If I could redesign Beavis and Butthead to avoid copyright issues (new names, new appearances, new speech) I think I could make an adventure game full of minigames about 2 stupid characters tooling about their house. All the while they say lots of stupid stuff that hopefully is funny. Or maybe just dumb. 
Iām looking for ideas on names, situations, and dialog.
I was thinking an almost orthagonal 3d house and 2 billboard sprites for each character that are deliberately done in blocky 8 bit looking style.
There would be minigames, adventure scenarios where you had to use multiple items, and mode to participate as the characters in TV shows by interacting with the channels on their TV set.
What do you think?
Just steal everything MTV (what was the āMā for again?) did and put it in the game, like celebrity deathmatch etcā¦ Maybe you get some attention by that alone
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This sounds like a good idea of a game, I loved the bevis and butthead series growing up. Maybe you could start the player off at their house where they learn all the controls then they have to walk to school becuase their power went out and theres no tv so they get to school and get the bright idea to bring the tv back to their house. They are later caught just before ariving at their house by the police and must then escape from jail.
Thats all I got. Maybe when I get better at this video game programming thing I could help with some code but for now I contribute story lines.
Pretty good Shane. Good idea also Normen.
Cool thing is we can do episodes that involve different plots independent of effecting each other.
Hereās an episode idea to pitch in: a military satellite crashes in the backyard and somehow they start using to control military Drone craft and blow up half the neighborhood before āblack helicoptersā start to fly in.
I think the point is to come up with as many cool ideas as we can, flesh them out in writing complete with the dialog that makes it so damn funny, and then engineer the most bare-bones game design to accomidate all of them. This falls into my āthis game is deliberately retardedā design philosophy for this subject with 8-bit sprite characters.
If we could layer say 10 story ideas we can look for common threads and design the game around it. Anyone can flesh out the stories and post them. Iāll flesh out a few.
So, IDEAS SO FAR:
- celebrity deathmatch
- tv heist
- mil sat drone war
The internet fails. They are faced with the dread prospect of going OUTSIDE!!! :o
Accidentally hack the pentagon (connected to drone war thing - think War Games maybe (āHow about a nice game of Chess?ā)
Cute girl moves in next door. Social skills fail.
One of them is scared of something obscure (butterflies?) the other one gets one and torments the first with it.
If only bevis and butthead were around during the era of the mainstream internetā¦ oh wait a minuteā¦ new bevis and butthead on right meow!
Talk about Daria and then Iāll be interestedā¦ or at least her dad in the spinoff 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjXtatucdgg
I miss the late 90ās/early 2000ās
Iām pretty sure Iāll have to come up with some more different characters so I donāt get slapped with a lawsuit. What Iām thinking is a little less beavis and butthead and more like some college-age retards in a rental house. Maybe a lot of people have been in that situation but these guys are more retarded than most. Then Iād throw them into a bunch of imaginative Beavis and Butthead situations. Still stupid but with different characters.
From a design perspective itās gotta combine some basic in-game dramatic blocking and speech with actual cheesy 90ās Adventure style mechanics.
Thereās two ways I thought of doing the mechanics, and maybe a third way combining both: You have arrow keys to move the character, a button to switch control of characters, and a few buttons with preset actions binded to them. The other way is to have a GUI interface on the bottom of the screen allowing you to click on things like āTalkā and āPushā. Anybody remember the game Maniac Mansion or any of the Kings Quest series? Kinda like that. But I wanted to throw in some stupid action scenes like those old games like Final Fight and the ancient Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade games.
All of this running with billboard-sprite characters and 3d environments.
But I can see doing a celebrity gauntlet instead of a celebrity deathmatch.
Bottom line: comedy, adventure, and action.
Honestly I might need some help writing the dialog, which will the only thing that would really be funny about the game. I can come up with these characters but Iām no comedy writer. This is definitely a case of me thinking āWouldnāt it be cool ifā¦ā without knowing really how to pull the thing off except maybe technically.
Did anyone ever play Bevis and Butthead for sega dreamcast genisis? thats kind of how I imagine the game play for this game. except with 3d
Great ideas all. Iām thinking now of sticking with a very simple adventure/RPG design in a FPS format utilizing 2 voices in the playerās head going back and forth as the comedy aspect. This may turn out incredibly stupid but it might make me laugh a little.
Conflictedā¦
A GENERIC RPG
So I thought iād make this RPG, and then I sorta started to realize itās a carbon copy of everything thatās ever been done before. So I ask you, the readers of the forum, to input what could make this thing different without breaking the bank in development time. Thank you.
KEYS:
LMB punch/attack w current weapon
MOUSEWHEEL switch weapons
P pick up
ENTER use current item
[ ] switch items
BACKSPACE drop/throw current item (can move throw to cursor w mouse)
SPACE interact w environment/character
T speak
I inventory
ARROW KEYS
switch helmet
switch armor
switch boots
DESIGN NOTES:
small number of items
5 monsters
skeleton
imp
blob
dragon
thug
4 npc types
wizard (QUEST, SPELL)
trader (TRADE)
damsel (save)
guy (talk, messenger)
5 spells
MAGIC MISSILE
HEAL
REGEN
FIRE BURST (bunch of magic missiles exploding away in all direct)
RECALL (return to nearest recall ring)
Maybe to solution to make it less generic is iinstead of having those 2 voices in your playerās head you give him those 2 voices as companions
and let those to screw everything up and make the point of the game to help them survive and complete their journey through the game.
