A Yukkuri raising sim? A fool's errand?

I am a gaming major, unemployed, have a lot of free time, and recently broke up with my girlfriend.

I have been considering trying to work on a Yukkuri raising sim. I am more of a designer and an idea man then a programer. I already have a lot of possible ideas as to what this sim would contain, however I have no delusions of grandeur regarding myself. I currently have no one other then myself, and I have no program to use to make this game.

At this time I am nothing more then a single person stating an Idea they have. As I mentioned I am unemployed so I would not be able to pay anyone, and I expect nothing in return. This project would be a labor of love... or abuse... for Yukkuri!

It would also if completed look good in a resume.

My idea so far is that the player takes control of an avatar, and you can interact with other people as well as yukkuri. The player may earn money to buy a yukkuri from a pet shop or yushelter, or they can pick some randomly of the street. You can raise,kill, or abuse them. Or you could just roam the city caring for, abusing, or killing random yukkuri.

I have a lot more ideas, but I need to know what I will be able to accomplish before I start blabbing about it and pull a Peter Mulinue, and end up disappointing everyone.

Currently I can't do anything other then talk big, but with some help I can accomplish this. I know that compromise is a important part of any team so I now that people do have lives outside of the internet, and that not all of my ideas will be agreed upon but I am willing to do my best to ensure that this game will see completion.

I'd offer to support you but I have no technical skills :(

I could try to draw some sprites though.

I have technical skills to the extent of being an "idea guy", that is to say, completely useless to you. I, like you, know piddly squat about programming outside of basic stuff like recursion and polymorphism.

If you're looking for an engine to use, I'd say try one of the FOSS engines floating around sourceforge. But that's just because I'm a GNU fanboy.

It's been done before, so it isn't impossible. post #22572

Good luck.

Thanks a lot, I'll check it out that game and the FOSS engines.

I also want to say that even if you don't think you are qualified or if you feel that you have no technical skills, I would be more then happy to swap ideas with people who are interested. It doesn't matter if you think it is a good idea, or even if you think it is stupid or dumb, I mean think about the Mario, it is a good game but it is about a mushroom eating plumber who jumps on turtles! Or Kingdom Hearts, combining Disney and Final Fantasy sounds like a terrible idea, but it turned out to be a huge success!

Never undercut yourself! Don't give up or feel down because you fail or screw up, learn from it and use it to make something even better! I have failed countless times, I know it hurts to put all of your heart into something only to have it stepped on, or worse have nobody care enough to even pay attention to it, but I still do not give up! I have been called loser, idiot, failure, and I have been told to give up by my teachers, peers, and even my parents. However that has all paid off since I have made them all acknowledge my talent, as a matter of fact the head of the gaming department at my college of choice told me can't wait for me to attend... I just need to be able to pay.

... I hope I didn't come off too strong. I tend to type too much.

lonefool said:
... I hope I didn't come off too strong. I tend to type too much.

Yea, you got a little like a self-help book there @_@

Any specific gameplay elements you'd like feedback on at this stage?

It's never about failure, it's always about one thing:

Time.

Making a game takes a lot of time. Heck, basic programming takes a lot of time. We have about 4-5 different project that have all mothballed (mine included, though I'll admit mine was too ambitious) and will never come to have every feature we wanted.

To make a yukkuri game requires a lot of commitment and time, and frankly most people have one or the other but not both. Not to mention being a skilled programmer is a merit in itself.

Not trying to be a debbie downer, so if you need programming tips/guides/feedback and someone to help you debug code I'm always up for helping.

Making a game is easy. It really is.

But BUILDING a game is time consuming as hell. Its a commitment. If you can't envision yourself working on it 1, 2 years from now; Give Up Now.

Thanks I'll take what you are all saying to heart, and I'll try not to to sound like a "self help book".

I have time and commitment but I lack skill. If I had the correct tools to make the game I could make a simple vision myself, I am a bit OCD, I spent at least 15 hrs a day for two months building a level and aligning the textures.

I will probably end up having to ask for the help of my "friend". He is a programer of immense skill and talent plus he has a connections with similarly talented people. In fact he already worked on a game that got publish by a company.

He is however a self absorbed ass, with a tendency to demand compensation for things he said were free, even though he knows I am unemployed. It would take me an entire day to explain why I don't want to work with him, but this isn't the listen to me whine forum. I admit he is a powerful resource, but using him would make me feel like I made a deal with the devil.

I just finished playing several Yukkuri based games, I wasn't able to get "Project Yukkuri" to work though. I did however mess with the "Yukkurarium Game", which was amusing for a while but I feel that it could use some more options.

I guess that I could try to lower my original idea, and try to make a game that is similar to the "Yukkurarium Game". I already have several versions of it including the most recent untranslated version, so I could possibly reverse engineer the coding.

I am not saying that it wouldn't be hard, as yukiyuzen said making a game is very time consuming. And like poweryoga said you need people with time & commitment.

