Anyone want to help me make a Multimedia Fusion game?

[Ziggy]

Awesome, sounds almost exactly what I was hoping for.

You might be able to find that first song already composed as a midi some where on the web. Even if it sucks, it'll be easy to start with that and fix it up rather than to start from scratch.

[brunoafh]

Good idea, I may look into that. The composition is a bit weird so making a MIDI from scratch would be a little time consuming. I'll post whatever progress I make on stuff in the thread, and just randomly talk about it.

Man making a sprite sheet for the main character with a 9-bit RGB palette is a bitch, so many details on his armor.

[Ziggy]

So is it cool to have a couple of original songs in this game, or did you want them all to be music from the anime?

[brunoafh]

I was thinking primarily original music actually, for the levels and such. I just wanted to redo a couple of songs from the anime. Definitely Forces, and perhaps a few others.

I'm not sure about how to handle story sequences though. One thing I thought of was to have like a comic reader type screen progress the story in-between levels. Just have the screen change to pages from the manga with some BGM, and use the keys to switch pages. It's what I did when I started making a Preacher beat-em-up and it was pretty cool. This is very easy to do and would remove quite a bit of the workload. I feel like that might detract from the feeling that you're playing a retro game though. Thoughts on that idea from anyone?

Also, in this video someone managed to like... animate the manga scans. If I knew how to do that, or anyone else does, that'd be cool. I'm guessing using Photoshop and video editing software or something? (If you just watch it for a few seconds you'll see what I mean right away.)


The other option of course is to create story scenes. I'm definitely not ambitious or talented enough to make the story scenes Ninja Gaiden style (but man that would be awesome), so my other options are to be really lazy and barely tell the story at all, or create story scenes with text boxes and such.

[CFFJR]

Man making a sprite sheet for the main character with a 9-bit RGB palette is a bitch, so many details on his armor.

How exactly do you draw sprites anyway?

Depending on what you do and the complexity of it, I might be able to help out a bit. I'm fairly handy with Illustrator if that's a factor at all.

[brunoafh]

How exactly do you draw sprites anyway?

Most people grab a sprite sheet from whatever game, and modify it. It's really as easy as just zooming in and drawing. You can also whip one up from scratch of course, but, it's very difficult if you're not a good artist (which I'm not). I'm alright with modifying sprite sheets, but not anything special when it comes to doing originals. Some people draw the sprite they're going to make on paper, scan it, and use it as a base.

[Ziggy]

I started writing a midi song, picturing the game in mind. I might end up scratching this one, as I pretty much just pulled it out of my ass. But it's getting me back into the swing of things, I haven't composed midi in a while. Once I have tracks worth sharing, I'll show you(s) some previews.

I was just thinking, you specified midi... is that the format that is HAS to be in?

[brunoafh]

Nah, it doesn't specifically have to be a midi, but it being in midi format would be helpful. Mainly I just want the songs to sound retro. Definitely interested to hearing what you come up with. I'll post what I come up with sprite work wise in a few days here, coming along alright.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Nah, it doesn't specifically have to be a midi, but it being in midi format would be helpful. Mainly I just want the songs to sound retro. Definitely interested to hearing what you come up with. I'll post what I come up with sprite work wise in a few days here, coming along alright.

Aww. I would've loved to craft some music but I'm not much for creating retry style music. Mostly ambient bassy stuff.

I've got some minor experience in MMF. I also wouldn't be apposed to helping craft backgrounds and other art.

Possibly go with a hybrid modern/retro style? Detailed backgrounds with relatively simple sprites and "platforms". It would also help eliminate any visual confusion with the backgrounds that some games have.

[Ziggy]

Did you say you were aiming at a 16-bit style game? 8-bit music is really easy to do in midi because of the tones you get to use. But with 16-bit you gotta be careful, it still has to sound retro and not "too good" if you know what I mean.

I just wrote something now, real quick. Damn, I've been playing too much Kirby. It sounds too "happy". You know how you tend to right the kind of music you've been listening to? I need to play some Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden and get those songs in my head.

edit: Does any one know of any thing that I can upload audio to and share (stream, not download) like you would with pictures and Photobucket? As a workaround I use to convert a midi to an mp3 than use Windows Movie Maker to make a "video" and upload that to Photobucket, but it's such a hassle. I guess what I'm asking for is the audio equivalent to Photobucket.

And not to make a big deal out of my post count number right now, but http://www.shwiggie.com/wp-content/uplo ... i-5200.jpg