I don’t have much time to explain here, but I’m making an FPS/horror style game called Lexicon. Right now it’s under the name El Birth Contrablo for no apparent reason. When it reaches version V1.0 I’ll start calling it Lexicon. As of right now, it’s at version V0.3.5. I have very, very basic features in the game. I already have a campaign and multiplayer, everything planned out. I’ll edit this post and add some story details, but I do plan on making this a serious project. I’ll add pictures and video, and some downloads of all of my work so far. I work on it pretty frequently.
Also, I’m only 15 years old. No h8 pls. Haha.
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Good luck 
The only recommendation I’ll make is to try and keep the first release simple and get it finished then build on that rather than trying to do everything at once.
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That’s the plan and it’s going amazing! I just released v0.5 for anyone who has liked my page on Facebook! I’d post pictures but I’m not at my computer at the time. Current features are:
A level loading class, easy to specify lots of variables per level.
A player class, easy to create and spawn a player.
Weapons, that fire and can aim down sight.
Basic movement, such as sprinting, walking.
Water + water movement(like swimming)
Weapon attachment code, making it easy to add things like new sights, stocks, etc. to weapons, which dynamically change variables like Accuracy, Rate of Fire, etc.
Building code, with buildings that collapse. (badly in need of fleshing out and advancing.)
A simple main menu.
A host of Post Processing effects, IF you play in High Detail.
For the next version(v0.6) I plan to add:
A weapin customization menu.
Better buildings with more realistic collapse.
More weapons.
Vehicles.
Improved main menu.
Optimization as always!
HUD.
Ability to quit the game to the main menu.
More maps.
Now, a bit of explanation. The game is called El Birth Contrablo because I was bored one day and dared myself to see how much of a game I could make in 1 hour. I got a basic level loading method, simple physics, basic movement, and a cheap sky. It needed a name, so I dubbed it “El Birth Contrablo” because of a joke with some friends. As I fleshed it out and gave it more features, I began to have the idea that I could turn EBC into a game idea I’ve had for over 5 years. I began to add features that would belong in this game, such as weapons, armor, and collapsable structures. When I reach v1.0 the game will be called Lexicon.
Lexicon is my game idea. It’s been a dream of mine since I was only 8 to grow up and be a game designer. Shortly after I began researching game design, I got my idea. Robots rebelling against humans. A very 8-year-old idea, if I do say so myself. Over the next 7 years the idea would change. From robots killing humans, it went to a small rebellion of civilian robots in a small town. From there, the idea for a few campaign levels. Then…what?
I was on the phone with my friend (we were both 12, mind you) and he said he had an idea. He proceeded to explain that he’d been drawing spiders (Ironic since he has extreme arachnophobia) and that he began adding human features. He said they were like spiders that could stand like humans, but had 8 arms/legs. He called them “Arakniak.” For the rest of the night we talked about this race, turned it into something that seemed so believable. It was interesting, what we came up with. But I saw it serving a purpose: the main antagonist to my idea.
I met a 17(at the time) year old guy who wanted to be a writer. He became a good friend of mine. We began talking about my game, and he offered to write a background story for the alien race, the Arakniaks. I, of course, said I’d love that. He and I talked night after night, hours and hours, and the background story became so indepth and beautiful. At this point, the game was called 2500 (Twentyfive hundred, not Two thousand five hundred). The game took place in 2500 so it made sense.
By this time I was 13. I had written out a lot of the campaign of my game. Tons of weapon designs, gameplay ideas, etc. had been passed between my friends and I. But it seemed like these aliens were attacking for no reason. So, we started thinking.
About a year ago, I had an idea. These aliens have experienced something called the Inferior virus (this was already in their history). What I changed was, their home planet became infected and they needed to find a place to expand to for safety. They’d lost hundreds of thousands of men over the past 2000 years. On every piece of technology the Inferior touches, it leaves a strange, undecodable language. It was declared Lexicon, and they believed it was the key to their survival, and stopping the infection. They had built a machine called the Masstograph, which detects masses of…mass throughout space. It reports to them the atnosphere of planets, chemicals and elements in the soil and air, etc. In 2475ish they found a suitable place to inhabit, but at Faster Than Light speeds it was 10 years away. The emperor finally found a fleet of ships willing to make the journey (risking no return to loved ones) in 2490. They arrived in early 2500, and encountered a human fleet. As it turns out, the human race had already found the planet in 2450 and inhabited it. The aliens in the fleet of Arakniak ships saw words on the human ships, and mistook the English language for their Lexicon, and opened fire to destroy what they thought was Inferior. When they discovered they weren’t Inferior, but an alien race(to them), they began to think it was a race that had overcome the Inferior, effectively becoming the “bearers of Lexicon.”
