It’s my first LD and my first real  game.

I  want to make a Tower Defense with continu attack.

I will use the C# language and XNA

Hey Ludum Daredevils (<:D), I’m in for the 7DRTS challenge!

What I’m making?

Two words: BOMBERMAN + RTS

…these are the magic words ruben created himself.

Don’t steal them!

Also, here’s a mockup I made and then threw away. I wanted to make this, but then I realised I was never going to finish it 😉

Anyway, have fun everyone!

The theme for myself when it comes to Ludum Dare has always been to become a better programmer, so here I go to try again. This time around I am armed with a better understanding of the matrix and vectors, and have a little bit more stable library. I am hoping I can step it up this time around.

Lets have fun!

This was my original idea before I decided to spend day 1 trying to come up with more. Each player controls one little guy, and you roam the map gathering resources, building buildings and fighting. It’s like an RTS in that you tech up, expand, scout the enemy, etc. but instead of having a whole army you just have the one unit.

You get one ‘base’ building to start with, and you have to return to your base to make stuff from the minerals you gather. If you die, you respawn at your base. But if your base gets destroyed and you die, you lose.

I think this is a better idea than my other one (a side-scrolling RTS) because just having the one unit removes a surprising amount of complexity. In a normal RTS you need a little bit of AI to help you manage your units since you aren’t controlling them directly. But here, you don’t!

I’ll go with this unless I think up something better this evening.

Also I did some pixel sprites. I don’t normally do pixel art, so this is another fun adventure. Lesson 1: 8×8 pixels is not enough to draw a convincing humanoid.

• C++
• SFML
• Game Base
• Utility Library
• Maybe libnoise?
• Boost Filesystem

Still haven’t decided what I’m making yet. One possible idea:

Basically it’s a traditional RTS but on destructible 2D terrain. Trouble is, a traditional RTS is a lot of work: selecting, orders, menus, auto-attack, resources, notifications, pathfinding…
So, as much as I’d want to play this game, I doubt I could make it in 7 days. Back to brainstorming…

So, here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about two things, an old game and an old computer.

First, the old game. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a designer named Howard Thompson came up with a novel wargame idea – a game set on an alien planet, inhabited by huge, semi-sentient hive-minded insects. He called this game Hymenoptera, and unfortunately a complete version never saw the light of day.

It also had the word “hymen” in its name, which caused everyone who heard it to snicker.

As Hymenoptera languished in development hell, Thompson’s company, Metagaming, decided to focus on small, simpler, easily portable and playable games that they called microgames. This strategy proved successful, and Thompson decided to create a microgame set in the Hymenpotera universe. He called it Chitin: I – The Harvest Wars.

I know that killer bugs have kind of been done to death in the RTS space, what with the Zerg and the Tyranids, but I think I’m going to do it anyway.

Now, on to the old computer. I’ve talked about Daniel Remar rather a lot on my blog, and I’ve mentioned his game Hero Core many times, too. Now, the interesting thing about Hero Core is that its native resolution is 200×180, which means that it could easily be replicated on the ZX Spectrum, which had a native resolution of 256×192. In fact, I always thought that Hero Core felt like a ZX Spectrum game – austere but imminently playable.

And then there was the Easter egg in Startopia that presented the game almost as if it were on a ZX Spectrum – and the game was still playable! The only real problem was that the text became unreadable, but you could still build and manage your aliens due to the use of very clear icons.

So for a while I’ve been wondering what an RTS on the Spectrum might have looked like. And I’ve already mentioned that by limiting himself to a small resolution and monochrome palette, Daniel was able to get effective graphics for Hero Core in a short amount of time.

So I’m following suit. My RTS will use a low native resolution to make it easier to do the graphics (I’ll scale the final graphics so the window will be larger on the screen, I promise) and it will be about bugs fighting over various resources they need.

And I’m going to call it Chitin, after the original microgame.

The  #7DRTS  (Seven Day Real Time Strategy) Game Jam at +Ludum Dare has begun!  (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/07/05/minild-44-announcement/)

I’m taking part and hope to post one screenshot per day for the next seven days – from concept to mockup to beta to release. I hope to make a simple puzzle/boardgame style RTS that features lots of castle and road building.

My initial idea: think reversi (othello, gomoku) plus civ/simcity/carcassionne.

Played on a top-view fantasy overworld map. The strategic focus is on the road network (or train tracks). Any time you capture a city and own both the first and last city in a network, you claim the entire trade route. Just like in reversi, you can suddenly flip the team of a long row or column of cities if you capture the “ends” of the chain.

Wish me luck!

Tags: #7DRTS, McFunkypants, screenshot

Back in December, I made “Cruel Cruel Dastard” for Ludum Dare 25. Folks seemed to respond positively to the mechanic, so I’ve spent the past few months making an updated version. The new game, now called “Ragtime Ruffian” was just released today and is available for iPad/PC/Mac/Linux.

The new version includes completely re-done art, new mechanics, 50 designed levels, and the procedurally generated endless mode I originally wanted to implement during the compo. You can get it here if you’re interested.

Tags: final, iOS, post-mortem, postmortem, SuccessStory, You are the villain

Yes, it is spelled Defence instead of Defense in other variations of English that aren’t American English. :p

Anyway, I am Xeon Gutierrez of Kerinova Game Studios, and I will be participating in #7DRTS, or Mini Ludum Dare 44. There will be one other person working with me: Sebastian Benjamin. He will be doing his day 0 blog later today.

