Iter 10 etc.

The goal for iter 10 is to add the begining of instant action mode. First stage is to create a “battle editor” allowing the player to create custom battles. The player will add objects – ships, stations, etc to the game field, designate their sides (enemy, friend, etc), positions etc and then press play and battle it out. Initially all units that are in game will be unlocked, but later on the player will unlock units via the main “story” game or pre-created battle scenarios.

The battle editor will serve a variety of purpouses, sure it is there for fun and another neat game mode, allownig the player some quick action. But there are some very practical uses concerning the development of this project. It will allow for testing art assets, tweaking game balance (how many fighters can take out a corvette?), observing/testing the AI and creating videos to post on YouTube :)

Its going well so far, a lot of the work has been completed, luckily I’m able to re-use a lot of the code already. The battle editor closely resembles tactical mode, there’s a free floating camera, the player is able to position units (same code as positioning stations), collision checks need to be performed (stripped down physics engine code) so that units don’t overlap causing unintended consequences.

I’ve reached the stage where I need to populate lists of objects for the player to add to the battle. I’ve decided to make the switch from hard coded (in the executable) asset lists and their paramaters to having the game read text files. Thus making the objects accessible to the player, I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and this will be the first step. The objects will be read into the game from xml files (easily openable in notepad or other editors), allowing for modding. Eventually a modding tool will be finalized meaning that editing the files will be done via this graphical tool rather than notepad or some other text editor. I’ve started creating this tool in a seperate (from the main game) project file, intending to one day release it as open source. I’m starting to think this over, and am now leaning towards making this part of the game itself – meaning that at least for some time it wouldn’t be open source. I’m still debating this, the pros of combining the project would be simplicity and speed for me – not having to have the same code in two different places (characteristics of objects – reading – editing – saving of files). Another pro is that the player wouldn’t have to look very far for the modding tool. The con is of course the open source nature, still I don’t know how many people would find this editor useful, it would be very specific to my project. I guess I can always seperate it out later on once the code is completed.

Iter 9 released!

Iter 9 features the addition of the “research” system. Your basic click here then wait a bit and now you can build a new class of ship or station. Pretty boring (nothing very new or innovative about this), but it accomplishes several important things.

Delayed gratification: yep I’m withholding things for your own good and enjoyment, so appreciate that corvette and enjoy that new frigate when you can build it. You’ll plan it out in your head… first I’ll research a defense station so that it will protect the shipyard that I will research next… etc… etc… dreaming of things to come :)

Game pacing: you can’t build a destroyer right from the start. I know you can’t so if I send one against you I’ll know it will be a bit of a challenge.

But in actuality it is busy work! To extend the life of the game and give me greater control over the experience. So I hope that in future iterations I’ll make this more intersting. Right now research comes at the cost of your crew not producing ore, energy and/or food. Plus the player has to pick and chose which research item to research first. But in the future I hope to add more interesting mechanics for example: blow up a bunch of frigates to be able to research your own, or better yet capture one (via the Command ship) and make it dock with your station – then take it apart to learn its secrests. Basically making things more interesting.

Plans for iter 10: instant action system – very excited about this – it will give me the chance to test game performance (you’ll be able to create custom battles of any size). Via staging battles I’ll be able to tweak ships, balance game play and you’ll be able to quickly jump into combat for some fast action.

More happenings

If you follow the change log forums (change log for iter 9) you’ll notice the iteration 9 post is pretty sparse. Although from the view count there’s only 8 of em so you probably don’t. Those 8 views (at the time of this posting) are probably mine:)

My excuse is that I’m in finals week for the summer session. I was assigned 3 papers to do and I’m on page 8 of the required 10 of the last paper. Luckily my plans for iteration 9 are pretty modest, putting in the research system into the game. This actually is mostly gui/interface work which is already done, a free wekeend and it should be done :) Research is fairly similar in function to the Command Ship upgrades screen so that helps as well (a bit of copy and paste coding here and there).

Happenings

Currently working on the research portion of the game. The player will be limited to what ships and stations can be built at the beginning, you’ve seen it all over. Gives the player something to do and choices to make (should I build ships for offense? or stations for defense?) It also gives me the chance to control difficulty (knowing what forces the player will have at the beginning) and game pace (don’t have to worry about the player having destroyers for a bit, so don’t have to send destroyers against the player).

Currently the corvette type ships are pretty useless compared to the frigates, one of the most noticeable thing is that they die way too fast in comparison. So if the player can’t build frigates yet, corvettes have to be the initial bulk of the fleet, giving them a chance to be utilized and then properly slotted into the fleet in the future (the player has a chance to appreciate their potential). Once I put in the instant action mode (scheduled for iter 10) I’ll have a chance to do game balancing, see how frigates stack up against other frigates, and how corvettes do against frigates. This will give me a chance to make sure each ship is useful.

Iteration 8

Iteration 8 is ready for download on the main site: http://www.VoidDestroyer.com/download.html

Plan is to create a new video as well. Hope you enjoy, attempt to conquer the nearby asteroid base and let me know how it goes. As the game becomes more “game like” I’ll need more and more feedback. For example it took me about 30 minutes to capture the base. But how long does it take a new player? Is there an obvious way to cheat? Is there some parts that are confusing? Some that don’t make sense? What’s fun? What’s frustrating? Any and all feedback/criticism will be greatly appreciated.

