Help designing a skateboarding game?

[Skategame]

Howdy - hope I'm posting this in the right forum.

I'm not a skateboarder, but my 11-year-old nephew is very interested in it. I work at a multimedia design house, and I make little web games and such as part of my job, and I got a tip that he'd like me to make him a skateboarding game for Christmas this year. I'm considering doing that, if I can make something that wouldn't suck.

The trouble is, I don't know much about skateboarding tricks, terminology, and culture. I can't do anything too complex, but I'd like to get in a few actual tricks and have them be referred to correctly.

I was hoping to hear a few ideas and suggestions from actual skateboarders, so I came to this forum via Google. What advice would you have for someone setting about designing a game about skateboarding?

[subculture]

wrong place

[smc]

look at the tony hawks pro skater games

[d_n_b_and_d_u_b]

Gee, that's difficult.

You want to make the game fun.

There are a number of tricks that skateboarders can do, I'm not gonig to name them all but I will give you a reference. A few of these tricks that are common amongst many skateboarders are kickflips, 360 flips, and of course..ollies.

So, if you were to list a few ideal tricks that a skater could perform in a videogame you shouldn't just let that trick be something that's just done on the ground, have the skater do a trick over something. A skater gets points everytime he kickflips, ollies, 360 flips or whatever he does thet rick over something or on a certain obstacle.

For example, the skater gets 100 points for kickfliping a trash can, 200 for 360 flipping a large grass gap, and an 10 points for an ollie over a bench.

The thing about skateboarding is that someone can skate almost anything. They can use rails, fire hydrens, barriers, and so many other things when they skateboard.

Just look at a skate video and get an idea of what skaters can do and the sorts of things that they skate.

References:

http://skateboard.com/Frontside/101/default.asp

this site tells you about tricks, slang, and other things that are vital for someone who's interested in skateboarding.

and this site:

http://www.skateboarding.com/skate/

it's got all the news and what's the latest thing happening in the skateboard world. it's got videos as well, use it to your best interest.

I'm sorry this is a little sloppy and thrown together, I'm just not good at explaining things I guess. But I hope you can develop a good game for the skaters out there, share it with us when you get it developed! Thanks and goodluck.

Sid

[RoYaLnINjA5]

look at the trick tips guide on this site, that should be helpful for the tricks and terminology.

[magic mushroom]

yeah. and look at skating games if you have any. yeah. das ende

[L1QuiD]

Will it just be a flash kind of game online? If so will you post the link on here after completion?

[d_n_b_and_d_u_b]

btw, this is going to the gamer's forum. good luck!

[Skategame]

Thanks for the replies, especially to Sid - that second link you sent me was really helpful. Not only does it have slow-motion Quicktime video of the various tricks (which will be a great help with the animation), it also educated me pretty quickly on what some of the standard tricks are.

I'm planning on this being a Shockwave3D game. Shockwave3D is like the big brother to Flash, basically, which allows for 3D environments. Not sure if I will be able to finish something like this by Xmas, though, so I'm still in the "investigations" phase.

I started working on a 3D model of the skater today using some reference photos. I have the basic geometry done; I still need to texture and rig it with an armature for animation. (See attached screenshot.) Since the character model is probably going to be the hardest part, I'm pretty happy with my progress so far.

I'll also have to model an environment for the player to skate around in, and embed the game world information into that environment so the game engine will be able to know where "things you can grind on" and "places you can skate", etc., are.

I'm also trying to figure out whether to just give it an urban skate park look, or going for something more fantastical. I was thinking "Jurassic Skate Park" would be fun. (He *is* eleven, after all.) The former would be easier, since it would be all boxes and things I can take photos of here. The latter would require more organic shapes (which are harder to model and require more polygons), and more hand-painted textures.