We are making a game called Defence Paradigm. It is intended to be a 2D ARTS/MOBA, but with far more RTS elements than MOBA, and not top down. We are hoping we can get online multiplayer done in time, but it will be difficult. If we do have extra time, I will add leaderboards, and port it to more platforms.

Anyway, enough with the introductions. Without further ado, the nominal amount of work I have achieved on Sunday, the 0th day.

07/21:

• Set up my Twitch account, and got Twitch premium, as to be able to stream as much of the Ludum Dare process as I can. // This proved more problematic than I first expected, as I got an issue when I used my password, and only realized an hour in that I needed to use the stream key. Then I started optimizing the stream for high quality, and little-to-no lag.
• Designed the game using a game design document template. //This, other than naming everything, proved relatively easy.
• Then for most of the work of that day, I set up the engine I would be using for Defence Paradigm. I would use a modified version of the Strider Run engine, which was a custom built engine we were using for our first game. All I did was work on importing the engine, as well as mixing in the GameState engine provided by Microsoft.

Anyway, that is all we have accomplished on Day 0. Now it is time to work, as it is now Day 1. Do tune into my Twitch channel if you want to see the development process. I will be streaming most of the day on Twitch.tv/zxeonz.

If you want to follow this developer blog easier, then go to www.kerinova.blogspot.com I will be posting these blogs there, in addition to here.

Day 1, part 1

The night before was intense. I could not sleep, especially knowing that my first major game – to be made within 5-6 days – would start tomorrow. I set the alarm clock to 5 AM, and started working on it an hour later.
For the most part, the game mechanics are done. Sharks, seagulls, sailors, so on and so forth. Multiplayer is pretty much done, though I still have to test it with a friend.

I guess you guys want specifics, so here they are!

*Started game
*Made the game controls for the seagull
*added mouse-only support
*removed mouse-only support
*added keyboard support
*”hey that’s pretty easy : D”
*Added sharks
*OH NOOOOOOOOO-
*Added ships
*So long, and have some fish!
*Added multiplayer
*Added base credits
*Added endless singleplayer
*Seagull doodoo everywhere

yeah I’d better stop there before I gross myself out

for the first 5 hours, not bad! The graphics leave much to be desired, though, so no info on that quite yet :/

Goals for now: Online Multiplayer, sound design, testing, outsourcing graphics to a talented artist named BeGamer who’s working with me!

Tags: devlog, journal

Hello everyone, Sebastian here.

Day 0 was a day of immense preparation for our debut in #7DRTS, as we had many things to get ready for the challenge that will be not *entirely* failing at this. I think we did well…? At least, we managed to not break anything so far.

To reiterate for the fifty-thousanth time, the game we are making will be called Defence Paradigm. Basically the concept is a MOBA/ARTS- with potential macro elements and controllable units other than the main hero.

What I did on Day 0 [7/21]-

-I tried and managed to actually succeed at making the stream work with semi-decent quality

-We (me and Xeon over at twitch.tv/zxeonz) created the GDD

– I set up all the VSTs that I’ll be using to make the music and sound

– I made my already ghetto setup more ghetto by trying to make the second monitor for streaming not be crunched into the wall

-I designed the HUD concept

Go to my stream at twitch.tv/threadnecromancer for my side of the development

Tags: #7DRTS, art, Day 0, design, editorial, game development, hud, LD44, Ludum Dare, music, programming

This weekend was the NoMoreSweden 2013 game jam.

I was nearby so dropped in on the Sunday lunchtime to watch the teams present their games:

The entries were fantastic!  Lots of really good games got made this weekend.  The mood was fantastic too; lots of coders got really happy this weekend too!

I’ve shared my quick impressions of some of the games on my blog williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com

Quite excited being that this is my first. Was working on registering player movement and pathfinding. Enemy ai isn’t just ready yet. I guess mines is more of a conquer type of thing. Don’t have all the assets right now. Focusing more on the coding part and functionality.

What you see (in a correct aspect ratio if you go fullscreen):
Two agents playing the game:

• Finding a spot for a harvestor building
• Building a harvestor-building
• Producing a harvestor
• harvesting some green stuff
• building more harvestors to harvest more stuff
• until maximum number of harvestors is reached

Done today:

• Basic Server and client code
• A lobby (not shown in the video) with options to create and join games
• A* Pathing (might also try greedy best first search tomorrow, we’ll see)
• A very simple agent system that I should be able to extend into something more fancy
• Some placeholder gfx and lots of sand
• A minimap

The final maps could be much larger and I am looking forward to start building barracks tomorrow. I hope to be able to get some simple card system as in my draft here implemented by late tomorrow. I got a lot of ideas during the day how the card system could actually work. I hope it’s working out as I imagine it.

Happy coding everybody!

I’ve barely started, because I want sure what I was going to do until recently. I’m going to remake Goblin Fortress, which I entered to LD last December. As I left it, it was a very basic city builder, but this time I’m determined to get the ‘map’ section of the game done, letting you send little goblin armies to ransack the human populace.

