I’m in!

 

My first ever game jam. Nervous and super excited at the same time!

It does feel pretty good to come out of my cave and make a game as part of something bigger. It’s easy to forget that there are other people out there who also try and make cool games and are stuck on their own! D:

I’ve been idling in the IRC for the last few days and the amount of talented people in there is awesome! I can learn a lot from people here I bet.

Details

I’ll be using Unity as an engine as I’m to scared to go full Java with this time frame.

IDE – Mono dev with C#

Asset creation – Photoshop / Blender (God help me)

Audio/Sound – Audacity for editing (and still researching sound creation software)

Good luck and have fun everyone!

Hobo

Been toying with the idea to make a city building game for a while. So why not use this as a chance to cobble something together? I’m trying to keep things simple since I know how complicated these things can get.

Game is going to be called Salvation and you play as a station manager guy (name is in progress) who runs a refugee camp trying to save people. This occurs after the Frontier worlds are assaulted by the enemy (I dont know who that is yet). All the different worlds inhabitants are now jammed together in one camp. He is trying to keep them all alive and well, and maybe even gives them the oppertunaty to fightback?

Still working on the lore but got the overall design finished in my note book. Mapping it out in more detail now:

Still trying to decide on simple 3D or 2D via quads. Would be awesome to use <SIMPLE> animation in the form of deltatime * transform.

Anyhow back to it!

Hobo

 

So far it’s going slower than I anticipated. I am gringing at how bad I’m writing my code. I’m using public GameObject variables to just store a buncha prefabs. I then plan on instantiating these prefabs based on button clicks. At the moment I’m just removing (Destroying) a GameObject and instantiating a new one in the same place (Vector). I do this because I really don’t think I have the time to code solution that overwrites the GameObjects components. And I can’t overwrite a GameOjbect with another one, gives me an indexing error. My solution is pretty hacky but it’ll work for now.

This would probably be the view part of a MVC design. I feel like I’m working backwards as I have no assets yet. Just a lotta placeholder stuff.

Still having fun though. I best get back to it.

 

– Improvement ideas –

Build building placement system, rather than the preplanned spots (EmptyRoom GameOject). Maybe instantiate – move with cursor (in Update()).

Don’t use loads of different building prefabs, use a Building class instead and inherit from it.

Find better way to load in buildings, or overwrite GameObject components. You can’t overwrite a GameObject with another directly.

I use this all the time as it’s a great little tool. Made by Alex C Peterson. Not sure how well known it is so thought I’d mention it.

It allows you to make stary skyboxes, which works great for sci-fi games. It’s ‘free’ on the MIT license and availalble here:

http://alexcpeterson.com/spacescape

Ok, I got a major milestone out of the way I think. So far I have:

• Building Panel working
• Buildings in the game scene
• Backdrop with a particle system (basic but looks neat)

So I’m 6 hours in and I can now select a building from a menu and it’ll be built in the area I specify. In the screenshot, the red/green/blue and yellow boxes are placeholders for building icons. I select one of these bad boys and the corresponding building will be built in the desired location.

Realism is not my friend since I can’t art very good. And my pixel art skills are terrible so I can’t do that either. I’m hoping that by following a Neon-like art style I’ll be able to hide most of my artisitc failings. I’m thinking something similar to Hotline Miamis art style. A gamble I guess but I hope it’ll pay off.

I’d like to declare here that I made use of Alex’s space skybox tool to create my stars quickly (see previous post about it, available here http://alexcpeterson.com/spacescape).

My next objective is either to finish off all the buildings and finish my building panel, or start working on the’ Management Class’ which will be dealing with the controller aspects of my game (in terms of a MVC design). I am leaning towards the Management Class at the moment as that is going to be more work I feel. If I get this working for atleast one building, then adding other building objects shouldn’t be that hard (touch wood).

– Improvement ideas –

I’m not happy about how I build buildings currently. My code instantiates a new building in the same vector as empty building slot I want to use. This empty building slot is a building initself. Meaning that I destroy the building (emptyroom) and then initiate the desired building in its place. This seems pretty memory intensive to me, but for now it’ll work. The one good thing about this is I can overwrite any building I want now, visually atleast. Regardless of which type of building it is or where I placed it. Example of my current code for placing a new building:

public void spawnBuilding(){
Destroy(killObject); //kill the current gameobject that I get from the buildings class of the building I clicked on
switch (BuildingSelect) { //BuildingSelect is a unique ID
case 1: Instantiate(Building1, tempVec, transform.rotation);
break;
case 2: Instantiate(Building2, tempVec, transform.rotation);
break;
case 3: Instantiate(Building3, tempVec, transform.rotation);
break;
default: Instantiate(Building0, tempVec, transform.rotation);
break;
}
}

Back to it!