If I did make a game similar to the "Yukkurarium Game", I would probably reduce the number of yukkuri you could have in the aquarium to about 4.

(for Abuse)
I would hopefully be able to add more features for abuse like the ability to throw away the accessory, place spicy food, and/or the ability to drop them into their poo poo.

(for caring)
I would like to try and add some positive actions as well such as petting, giving a new (or returning the old) accessory to a yukkuri without one, cleaning the yukkuri, giving medicine/healing the yukkuri.

(for the Yukkuri)
I will try to add more actions to the yukkuri such as an affection gauge, such as being happy if you feed, clean, pet, and take care of them, or have them unhappy if you dispose of their accessory, drop them in poo poo, and starve them.
Maybe have them complain when they are hungry and possibly have them either eat their poo poo or a dead yukkuri if they are starving.
possibly have a yukkuri with an accessory attack/kill/eat a yukkuri without an accessory. Also if possibly have a yukkuri you abuse attack the yukkuri you spoil, out of jealousy.

does that sound like a good idea? I may not even be able to accomplish this but if I get feedback I can at least know if it is worth trying.

More options and interactivity is always better than having less!

Although I have to ask, why the cap at 4 yukkuris?

I'll be perfectly honest: If you're not a programmer, don't bother. Not to be rude, but just trying to save you some time.

Seriously,if you're not familiar with concepts of object orientation, APIs, GUI Design and basic programming concepts like recursion, don't bother.

In layman's terms, a yukkuri game is similar to developing an AI. If you don't have any sort of concepts on switches and flags it'll be extremely hard for you to get something like this done. The most you'll be able to do is some sort of a graphic novel with various "Stimuli", that's about it.

The reason for just 4 is because of the strain of having all the different variables running at the same time. More options means more things to calculate, multiply that by the number of possible yukkuri that can be in the same area at the same time, not counting the different combinations of the different types of yukkuri. Then as Poweryoga said I will essentially have to create an AI for the Yukkuri. This is just some of the things that would need to be done. But to be honest the best way to get it to work would be to have just 1, but that kills a lot of the interest. Finally I don't have financial backing, a studio, or an army of developers, artists, and programers. This is more of a labor of love... or abuse.

I have actually managed to find someone who said that they would help me and they seem to be pretty promising, I understand the difficulties, and if we do make it I may end up wanting to throw my laptop out a window due to frustration, but I will do my best and hope that it comes out well. But first, we need to plan it out what we are going to do. I like visual novels I even have plans for several, but that is not what I am trying to achieve with this game.

I'd create an object class for the yukkuri if you're going to do it that way.

My original plan for my game (long since abandoned) was to just make it into objects so you can call make/destroy as well as apply attributes more easily. Plus you can create as many as you want, obviously will have resource limitations and what not. Also if you create the yukkuri as a base class it's easy to apply polymorphism to add additional traits for say a Reimu, a Marisa, etc.

Heck, toss that into another function and you got yourself a nice little function to create multiple reimus, marisas, etc. Either way, it's important to think about the architecture of the program before you even get started and do some scoping.

How about just a yukkuri interactive novel, or whatever they're called. y'know, what all the h-games are.

You make a very good point poweryoga, my teammate and I have already narrowed down the direction that we would like to take this story wise, but before we do coding we need to decide if the game will be in 2d or 3d.

YMD, while I love visual novels (not just the h ones) I think that it would appeal to more people if it was not a large amount of reading, that and it would likely end up with limited replay value if it was a visual novel.

Of but if you like visual novels (both h and non-h ones) then you should check out the Visual Novel Data Base. It is at this address.

http://vndb.org/

lonefool said:
we need to decide if the game will be in 2d or 3d.

Something to consider on that note, making sprites for a 2d game is probably easier than making models and textures for a 3d game.
Also, I think it would be easier to find skilled spriters willing to work on this, than it would be to find skilled modelers and texturers for the same.

Personally, while I would prefer the game be 2d, if you can just get the game DONE, I wouldn't care whether its 2d or 3d.

Yeah 2d would be significantly simpler, and unless it is done right 3d looks terrible, but I feel that you can do more with 3d. I am however leaning towards doing 2d.

lonefool said:
Yeah 2d would be significantly simpler, and unless it is done right 3d looks terrible, but I feel that you can do more with 3d. I am however leaning towards doing 2d.

I tried 3d. It's significantly more difficult with 2d. Unless you're good with graphics programming, spatial awarness and matrix transformations I suggest going with just 2d.

Just a comparison: I wrote a bounce function for a 2d yukkuri game in about 15 minutes.

I tried the same thing for a 3d game and I had to get a fully rotatable camera working (took 3 days and it didn't work correctly) just to see if bouncing was working properly, then I had to program the actual bouncing (took a whole day) and then get collision detection working for the yukkuri and the ground (never got it working)