Game idea: EvolOcean

[MisterE]

So, There used to be a cool open world game on the android app store that was called "Deep Sea Evolution"
http://free-apps-android.com/deep-sea-evolution/
In it, you started playing as a cute little bacteria. You swam around, eating smaller bacteria and collecting friends - other bacteria of the same type as you. When you had eaten enough and collected enough friends, you could "evolve", which meant turning into the next higher level bacteria, which absorbed your friends group.
Unfortunately, the game disappeared from the app store and online.
I would like to recreate this game in minetest, using the title of "EvolOcean".
Here is the vision:

Gameplay: Collect food and freinds, level up to the next higher organism.

You can eat organisms of lower levels as you. You can also eat organisms of the same level as you, but there will be a battle, and you might get eaten instead. Higher level organisms, and those with more numbers in their pod/school will likely end up eating you if you are not careful. Grow your pod, and feed it. When you have done that, you can level up to the next level of organism.

There are many types of organisms of each level. You can only gather friends of the same type as you. The kind of food you eat influences the chance of what kind of organism you will become when you level up.

Other gameplay aspects can be added, but to start, we will focus on just the core elements.
Possible expansion would mean adding specific behaviors to organisms, such as group attacks, feeding frenzies, poison, symbiotic relationships, parasitic relationships, camoflages, unique behaviors, etc.

Gameplay will continue until you have achieved the highest available rank. Then, you have won the game. You can restart if you like.

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so thats the vison... get the basic game made, then

If this game is going to be made, we need to form a team. We will need programmers, artists, sound designers, game designers, etc. If you are *not* one of those, but want to participate, we will help you learn.

The team will be organized as follows:

We will have weekly meetings, on Saturday. These will be held over zoom (other similar apps are acceptable). Participants are encouraged to not use their camera, just their microphone.

During these meetings, we will discuss the current state of game development, define short and long-term goals, and review the status of short term goals.

We will have several teams: art, modelling, animation, programming, and game design. A person can be on more than one team. A person can only be a leader of one team (unless there is a shortage of participants). We will make a forum post for the overall game, and a forum post for each development team.

The order of operations is like this:
game development team decides what game aspects are needed. The tell the modellers and artists to make specific game assets. They also let the programmers know how those assets will be used. The programmers try to implement the concept, and use the assets to finish it. If any group hits a roadblock, then they let the game devs know. Each team will keep a todo list, and will work on things in order of priority.

besides the weekly meetings (it could be every other week instead), participants can work on their tasks on their own, when they find the time, but having the support of the rest of the team. Job assignments should be given as people feel they are able to take them on. That means that only a few people have to make a major time commitment, most people can make very small commitments as they have the time.

If you are able to give only a little time, then just claim small projects from the todo list of a team that you feel you can tackle. If you realize that you cant complete it after all, then let others know so they can finish it. You can work take on jobs from different teams as well, so that you have variety. If you don't have any skills, then we can help you learn some easy skills, and if you have trouble with a specific problem, then you can post about it, and other teammates will help solve it. We can learn together how to program, when issues arise that no one has experience with.

If you are interested in participating, please post below. Once there are enough people interested, we will determine a date and time for the first meeting. Please indicate the level of participation you *think* you can provide, especially, can you be a team leader. Team leaders will oversee the todo list of each team, and keep track of the progress of the tasks, as well as coordinate with the other team leaders.

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Once we get a team together, we will start to discuss implementation of the game elements. We will find our pace of development based on how much time people are willing and able to provide.
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One other thing... This game should be distributable. Right now, I would like to settle that the code will be licensed under the "GPL 2.1 or later". All media made during this project will be a creative commons license
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

or less restrictive license that maintains compatibility.

If we use code or media from other sources, it must have a compatible license. If it doesn't, we either will code that feature ourselves, or we will (nicely) ask the author to re-license.

The above is what goes... unless there is a good reason to change it. If there is, please post below. We definitely should decide this before starting on game creation.

I think it would be a good idea to use github, but that will be decided on the first meeting. If you want to weigh in on that, attend the first meeting.

Also, if the above vision is not clear, please indicate what I should clarify (details will be determined in the meetings, but the core idea of the game is what is being specified now).

[MisterE]

Anyone interested?