Slow going so far, as I’m using a half-complete Component system, but I’m enjoying it anyway. No screenshot, as I literally just have a tiny motionless goblin on a black background.

Hi there my names Stewart I’m an artist from the Scottish gamejam team tartan paint.

Our game is a top down hexagonal strategy game with a Greek theme. We spent the past week brainstorming gameplay and design. We have a very unconventional yet accessible play style and we`ll be going into more detail it in the upcoming days courtesy of our team leader

In the meantime, I’m going to show off some of the assets we managed to whip up on the first day of production.

This was one of the initial mockups to show the positioning of the user interface and how the playfield is composed.

The game involves you sending units toward an enemy base, and the health indicator is to be a statue which crumbles the more damage you do.

The typical Zeus pointing lightning worked well for a placeholder, but now we`re thinking about having an hourglass which could shatter and crack. We`ll be focusing more on user interface once the initial terrain is done.

Speaking of which, here are some of my efforts today to try and get tiling paths to be modular and link seamlessly, it was not a fun procedure. The more decorative, straight roads were a real headache and in the end I did a patchy looking cobblestone road to better success. as far as environment art goes, getting the paths working was the biggest hurdle, and mostly from here out it`s just fun draw times. No more modular nightmares.

I got all the necessary tiles done for mountain/lava environments done today, and a start on the water ones as well.

And our resident coder got the terrain generation up and running. every time you load up the .swf file you end up with a new level.

That’s all for now! It’s been a long day for all of us so sorry for the scrambled and hurried post. Hope the gamejam goes well for everyone!

Tags: team tartan paint

Hello folks!

(First of all, sorry for my english! I’m not a native speaker.)

My game idea:

You have to take control of an evil wizard’s tower. For this you have to build your character by training, acquiring items, developing your stats etc.

Not very original, but I’ll try some mechanics to see if they work (or if I can make them work): you can take control of the tower in different ways, like marrying the wizard, killing him, joining him etc.

As you progress, some events can occur (since the mage is trying to destroy everything around him). These events could be, for example: the mage is going to the forest to hunt unicorns (where you’ll have a chance to kill him in the open or the chance to get some equipment, map, or you can talk to him and establish something etc).

I think it will be too much for me to do in a week, but I think it’s a cool idea. Maybe if I trim it down to the essential:

• FF IV like maps
• top down perspective
• no multiplayer (too much to do right now. But multiplayer would be very nice)

Cheers!

In high school they sometimes give us “progress reports”, which is just a mid-semester report card. So far I’ve only been at it for a few hours but I am content with my progress, so I’ll give myself a solid “C” for my progress report. This is my 3rd competition thingyma on the Ludum Dare site and my 2nd time using Javascript for a game (The first time was miserably failed but I learned a lot from it).

My “strategy” game is going to involve moving clouds around to control the weather, and in my current version of the game moving around clouds is all you can really do.

Since my Ludum Dare 26 game had the worst controls out of all the submissions I’m going to make sure the controls actually make sense this time. Which is exactly why I’m using WASD and the Spacebar instead of “>” and “<” with “U” and “P” and other akward keys like LAST TIME.

Looking through the entries you guys are doing amazing!

Here have a splash image!

Day 1, Part 2

After settling into the routine, I managed to get significantly less done than before. Nevertheless, it’s better than nothing.

*Attempted Gamepad support
*Put it on hold because it wasn’t working
*added sound effects
*Made Multiplayer more chaotic
*Added buttons for different controls
*Also put it on hold because of the gamepad issues

At this point, if it weren’t for the bad graphics that people watching my stream could notice I could consider this done, but then I still don’t know if it’s ready for submission – we’ll just have to wait and see.

Tags: journal

Hello!

I’m in for this MiniLD. My plan is for something in the area of a god game, which I think is probably close enough to being a real time strategy. Even before starting my idea was scoping out a little wildly so it’ll be interesting to see what remains by the week’s end. It’s quite possible that by then I’ll have decided to skip over the “strategy” and  “game” parts of the design.

Language: Haxe

Platform: Flash

Flavour of the month technology I’ll regret using: Flash Workers

As well as the Flash API and HxSL (like GLSL or HLSL, but it can compile to the bytecode used by Flash’s Stage3D rendering stuff), I’m using my hodge-podge of a self-made library. Recently I’ve added stuff to that library to deal with data sharing between workers, so this should be a nice relatively small scale test for it.

With most of the first day gone I’ve got the basic core of memory and worker management going, and a rendering height map. Easy to forget the time it takes to write even quite simple code to generate a mesh from height map data, definitely a good thing this isn’t 48 hours.

Hi everyone.  I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring for the 7dRTS challenge.  I enjoy RTS games although I’m typically not good at them, but that might just come from playing against my younger brother back in high school who was very good.

The inspiration

One of my favorite games for the SNES is Metal Marines, which is an interesting take on the RTS genre.  If you’ve never played it you build up a base on an island and fire missiles and large robots (the Metal Marines from which the game gets its name) at your opponents islands trying to destroy their base.  The game alternates between building and attacking modes.  The building mode is real time where both players simultaneously place units and upgrade existing ones.  The attack mode is initiated by one player who then fires up to 4 missiles and 3 metal marines at his opponent whose automated defenses try to resist.

