Isometric RPG

So what about exploration? I’m a fan of Zelda 1 where you could basically go pretty much anywhere on the overworld map right from the start. Here I’d like to do something similar to Dragon Quest 1 where the enemy difficulty partly limits your progression.

I might get the map drawing and scrolling done tomorrow. Perhaps player movement (and buckets). Probably not enemy instances or items.

Mr Magical wand will have to do the transparency mask for me. I haven’t really ordered the graphics in a sensible order. I don’t know if the stuff tiles well either.

Now I’m mighty tired. My slow start aside, I’ve been drawing all day and got a decent amount of graphics done.

I surprised myself and actually got some code done. I have made a simple Editor where I can select, draw, draw randomly and clear. Scrolling isn’t done yet. The map might be 128×128, I don’t know yet.

I’m thinking of replacing the shadow ellipse with a selection ellipse for the enemies and items. Or, I can do several shadows which work for different sizes of things.

Overall, the environment is a bit noisy and hard to read, but that’s partly because I crammed so many different objects onto one screen.

I’m still making progress. I actually made a new year resolution this year that I would finish something. Is this it?

Here I’m trying out the new more silent terrain bits (less dots) in conjunction with the more busy ones.

I might skip making instances for the enemies and just make them terrain objects of sorts. They wouldn’t have any real stats this way. Instead they could die based on a dice roll. The player would have health though. This is a cheap way out just in case I don’t get to making the buckets and linked lists for the enemies.

I didn’t think I’d get this far. The character can move around, collide with things, change stance/posture (def/off) and also collect treasure.

I only have 2 hrs until super tiredness assaults me, but hopefully I can make the enemies move, do a rudimentary combat system, some GUI cleanup.

Pronably no time for sound. My idea was that each tile when drawn has a small chance of making an ambient sound. This would make a huge on screen forest go fooosh, a grave yard wooo aaaaaauuh… I have no sounds for that though. Trivial to add the code though, I think.

Also, I only have the gameplay and editor mode now. Maybe a big non interactive splash screen is doable as a title screen, but I also need a game over and a victory screen (panties). For now I was thinking the game is over once all of the treasure bits have been collected.

I think I wasted too much time on this. I need to do a game over and victory screen too, although they can be simpler. Thankfully they are easy to integrate into the program, since they are just single images.

No progress on gameplay… I’m past bedtime too, head is getting woozy. I can do art when I’m tired (well over the 30hr mark if needed), but not code.

So, I’m done. While I did finish something, it’s not much of a game. I spent far too long on graphics. The characters just skate around and do simple damage. The source code quickly turned into a mess as I approached the deadline. I haven’t even played the game myself, so I’ll give it a go tomorrow. I think I need to do more unique landmarks, i.e. more graphics to make the exploration worthwhile… and an actual game of course. Although, I think I will still consider it a game for the sake of my new year resolution (promised I would finish something).

Like many people here, I’ve been awake for far too long. Good night!

I just woke up and was able to play through my game. Here are a few things which went wrong:

• I spent too much time on enemy variants. I should have gone for more variants of the terrain tiles instead, to make the exploration more fun. Terrain tiles are faster to draw since they don’t rotate. A snow area and desert area could have been cool.
• The title/splash screen has a very flat landscape. I didn’t add any shadows or foggy background mountains.
• I could have avoided combat altogether and focused on stealth exploration, sneaking by and grabbing the loot. It’s difficult to do a satisfying combat system in just a few hours. I had no time to make fun AI either.
• The game gets too easy mid-end. I didn’t have time to play through it even once. Anyways, this means that it’s mostly laborsome to find the last treasures.
• I should have made a few sounds. Without sound, one feels detached from the game. It’s harder to understand what is going on (especially taking hits in combat). Music adds atmosphere too, of course. I had an idea where the tile map drawing routine would generate ambient sounds.
• I flipped two of the squid frames wrong. I didn’t notice because I had put most of them in a maze with high walls.
• The main character looks like it is ice skating because of the scroll focus, but drawing 2 walk frames * 4 angles * 2 stances would have been too much work for me. I suppose it would’ve been less of a problem in a game where you move less.
• Speaking of which, tapping the movement buttons is straining on the hand after a while.
• Str(ength) should have been Att(ack) in the sidebar. I was thinking of drawing a background for the sidebar, but had no time left. The treasure were supposed to do things, but I didn’t have time for that either.
• If Health = 0 Then FGameOver() … I guess this made sense at some point, but it doesn’t in the current version. I’m generally careful and put less than checks in because I know I might change stuff around or lose control of value ranges.
• It would’ve been simple to couple the stats-up mechanic with the player’s current def/att mode, giving the player a bit of a choice for stats development.