also let them to the talking with npcās but let the player iinterrupt their conversation with things like : āI donāt think thats a good ideaā or āshouldnt we doā¦ā in that way you can āmaybeā change your companions stupid ideas
Also maybe use more alternative weapons and spells that B&B would use like :
slingshots ā ranged
soda cans ā explode on impact or used for regen / health
life picked mucus and shoot them ā poison ranged attack
spit ā slowing attack
pick up cats and use them as melee weapons maybe with a cleaving attack ( I LOVE cats by the way, but Iām sure it would make me laugh when used carefully with some nice sounds / visuals)
maybe for recall rings you can use retreat to trailer home.
for the visuals I loved the idea about using the (animated) billboards for the characters, good olā times
Edit 3+ :
My imagination is seriously in overdrive canāt stop thinking about this so some more additions :
- maybe the big quest around rescueing the danzel(s) in distress is to make real man of those 2 idiots so the danzels are impressed enough in the end else the dont wanna be saved from their pimp or something.
you can make real man out of your āheroesā by :
nicer clothing = better armor
better manners = stronger spells
more āeducatedā equipment = better weapons (briefcases or staplers, pens instead of cats and slingshots)
moā money !!
but their average intelligence has to stay the same overall, they are shallow people after all, its all about appearances
Iām thinking random events i.e. they staple each other when they have differences in lets say a conversation or something
Nice ideas dansion - it would need a lot of AI work to get the two companions working well in a non-frustrating way though.
Yeah I realize that and to be perfectly honest I never really touched AI so I just think of stuff but donāt know how hard they are to implement, but I think itās important to split the AI into the gameplay part
- moving , just let them follow the player
- attacking enemies on sight, you help them out by saying which skills to use (else they are to stupied to survive), so no smart evading, dodging or strategies of their own.
- talking - player says to them which npc to talk to , pre-scripted conversations
basically it are RTS controls with basic-pathfinding so they can follow the player smoothly
I mean that looks not to hard, they dont really have to find the way on their own and stuff, but as I said iām a total AI n00b.
The fun stuff has to be pre-scripted and run randomly when certain conditions are met ( idling for 5 - 10 seconds) or in conversations.
the voices stuff just can go on whenever u want to on random intervals maybe according to situations i.e. in a fight, walking, dying, comments on npcās in sight.
The most work will absolutely be the graphics / animations.
I like those ideas. That would be pretty difficult to do.
A few more questions:
- what should the characters personality/names be like?
- 3rd person rts controls or first person?
Iām thinking I should release this game in installment episodes, with each installment with more programming technology than the last.
I had a plot idea.
How about: āDalai Lamerā. 2 certain idiots have been reincarned as probate (heheheh) monks at a Tibbetan Monestary and these 2 are in the running for (God knows why) ascension to the title of Dalai Lama. They have the tendancy to laugh uncontrollably at seemingly innocuous words in spiritual metaphors used by their mentor. The whole plot of the game revolves around the idea these 2 have gotten in their heads when they were on their own that the way the Dalai Lama would ultimately be chosen would be a bloody fight to the death. So they practice destroying things when away from their peers and teachers.
āYoung Buddhead, what do you think is the nature of Nirvana?ā
āUhhhhā¦ hehehā¦ Smells like teen spirit.ā
āDammit Buddhead, you suck.ā
HahahahaI think the dalai lama plot gives enough room for humor
Only the characters I drew wont fit in that setting I suppose, but still its a good example of how I see the the in-game presentation before me, (billboard characters and 3d world).
controls should be a combination of first-person walking with two idiots beside you and you control them by combination of mouseclicks and a skillbar.
Here is a example of the characters I thought of ā¦I quickly drew them in paint and pasted them into a screenshot of the forester plugin with saturation turned way up.
As you can see I tried to get a old skool , low quality look for the characters, like in old point and click adventuresā¦
2 Likes
Thatās awesome, Dansion! The characters are perfect. Now I just gotta draw the characters, add the point and click interface to my Skyrim program, add a billboard sprite system, and stick the characters in there.
Letās see:
PHASE 1:
- draw characters (just one frame for each so far)
- point and click interface (right mouse button)
- billboard sprite system
- make the characters walk to the waypoint designated by the point-n-click
PHASE 2:
- draw frames of animation for characters
- add frames to the program as sprites for different states
- add a command bar for the characters on the bottom of the screen (NiftyGUI)
- think of a list of commands for the characters
Anyone use that program called Spriter?
Anyone else want to draw stuff for the game?
I did the drawings for the Dalai Lamers and they turned out kinda crappy. Iām going with a different theme than Buddhist Monks. I like the characters Dansion drew better. Can I use the basic idea of those sketches?
My drawings look like crapified sprites from Mike Tysonās Punchout (ancient game for Nintendo 8-bit).
Yeah sure you can and it are just sketches. the arms of the left arms are bordered and the arms from the right character arent dont really know what looks best.
here are my initial sketches, feel free to use them however you like.
As you can see I didnt even draw the arms for the left character :S
 http://i.imgur.com/lfLHv.png |
 http://i.imgur.com/zw2dO.png |
If you still want to use the tibetan monk story-line i'm also willing to try to draw funny looking tibetan monks ^^
also for the controls, the most common commands like "pickup" and "talk to" dont have to be in an ability bar, you can different mouse icons, that change on hovering over objects.