There are a couple of things about the game that I don’t like.  Each level can take a long time to complete.  Although it is very satisfying to watch a missile fly across the ocean to strike your opponent after a short while it becomes really monotonous (and you will fire a lot of missiles).

Design Goals

• RTS should focus on macro management instead of micromanagement
• All attacking and defending will be done in real time
• Individual units will be built and managed automatically leaving the player to focus on choosing where to attack and defend.
• Games will be play and be resolved quickly

I’m not sure that I’m going to achieve all this, but anyway, I give you…

POWER GRAB!!!

In the future, solar power rules.  Corporations battle over floating islands that cover the Earth for solar powered supremacy!  The backstory makes no sense, but who cares!

Players will start with an island with a single power station.  This station produces a fixed amount of energy every turn.  Each station can build and pass energy to many different nodes.  In turn, these nodes build and power units that either attack or defend.  Maximizing your energy usage will be key and attacking is always more efficient than defending, so defenses must be used sparingly.  Find and destroy your opponents power stations to win!

I don’t have a name yet 😐

Day one progress!

Graphics all very placeholdery of course.
I have a level editor done, recycled some code to make a level selection screen that loads all levels in the levels folder and displays information about them before you choose one (level name, size, author, difficulty), placed a worker unit who can be clicked on to move him around, or double clicked on to give him orders – right now all he can do is build three different types of treehouse.

It’s basically going to be a village of elves defending and protecting a forest from an invading army of something, probably orcs and the like. I have some weird resource management ideas for it that should make things interesting that I’ll post more about once they are working 😀

I couldn’t resist this challenge! RTS Games is one of my favorite genres. I actually created Warcraft 2 Levels back in the day; which is part of the reason why I got hooked on creating games.

Gameplay Idea

Aircraft command is a tactical time management combat game. That’s what I wrote back in 2009. Basically the game is a reverse Tower Defense game. The player must successfully lead a group of bombers (which he does not control) to a series of targets. To do this, the player has access to a different units. These units will eliminate the turrets and fighters that are trying to kill the bombers.

Win Condition:

Get enough bomb mobs to the target. ( I may do some type of other element like a ticking timer)

Lose Condition:

Lose too many bombers, or let time run out (This may change)

Tools:

• Unity 3d
• Photoshop
• Playmaker (Unity Plugin)
• Maya

Goals:

• Expand knowledge of Unity Playemaker
• Finish an old idea in 7 days
• complete a damn LD type challenge!
• Port game to Ouya
• Port game to ipad

Luckily I’m not starting from scratch per se. A lot of the work I’ve done for my main project can be repurposed.

I also have some art that a friend made for this very project a few years back.

Here’s my progress so far:

I got the main bomber mobs going to the target. I’m working on making the first turret fight back against those pesky invaders. Follow me on Twitter to keep up with my progress. ( @MarvinHawkins) I’m also going to post here!

I have never made simple physics or platforms before, so this is extremely exciting!

Tomorrow I make side-scrolling and a player that controls the world around him!

So, here’s what I accomplished yesterday: Building a particle system for my isometric game. This game has been in the works for a while now, but I’m aiming to get something playable together by the deadline – possibly some kind of ultra-simple twin stick MOBA, or a cooperative defense game (including elements of base construction). Anyways, pretty happy to this system in place. It still needs a lot of tuning, but it looks damn cool. And everyone knows, graphics > gameplay (edit: Images are animated; click to view).

Quite a few particles can be on screen at one moment. At least, until I add those perspective performance drains like “enemies” and “objectives”.

The sprite creates a perfect particle replica of itself upon death, as you can see when I free their movement.

Tags: bossfighter

Great seeing all the activity! To fully enjoy this post, open this in a new tab so we can enjoy it together. It’s time for a premature victory lap. Volume warning!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcTStCOKXGI#t=27s

While we sort out what kind of game we want to make, I’m free to explore the tech before I’m crushed by the weight of demands. RTS is terrific for multiplayer re: input, you’re sending commands instead of keyboard input. And not to mention no collision gargle. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a shot.

I gambled on Player.IO as I’m not into hosting a Haxe remoting server and I figure Flash-only-networking for this compo is ok. Yesterday I didn’t know if I could get Player.IO working in Haxe. Today I know!

I long for the day when I’m free to send bullet data across the network every 16 milliseconds. But alas, I’ll spend some time bringing down the 130+kb/s transfer.  

BTW The bullets on the other clients are stalled because they don’t know they’ve been told to fire — I can send prefabs across the network but not commands like “go here, this fast” just yet. RPC’s to the rescue!

Finally, here’s the game code so far, all in one file: CTF.hx: http://pastebin.com/MD6fdZGe

CTF is the class that defines and spawns prefabs like with Unity. It does this by creating Actors (GameObjects), and adding shared Behaviours between them. Once defined, we’re free to spawn them however we like, mixing and matching behaviours as needed for gameplay.

You can see it inherits the Engine class, I don’t want to even call it an engine, as that implies a huge turkey that you have to stuff in your mouth all at once (UDK, Unity, etc.). With a framework, I’m free to nibble or scarf as I choose. Having this class makes creating new games all the quicker because the boilerplate is solved up front, but can be modified per game with overrides to add new components or just replaced completely, see?: http://pastebin.com/Wz3eh23f.