Arne's LD17 concepts

Basically, you’re playing a large floating creature (an island of sorts) who raids islands. The creature can abduct human slaves which it uses for labor. The slaves can build factories, turrets etc on the back of the creature. As the raids go on, the island inhabitants get more and more upset, and defensive forces around the islands grow larger.

The strategy of the game is to figure out which islands to attack, since they offer different resources and different defense. A more developed creature will be able to grab more loot per raid, but the opposition will also be tougher later on.

The turrets could go in three groups (A,B,C) which can be fired individually. For example, the player can choose to put medium distance flak in one group, and long distance sniping in another. Aiming is done with the mouse. Each level (island) has a certain scroll distance to go. During the scroll, the creature is attacked by various enemies. They vary in terms of damage type (some might kill population), movement type, hit points, defense type, bullet trajectory, etc.

All batteries fire at will

Oh yeah, I ate a pizza slice. There won’t be any in the game though. The enemies will be balloons with little turrets underneath.

Fortress Leviathan WIP graphics

The game mechanics are very simple, just a drifting blob which shoots on other drifting things. Not sure how long this game will take me to code. Tomorrow I might have to budget 6hrs for the code, 6hrs more for the art, 2hrs for tax declaration and 2hrs for surviving.

It’s approaching bedtime here. I’ll have to get up at 12 tomorrow… today.

Fortress Leviathan screen concepts

The left title screen has some potential, although it needs to be 960×512. I can keep the game over screen really simple (top one).

The creature refit screen is the most complex one and I haven’t quite nailed down the game mechanics there yet.

The game/shooter screen is pretty simple, just a static sky background with baked in power meters for heat and health. Clouds can go in the foreground. I might just do 5 quick islands which will scroll in. The water… maybe some animated tile. Doesn’t need to actually scroll. Only the clouds and island would move. I drew some sea gulls too.

Also, I ate a Wienerbröd for breakfast.

Leviathan is being refitted in the secret hideout

Seen here is the refit hideout, which is pretty much functional. What’s left is… connecting this game mode to the half finished shooter game mode. While I don’t have any enemies yet, they already have some data structures in place.

Anyways, tomorrow is a busy day, so I won’t be doing anymore work tonight. Goodnight folks.

I’ve been busy painting HIB promo art and Yule shopping, so I missed this LD by a day. But I want to at least throw an idea down. An idea fueled by pepparkaksdeg (it’s a crime to bake it really) and a movie that I just watched: “They Live” by John Carpenter.

So, you play as a person in a city full of other pedestrians. The walls have company logos, ads and other things. In a trashcan you find a pair of goggles which allow you to see (or should I say discover) the evil aliens who have infiltrated mankind. However, wearing the goggles lowers your health. Taking them off replenishes it.

The aliens consider you a threat, so they’re trying to discover you, and then attack you with health draining beams. They can only do this if they get within a certain distance. So the trick is to only use the goggles in crowds, or to read the motions of people and move in the gaps. You might also have to remember who is nasty after you’ve taken the goggles off (like a game of memory) . The goggles might have a warmup/cooldown to prevent the player from flicking the effect on and off. Perhaps aliens spot you at a larger distance with the goggles on, making it more important to remember who’s who and then sneak by whistling with the goggles off.

The goal of the game is to gather up stuff around the city and head for a building where the aliens have hidden the device which is cloaking their appearance to the human population. The ads and stuff would of course substitute for OBEY/CONSUME/WATCH TV while the goggles are used.