Hobo

Ok, so after a mini heart attack because I accidently must have deleted one of my scripts, I managed to get it back. Thanks to the people in IRC using logic for me and telling me to check my recycling bin. Silly mistake. I now make backups more often than anything else!

Anyhow, so far so good. I planned out how to tackle the next part of my game. The stats tracking. I jotted down a very simple class diagram to get a feel for my overall games construction.

As I note in the little diagram, it makes a lot of sense to use my Building_Instance class to also set all my building stats. This class sets the current selected buildings vector, and calls the kill method in the OverLoard class. Pretty much all things I do with a specific building is dealt with here so why not add all the stats? So I did!

void setRedHAB_stats(){
int populationIncrease = 50;
int buildingCost = 50;
tempBuildingManager.setPop(populationIncrease);
tempBuildingManager.deductCash(buildingCost);
}

void setSolarArray_stats(){
int moneyIncrease = 100;
int buildingCost = 50;
tempBuildingManager.setCash(moneyIncrease);
tempBuildingManager.deductCash(buildingCost);
}

Once they are added here I have a fresh new class where I manage all the buildings effects on the game world. Things like the overall population/current funds etc. I use the Instance class to add each specific buildings stats upon their instantiation. The Manager class then applies these stats to the overall global stats. I added in some debug GUIText to keep track of the global stat numbers.

Next up I am adding spaceship! I keep telling myself not to as they will take a lot of time to get working the way I want them to but then again THEY ARE SPACE SHIPS! D: The plan is to have each spaceship, depending on what world they come from, to add 5 population to the current overall population. The population is going to be broken down into 4 sections, 1 for each worlds race.

So every x amount of minutes, a spaceship or a few depending on things, will dock at the facility. If you can accomodate the refugees (have enough HABs built), then they will be added to your global population. If not, they will not be added, and I plan on adding some more ships that leave the facility. These poor, sick, unwanted refugees will be on those ships

 

Back to coding now!

Hobo out!

 

 

Holy gravy boats! This is taking a lot longer than I thought. Quick update:

Rescue Ships now work completly. They are based on the world they come from. Red ships will dilver red population, blues will deliver blue population etc.

If a ship dilvers refugees from a world the facility doesn’t support (due to not building any living quaters for said race) they will leave on a different ship.

Population is now broken down per world inhabintants. Thus far my debug only shows red/blue but it supports all 4 races. All these broken down numbers will be tallied into a total … maybe…if it’s useful.

Now all I need to do is add all the different buildings and then add the victory / lose condition.

Then I’ll have to make all the assets 😮

– Improvement Ideas –

• I’d like to make more levels
• Add story
• Add an events system that I was thinking about – would be so cool! 😀 Would be based off %’s derived from the numbers I already have in place!

 

Oh my days -facedesk-

Alrighty so I been fixing a bunch of minor bugs, most of them GUI bugs I didnt think of during the early stages. Like what happens if I just spam a button over and over again. Turns out you lose the game terribly, or win the game also terribly. Trying to fix all these click spam issues.

Also busy working on deconstruction, like what happens if I swap one building with another? Now you get a 50% refund and the other building is built. Pretty sure I’m missing a few bugs though which haunt me still D:

Money and population now matters in the game. You cannot build a work-building such as a solar array or factory if you do not have enough of the required population. Only certain refugees from certain worlds can run certain buildings. So the idea is to get a good mixture for what kind of facility you want to run. The idea is to have everyone from different worlds band together and help each other to survive this terrible assault from <INSERT ENEMY NAME HERE>. You also now can’t build anything if you can’t afford it. This money checking method works ok, not perfect but ok for now. You can still go in the negatives.

I’m also starting on the win/lose conditions. The win condition is reach a certain level of population. Meaning rescue X number of refugees. I’m not sure what this number is at the moment. I’ll focus on balancing later as those would only need me to tweak ints here and there. I’m also spawning things super fast to debug so balancing is not a smart move at the moment I think.

I’ve added a Happyness rating to my game. If you can’t accomodate a certain amount of refugees and they leave on a ship – you have a decrement to your happyness rating (maybe, depending on a % of an int). I’m planning to have it so that if your happyness reaches 0 or less, you have a chance of the refugees rebelling on you and you losing control of the station. Meaning you lose the game.

I also wanted to have a % chance that the rebels would destroy a building based on happyness, had it kinda working but it’s taking to much time and I got around 1-2 hours before I have to start making assets.

My next steps are to add defence, food and healthcare to my game. It might have to be in a basic way for now but they’ll be there. I also need to start and finish the upkeep/transport costs. And the grant income for money. Since at the moment there’s no long term money making in my game. A building gives you + cash flat out and then never again. This doesnt work well in gameplay so I need to change it.