The more game like this project becomes the longer it takes to test it. Luckily I think the game is a lot of fun :)

New missiles incoming and some tweaks to the trails



Here’s a small video of some neat stuff. Before missiles were single colored ugly models (my work). Now they are sleek looking and textured (artist – Edocsil). Players may not take much notice of them (in light of all the other things going on), but to me they are amazing! The missile trails also got a tweak, before they were yellow turning to orange, now they are a bit “smokier” they start off white and end up mostly translutent to give the visual effect of fading smoke.

Also in the video is the new “rock” frigate (also modeled and textured by Edocsil). I love how bizzare it is, I don’t know if any other game has such a strange looking (but cool!) vessel.

Base assault play testing

It is interesting how different things actually play out than what you put into the game as code and logic.

Here’s a list:
I found and fixed a bug – stations couldn’t be destroyed. I don’t know how long this bug was in effect, since the enemy now builds stations this bug became apparent after I ordered the Command ship to destroy a defense station of the base I was assaulting. Speaking of stations, I recently changed the health points of stations that were being built, I made them start at 0 and increase as the station was being built (prior they started with max health even 1 second into their existance). Meaning that in theory the player could destroy the station as it was being built and not yet operational. The Command ship was firing all its guns and missiles and did put a dent in the station but couldn’t destroy it (the health generation was overwhelmed the damage), so I need to change this process and stop the station’s health growth if it is under fire. Otherwise the situation is a bit silly.

Minor bug regarding ships wanting to return to a friendly base, instead they should patrol the enemy base until the player commands them otherwise.

After defeating the defenders I realized that I have to tweak a few things, I started sending in the boarding ships, and realized that it would take quite a lot of them to kill the crew of the base which at this point numbered at over 1500. I plan on putting a cap the station’s population (this is a easy way to control difficulty as well, nearer stations will have smaller cap than further away bases). To create more strategy I plan on putting in “city” stations, which will allow for a larger work force (raising the crew cap), but they are much more vulnerable to attack since they are outside the base in a station that can be destroyed. The enemy and probably players will build defense stations around these too :)

The base’s crew generation (it is a percentage based one) was far greater than the rate of boarding ships I was sending so I need to stop the increase of population if the station is being boarded, plus put a max on population growth instead of making it a straight percentage only deal.

I also plan on putting in different ways that the player could hurt the base’s crew, for example a station that shoots torpedos (or even meteors, why not eh?) at other far away stations and bases, if shot at a base it would kill 5% of the station’s occupants (meaning that this torpedo station alone wouldn’t be enough to destroy an enemy). Plus the torpedos will have low health so that defensive stations will have a chance to destroy them. And with the city stations I mentioned, base assaults will become much more interesting. I think this will more strategy and fun to the game! Very excited about the future.

Getting ready for iter 8

Iteration 8 should be ready next weekend. Putting in the final touches now. Making sure that there aren’t any crashes, that the player can save/load etc. Also I’ll have to play test to make sure it is possible to capture other bases. If the enemy defends too well, or what not. Also this will be a test of whether this is fun/interesting :)

Once iter 8 is released, I’ll need more feedback from players, see what their impressions are. The closer we get to “alpha” stage and beyond, the more game like this project becomes the more feedback I will need. I’ll have to scour the web for willing participants.

Iter 7 and beyond

Iter 7 feels a bit sparse, my intention for it was to showcase the trading ship changes, but since I disabled “colonizing” other bases trading ships don’t have anybody to trade with. I already put in the code to capture bases into iter 8.

The process goes like this: player builds a ship, ship uses 50 crew. Ship docks at either neutral or enemy asteroid base. If neutral player takes control of asteroid base. If enemy base, the crew of the ship of 50 attack the base’s crew. At first the attackers would lose a static number of 5 “troops” per round, this felt very odd, so I made this a random number between 2 and 5. The defenders lose a base number of 5 crew each round, and then an additional 0 to 10 crew, giving it a bit of a randomized feel, but also making it in favor of the attackers.

Another aspect that I’m working is some common RTS elements, in past iterations I had a “enemy” object that just spawned shisp based on a timer, after a spawn the “budget” of ships would increase up to a maximum value. These ships would pop in instantly, and wouldn’t be linked to any asteroid base, wouldn’t take up any resouces of crew. Because I wanted this to be linked to asteroid bases (to make the enemy less of a cheater, more obeying the laws of the game that the player has to obey), I changed it so that asteroid bases queue up ships to be built, then once a pre-determined number of ships are built the base checks whether there are enemies nearby, if not then it orders the built ships to attack the player’s base.

Next up: having bases build stations, defensive, shipyards, etc.

So my goal is to make the game – more game like :) giving the player their first objective, conquer enemy asteroid bases. Will work on adding “research” in to the game as well, this is to essencially limit the ships avaiable to the player, thus allowing me to be able to control the early game. If I know that the player can only build corvette class ships then I know what I can send against the player. Also this will give the player another goal: get better tech to build bigger ships :)