I've currently got ~6 projects "on the shelf," or in other words I haven't fully decided to lay them to rest and may one day continue them. ::
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| My current primary project is "Breach," a strategy board game for two players. I also believe it's the oldest of the games among those 6. In Breach, players take control of a small formation of units, and try to break through the enemy line. For the most part, units can only move and fight within their columns. Battles between units are done using a dual-tiered rock-paper-scissors bonus system, where units can have an advantage or disadvantage against enemy units based on their respective equipment. The last few days I've been working on the game's GUI, trying to decide how to relay information to the players. One concern I've had while working on it is that I might be "giving away the game," in that I could be automating too much. For an example of what I mean, consider the game of Chess. It is common in computer versions of Chess for the game to highlight possible moves pieces can make when selected. Generally, I think most agree this is an acceptable automation. However, consider a version where the game also highlights any pieces of yours that are in danger of being captured during your opponents next move. Would such an automation not kill some of the game's fun if players wouldn't have to worry about a "I didn't see that!" moment? The game's strategy would technically be intact, but I think it hurts the social or human aspect. Which brings me back to Breach. How much should I have the game communicate to the player as to the state of the game? Currently, whenever you select a unit, its "outlook" is displayed. An outlook can range from excellent to average to grim, based on the bonuses that unit and the next enemy unit it could encounter will receive. I think this is a reasonable amount of automation, and helps players more quickly wrap their heads around the bonus system. However, I was also considering adding colored arrows onto the battlefield indicating for each column which team currently has the advantage at the skirmish line (where the two teams meet at that column). Is this too much automation? Would this kill "surprise" attacks and other subtle strategies? It's likely too early to tell without having a playable version of the game out, but if I included a game option to enable or disable both this and/or the outlook feature, which do you think you would turn off? (keep in mind this would be a game-wide setting, so both you and your opponent would be playing with the same visuals) (Note: "Run Them Through" was the game's previous title. I've also fixed the off-color backgrounds seen in the screenshots..) |
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| My GIAD entry, Iron Reaper, has also seen a few minor updates (although they haven't been released yet). In Iron Reaper, a group of players cooperate to complete mission segments; somewhat like a cross between Mech Warrior, Gauntlet, and a shoot 'em up. At the time of its submittal, all of the projectiles in Iron Reaper acted like homing missiles, never missing their target and doing 180° turns to track them to the ends of the earth. This was not so much out of laziness (it would have taken less effort to use pixel projectiles) but rather part of a design goal to create a game that took advantage of client-side processing whenever possible. The new version still uses missile() to send projectiles, but they now fire "in the direction of" instead of "to" a target. This may sound like a minor change, but it required a fair amount of fiddling with hidden objects and the missile() process to get it looking right. I also revised the control scheme to use WASD and the mouse, but I think I might set it back to using a targeting system. I also wrote a cool little control option page that lets players set keys themselves. Oh, and I added the ability to jump forward. This should be a great a tool for dodging enemy ordnance, covering ground quickly, and getting over obstacles. And I drew a tree. |
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| Well, with the new isometric support, of course I had to take a stab at making an isometric platformer! It's lacking any real content at the moment, but most of the physics (pixel-based, booyah) seem to be working smoothly. I'm torn between turning this into an all-out platform/puzzle game, or into an RPG like SMRPG. The graphics were generated using Blender, thanks to a great tutorial I found. They took several hours each, but that was more-so due to my inability to grasp the Blender interface. I'm told it's one of the most intuitive and streamlined interfaces on the market, but my ears are still shooting out smoke. |
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| Not much progress has been made on my Static Lighting Generator. It's rather a specialized tool that eats game resources, so I'm not surprised no one has found a use for it. Heck, I haven't even gotten around to implementing it in the game I originally designed it for (not mentioned in this post, "Ultimate Laser Tag" was my Get Something Done entry, which if you can't tell, did not get done) I've run through all of the math and theory behind turning it into a soft light generator using penumbra, but haven't found the time to actually implement it. Also, now that I have a C++ class under my belt, I was considering offloading all of the drawing onto an external .dll, if I could figure out how to set one up (maybe my fancy $140 C++ textbook will have the answer.. nope, no surprise there). I looked into it online, and it looks much more complex than I expected. More than likely, I'll just use C since my generator doesn't really take advantage of OOP. Incidentally, I ran across an article on dll injection, and I'm now tempted to play with that on some old, offline games :P Oh, and for reading this far, here's a contest: if you can tell me why my generation isn't perfectly symmetrical about both axes, I'll buy you a membership, or give you 20 BAP. |
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In non-programming news, I scored the entire Kaze No Yojimbo anime series on ebay for only $20. I've already watched the first 9 episodes, and while some of the animation is mediocre, I love the story and characters. The style reminds me of a detective video game. If you're curious, the first three episodes are on youtube.
Oh, I might finish my blog layout one day.
Wow, that turned into a much larger post than I had planned. I hope the pictures adequately broke it up so it wasn't too boring ;)
