Three Questions For You...Yes You!

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

It’s Sunday (for me), but the forums have been quieter than I’m used to so I thought I’d post a question just for fun.
 
Rather, I’m posting three questions.
 
 
1. What is your #1 favorite 2D or Isometric Game Ever?

  • Just one game please.
  • No 3D games please.

2. If you could make just one (2D or Isometric) game, what would it be?

  • Just one game please.
  • Again, no 3D stuff.
  • Give us the elevator pitch.

3. Are you here (making games) primarily for profit or for fun?

  • Please choose one.
  • If you make games and release them all for free, then you’re here for fun.
  • If you make games and don’t even distribute them except to friends, you’re here for fun.
  • If you monetize your games / content you’re here for money.

UPDATE: re: #3 - I’m talking about your primary motivation here.  You can ‘have fun’ doing the work, but if you’re doing to to make money, then you’re doing it for profit.

My answers:
 

  1. Wasteland - I was tempted to say Ultima V which was my first love, but I played the heck out of Wasteland and have aspired to make games like it.  In fact, if I was only allowed to make one more game in my life, I’d want to make a game in the same vein as this.
    937940406-00.gif 937939521-00.gif 937939551-00.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK1iUqLi3xE
 
 
2.  I answered this as part of #1, but if I couldn’t make a game similar to Wasteland I’d choose to make a storytelling game.  I loved CYOA games, MUDs, and similar style games as a kid.  Additionally, I recently played/read chat stories on on HOOKED.   I’ve long aspired to write fiction (in addition to non-fiction) so a storytelling game/app would be my choice.
 
3. Sadly, I’m here to make money.  While I do give a lot of free content and help to the community I’m doing this to make money.  I do miss the days where money was not a concern and making games was just a fun adventure.  
 
I do hope many of you answer on the other side of this.

#2

  1. All-time favorite Isometric: Age of Mythology

  2. While I would love to make something like Age of Mythology, I’m working on an isometric (book on how to do it forthcoming!) game that Klondike right now.

  3. I would like to retire someday and shift to running my media empire (ha!) fulltime, so definitely for profit, but I have so much fun making it, there is definitely an element of fun involved!

#3
  1. Warcraft II   (although there are many very close other choices)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_II:_Tides_of_Darkness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZfizuM1pRQ

  1. Zork (point & click adventure)  .

Pitch: imagine the fun and adventure of discovering a magical and undiscovered land full of puzzles, strange and unusual characters and a heartless ‘grue’ that steals your lantern or torch.  Travel about this world, not unlike The Great Underground Empire of Zork… except ‘with-out’ all that repetitive typing of commands - you know what I mean!

* actually that is my second choice. So I lied. My first I have been designing (note and planning phase only so far) on and off over several years. It is large and complex and for now will keep it to myself, since it is to big likely for a single indie dev to do. 

  1. money …  but know one really does this just for money.  If you make something people like and like to play, ‘Build it and they will play’ - then maybe you will get a little money!  But, it is still fun to make the games, even if they make no money.
#4

  1. I really enjoyed the old “Empire” game. It was an ASCII game where you built armies, ships and worked to conquer the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire

  2. I’d love to make a good 2D Role-Playing/dungeon crawl game. See: https://www.kingdomofdrakkar.com/

  3. I want to make games for fun, but I need to recoup my costs and putting some cash in the bank would be great. 

Great topic by the way!

#5

  1. Icewind Dale. I’ve finished that game…maybe 3-4 times now. Started dozens of times.

  2. Something like Darkest Dungeon meets FTL.

  3. Profit at the moment. But the fun is always there.

#6

  1. The original Close Combat series (I, II and III) circa 1996.  These were great tactical games that introduced psychological variables like soldiers panicking, cowering or acting heroic (rare).  You are the battlefield commander giving your units commands and objectives but it was up to them to “get there” and “do that”.  The original series was by Microsoft but they sold the franchise and it became horrible.  Any non-Microsoft release sucked!

  2. I’d love to remake Carrier Command (1988) for Atari ST and Amiga.  It was way ahead of it’s time and often forgotten gem of a game.  I’ve been playing around with a light 3D engine for Corona that might be able emulate it.

  3. $$$

@roaminggamer - great topic Ed

Here is a link to the original Close Combat (1996)

You issue commands but it’s up to your squads to do the work and make the close tactical decisions.  They don’t just blindly follow orders.  If you order them to run across an open field and attack an entrenched enemy, they may take a few moments to build up their courage or may freeze or panic once they start taking casualties.

