ok who wants to discuss fluffies on the site dedicated to discussing fluffies. specifically fluffy games i guess.

Even then, you can still let them have their dumb conversation that’s not gonna go anywhere. Or are you gonna start screaming “STOP HAVING FUN!!!” at them?

I’ve talked about which actors I’d like to play my characters, but that doesn’t mean I expect Patrick Stewart to show up on my doorstep, begging me to let him play Pierre. If Patrick Stewart had a less talented younger brother, maaaaaybe I could get that guy.

But we could easily get Tara Strong on board with any fluffy related project. I mean, let’s be real, she’s not picky when it comes to roles. She’s in everything.

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Oh goodness, I didn’t mean literally taking Pikmin. You can’t pull fluffies out of the ground, throw them at enemies to kill them, have them work together to carry components for your space ship, have certain fluffies be immune to water, etc etc. I only meant the basic “you have a group of pikmin to keep track of and maybe can whistle to make anyone within a certain range come to you” part.

The lemmings part is that unlike pikmin they can blindly wander off on their own into certain death, lacking any self-preservation whatsoever. So if you think about it that way, playing a smarty with maybe 4-5 other fluffies, you only need movement controls and two order commands (“stop!” and “come toward me!”). The herd fluffies would only need one variable, “intelligence”, which determines how close they are to going toward you when told. Too low intelligence and they will literally start to walk in a random direction instead.

Anything else - having different types, super-low int fluffies being derped, partnering fluffies together, actually having puzzles to solve, the herd having needs - is optional. The minimum viable product is “here’s you, here’s your herd, some of them don’t listen”. Heck, it technically doesn’t even need to have the intelligence stat, that’s just a way to show not every herd member is the same.

Looking at it that way, especially if you use Unity or similar, it isn’t nearly a daunting a task as literally trying to combine all the gameplay of Pikmin and Lemmings. That would be ludicrous and not even have a good end result. I mentioned the two games to help provide an easy-to-understand summary of the genre (real-time managing lots of little dudes) and a merge of the two main concepts (you’re herding creatures + who will walk into certain death if you let them).

Incidentally, part of why I picked that kind of concept was because they already mentioned making a 3D model, which means it’d be a 3D game. Otherwise I would have gone for something more pixel-based, like I dunno Frogger or something. As far as I figured, it was an elevator pitch for a simple 3D game with a lot of opportunity for expansion and personal ideas, and then more details could be hammered out if there was interest in it.

I didn’t necessarily assume a straight up clone of Pikmin, no : )

But it gives a sense of the time and skill it took to make a successful game of that general complexity. By that I mean:

  • Basic interaction model (3D) and 3C system (character, camera, controls)
  • The content scope: number of 3D models, textures, animations, audio files, UI elements, etc.
  • Number and complexity of gameplay systems like pathfinding, AI, in-game economy, various character interactions like combat, trade, etc.
  • Technical work, even with an off the shelf game engine, like optimization, SFX/graphics (shaders, particle system, etc.), content pipeline, debugging, version control management, and so on

I know a handful of people who can do each one of those things single handed, to a good standard. Those people are rare indeed. But it would take an individual like that about 30-60 years to make a game like Pikmin on their own. Not counting a possible need to remaster and refactor every 10 or so years because the world moves on to new tech and visual standards.

Scoping is king.

Incidently a hobby level game dev could make a Frogger clone in a couple of days or weeks, by themselves : P

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@Fluffus, what about, going back to the whole “feral herd manager” idea, if the 3d part was mostly the “fluffy social interaction” part of the game, while all the big juicy things that would otherwise be real hard to do (nummie-finders going out to scavenge, toughies keeping other fluffies/some minor munstahs like cats and rats at bay during the night, babbehs being born, etc.) were to be told via text/still images? Would that be enough to keep the project small, while providing some relatively interesting gameplay and keeping the 3d part alive?