Code for how my happyness works at the moment:

//*****************************************************************************************
//Making nice old school comment dividers cause my eyes are getting blurry! 😀
//Sets the population values per worlds race
//*****************************************************************************************
public void setPop(int x, string y){
if(y == “red” && redCap != 0 && redCap >= redPop){
redPop += x;
GameObject.Find(“RedCap_Pop”).guiText.text = redPop.ToString();
}else{
if(y == “blue” && blueCap != 0 && blueCap >= bluePop){
bluePop += x;
GameObject.Find(“BlueCap_Pop”).guiText.text = bluePop.ToString();
}else{
if(y == “green” && greenCap != 0 && greenCap >= greenPop){
greenPop += x;
GameObject.Find(“GreenCap_Pop”).guiText.text = greenPop.ToString();
}else{
if(y == “yellow” && yellowCap != 0 && yellowCap >= yellowPop){
yellowPop += x;
GameObject.Find(“YellowCap_Pop”).guiText.text = yellowPop.ToString();
}else{
tempLeaveShip.SpawnNewShip();
UnHappy25(); //Because of refugees being forced off the station you bad person you!
}
}
}
}
}

//% chance of an unhappy being added to overall happyness
public void UnHappy25(){
int rndNum;
rndNum = (Random.Range(0, 40));
if(rndNum == 1){
happyRate -= 1;
}
GameObject.Find(“hppyVal”).guiText.text = happyRate.ToString();
}

Oh I also added totals for a nice overview.

Back to it!

Hobo

Man was I feeling bummed out last night – all my complicated stuff was working fine but I had a ton of minor bugs around which was annoying me to no end. Also the way Unity uses its Setactive-ness is beyond annoying in my opinion. Anyhow I desided to spend 5 hours sleeping, overslept by like 2 hours but I still have 14 hours left.

Not started on assets yet, but I’ve decided that I’m done adding features to what I have thus far. It’s now a decision between what my game can do – and how my game looks. So I gotta choose looks as I think it can do a fair bit 😀

The sleep helped, and I added Income rates into my game. So building a factory won’t just give you flat out money but also an income rate very X amount of time. at the moment this time is every second, but I need to do balancing once i can acutally sit and play my game for a bit.

Happyness now also has this. So the happyness rating is working properly now, apart from balancing. I would have liked to have more factors include this happyness functionality. As at the moment it just leaving refugees (-) and security buildings (+) I need to rework the code for happyness, it’s pretty messy at the moment.

– Improvement ideas –

• Make more use of happyness rating, if I make an events system I should then use it in there as well.
• Fix how the happyness works, it needs its own class. Perhaps then I can add other factors in easily (such as hunger/sickness etc)
• Tweak how my income rate is repeated. There’s a more efficient way of doing that…it’s on the tip of my tongue!

I’ve now gotten the game into a state where I can start working on assets. Currently I have 10 hours and 52 minutes left. Originally I wanted to spend 24 hours on the assets but I am confident that 10 hours will be enough to cover all the buildings I have in game since I didnt add all of them.

My plan now is to make the textures / sound effects and if I have time maybe a sound track. I’ve never made music before so I’m apprehansive but I’m super proud of my game and wanna go all out.

If I finish this with enough time remaining, I plan on spending the rest of my time fixing bugs.

Not all buildings are in and I’d like to make the game more in-depth and add a Save game system but those are on the backburner. I’ll probably add those in my own time after this event.

I have to say, all the other games I’ve made in the past have been little arcade games that I didnt think were amazing, just standard match three stuff. Or avoiding obstacles stuff. This is the first game I have made that has something to it in terms of depth. It’s amazing what you can do in around 32 hours. This event really made me see what I am capable of. I love city building games/ stratagy games so I’m really happy I could churn out an idea I was playing with for a while. It feels like a weight is off my chest. 😀

My game is not the most amazing thing ever but you know you have a fun game when you lose and go “This is bullshit, I should have been fine, why did my happyness go down like that? stupid leavers!” Or when you build yourself into a corner and realise that the refugees will probably rebel before you can get enough funds from the goverment to build more living accomodations. If you can get worked up at a game you made then things are probably going pretty good 😛

-Improvement ideas-

• Add background elements (in terms of quads) like asteriods, ships, fleets etc to make things more immersive / war torn.
• Add a deconstruction tool so I can revert the building to an empty room object and get some money back. This will make it so I don’t build the wrong building and have no way out resulting in a lost game.
• Add tooltips! Like seriously, loads of tooltips!

I hate art so hard! But atleast it’s all done so I can almost get back to fixing bugs.  Next on the list is Sound / Maybe music / Finding a nice font.