I’d like to say that I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, but I’m all out of… well, time.

Tags: concept

So, I finished my entry, ROBOTS AMONG US. I think I spent some 12hrs or so on it. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to play it, and the game mechanics are kind of experimental, so we’ll see how that goes. I fear that it’s kind of dull, and impossible, and confusing. Let me know!

Robots Among Us - Progress GIF anim

The goal of the game is to navigate the crowds and avoid the evil robotic infiltrators. You can use the goggles to spot them (RMB). Move towards the CLUE which reveals the CLOAKING GENERATOR used by the robots. You need to blow that up with the C4. If you have time, you can pick up a one-time-use GUN, or pick up a DAMSEL.

Holding LMB will make you run, but doing so slowly increases your detection radius because you look suspicious. The goggles drain your health a little if you leave them on. On top of this, wearing them makes you stand out, and taking them on and off a lot looks suspicious too.

I wanted to do some painted arcade style borders and a title screen, but did not have the time (spent the last minutes on sounds). The sloppy source code is included in the zip. It was written in BlitzMax. I can compile a Mac version too if there’s any interest.

The game can be found here:
Robots Among Us

There’s a game where it’s incredible DANGEROUS to walk around without certain (hard to find) items.

Tower of Druaga.

Zelda was most likely partly based on this game, so it kind of fits the theme. I went to sleep just after the theme was announced, so I’m only just getting started now.

Morning doodles.

Engine: Very simple grid-locked movement. Tiles are drawn overlapped at a slight angle, so when I draw I might just compress the y coordinate a bit (keeping things square in the game physics of course).

I’d have to do a lot of graphics though. The humanoid characters would have 4 directions and walk frames, and the main character has the sword and shield states on top of this… so I don’t know if it’s doable. I might have to be very sloppy. To avoid what happened to Legacy of Hydon (1+ day on art, then 6hrs or something left to do all the design and code), I might do the engine first this time. I’ll be using BlitzMax 1.40.

Things have not being going that well for me. I had to rewrite my engine two times. The first time I tried synchronized grid-based movement for the characters. They would use a global variable to slide from cell to cell… but I couldn’t figure out a way to make queues and priorities work. Who would get first dibs on an empty cell? What if there was a really complex queue? Would they figure out a way to move out of the way? It also looked a bit strange with characters not being able to move into seemingly empty cells because someone had called dibs on them.

So I tried something a bit more analog, but made a mess of the code and there were big problems with getting stuck against tiles and not sliding against them properly. The maze is really tight so you need to be able to easily slip around corners.

Finally, I managed to write a huge chunk of code which slides the player around edges, e.g. if pressing against a wall the game will look for a gap nearby and walk the character towards it. I also added buckets which helps me with depth sorting (overlapping) and it will also make collisions easier to detect later. Some characters will be vulnerable from the back. Slimes are sort of omnidirectional though.

Early array fun. Druaga colors.
Mac screencaps being incredibly slow.
Rewrite. Buckets. Pause function for screencaps.

There’s a lot of work left, but perhaps I shouldn’t underestimate what I have finished so far. Regardless, it will be a busy day tomorrow.

First I wanted to do something in the vein of Last Armageddon. Demons, their homeworld ravaged by aliens, have to find keys to a portal in their ruined city and escape to Earth. Magic vs Tech. Dragon Quest style, maybe with a Dangerous Swimsuit in there somewhere.

Then I felt like doing a TBS. As a twist, you play as the Chryssalids who have to escape the Alien Containment, with the X-COM soldiers hunting them down. The Chryssalids are simple “Alien” units with no upgrades or equipment (to code), but they can increase their numbers by infesting soldiers (in close combat). To offset this, the soldiers get more dangerous as the game progresses. The soldiers act more as stupid semi-mobile turrets that you can sneak up on. Perhaps they advance towards the position where they last saw something, allowing you to set traps (or get killed more efficiently).

Chryssalid Escape LD21 by Arne

I was thinking the game should be a single level that has to be traversed, the escape being the hangar/elevator rooms.