My strategy this compo: keep the tech clean, funnel in art, stumble over game ideas by accident, be able to punch out a game in 60 seconds …if… when the inevitable Swordfish-hacking-scenario erupts. [IMAGE CENSORED]

Stay ready people!

I think lightning zweihander is pretty imba.

1. Melee damaging has been added.
2. New unit: Zweihander guy. Zweihander guy is slow but his attacks are powerful. His weapon also has a large reach.
3. Smoothed camera rotations.

Web demo WIP

Tags: progress, screenshot, Strat Souls, unity, unity3d

So today I managed to pull my disparate code base together, and get the very basics of an RTS up and running.  What I have is essentially a field of more or less randomly positioned planets, as well as some ships that spawn at the start of the game and can be directed using the standard RTS interface of left-click to select, right-click to order.  I also have box-based group selection, though there is a kink with that I still need to work out, and my first pixel art!

Resource management and combat are still a ways away, though.  Tomorrow I hope to at least get the enemy faction implemented, as well as basic combat.

Don’t forget to get your sleep, guys!

Today was more difficult than me and Sebastian have anticipated. He spent a long time today having trouble with drawing characters. I have also had troubles based on programming porting and the options menu. We managed to get some things done however in the 7 or so hours we worked today (all on stream on Twitch.tv/zxeonz and twitch.tv/threadNecromancer) His log will be coming sometime tomorrow.

Anyway, what I have managed to accomplish today.

07/22:

• Set up parallax scrolling for the Y axis of the camera //This was the last thing I accomplished today, and also the easiest. I merely needed to add a few lines of code to the existing Strider Run codebase for the camera.
• I updated the start and options menus.
• I worked on ranged weapon implementation. It currently has a few problems with the gamepad control not working, and the controls for the mouse are inverted.
• I added the ability to resize the window. //I just need to add an option for Full Screen.

Anyway, that is all we have accomplished on Day 1. Do tune into my Twitch channel if you want to see the development process. I will be streaming most of the day on Twitch.tv/zxeonz.

I will add media once the game is actually more like an RTS. In the mean time, if you really want to see the game, I did live stream it.

If you want to follow this developer blog easier, then go to www.kerinova.blogspot.com I will be posting these blogs there, in addition to here.

Tags: day 1, Ludum Dare, programming, progress

For the next couple of nights, I’ll be taking a break from Chess Heroes to join the super duper seven day real-time strategery compelooza!

After spending (wasting) time on a generic fantasy idea (with clever mechanics, but still) and getting my mind blown by McFunkyPants (again), I went back to the drawing board. Instead of trying to create something brand new and falling short (which I often do during competitions), I’m going to mash some stuff together.

Hence: MOBIUS: A portmanteau of MOBA and the -ius genre of side-scrolling shooters (Gradius, Darius, Parodius… kids, ask your parents!). I’ll be using Unity and Photoshop, as per the usual.

Early sketches:

This article is copied from my personal blog.

I have decided to participate in the 7-Day Real Time Strategy Challenge, July 2013 edition.

I am working with Broken Sounds who will create sound effects, music, and be in charge of the “atmosphere” of the game.

I am using chem, a canvas-based game engine I made for rapid development occasions such as this. It has been working out quite well and I think it has been playing a large role in my productivity today.

The game is codenamed “pillagers”. The idea is to mix space physics with real time strategy and see what comes out. Instead of creating a carefully planned out base, you will be campaigning through levels, pillaging for resources.

That’s the idea, anyway. We’ll see how it pans out.

Here’s a list of the things that work right now:

• Selecting squads and telling them to move around.
• Ships shoot enemy ships, destroying them when their health reaches 0.
• Scrolling around the map.
• Auto generated parallax background with stars and a planet.

The code is open source, hosted on GitHub. It’s 941 lines of JavaScript:

   46 src/bullet.js
   33 src/explosion.js
  432 src/main.js
   19 src/militia_ship.js
  241 src/ship_ai.js
  165 src/ship.js
    5 src/uuid.js
  941 total

Screenshot of a squad of ships under attack:

Short video of me playing around with some elements of the game:

http://youtu.be/QQ1jGk5e7o0

It was a fun challenge to write the AI to get the ships to stop at the intended destinations. As is it’s not optimal, but I think that’s okay. Maybe later classes of ships will have better AI.

You can actually play this game right now. Since it’s web based, you don’t even have to download anything.

Here’s what the TODO list looks like currently:

• Edit the main militia ship to have short range.
• Auto targeting enemies should only work when close enough.
• Ability to right click an enemy ship to tell squad to target it.
• Add enemy turrets and ships to level 1.
• Add enemy flag which grants victory when destroyed.
• Add 2nd class of ship which you get some of at beginning of level 1.
• Instead of giving the player ships at the beginning, give them cash and buildings which they can use to create the ships they want. The user will thus be able to choose how many of class 1 and class 2 ships they want.
• Put instruction label text in level 1 to explain the controls.
• Start planning level 2.

Well, I’m off to bed to get some rest. Looking forward to Day 2!

Just wanted to share a small arcade game I made for the RetroNoFuture competition a few weeks back.

This game requires 3 or more players, and a microphone. The louder you yell the faster they work. First team to finish their building wins!

