means!
So they create this show to bolster themselves and get ahead using what they have and society craves. It's a theme seen often these days with a lot of reality shows etc... Paris Hiton comes to mind really ... someone who's using what the public will eat up to get ahead. Now I doubt a lot of the people using this tactic today really have any grand plans to better the world but my characters are different because they want the system to change so that the people after them don't have to be degraded to attain their dreams.
How that translates to being funny ... well I want the game to be a satire as I said. Much like how Team America made fun of everyone from the US Military, to the Actors in Hollywood protesting the latest war, to the terrorist themselves ... I want to make fun of the people involved in creating this girlie content.
In the image I'm about to unleash you can see the beginnings of the fun in the black bubbles (I do need a good humor writer to help) which are the thoughts of the girls ... who are going to be constantly ripping on the idea of this show (they hate it). I also want to go further and make fun of other people involved ... for instance when we were younger my friends and I all thought a lot of game programmers were perverts for some of the stuff they did in games with women (oh no! look at me now!!! I'll have to joke myself) ... anyway they need to have some fun poked at them!
I put a lot of description about the gameplay I want to achieve in the Dev Snapshot and I'll get to more of that later. For now check this out!
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Submit your own resources!| Jeff Tunnell (Feb 28, 2005 at 04:14 GMT) |
I'm not a prude, but it just feels way too gratuitous. I also turn up my nose at the Beach Volleyball and BMX-XXX games because they feel way too transparent. These games give me the feeling that the producers are desparate and need to turn to sex to make their ideas work.
I do think there can be a place for good sexy interactions in games, but I don't think we have really found it yet.
-Jeff Tunnell GG
| Jeremy Alessi (Feb 28, 2005 at 04:28 GMT) |
| Jeremy Alessi (Feb 28, 2005 at 04:39 GMT) |
| Peter Dwyer (Feb 28, 2005 at 09:07 GMT) |
As a game though I would have to say er no.
| Jeremy Alessi (Feb 28, 2005 at 14:07 GMT) |
| David Montgomery-Blake (Feb 28, 2005 at 16:00 GMT) |
If the gameplay for this WORKS, then it could be a fun humor-based game, but just be careful. Humor games are extremely difficult to make and often come across feeling forced. Compare things like Giants and the new Bard's Tale. In Giants, the team worked hard to create a fun and humorous environment that didnt' feel forced. But The Bard's Tale felt horridly forced, as if they weren't sure who their target market was. The latest Leisure Suit Larry felt the same way to me. They didn't know whether they were targeting the older generation of Larry players or the new blood, and the humor came off flat and forced. The lower right screenshot had that feeling for me.
But perhaps it is because she's also speaking. Giving the announcement to a male voice-box drone announcer and have the thought bubbles issuing from her may change the dynamic some. It seems like you're going for the disparity between what we say and what we think, but it didn't seem to work for me. I see the potential for it to be very humorous, but also the potential for it to be extremely trite and flat.
| Adrian Tysoe (Feb 28, 2005 at 16:43 GMT) |
Either way it probably wouldn't be my cup of tea, but I could see someone doing something sucessful with it, just not sure it would be fun for the kinds of games you would expect from torque.
Kind of like Market Value, which had a great premise but wasn't executed as well as it might have been.
| Adrian Tysoe (Feb 28, 2005 at 21:04 GMT) |
Gabriel night 3 and leisure suit larry both have awful humour, LL kind of cheap potty humour that isn't funny at all. THe DOA stuff is ok, only I can't stand the japanese voices on western characters lol.
| Jeremy Alessi (Mar 01, 2005 at 02:08 GMT) |
| bentgarney (Mar 01, 2005 at 17:06 GMT) |
Changes I'd make:
I would instead turn this into 'Battle of the Sexes', ripping a parody of the most vain features possible in males and females.
The females are bitchy, thick and hopeless.
The males are bitchy, thick and hopeless.
Some males and females are also GAY and this is made very clear. However it's impossible to tell who is gay. Instead of a tall pillar like that, gameplay would revolve around petty and foolish locations.
For example:
A small hut on top of a hill.
Shelf 9 at walmart.
The roof of an old aged pensioner's house.
And so on...
| Adrian Tysoe (Mar 01, 2005 at 17:19 GMT) |
Try not to misplace your target audience, and avoid the kinds of humour and cliche's that make people groan. I played Leisure suit larry on xbox the other day. That was completely lacking in anything even close to humour. the best instances where humour has come out for me, has been subtle and clever., rather than in your face and plain dumb, but maybe thats just me. Afterall I hated southpark, but liked the simpsons (or at least used to) I havent watched any TV stations avaliable on my Television for 4 years now lol.
| Jeremy Alessi (Mar 02, 2005 at 01:49 GMT) |
Quote:
Instead of a tall pillar like that
That won't be an actual location anyway ... it was just the easiest way for me to get the gameplay working.
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