Cheat Engine

[Phox]

The CEF City Sprite in development:


The first thing I'm working on that it would be easy for anyone to help with is what the heck is the island of CEF City even going to look like? In terms of the landscape and layout. Helping me by drawing a bird's eye map takes no programming skill and little artistic skill, just creativity. I'm working on one myself right now, but if it turns out that you have a great idea for some river or lake somewhere or a great place to put important building X or landmark Y, I will add it in. Then, where we're finished with that, we're going to look at how the blocks of the city are going to be laid out. Feel free to input ideas for both.

Heads up: I am NOT asking for help with programming this. I know nobody's going to write lines of code for me, so I'm doing that myself. for the most part, this is a very simple program anyway. The complicated stuff is only really going to come in at the very end.

Since nobody ever believes any of my pixel art is actually my own work, for some reason, I have been practicing in silence. However, I figure that I'm probably good enough to start an isometric pixel art project and I've been inspired by some of the amazing cities people have made. So, I'm determined to make a huge, bright and beautiful city map, I'm thinking somthing like 15000x15000 pixels. It will be the king of all pixel art cities.

At the moment, I'm working on a program in C# that allows me to "walk around" in a map with the sprite of my choice. I was thinking that I could use this for a little walkaround game. The game won't have an objective, the player will just be able to walk or run where he pleases in the huge city.

But then I was thinking, the player's going to get kind of lonely just walking around by themselves in a ghost town, right? I was thinking, it would be really cool if I could have it be browser based, where players rent out apartments and walk around and talk together. That's sort of what RStown was meant to be like originally, but I guess holland sort of scrapped that idea. It's too bad, because I loved the idea of RStown. I was actually thinking that "CEFCity" would be a cool name for this project.

I'm just posting here to ask if anyone would like to help me. I will go through with this, even if it takes me an entire year or more, but I figured it would be more fun if I could get some partners in developing it.

I'm open for any sort of help, whether you want to assist in the actual pixel art, give architechture suggestions, suggestions for the general layout of the city (this is a big one), even if you just have an idea for some element of the city.

Why should you help?

Because this is an awesome, fun project.

____________________

Current Version: CEF City v0.0 (lol)

Client:

I am working on a simple program that will let someone move around isometrically on a background. Movement will work like it does in pokemon games, where the only thing actually moving will be the background.

Art:

I haven't even started making the actual "city". I do have some sort of plan.

Stage 1: Road Map

Status: Currently working on

First, I will lay out the entire city's roads and blocks. Every road will have a unique name, so feel free to throw one out there.

Stage 2: Moving Day

Status: None

When I'm done with the roads and blocks, that will be the stage in which I make a website that I'll use as my base. The game, of course, will not yet be multiplayer. I may or may not have account registration at that point. Since the only people who would know about the project at that point still would only be CEF and maybe some friends of mine, there's no need to reserve user names.

Stage 3: Under Construction

Status: None

From there, I'm going to be making "frames" of my buildings. When I say frames, I had this idea where I make it look like the buildings are actually under construction, maybe I'll throw in some cranes and equipment for fun. This is when you want to start maybe asking if you can have an office in building X, or make building Y look this way, or be the leader of club Z. If I've implemented user registration at this point, I'll definitely be activating everyone's account by hand. Everyone will have to identify themselves as someone I know (basically, anyone from CEF is good) via email.

Stage 4: Multiplayer

Status: None

This is when I start nearing the end of construction. I will definitely have user registration at this point. Some players will already have registered establishments, like nightclubs, churches, ETC. In the end, every single player will need to have an apartment, but I probably won't have this implemented yet. However, people will be able to walk inside most major buildings (such as landmarks like skyscrapers or the town hall, where my office will be located). I'll be working on apartment buildings alot here, and you'll be able to go inside some of them, but all doors to apartments will be locked. I almost forgot, there will of course be a chat box.

Stage 5: Polishing things up

Here, I'm going to make a user registration system where every single person has an apartment, all buildings are finished, and I'll be gradually releasing more advanced features, like buses and helicopters. I was thinking that Moderators could be like the police force, who zoom around in their choppers and motorcycles, looking for trouble.