#7

  1. That’s really hard as there are quite some I really like - but to just list one, I’d say Jagged Alliance 2.

  2. Pharaoh, just to not repeat what I listed in #1 and because I simply love developing these kinds of games.

  3. I do have a lot of fun developing games but in the end I need money too, so I have to say, primarily for the money.

#8

Ohhh, this should be fun…

  1. My absolute all time favourite game is Fallout (both 1 and 2… They’re basically the same game just cut in half!). Fallout was innovative in a zillion different ways, had fantastic graphics for its time, brought us the concept of character traits, turn based combat, and dynamic storylines, and it even made use of isometric graphics for strategic item and NPC placement rather than leaving you feeling like fixed cameras were a hindrance.

Perhaps surprisingly, I’ve never played Fallout 3 or 4, and it’s unlikely that I ever will. I just can’t bring myself to try a game that’s built in an entirely different engine, by an entirely different development team. I don’t want to risk something ruining my love for that series.

  1. Right. This is going to be a lengthy pitch…

I found the MMORPG RuneScape when I was I think about 15, not long after it was launched. The game back then was very simple - technically 3D but not in any real sense of the term. Items and character were 2D sprites, walls were 2D skewed perspective sprites, and the ground was a 3D mesh. You could spin the camera around and zoom in/out but all just very clever trickery with 2D graphics really. I loved that! The game had no real storyline and very few quests. Essentially it was just a bunch of ‘skills’ that you could level up by repeatedly doing. Everything was point and click - even combat just meant clicking on an NPC and waiting for your character to attack. Each skill had a leaderboard and that was enough to give us purpose - we didn’t need a story or quests, or fancy 3D graphics, just a reason to level those meaningless stats up.

I’m 32 now so this was a good 17 years ago and since finding that game, I’ve made numerous attempts at building my own. I’ve made a few good starts, some even in 3D, but somehow I’ve kept losing interest despite this being a bit of a dream for me.

Finding Corona last year has reignited my passion for games development though, and once again I’m driven to making my own RuneScape inspired MMORPG. This time round though, I have the resources to actually make it work. I run a web agency so it’s not just me any more - we have things like hosting servers and some brilliant graphic designers, and perhaps most importantly, business experience. For the first time in my life as a developer, launching something of this scale is actually feasible.

It just so happens that this time around, we also now have mobile gaming, and retro graphics are “in”. For me personally, combining the two make perfect sense and I just absolutely love the idea of bringing isometric graphics back. Isometric is exactly what mobile games should be - 3D on a small touch screen is just too fiddly and in most cases battery draining.

This is the main reason Qiso was born. It was built for two of our game ideas, one of which being an isometric MMORPG for mobile inspired by the original RuneScape.

I can’t give too much away in a public post and this isn’t the thread for it anyway, but www.argentauria.com :wink:

  1. Definitely for the money I’m afraid. I’ve been a programmer since I was 10 and this is absolutely a passion for me, but it’s also my career. My agency is my soul income and I’ve a family of 5 to feed so I just have to prioritise paid work. That said, I’m also an advocate and huge supporter of open source, the free software foundation, GNU, copylefting rather than copyrighting, and so on. I’m a developer first, business second, but my code has to earn me noney and I can’t warrant spending time on a project that doesn’t.
#9

  1. Caesar 3 (runner-ups: Rogue Legacy, Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, HoMM3)

  2. Space colony sim. But there’re so much this days!

  3. Fun

#10

  1. Age Of Empire 2 (I still playing it AOE2 HD) I have follow the creation of all unofficial extension. 

  2. An endless runner seem fun and not very complicated. Something very simple as sonic or mega run

    Before that, I wanted to make Tower Defense game because I love this kind of game and none was perfect from my point of view. That’s why I spend 3 years to try to make a good one.

  1. I code for fun, I discover the code with corona. For me it’s a starting point for my company.
#11

Interesting that everybody here is picking older games as answers to both of those questions. Is it that we’re all of a generation that grew up in the 80s and 90s so have some kind of an attachment to these games and perhaps also that’s why we’ve chosen Corona? Or has there really not been any impressive enough 2D/Isometric releases in more recent years?

#12

In my opinion there has been very good 2D releases.

