Crowdfunding a game I'm developing: ReTux (Mario-inspired game)

I wouldn't call it an "engine remake". It's an entirely new game. Similar in some respects to SuperTux et al, but with various differences. For example:

- The completed game should be a lot shorter than SuperTux's ambitious goal, and have a lot less features. This means the game will be finished a lot faster.

- Tux doesn't transform in this game. Powers come from objects that are carried around, and health is just a health bar.

- This game is accessible to colorblind people, something a lot of game developers in general tend to neglect. :)

- I'll be hiring some artists to clean up the rough edges of the graphics. For example, giving Tux a proper run animation (right now, a placeholder of the walk animation feet and kick animation arms is used). Most libre game projects pretty much depend on volunteers.

- I threw away the whole "lives" concept. Instead, you indirectly lose points when you die, by losing out on some of the level's time bonus.

The campaign is basically just a different way to "sell" the game I'm trying out: selling the game to the public entirely, rather than just copies.

Thank you! :)

You don't have to contribute exactly $20 to get the $20 perk. Any amount that is at least $20 will allow you to choose it. You could even contribute $1000 and only pick the $20 perk if you really wanted to.

I don't consider reTux to be a "fork" of SuperTux. I took the art assets (graphics, sounds, music) of SuperTux, but reTux is otherwise a completely new game. None of the SuperTux source code can be found in reTux's source code. In fact, it's a completely different language (Python as opposed to SuperTux's C++).

ReTux should work on any system that both Python (either version 2 or 3) and Pygame can run on. This includes all of the commonly used desktop operating systems (GNU/Linux, Windows, OS X, BSD), but probably not Android, at least not right now. If I can get cx_Freeze to work, I should be able to make binaries for GNU/Linux (built from Trisquel) and 32-bit Windows available. In the worst case, though, all that means is you have to install reTux's dependencies and run the Python script. I will make sure to have a distribution with all the pure-Python dependencies included so that all you have to install yourself are Python and Pygame.

Freedo is cuter than Tux, too. I mean, those button-esque eyes, with that adorable blank face...
Tux is more well known than Freedo, however. The game'll get more attention with Tux than it would if Freedo was the main character. So the smartest move would be to not make Freedo the main character, it seems. And requesting easter eggs and extra characters? onpon has enough on his plate as it is!

Good idea, Freedo (and I'd add GNU).
There could be an oiled leak level where Freedo would have to get clean from that and would look like Tux in the mean time.

Or where freedo would be some super-sayajin power up.
Problem is, Tux is much easier to notice on most backgrounds.
But it's doable.

Or just make the state change related to the free software struggle in some other way. Like without free software, you get very weakened by the spying, and limited in your actions.

Freedo's towel and brush could be weapons. but imposing them on the people to "liberate" is a bit too radical. Not sure it's a good idea. I mean adopting free software is supposed to be n informed free choice. Not forced.

Anyway, not sure I understand what I'm writing anymore, I'll give it a rest.

> I'm not sure, but isn't there a level editor integrated in super tux?
> I think the final version of retux will probably be very similar to what somebody could have done with this level editor except of some minor differences that don't really matter (at least to me and, so is my guess, to many other players).

SuperTux has a level editor, though it's a separate program written in C# now. However, just using the level editor wouldn't have been sufficient. If I had based the game on SuperTux, I would have had to make engine changes, because I can't stand some of the design choices in the core of SuperTux's engine. (You might think of them as minor, but I think of some of them as fundamental flaws. They're little things, but they pile up.) Additionally, since SuperTux is in an alpha state, I would have had to fix problems in the existing engine anyway. I decided that starting over with the SGE Game Engine wouldn't be any more difficult, might even be easier, and would give me a chance to make the SGE Game Engine more mature, something else I wanted to do.

> 50 000 dollar for this sounds unachievable;
> 500 maybe, but i wish you the best.

$500 would be nowhere near enough for this size of a game even if I were just making the levels. At $10 an hour (slightly more than minimum wage where I live, but easier to do math with than $8.15), each level would only get a little more than an hour of work, on average. This isn't even taking into account making the maps (which doesn't take a huge amount of time, but does take some), and testing. The only way you could possibly do it that fast is if the levels are so terribly rushed that you aren't putting any thought into them, and you don't test them much. The game would succumb to repetition and other design problems because of this, and the lack of testing would almost certainly mean design problems would slip through.

For just the levels, if you want them to be good, I'd roughly estimate about 2 months of full-time work, total. At $10 an hour, that's about $3200. That's a bare minimum.

For the entirety of reTux, but not including whatever the cost of hiring an artist will be, I roughly estimate the bare minimum to be about $10,000 (or, about 4 months of full-time work for the engine, at about $10 an hour). That's why I said I'd consider $10,000 to be a success, but not successful enough for me to quit my day job over.