In anger that a group of “aliens” had fought back against their prized fleet, they followed the ship to the planet (now called Octanus) and began an onslought, fighting the human armies on Octanus. Within the 10 years it took for the fleet to reach Octanus a massive Faster Than Light travel breakthrough had occured, and ships could travel up to 100 times faster than before. Reinforcements were sent.
Soooo yeah. To sum it up in one sentence:
Your team of men fight an alien race that wants to kill you for a language you don’t know.
As the game goes on it gets intense, and you learn about the alien history, the Inferior, etc. What happens after that? You’ll have to ask nicely. 
Anyway, that’s it for this update of Lexicon/El Birth Contrablo! If you read it all, thanks! I hope you enjoyed my giant paragraph/story thing!
I will post pictures and a link to El Birth Contrablo v0.5.5_02 soon!
-whattapancake, lead developer.
October 7th:
http://youtu.be/_KfiR0YIWS0
Lexicon/EBC v0.6 feature show off version. For the release of 0.6, I'll make an optional download where you can get all of my releases. That would be v0.3, v0.4, v0.5, and v0.6 as well.
I guess I'll just be editing this specific post instead of adding more and more comments.
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Cool. Can’t wait for a vid!
Thanks! If you’d like to try out the latest release, like the “Lexicon Game” page on Facebook! Also, if you think I’ve got potential, spread the word! I’d love you forever! xD
Mmm, nice background idea. A lot more original than some I’ve seen
Thankee! The rest of the Arakniak history gets very deep, and throughout the campaign you learn about it and it ends up with a lot of twists and turns. I’ll be starting on making the campaign models and stuff later today.
I major release is coming very soon! I’ve added lots of new things! I’ll list a few of the good ones:
Weapon customization - depending on your choice, your gun will have better accuracy, better ROF, etc. I aimed for a sort of “If you’re a sniper, this is a good choice, if assault…” sort of effect, where certain attachments give you advantages in certain areas.
Added more weapons - I’ve added more weapons as well, including a pistol and sniper rifle.
Added basic vehicles - There’s a cheep looking little jeep you can speed around the scene in. It’s actually pretty fun!
Added basic AI - Yes! There’s some basic AI and I hope to advance it soon. Of all the new features, this one was the most fun. The time-sensitive programming was new to me so it’s not the best, but like I said I hope to improve it soon!
Added better buildings - You can now fracture walls, and building collapse behaves slightly more realistically. Again, something not finished (At all) but still better than it was.
Added options for graphics - Instead of running all on high, or all on low, now you can choose certain Post Processing effects to load.
Added (very buggy) multiplayer - I took my shot at it. For my very little experience in time-sensitive coding, and networking, etc. I think it came out okay. As of right now, it doesn’t fully work so it won’t be in the next release. The code is there but I’m still working out some very major bugs. Bugs like not being able to see anything but an uncustomized gun and the world map. >.>
Added grenades - Yeuh, grenades! Right now, I’m just using the same explosion effect from the “TestExplosionTest.java” class in the jME3 test data. It’s interesting, and fun to mess with.
Along with all of that, I’ve done some revamping of original code, and changed a LOT of things from un-optimized chunks of code to AbstractControls and stuff. Lots of improvements. I hope to release the next version very soon, but there’s just a few more bugs to fix. Also, a couple more features to finish up. If there are any other minors (less than 18 years old) on here, that would like to help, just email me at brendan.lyon@contactvinex.co.cc! I want it to be a project done entirely by younger people to restore some hope in humanity that this generation doesn’t entirely suck. Lol. Also, I work best with people my age. Other than that, you can give me all the advice, pointers, and criticism you want. I’m more than up to it.
PS: I sorta sound like a rapist asking for only minors, but I promise I’m not. >.> I HAD a facebook to prove I wasn’t but there were some complications there. Anyway, that’s the update for now! Thanks for anyone who reads it!
Another minor update on progress. I’ll be without home internet for an indefinite amount of time, so I can’t upload a video for the show off thing. I was hoping to be able to, but at the time it’s not looking too likely.
Other than that, I’ve added Nav Mesh based Pathfinding. I’m working hard on making buildings act more realistic. After that, a HUD. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out a few bugs. I’ll also be attempting to fix multiplayer.
If anyone has feature suggestions, questions, etc. just say it here and I’ll respond ASAP!
