Scratch

For a start, there's a lot of nosey scratchers! It clearly says who this collab is for and already there's 38 views.

Anyway, back to business. We need a tycoon game that's hands-on. You see, we can't have a game which relies on jobs like Diner-Dash where you're a waitress who spends all day running around serving people. At the same time, it can't be like that Restaurant Empire game realised by the same company who created Hotel Giant, where once the building is finished and you're all set, you're practically all set until the game ends, because all you do is sit and watch it run itself.

Not sure if you have ever played Now Boarding (the logo on my Avatar in Scratch) but it is an excellent game. You see, it has been carefully planned so that at the beginning you have a lot of jobs but not many things to handle, then as the game gets deeper in you have more to handle but less jobs to do. I would suggest you play an online demo of it, not of the First Class version though. There are a couple of things odd about that version.

So, at first you seat the people into their places; bring planes from the runway to the gate, load passengers onto the plane and then make the plane take off whilst clicking on left-over passengers to make them happy. When you can afford it, you hire staff. By the time all departments are filled, all you're doing is clicking "Plan, use existing" all the time, but you can still help out and speed up the airport process and get involved unlike other games where if you do get involved you're putting the entire company at risk.

I'm not saying we make a game about an airline company, I'm saying we need a game where you are in control of how much you control. If the player was up to the challenge, than after many years of depending on staff they may sack them all and do all of the jobs themselves. At least no matter what happens, even when there are hundreds of workers, there will always be something for the player to do. Then, in-between months they can still build and customise their terminal (a.k.a. "Room X" because we haven't decided what business we're going for.)

Finally, I personally think that if anything, we need to think of the actual business. perhaps a hospital, I bet that would be interesting to run because it's like a hotel except instead of say 20 of each 4 types of rooms you would need 2 of each 10 types of rooms. Instead of a fancy restaurant you could have a little cafe, and instead of the check-in desk you have the  reception. I also think there would be plenty of things the player could do, like sweep up rubbish by clicking on it. Then when it gets busy they can hire someone instead. Your opinion?

Last edited by Borrego6165 (2011-11-26 03:35:07)

I've never played the airline game, but I agree with what you're saying. I like the idea of a hospital; that sounds really good. We'd need to come up with a format. Would you navigate between rooms by clicking buttons, would you scroll to view, or would the entire hospital be visible on the screen? I like the idea of simply making the entire hospital visible, then have a small menu at the bottom for the statistics and buttons. Ever played Dot Village on Scratch? I'm thinking of a format like that, except the field would be your whole hospital.

I know we haven't exactly agreed that a hospital theme is the one we want, but I like it and I'll go ahead and speculate on it. I imagine you would start off with only the basics; minimal staff, if any; lowest-model technology; little decorations. I would imagine the player's role would be the role of building owner and manager. You could handle financial means, such as paying bills, as well as buying new additions for the hospital. You would control how the hospital looks and runs. Then, since you are not in the medical field, you would hire doctors, nurses, and other basic staff. Like you said, the player could sweep up debris and maintain easy, manual jobs.

I like the idea of being able to fire all staff and running everything on your own, but would this apply to a hospital game? Should we make it to where you can act as the doctors and nurses through basic controls, or make it to where you're just the manager?

Lastly, I'll add more on the part where I said "start off with only the basics": after familiarizing yourself with the bare hospital for a moment, patients would begin coming in. Along with paying the few staff members, paying bills, tending to patients, manually working on the hospital, and so on, the player could visit a shopping panel and purchase higher-grade technology, fancier decorations, and fire and/or hire staff. Maybe even make the hospital small, then allow the user to add more rooms. The cafe could be a tiny cafeteria, then blossom into a full-blown restaurant-style place after upgrades.

The perspective could be similar to The Sims; view the building from the side, except the closest wall is invisible and you can see the rooms, furniture, and stuff, though we would probably make the patients and staff invisible factors, like in almost all Scratch tycoons.

Once again, I'm still wide open to many other ideas, but here's my take on the hospital suggestion.

PS. I'm off school all of wednesday (30th) because of a school strike, so that'll be the day when i can get loads of jobs done. So we have tonight and tomorrow night to agree on how the game will work and then on wednesday i can get down to business. I personally think FB is a better way to get in touch than hotmail, but scratchers seem to go for the other one. Or we could just keep writing tremendously huge texts on here and wait 24 hours (or even longer) for one of us to reply. All official ideas should be posted on here (so if in chat we agree on something it'll be added onto here in bullet points or sommit) Obviously we can just stick to this.