Ideas or Mechanics:

-How buildings will work
My idea is for buildings to be completely the same on the inside and on the outside. When a player enters a building, the walls of the building will disappear. None of this tiny on the outside, huge on the inside nonsense.
-Offices, Apartments
Players will be able to rent offices and apartments. Apartments are the place where the player lives, and I haven't decided on a function for offices, but I like it.
-My personal office
I'm going to have an office on the top floor of the town hall. Aw yeah.
-Construction Projects
When a building is in the process of being created, I'll put my work right on the map where it's going to go.
-Renovations
When I'm remaking/building onto/etc a building, I'll put cranes/other machinery in/on/around the building as an indication of this
-I don't want to see all that ugly unfinished art!
There will be an option not to view construction projects and renovations, and just view the regular map.
-Locked Doors and Keys
Not everyone can just barge in on your property! When you privately own an apartment, office, or other building, you will have a key to open that building for anyone to enter, or lock it so only you can get it. You can make a copy of the key and give it to a friend.
-Helicopters
I'm thinking that only the police will use these.
-Cars, Bikes and Buses
This is a big one. Buses will regularly patrol around the city along selected routes. While at a stop, you are presented a map of some sort, and the map will have bus stops on it. You click on the bus stop that is closest to your destination, and the next bus that was traveling past your stop will stop briefly, your character will automatically hop on, and then when the bus arrives at your destination, the bus will automatically dump you off. Because of how automated it will be, bus travel will really be quite fast. Cars will work in a similar way to buses. There will be some sort of cost for a car, maybe you have to pay for it in the game's currency, maybe you have to hold some position, maybe you have to live in a certain place, whatever. The point is, not everyone has a car. When a player gets into their car, they type in the address or area they want to go to,and the car will take them there, and find the closest parking spot. The player can set how far the car will search for a spot until the car starts looking for the nearest parking garage or something. I haven't decided exactly how that will work, but it probably won't even be a problem unless CEF City gets quite populated. A couple things will be for certain: 1. Car travel will NOT be a ton faster than Bus travel. More convenient in some cases, but definitely not significantly faster. 2. Nobody will be driving their own vehicles on the roads except maybe the police who might not be going anywhere in particular. This will keep travel fast and NOT buggy. Bikes could work the same way as cars, except they 1. either ride on the sidewalk or in a bike lane 2. they might not be allowed in some places 3. they park on bike racks, there probably will be 1 per block that holds 6-10 bikes 4. you need a lock 5. you need to replace the tires more often then on a car
-Boats
There are a lot of rivers in and around CEF City. Boats and Jetskis may be a form of transportation that players can control freely.

Things I haven't come up with the mechanics for yet:

-The beginning of the game, and choosing an apartment
No idea how a player is going to be assigned an apartment when they first register.
-Going behind an object
Tall buildings are bound to cover up some of the landscape behind them. I'm not sure how to approach how such obstacles are to behave.
-Roads
I would like for players not to be able to walk into the roads due to the automated road vehicle control other than at crosswalks at a red light. However, this could be a little bit stifling for the player.
-Times of day
I could have a day/night schedule that fluctuates 1. Every 10-30 minutes 2. according to real time. I don't like either option. The alternative is to have it be daytime all the time, which I'm leaning towards.
-Currency
For some reason, I kind of hate the idea of in game money. I hope to figure out a better way to distribute wealth.

[Gavin]

Reminds me of Habbohotel.

Keep up the work though.

[Phox]

[Wania]

I cant contribute with anything but I think it sounds awesome.

[Antagonist]

is there a spot for being a supervisor?

[Phox]

[Up2Admin]

Sounds pretty cool. The multiplayer might be a bit difficult to pull out, especially with your planned movement system.

[Phox]

I mean, it is kind of inevitable that players are going to have to be able to walk through each other, I don't know how to get around that. Other than that, I think it would be fine.

[Aviar³]

[Fantasy]

Great idea, but it's going to take a long time to even get it to a state where people want to use it. But I support this idea.

[Phox]

[The Fish]

If people can't walk through other people you're gonna get problems like this.

Link

[Phox]

[The Fish]

I could help if you need.

[Phox]