After that bug fixes! 😀 I am pretty happy with the colours though, super bright! All hand drawn (if you couldn’t tell hahaha).

 

Hobo

 

I’m all out of time. I was frantically trying to fix some last minute bugs and add in some balancing but no luck. I also unfortunately couldn’t add any audio to my game since I didn’t have enough time to mess around with Audio listeners. I submitted an hour early just to be on the safe side.

BUT! I am still pretty happy with my little game, even if it has balancing issues and isn’t completely done. I did it all in 30 hours, excluding sleep breaks.

The last few things I added were tooltips for things since it’ll be pretty hard to figure out what to build without them. I also added a front end and a splash screen. A little bit of lore in the form of an email. I only submitted a web build for now as I want to add a few fixes before messing around with a PC/Mac build.

Now that the event is all done I can spend some time fixing things I’m going to take a break for now though!

Good luck with the odds and ends of your submissions guys!

Hobo

Second time in Ludum Dare, hoping to improve this time around a last time UI issues kept me from doing as well as I wanted.

Might be doing the jam over the compo this time with a few people! Try some team work. We shall see!

Engine: Unity

Langauge: C#

IDE: Visual Studio

I’m still working with my first Ludum Dare entry in my free time, trying to improve on it 😀

Ludum Dare 31 – It’ starts! Theme – On one Screen

So I spent like 3 hours on this so far and made the following stuff:In-game pause menu that pauses/resumes the level.
Front end main menu that starts the game on Any Key event. (I know this may not seem like it matches the theme but we have a plan).

I am liking the new Unity UI features 😀 Although the new script-attaching UI is a little annoying sometimes. Change is never easy though right?

Apart from that, I have not done much else. My coder-in-crime has been though.  You can see more of that in our blogs here and here.

Our current team structure has changed to:

• 2 coders
• 1 designer
• 1 artist

I’m hoping to get all the menu stuff done tomorrow morning and then I intend to move onto adding 360-pad support to other Robs character controller code.

I’ll also spend some time getting audio / font assets. I left this way to late last time!

So sleepy now though 😮

So far so good. We decided on a shared screen, multiplayer game. We went with a shadow puppet style

We also have controller support for PC at least – it’s pretty buggy on Mac atm.

Still a buncha work to do but we have a basic AI set up with movement / combat etc. Sleep time now though, been at this all day and its 4:15 am now lol.

While Stacy and the two Robs work tirelessly on the art and programming, I’ve taken a break from the design to hijack Rob’s blog and post about our progress.

For a start, our game now has a name! We figured that ‘Local Multiplayer Shadow Puppet Game’ was a bit of a mouthful, so instead plumped for ‘The Grimm Journey’.

In this local co-op beat’em up platformer, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf have formed an uneasy alliance. The duo have to traverse a spooky, projector-screen world to escape the deadly encroaching Darkness that seeps up from below, but there’s a catch. They are magically linked – if either of them die, then they both die. This leaves the Big Bad Wolf deprived of a tasty human snack, and instead the sole protector of one.

For the player controlling the Big Bad Wolf, they have a number of attacks at their disposal; they can huff and puff to hit their enemies at long range, or claw and bite them to inflict more damage at close range. While they can wipe out the Woodcutters, Witches and Trolls that hunt them down, they cannot ascend the level to escape the deadly darkness.

The player controlling Little Red Riding Hood cannot fight, and has much lower health than the Big Bad Wolf. However, they have one skill the Big Bad Wolf does not – they can jump, and when they are in close proximity with the Big Bad Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood can help them jump. And in a world full of platforms, that is crucial. Both characters need the other to survive.

In each level there are curious glowing lights – these switch the characters, so the player controlling Little Red Riding Hood transforms into the Big Bad Wolf, and vice versa. Whether players use this to best exploit their strengths and protect each other, or screw each other over for shits and giggles, is entirely up to them.

Things are taking shape nicely; you can see an example of Stacy’s awesome artwork here:

We have several gameplay rules in addition to those mentioned below; Rob J and Rob B have the mammoth task of putting all of that into practise. So far, they’ve created some cool enemy AI and character controller mechanisms, as well as the switching function. There’s still lots to do to fine-tune everything, and there is some sound to be added, but with 26 hours to go, we have ages, right?

Right?

We have a number of level designs to build; the ideas is that we start off gradually introducing the various mechanics and enemies through simple levels, such as this:

Only one type of enemy spawns in this level (where the black boxes are), and the platforms do not have additional behaviour beyond making sturdy resting points for our heroes. The white boxes indicate the position of the switching triggers.

Later on, we plan to break everyone’s spirit with more taxing levels such as this:

Red platforms collapse after a few seconds. Nobody said Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf would have an easy time of it; clue’s in the name.

26 hours to go… there’s everything to play for.