You can find it here: http://kanako.dk/clients/fun/WOOORRK!/

Lets pretend this is opposite land, screw the introductions and jump straight in!

So, we are making an RTS inspired by the Worms games of old. That should give you a vague idea of where we are going with this, and the best part is that statement holds more depth than you might expect.

Time to hammer this concept home!

• Side-view Camera: Yup! This RTS will be using a side view camera, it was inspired by Worms after all.
• Guns!: Yes, we will have those. Code are focusing on the Rocket Launcher first, so if it works then drinks all around! (Then get back to work!)
• Real Time Combat: ‘But.. but Worms is a Turn Based Game!’ Yes I know! The challenge is to make a Real Time Strategy though, so that’s what it’s going to be!
  Players can select a Troop to aim their shot individually, or select a bunch and have them mimic each-others aim. Once a Troop fires a shot, they will have a reload time (varies depending on weapon), once the reload completes they will fire again. So, the player will have to micro manage their Troops position, where they are aiming, and the power of their shot. So it’s going to be a Super Hectic Real Time Combat Worms Styley Strategy Game. A SHRTCWSSG if you will.
•  Multiplayer: Hopefully by the end of the week it will be networked, so you and a friend can battle it out over the interwebs!
• Art Style: Big Guns! Big Troops! Big Explosions! Unfiltered, Uncensored 80’s Action Movie inspired goodness!

Day 1 Progress

We have a basic game-play prototype with moving, aiming, firing, and path-finding. The image below the selection and moving of blocks around a thing! SHIP IT!

Art has made great progress, you can see the current state of a level below. Day 2 will be spent populating this with loads of little details to make it feel more like a ruined city that still semi-functions.

So that’s the Day 1 post!  Things are going well, so tune in next time to see everything go horribly wrong.

Tags: #7DRTS, day 1, gamedev, Ludum Dare

Brace The Gates will be a hybrid RTS/adventure game in which you take on the role of an unlucky protagonist who finds himself alone in a castle besieged by the evil forces of the undead. Reinforce the defences, rescue fellow survivors and brace the gates!

So I’m at a point where I’m wondering how the whole game will work. Will it have harvester units? Worker units? Are units upgradeable?

Here are multiple ideas that I’ve come up with:

Traditional RTS Type

1. You have harvester units who gather souls from corpses in the map. (like Tiberium fields in C&C)
2. You have a nexus which is your base. If it gets destroyed, you lose.
3. You create units by summoning them into the map, costs souls.
4. Summoning takes a long time to complete, and the enemy can attack the summoning point to prevent that unit from appearing.
5. You can only summon near your nexus, near other units, or at summoning fields that you can construct. Summoning fields can be destroyed by the enemy.
6. When your units kill enemies, they level up automatically (i.e. veterancy in C&C).
7. You upgrade your nexus to gain access to better units. You can purchase upgrades also in your nexus.

Tactics Type

1. There is no base-building, no resource-gathering.
2. Instead of an army, you have a party of heroes. Your enemy has likewise.
3. Tries to capture the Dark Souls vibe, just that instead of controlling one character only, you control maybe 2-5.
4. Controls are much more micromanage-intensive.
5. May be more suited for a single-player experience.

Epic Battle Type

1. Inspired from the multiplayer mode in Total War games.
2. There is no base-building.
3. Each player has fixed number of souls at the start to purchase units.
4. When you kill enemy units, you gain souls equivalent to half its cost (i.e. dwindling economy).
5. You can summon reinforcements in the middle of battle. Summonings are almost instantaneous.
6. If you don’t want more units, you can use souls to upgrade your units instead.
7. When your unit dies, all the rest of your remaining units gain size, until you are left with one unit who is a giant boss that you control.
8. This ensures that an “epic battle” at the end of a match always happens: between the winning side who has so many units, and the losing side who has a giant boss.
9. It’s also possible that both sides end up with giant bosses too.

I could eventually try implementing all of them but I have to consider which I will make first.

I’m also wondering whether I devote my efforts into creating a single-player mode first, or a multiplayer mode first. Of course I want to add both but I’m wondering what I prioritize for the 7 days.

Single-player means I make AI, multiplayer means I do networking code.

Feel free to give suggestions!

Web demo WIP

Tags: brainstorming, design, progress, Strat Souls

Hi there! First time participating in a Ludum Dare challenge. During this MiniLD I’ll experiment with this idea I have using Enchant.js – a cool javascript framework I found.

About that game I’m going to make – I had this idea for a RTS game which has multiple dimensions. These dimensions will be visible on the same map and will be distinguished by colour. To go to another dimension there are special units who can open up a portal to a certain dimension. Furthermore, this game will use traditional RTS elements.

What will this mean for the gameplay? First of all, the players cannot see each others units if they are in a different dimension. So, if player one has a unit in dimension A, gathering resources, player two is not able to see the other player’s unit because his unit is in dimension B (see picture below).

Of course the player himself can see his own units in all dimensions. Also, each player’s base is placed in a different dimension. In a normal RTS you have to look for the player on the same map, but in this game you will have to travel to other dimensions to seek the enemy.

Perhaps it all sounds a bit complicated for now. But I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible. Already I’m behind schedule ( mainly because of the nice weather ). But by the end of this MiniLD I hope to show everyone at least the basic gameplay of Dim Wars!