I'm also going to experiment with using a dance mat for the game input. What I'm thinking is that he'll hold a standard gamepad controller in his hands which is used to bank left and right and interact with menus, and he'll stand on the dance mat and step onto the arrows to do the actual tricks. For instance, he'll repeatedly step on the right arrow to push against the ground to accelerate (is there a proper skater term for this?). To do an ollie, he'll step on the down/back arrow, and if he then steps on the left and right arrows at the same time, the board will turn perpendicular to the direction of travel to perform a 50-50 board grind or to go up a pipe jam. Not sure if this setup will work in practice, but it sounds like it would be fun.

Anyway, please keep sending ideas and suggestions.

[zero sk8er punk1200]

Go to a skatepark and watch the skaters (NOT THE POSERS!!!) That may provide some assisance.

[Marevix]

CAUTION: LONG POST

Here's an old skate game concept that I never finished, don't know if it'll be any help or not.

We all know how unrealistic the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Tony Hawk's Underground games are. This here is a detailed description of what I believe would be a good realistic (if a little technical) skate game. Let us start off with the interface.

Interface-
The interface would be simple enough- a health, fatigue, and focus bar at the bottom left corner. Health is your physical well-being, if you land wrong off a huge set your health will go down and your performance will be affected. Fatigue is how tired you are, when it is empty you are at your best. When it is maxed out, you become too tired to skate and your skater sits down and takes a break. Focus is essentially your good day/bad day meter. The longer you skate, the more you're warmed up and the higher focus you have. Focus mostly influences balance and consistency. Stretching before a session increases the rate at which your focus bar increases, as does the random multiplier assigned to that day, simulating good days and bad days. At the press of several different mappable keys, you can access the trick progression screen, the inventory and board screen, the stats screen, and the progression screen. The trick progression screen lists the tricks you can and can not do anf your proficiency in them, more info in the tricks section. The inventory screen would show you what you look like, what you're carrying, your board and its statistics (more info in the board section), and how much money you have. The stats screen would represent the numerical fractions of you health, fatigue, and focus, and your skating statistics (more info in the stats section). The progression screen is where you see the list of important people (i.e. other skaters, shop owners, etc.) and your sponsors. It also has a list of any videos you've made and/or been in and the option to playback (yes, you can record your own video with your own angles). New videos would presumably be buyable from a shop, but no real-world videos would be included without permission of the copyright holder. The skating itself would be done in a through-the-eyes first person point of view. You look down? You see your feet and your board, the indicators of when to hit the appropriate buttons to do a trick. Tricks would be selected and mapped to 0-9 on the numpad so the game knows which trick you're about to try.

Storyline-
The guideline would be something to the extent of the player playing as a newbie skater and trying to get better until there's nothing else to learn. Each city has its own adaptations of that guideline.

Trick Execution-
On the keyboard, different keys would be pressed or held in a certain order. For example- an ollie would be 1. Hold down crouch button 2. Pop 3. Jump 4. Drag 5. Tuck up. Each instruction will have to be mapped to a key on the keyboard by the player. Timing is important, on Novice mode there are indicators of when to press each key floating on the screen- on the normal mode all you have is your view of the board, making some skateboarding experience very useful. When you first start to learn a trick, even if you time it perfectly, the skater usually messes up the order or execution of the trick (i.e. dragging before popping or not popping at all). Before attempting a trick, you'll have to select it from the trick list.

The Board-
Seeing as how getting permissions to use real-world companies in the game would take a very long time, decks with similar names and graphics will be used. Instead of Alien Workshop, you'd have Guinea Pig Workshop, for example. Parts can be bought through the internet at a low price with a 5 day shipping period or bought from the local skateshop for a premium. Skateshops don't tend to have as good a selection as online stores, but can save time if you need a new setup for an upcoming competition. Each part has its own statistics that affect skating performance and lastability. Decks have Pop (affects trick height and reduces the rate of fatigue while popping slightly), Shape (affects flip speed and consistency), Durability (influences it's breaking point) and Lastability (How long the graphic will last and the rate at which the board gets razortail).

[xxdead_dollxx]

post the link once its done