Cool! well because you've already got some scripts, why don't you figure out the random-appearance stuff, and i'll design all of the objects. Because this is an epic game, I will make sure the objects look good. Make sure your test is at the same angle as my rooms, because I will be facing the objects at the angle.

thanks!!! then once this stage is done i'll do the next bit of programming and you can do the next set of drawing- of what'll be left. this is so of course we both have fun and we both get to do some hard calculations. we'll keep taking turns on graphics and programming.

me too! this will be epic!!! not too sure what else to say really. It won't be long before I think up sommit. Also, later i'll post a list of all of the objects I'm planning on making. Please do add some which you think are necessary in a hospital.

Okay, so I added a day and night feature, the beginning of the finances, and randomly appearing patients, but not the Hospital Quality yet. Read the project notes for more!

The link in case you forgot.

yeah it's brilliant- except when i come to make the final version (i'm sorry we can't use this version, i'll explain later) i'll make the day/night more smoother. Also, to asnwer your questions on the project:
1. yes i will handle the walking problem
2. i'll get right to work on the scenarios.
3. I'm still writing lists for all the different objects, so i haven't drawn any yet. You see, as i'm desiging rooms i'm also adding illnesses, otherwise the rooms would not be used of anything. so far i have a wart-removal-gun and the sin-sucker. there's a few more but i won't spoil the suprises. i feel awful doing all the creative stuff whilst you do the difficult stuff.

Now, we need a fresh project because:
+ the scripts need loads of work, and we maybe using unnecessary scripts or extra varibales and stuff. i like things very organised and if we have loads of little tests and mini-scripts everywhere it becomes a nightmare to fix glitches, so in other words the best graphics will be saved for the final one. Also, people don't queue up properly, although that's probably my fault because i'm the one who mad the reception-part of the script. you can blame my aspergers for me needing everything tidy and in a certain pattern.
+ we need the scenarios made at the same time of the main game, because now we've got an empty hospital with no main menu or tutorial or any way of changing it from other scenarios. you may have done doodle zoo backwards, but i did mine in the order the player would see it, starting with the logo and then the tutorial and finally the main game. my mind goes bananas if i do it any other pattern. i only do it backwards for tests, but don't worry it's not like there has been tonnes done already.

I promise though that tomorrow I will try to finish the objects. it's just i can;t make objects without knowing what i'll need for the scenarios. so i'll write up some objectives first.

Here's the beginning: Woo-Hoo!

Last edited by Borrego6165 (2011-11-29 15:25:15)

Ok!!! Imagine how epically epic this will be in the end! I'll get back to scenario and object designing!

Also, I can't do anything to the project until the menu and logo are finished, otherwise I'd be updating the wrong project. So as soon as you upload your version of the project I can start putting the objects inside. I might as well make the other variables like income, expenses and safety ect, because I have experience from making similar variables work like the old pollution, population and traffic variables I installed in the last game.

so once it is finished I will download the updated logo etc, and what will happen is we will go into a split, where I will design the interface, day/night, ect. for the main game, whilst you stick to making the tests. Then we'll swap, and I'll do that backwards-patient thing I was talking about, and also any thing which you couldn't work out. That might including making queues work or making some variables work. This is so that the main game is not used for tests, and we can keep them clean and separate from each other.

It also means we know exactly what we're doing, and that at least one of us is adding to the project itself, rather than both of us doing completely different things. Plus, we don't have to swap as often as we may have originally needed to, meaning less time wasted on uploading stuff. Because, as you can see at the moment I've got a full day off school, but I can't put the objects into the game until I've got your version of the project back. So this is why I prefer we both do the split so then once of us is not putting pressure on the other to finish soon.

Last edited by Borrego6165 (2011-11-30 06:43:24)

Right, I've been doing multiple task at once. You see, for me to create objects I need rooms to put them in. But for me to create rooms, they need a purpose, so I've also been creating a few illnesses. But then, to create inspiration for the illnesses I had to create the scenarios, which did help me a lot coming up with illnesses for the rooms for the objects. So sorry, but I've only actually got down to drawing two images because of all the extra lists I've been making.

Also, by chance (well, bad chance) my mum fell and she grabbed hold of the TV for support but that fell on her head too so she went to hospital, and me sitting in the waiting room gave me a bit of inspiration for our hospital. That is another reason why I've only two images done as well, from being sat in hospital.

cool! except, we will not be using scratch-sounds/music unless absolutely necessary. I want this to sound (as well as look) as original and unique as possible, so sounds can come from anywhere except from the scratch folders. I hope you don't mind, but too many projects use the existing sounds/sprites and backgrounds from the folder, but I want this to be different. Also, yep that's fine if you haven't done too much.

cool! i can now start implementing the stuff. (The way I use such a long sophisticated word and then use "stuff" next to it.)