<<cross-posted again from TiltTheWindmill>>
23/07:
Putting off map design by messing around with cameras.
Alrighty, that stuff is being put off until later.

(IU*ASHDOIUAHSD Fed up with my original concept. Need to come up with something new. At least what I’ve made so far is really just an RTS base.

…later…

HAVE A NEW CONCEPT!
This new idea is completely different to my original one. But luckily, most of what I have so far can be used.
It is now divided into two distinct areas: RTS & RPG. (I do use the term RPG VERY loosely though.)
I will explain more later once both sections are a bit better.
RPG mode now has nice cameras and keyboard/pad control.
RTS mode is, well, the same as before so far.

The split has occurred in code. Will work on both much more tomorrow.

Progress (not in gif form.):

Very little has happened apart from the town layout.(and the comically bad mini-map) I usually am terrible when it comes to level/map design but this is alright.
I will elaborate on things tomorrow evening I hope. I have a lot to do before I comfortable talking about it.

No whiteboard photo today as it’s near identical to yesterdays…

//Discuss technical stuff
Alrighty, I should have talked about this in the first post.
Language: AS3
Libraries: Flixel
For coding I switch between FlashDevelop and SublimeText.
Making music I use main Logic Pro. Occasionally Reason.

Yep.
At this rate, it’s very possible that there’ll be no “art” by time Monday rolls around. But there should be a game and a good deal of music!

Song of the day: Spiel mit dem Feuer (Piano version) by Saltatio Mortis (Sorry, no link for this one.)

I’m open to taking questions about this design as it might help me solve some inevitable problems.

Hi Everybody

Been working hard on the 7DRTS yesterday and I’ve already got a playable prototype!

Play Here

The game doesn’t have a title yet but it’s a Turn Based Tactical Shooter for two players. Each player controls a team of four units. Each turn the player controls one unit. They can move and shoot as much as they like for the length of the turn, but with limited ammo. The objective is to eliminate the opposing team! It’s like a mixture of Worms and Counter Strike.

Let me know what you think. Remember to check my blog and follow @Trashgames on twitter for more info!

Enjoy!

Here’s a picture as well

Still no pretty screenshots or anything because I had trouble with my engine last night, so here’s some design work I did. First, my requirements:

MUST HAVE

* Map
* Buildings that either produce units or resources
* The ability to gather resources with units.
* The ability for units to fight each other.
* The ability to control units with band-selection and target specification.
* The ability to win the game by destroying all enemy structures
* Graphics for each unit, building and map
* A basic AI.

WOULD LIKE TO HAVE

* Map with different terrain types: blocking, slowing and normal squares
* Better graphics
* Sound effects
* Improved GUI
* Improved AI

WOULD BE AWESOME IF I COULD HAVE

* Multiplayer. Possible in seven days?
* Artist-done art (find one on IRC?)

Second, the design notes (I present these as-is, they are kind of free-associating):

Chitin is about two colonies of bugs fighting over resources. There will be buildings, workers and combat units.

Workers: Mite swarm. This is a swarm of very small units (basically dots) that will harvest any resources near their nest. Mites can’t be killed, so there’s no way to stop someone from harvesting. Mite nests can be built near resources and they’ll strip the resources bare in no time; think army ants. There’s no “owning” a resource; if two colonies build a mite nest near a resource then both colonies will harvest it (depleting it twice as fast).

Combat units: Three of various sizes. Dead combat units can be harvested by mites so it’s best to fight away from mite nests you don’t own. Classic rock-paper-scissors setup. We’ll have spitters, armored melee and fast melee. Spitters beat armored melee because they’ll wear them down before they get into range. Fast melee beat spitters because they get into range quickly and spitters are relatively weak. Armored melee beats fast melee because fast melee has no armor.

Plus, how about a big gargantuan unit, like a beetle? Slow, hard to destroy, but spits powerful acid a long way and can kill a colony all by itself if left unattended. Worth a lot resources if it can be killed and harvested, so it’s a risk/reward thing for the player that tries it.

Direct control of combat units?

Hmmm…how about a slow but steady drain on – YES. You win the game not by destroying the enemy whatever, but by making your enemy run out of ichor. Ichor is the resource of Chitin and will be used for everything. Ichor will have a +- marker next to it just like a resource in Total Annihilation, so you can see if your ichor income is rising or falling. You start with a slow ichor drain and every unit and building you make increases this drain, so you need to get out there and use your units to explore (which means there must be fog of war).

Creeps. That’s it, I think. There will be other insects on the map, you use your combat units to kill them for food then plant mites next to them to gather their resources. As you do, your ichor goes up meaning you can make new units (and maybe upgrade them?) But if you have no bugs to harvest, your ichor level will drop based on how many units you have in the field; when it gets to zero, you lose the game (your colony is untenable).

Creeps are also of the three different types; use the right bug on the right kind of creep – but be aware that you could get ganked by an enemy bug army that can counter yours.

The player can directly control all units except the mites. There won’t be any pathfinding on the units – after all, they’re drones. It’s your job to get them where you want them to go.

The player will end up with mite nests all over the place but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. A smart player might lure a creep towards a might nest before killing it.

So far I’ve got two buildings (colony and mite nest) and four units (spitters, speeders, brutes and the big bug) and one resource (ichor). That seems doable in seven days.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Feedback welcome!