I’ve mention FTL and Darkest Dungeon, I’ve 153 hours played in the latter, for example.

It’s just that because technology is better nowadays, there are also a lot of impressive 3D games.

Not so much in 2000, when Icewind Dale came along (my other choice).

#13

I think it is because those who are answering had their formative experiences with early video games and they were the most fresh and visceral.  So, they made the biggest impact on us.

That isn’t to say later games were not good (or even better).  It is just hard to supplant formative experiences.  

Your first love will always be your first love.

Most people are responding using their emotions, but I think if some of us went back and really analyzed the games we played, we might respond differently.

Having said all that, ‘Wasteland’ (my answer for Q #1) gave me the most joy in my early game playing years.

#14

I want to make a request to those who have answered and to those who will.

When possible, link either the Wikipedia page (or another solid page documenting the game from #1).  Additionally, if you can find a YouTube link that would be awesome.

I am seeing some games that I am not familiar with and it would be a shame not to be able to try them.  I want to be sure I’m trying the right games.

#15

Hi,

#1. Legend of Zelda (NES).

#2. Card battler like Hearthstone.

#3. Fun first, profit later.

-dev

#16

I think a lot of the games we are mentioning are games that inspired our imaginations.  Many current (especially big studio) games tend to be super-immersive and visually impressive, which can be thrilling, but they don’t leave a lot to the imagination.  I find that visual bells and whistles are often substituted for good old fashioned gameplay.

One of the things I love about MineCraft is that it is all about using your imagination.  Similarly, some old movies couldn’t rely on special effects so they tapped into our imaginations instead.  Now with absurdly realistic graphics, imagination can easily take a back seat.  I think that’s where we as indie and small studio devs can find a niche - games like FTL and Darkest Dungeon (@miguel.compiao) draw you AND your imagination into a well thought out game experience. 

#17

@roaminggamer, I updated my post. I should point out, for #2, I linked to the Kingdom of Drakkar. This is a game that I’ve had my hands in from time to time over the years. The developer was the dungeon master of our D&D group and part of the storyline of the game is based on the D&D campaign that we ran for years, so our player characters are in some form or fashion integrated into the game. I worked with the developer as the game started out as an ASCII based game through its current graphic tile-based game. While I can’t say that I have code in the game when the game was running on servers owned by companies I worked for, my hands were all over the login and billing system for the game…

It originated in the late 80’s as a competitor to Island of Kesmi on CompuServe running on a small local dial-up system that supported forums, games and other CompuServe like features. So yea, I’m kind of old and leaning on the games I grew up with. Let’s face it, Missle Command, Tempest, PacMan, Asteroids, Space Invaders and similar took a lot of my quarters. Those are games I’ve played the most in the 2D genre.

I’ve spent a lot of time playing Fight simulator type games, like F-16 Falcon (in the good ole days of 3 color VGA graphics) or today I’m playing a lot of Fortnite, but those are 3D (or quasi 3D games). 

Rob

#18

  1. Desert strike/storm/etc on Mega drive - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Strike (so many hours wasted it is untrue).   Actually this style of game could be done in Corona but a touch interface would struggle compared to an actual joystick setup.

  2. @vlad obviously I think you should play my game lol - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spheregamestudios.spacecity&hl=en_GB

  3. $$$$$$ all the way!  I don’t do this for fun…

Edit:  @rich It can be fun sometimes :slight_smile:

#19

This has turned out to be an excellent thread. Struggling to decide how to reply to all of the above now without writing another of my essays! I’ll keep it short:

Fallout wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_(video_game)

@roaminggamer I’ve never played Wasteland but have just briefly read the wiki for it… I see now why Fallout is considered it’s sequel! Sounds like Wasteland was Interplay testing the water and when it worked, they polished it off and gave us Fallout. I should definitely play that some day…

RuneScape wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape

Released in 2001 and I finished school in 2002 + remember playing this game endlessly instead of revising for my GCSE exams. I also remember that the game was originally accessed through their jagex.com website rather than its own standalone site, so I guess I found it literally just after release, in 2001. I was 20 when I gave it up, so I guess I played the 2001 - 2006 builds. It’s a very different game now by the looks of it :pensive:

And @SGS I’m sure deep down you actually do enjoy this ;-).

#20

  1. Favorites change all the time but Dark Sun:Shattered Lands is up there. 

  2. I can’t think of anything specific, but I like adventuring in a game. 

  3. Fun and learning.