(Images for reference)



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Or we could forgo 3D entirely. We could go 8 bit instead. I’ve said it before, fluffies would be right at home in the 8 bit era, because everything is trying to kill them and it’s really easy for them to drown.

This might be worth looking into:

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Yeah that graphical novel/text based game style exists so that small teams can make games. I mean the Phoenix Wright games were made almost exclusively by a 3 person team.

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I had a nazi character? lol What?

I wasn’t aware of that fact.

I loved them all to be honest and knowing it was just a few people only makes me respect them more!

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Yeah, IIRC it was a development team made up of a game designer/writer/scripter person, a 2D artist and a programmer. The rest were all the usual publisher gaggle of marketers and business managers and localization crews, quality control, etc.

It made me smile when I saw the credits list, since 3 man bands were so rare at that point.

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I don’t know who has the job of coming up with all of those punny names, but I would gladly become their apprentice, I could learn a lot from them.

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Cool so the vast majority. Thanks you can go now.

Hush, the grownups are talking.

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Anyway, this did get me thinking of an old game that’s probably why I like Fluffies.

Creatures.

Came out… IDK, ages ago, in the before time, the long long ago.

Billed as true cyberlife yadadadada, fully working brains and all that.

High concept stuff.

But they (the Norns) were dumb as… well, fluffies, largely due to over worked systems trying to mimic ‘real’ brains with just complexity.

Been years, but, very roughly, they ran on something very much like Sims - but just worse.

Had drives, hunger, boredom, loneliness.

If they do an action that fills that drive, they get a reward, that action is ‘reinforced’ so they will learn do to it.

The idea was, they would be hungry, then would look for food, move to food, eat food, not be hungry, get happy brain.

How it worked in practice was more like “I’m hungry” “look” “see food” “see food” “see food” .

Sure they would get more if they moved, but the initial rewarding of them for looking for food could just short the process.

Also everything was done via “chemicals”. Put a Norm near fire. Fire emits… “hot chemical”, which is picked up by the “skin organ” then digested (like food) to produce waste and a new “get hot” chemical which would then be digested and raise the body temperature.

Which was an interesting way to have them intact with the world but, you may have noticed that I mentioned the ‘heat’ gets ‘digested’ twice - so they get two rewards for ‘eating’ by standing near fire.

Like I said, they were very fluffy level.

Still, I did have some fun in that game.

The basic ideas, sans the over complicated ‘real cyberlife’ parts, could be used to make a fluffy brain like a knock off Sim.

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i have created a little horse that can have random colors! truly im on the cutting edge of gaming technology. sorry i havent had much to say to keep the thread alive, my brain runs like a windows 98 trying to run skyrim and baby i can smell smoke comin from it.

anyway i was gonna ask what direction i should take it next but i thought about it so hard while writing this that i think i solved it for myself

but would anyone be interested in talking about how to handle various systems in the game? ive already plotted out some pretty good ideas but yall might know better ways that i didnt think of. Peer Review or whatever. asking instead of just infodumping 20 paragraphs since i dont wanna clog anythin up if nobody cares

Thought that was common headcanon?

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Generally, but its not what’s usually depicted.

You’d want to be sure all public builds designate anything on certain hex ranges as Poopies, and make sure to press your finger on the scale for the first one either in the tutorial or random occurrence is any color other than brown.

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Right. Iconography can be that way.
Including the whole excremental rainbow can be confusing without proper textual support.
Then again, this assumes a market outside us flufffanciers?

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Localization on Indie projects seems to start with a fan willing to do it for a fee, or just as support, then if it gets big you start seeing the roster of languages expand.

At first they tend to just be in English or whatever the creator’s native language is.

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If you’re feeling really evil, make it a gacha game, and make the first fluffy the player gets guaranteed to be brown.

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A range of machines, the first one being of poorly repackaged rescues. The character gets more dextrous removing them from the can as they go.

Rip them in half trying to get them loose from the can, open one that died of being squeezed as it was placed inside, one with severe birth defects, and one with reversed programming so it only says banned words and scares the rest of the collection.

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