Hey Everyone,

I’ll be streaming a bunch of 7dRTS work today, answering any questions and interacting with you guys while I do so… If you’d like to check me out, I’ll be streaming in about 10 minutes! http://www.twitch.tv/0creds

Can’t Wait To See You All!

– 0Creds

I think I made today a lot more painful than it needed to be.

(Sorry for it being a day late.)

Tags: #7DRTS, day 1

Trojan’s Log #3

Day 2. Already the exhaustion is setting in. Perhaps it’s because of the heat (probably not because I’m used to it). Perhaps it’s because of the ongoing development. Perhaps it’s because there are so many ideas that I can’t handle them all. The game is going pretty smoothly nevertheless.

*Named the Seagulls in Singleplayer
*Tweaked controls and what they do a tad bit.
*Added basic stats to the singleplayer seagulls
*Added crabs
*Added Sea Turtles
*Added Baby Sea Turtles
*DAWWWWWWWWWWWW
*Added Whales
*Redid how fish appear – it’s not gonna work out as it is
*Added a storyline
*Added three endings based on how you play
*Added ability to eat sharks (DUN DUN DUN)
*Added hunger
*Added ability to eat other animals
*Added ability for Seagulls to die out of hunger
*Added ability to ransack ships
-Removed Herobrine

It’s looking like a traditional RTS now, which is good! The core mechanics are pretty much set in stone, and my game idea is more coherent than ever before. I can’t wait to share this with you guys!

Click to try!

I’ve hacked in some movement controls for the character and I’m fairly happy with how it works. What do you think? You’ll also note that there’s slightly more colour, but I’m not too happy with how it looks. I’ll probably be using a different palette for each screen.

Hi Faisal(Team Leader/Designer) from Team Tartan Paint here to give you a small update.

Character art

So far the artists have been working hard

and Jurgita has managed to produce some home units.

as well as some work on an enemy unit

Environment Art

Stewart has been working on the Environment tiles more currently he has managed to produce enough tiles and variations for 2 out of the 3 environments that are planned.

UI

Currently Ive been working on programming and laying out the user interface.

its current spawns units on 2 different lanes, unit reset timer, gold values, warning for gold being to low, some instruction screens and a health indicator(the status if zeus it should shatter bit by bit by clicking on it)

UI prototype

Code

currently Zac our coder has been working on the getting the assets into the game and programming in the paths and path tiles. now the tiles along the path are randomised so all 3 paths are made with random tiles.

Game prototype

thanks for reading and good luck to everyone else taking part in the jam hope we all have fun making these games.

So I made some more progress today.  I tend to be all over the place instead of just working on one thing until it is done…

I put together some art assets.  These are probably going to be close to the final products…

They are an empty platform, an attacking unit, a defending unit, a node, another empty platform, some floating land, and a power station, with some buttons thrown in for good measure.

Coding is going along well.  The skeleton of the game is in place.  You can select a power station and build nodes.  Those nodes draw power from the station that started them to build themselves.  You can also have the node build attacking units in the available spaces around it.  Once the node is completed it starts to transfer power to the units attached to it.  Once they are built, they draw power from the node to attack or defend.

You can also switch between attack and defend mode by pressing space.  When you are in attack mode you can select the nodes and give them a target.  The units attached to that node will then attack that spot (and the spots around it, because they aren’t perfectly accurate) until you change the order.

Next up are the defenders, transforming nodes into power stations, and the AI for the computer opponents.

EDIT – WordPress stripped out the pictures.  Weird…

EDIT2 – “Playable” Demo

Instructions

Note, the islands are generated randomly, so you have a 50% chance that the spot your power station is trying to appear on isn’t there.  Just restart and hope for better luck next time.

Hello! I am trying to make a Platformer-RTS for this competition.

Day 1. Made platforms and a world with a simple physics engine!

Day 2. Tried to do things with this physics engine; nothing worked

Day 2.5. Newfound motivation to make a better platformer physics engine and a deeper understanding on what goes on behind the scenes!

I shall redo my game with putting everything into matrices!

I will have concrete progress later!

Lets do this, me!

My game is coming along great, considering that I work a full time job, and have only got to spend about 8 hours on it so far. My pathfinding, combat, economy, and UI are all implemented (and done is such a way that they should be very easy to expand on as time allows). Just one big hurdle before all of the mechanics are in and I can start focusing more on content: Enemy AI. I’ve never done a strategy game AI, but I think the simple mechanics in mine should make things a lot simpler. Hopefully, I can have something fun to play against by midnight (4 hours away here). Anyway, here’s a screenshot:

Making non-game-specific stuff during a jam is definitely not the best way to do things. I could have made most of what I did today before the week began and wouldn’t have felt at all like it was cheating, but oh well.

Today has been landscape again, now able to render large maps, generate some quite nice mountain ranges, and have put in the start of the player being able to manipulate the landscape. Also raycasting against the landscape and a nice little camera system. All the landscape manipulation is done through workers, so even during heavy processing the game remains responsive. Not so important for the initial generation of the map but will be key once I get the more dynamic elements of the terrain going.

Tomorrow the terrain will become less monochrome, and much more dynamic. Hopefully I’ll get some flowing water done too.