On topic:
I'm also against voting in a poll now: we need more talking first, there hasn't been enough precise propositions, just brainstorming mainly.
Ok, here's my (final?) idea:
Small arenas in which the Player battles AI with a few characters he can choose and equip (with a drag-and-drop style equipment system). After a quick initial deployment phase, you start controling your units (around 5, depending on how you equipped them, they have different abilities) and using cover to avoid enemy's attacks.
+ Small arenas would mean little art work, so we can focus on code, a nice GUI and a nice style.
+ As slin said, anything big is unrealistic. I think this type of game would give us the opportunity to try mutliplayer; Two people could try coding multiplayer-code for this game, and if that fails then there's still the actual game that works.
+ Arenas could get created randomly, meaning more code and less art work and more fun.
+ no need for a huge long story line, no need for big explanations, the game would be small. no need for many different models.
- we would need to settle on a style. I really don't care what it would be but I'd like "cute". Sort of like the warsheep from ICQ: they think themselves to be real cool...
- balancing and the item-equipment is a little hard in this one.
Reference:
http://www.4warriors.de/shots/shot7.jpg (four little warriors)
http://www.nokia4me.ru/uploads/posts/2009-10/1255857805_bezimerprni-1.jpg (icq-warsheep)
LarryLaffer: here you go.
The demo can now be downloaded from Peter Soxberger's site:
http://www.anet-plugin.com/downloads_eng.htm (shooter example)
Please also read the forum thread (link on the site, just under the download). There's some mistake I made when writing the readme, I mention it somewhere in the thread, I don't remember what it was though.
Note that this is no good for a shooter. It's a simple demo thrown together in a day or two. I am against making a shooter because a) there's too many and b) if done in multiplayer, it would only be frustrating, as people have said. Precise prediction would be needed which is totally unrealistic for a few indies who have their own projects to work on.