Unfortunately, I might need to code some pathfinding stuff, and the line of sight stuff is not trivial either. It requires some clever ray stepping (Digital Differential Analysis?), and something to speed recalculations due to movement up (adding and subtracting in the fog array as unit see and unsee?). I don’t know. On the other hand, a TBS could afford very slow update rates. Right now I just shoot a lot of rays at a high resolution. It obviously doesn’t work that well even though it’s costly.

Right now I’ve got a map class, some simple scrolling/drawing/selecting and brute force LoS. Working in BlitzMax. The engine is still pretty abstract and adaptable. I might switch to a more manageable project or just watch funny youtube videos all day while pondering the more important stuff that I should be doing.

Chryssalid Autopsy

The darkness!!

Aside from feature creeping as usual, my drawing hand RSI is making it very difficult to work. Here’s the progress so far on Chryssalid Escape. The goal of the game is to sneak out of Alien Containment and reach the exit. X-COM soldiers stand in your way, but perhaps they can be used to increase your numbers? See previous post for more details.

Chryssalid Escape WIP 2

Screenshot. Bit of a mess. The perspective isn’t really working as good as isometric, and the walls should not be exactly 2 tiles high (they do overlap).

FEATURES SO FAR:
—————-
+ Ambient sounds. Very easy to make and remarkably similar to how X-COM sounds.
+ Footsteps. Other sounds are waiting to be used.
+ Graphics for 16 floor tiles, 5 wall tiles, and 4 Chryssalids. Using X-COM sprites as inspiration.
+ Map (128*64) in multiple layers that can be scrolled and edited a little ingame (mouse). Loads data from Photoshop Raw (which is my map editor).
+ Units (characters) with action points. Can Move, turn, strafe, collide.
+ Brute force Line of Sight rays. Hidden units not drawn.
+ Simple Immediate Mode GUI. Keyboard can also be used.
+ Data structures for the various units (mostly unused atm).

TO DO:
——
– Add (and layout) all buttons for control (mostly using keyboard atm).
– Button Gfx.
– Title screen with art, New game (reset all), Resume game, Quit and all that.
– Win and lose conditions (count Units, step on exit tile). Finish art for win screen.
– Rest of the Wall, Unit, Obstacle, Effect Gfx.
– Figure out where to store corpses and destroyed obstacles.
– Enemy roaming ai (use existing movement methods).
– Enemy stalking, noting target points.
– Enemy shooting and projectiles.
– Make sure the camera is focusing on visible enemy action and projectiles.
– Minimap. Pixmap that can be updated. Click on it to scroll.
– Edge scrolling instead of the wonky map click scrolling.
– Chryssalids bumping into obstacle and enemies should use existing damage function. Obstacles might need resistance values.
– Chryssalid Zombie and Cocoon transformation timers.

NOTES:
——
+ 805 lines of BlitzMax Code
+ Tiles are 48*32 px, asin(2 / 3) = 41.8103149 degrees (90 = up).
+ Using lots of constants to set things up, so I can change resolution and such somewhat easily later with the game adapting to it.
+ Art drawn at 4x in Photoshop.

After having failed consistently with my 48 hr entries, I think I’d like to try my luck at the Jam, taking the role as gfx/art guy. My art can be seen on androidarts.com. Drop a comment below if you’re interested in writing that text that make things go. Things that are not broken. If you are smart, we can be strong!

Eherm. As a side note, I thought it would be fun if LD had some sort of mascot, so I drew a bunch of proposals. Not sure what to think of them though.

I’ll be working with Blecki and BurnZeZ on something. Having waked up 5hrs after the theme announcement, my third idea (the first two were lost in the waking haze) was to do some sort of Defender (old arcade game) game set on a curved scrolling playield, but the idea mutated into some sort of Asteroids Choplifter Thrust thing which I called Asterceptor. Having scrolled through the pages here, I see a few sort of similar playfield ideas.

However, Blecki and BurnZeZ had some headstart and were already working on a… thing with floating blocks which sort of gravitate together and snap into larger continents. We don’t really know where we’re heading with it, but it could be interesting. Here’s one idea.