How long have you been coding for? I’m 14, and all the stuff you’ve done I can only dream about creating. I’ll be checking on this thread frequently.
PS, I’d love to work with you on this, but I don’t know how much help I’d be. (I’ve emailed you about it.)
Great! I’ve been coding since I was 12 but only recently (about 3 months ago) did I really start dedicating my time to it. As often as I can I work on this project. I’ll check my email in a bit, and I’ll send you some details. The help I could use isn’t all programming and such, you could do campaign writing, designs, etc. just whatever you’re good at. We’ll discuss more in the email, and I’ll try to send you a current dev. copy of the game. Thanks for the interest!
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@vinexgames said:
Great! I've been coding since I was 12 but only recently (about 3 months ago) did I really start dedicating my time to it. As often as I can I work on this project. I'll check my email in a bit, and I'll send you some details. The help I could use isn't all programming and such, you could do campaign writing, designs, etc. just whatever you're good at. We'll discuss more in the email, and I'll try to send you a current dev. copy of the game. Thanks for the interest!
Thanks. :) My programing is my strong suit, (since I was 12 as well) I just have commitment problems* so I never actually get up to the stages you've reached, I'd really like to help out on the programming and such, but I'd be happy to work on any part of this, whether it be design, or campaign writing.
I also have addiction problems; (no, not anything bad) When I first started programing, I spent every day, for 5 hours or so, programing. Once I stayed up 2 school nights in a row just to program. When I started learning blender about 5 days ago, I spent 10 hours a day for 4 days (it's golden week, a holiday here) just making models.
PS, You have my email, right?
@rangerplus10 I have the same… problem, if you could call it that. I work on this game for a good 3 hours a day, after I get back from school. It’s basically all I do all day, aside from little breaks of Minecraft or Battlefield 2. I’ll be releasing v0.6 very soon, whenever I can get it to a computer with internet.
That’s how most of the really good programmers get started…programming weird hours in their own time
Make sure you use the proper java naming conventions, etc and and if you can try and find someone experienced to talk to (maybe even look at your code from time to time). You will find that helps you learn good habits from the start rather than having to unlearn bad ones later on.
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Yeah, I try. It’s never fun when you try to mod Minecraft and the decompiler names things like “method_25493(String string, int i)” and you have to wonder what in the world that does. I always name everything obviously. Thanks for tips, hopefully I’ll have the next version ready for release soon!
@vinexgames said:
Yeah, I try. It's never fun when you try to mod Minecraft and the decompiler names things like "method_25493(String string, int i)" and you have to wonder what in the world that does. I always name everything obviously. Thanks for tips, hopefully I'll have the next version ready for release soon!
Which decompiler do you use? MCP+Forge, fern-flower works pretty well for me.
Quick sidebar about motivation and finishing projects:
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Thanks Erland.
Internet at home has finally been achieved! I’ll use Fraps or something to shoot a video of me running around in my game, and showing off the customization, then I’ll post it on YouTube and link it here. Also, I’ll be adding a shotgun later today, so that’ll make 4 total weapons, not including grenades. I’ll be working (again) on making buildings behave correctly. The problem is that they’re made of so many rigid bodies, and the CompoundCollisionShape method didn’t really do what I wanted it to. I need a way for the building to know there’s gravity pulling down on it, so that if you blow out the entire bottom floor, the next floors don’t continue to float. I’ll be trying a few things out today, probably with joints. I also have an idea to do just changing the mass of the parts to 0 until a large enough amount of force hits it. Problem with that is, my AI bots seem to push down a LOT on the buildings so it just destroys the buildings.
@vinexgames said:
Internet at home has finally been achieved! I'll use Fraps or something to shoot a video of me running around in my game, and showing off the customization, then I'll post it on YouTube and link it here. Also, I'll be adding a shotgun later today, so that'll make 4 total weapons, not including grenades. I'll be working (again) on making buildings behave correctly. The problem is that they're made of so many rigid bodies, and the CompoundCollisionShape method didn't really do what I wanted it to. I need a way for the building to know there's gravity pulling down on it, so that if you blow out the entire bottom floor, the next floors don't continue to float. I'll be trying a few things out today, probably with joints. I also have an idea to do just changing the mass of the parts to 0 until a large enough amount of force hits it. Problem with that is, my AI bots seem to push down a LOT on the buildings so it just destroys the buildings.
So what you are saying is that bots currently, by stepping on buildings, collapse them? I can see a trap being made; you shoot a building several times, weakening the structure. Next, you stand outside the building. The AI paths through the building collapsing the floors, and collapsing their spines. That would actually be pretty cool...
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