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[msilver]

Hello. Pretty new to TIGforums or forums in general but I've been working on this game for a while and I figured I'd give the dev log thing a go. If people are interested I'll try to keep posting here. I'm also looking to potentially team up with someone which I'll mention below, so if you are interested please send me a PM or e-mail. I'm marking it at 50% but a lot depends on interest and some unresolved design questions.

- Link To Current Gameplay Video -

- Recent WIP Screenshot -

Game Concept:
I had been working under the plan to make a building game with a few adventure elements. Through the course of the game you'll overcome challenges by building up your city's infrastructure and sometimes exploring new areas. The player and the other characters you manage have important roles and how you build affects the story. I'm thinking I could spice that up a bit though (see below)

Current Issues:
1) Hook. Right now what I have implemented is a "just build" game which isn't too grabbing. I'd like to add in a quick gameplay component to get players to want keep at it and get some value from the experience. My current thinking is to use space as a primary resource and have the islands slowly erode unless you keep building but I'm not really happy with it and my prototypes on that mechanic aren't going too well.

2) Art/Style. I don't really have a solid direction or any talent at art. One thought was to go in a kind of surrealist direction using the following reference: Reference 1, Reference 2 (That whole collection is good.) But I'd love to hear suggestions and potentially team up with someone. I'd also be open to doing a small project as a team to see if its a good fit if you have an idea you want to pitch to me that we could do quickly.

[Qqwy]

Wait, how come nobody has commented on this yet? This idea is amazing!

As for your issues:

1. Instead of having Building Space as the main issue, how about the main issue being that you have to keep your villagers alive? If you don't provide them with enough houses/farms/factories etc, as well as protection from environmental hazards. they will starve, get mad and might not always follow your commands anymore, and they also can die.

2. I like the style of the paintings, and I also like the 'concept' art you showed in your video and the WIP picture. I also like the slightly sloped hills. Any way to make them yourself in the game? Or is it impossible to make ground sloped again, after having built something on there?

[msilver]

Thanks for posting, I was starting to get discouraged. I had been listing ways to win and lose games as a way of brainstorming and keeping your guys alive was pretty high on the list. It'll probably be the next one I try to play with. Here's what I have so far just as a dev log thing:

Ways to Lose a Single Player Game:

• Run out of resources - resource can be space, time, money, food, light...
• Citizens die / get on a bus - bit of overlap with the above b/c typical deaths result from running out of resources, but it could also be that other bad things happen like they drown or enemies kill them. Also you could consider citizens a resource.
• Main character dies.
• Dug too deep / built too high / access area you shouldn't have. This would also cover stealth games.
• McGuffin is stolen/destroyed - could be a main building - could be destroyed by enemies or nature.
• AI wins faster than player - like running out of time but it may be possible to trip up an enemy AI.

Ways to Win a Single Player Game:

• Collect enough resources - could also be little tokens you don't spend like in collection games.
• Move to or take control of a goal area.
• Beat bosses.
• Eliminate all enemies.
• Get high enough score.
• Survive long enough.

As for the art, I also like having smooth hills and my new screen shot got rid of them b/c I was focusing on cellular automata for a big block of cubes to simulate erosion. Eventually you will be able to smooth out terrain and make nice rolling hills, I just don't have that implemented yet. I'm rendering it right now with a pretty standard voxel system and I'll probably make it so the top level of the voxels don't make full cubes and have smooth normals so that you get a nice hilly look. Here's a screen shot of the wireframe of my renderer as it stands:

[brynsane]

This is really cool!

I would recommend this video if you want to get a bit of a "painted" look for your game. It inspired me to go the way that I did with my renderer:
http://vimeo.com/5660045

I didn't really copy what they were doing, but it inspired me to come up with what I hope is a pretty unique look for our game.

[msilver]

This is really cool!

I would recommend this video if you want to get a bit of a "painted" look for your game. It inspired me to go the way that I did with my renderer:
http://vimeo.com/5660045

I didn't really copy what they were doing, but it inspired me to come up with what I hope is a pretty unique look for our game.

Thanks for this. I'm going to implement it to see how it looks. Will post a screen shot when its done. Never would have come up with something like that in a million years but after seeing the video it seems so simple.

I had recently implemented an edge rendering system based on this paper to get a more artistic look but it didn't really turn out how I wanted. The technique involves creating a new geometry edge mesh for each mesh and then in a vertex shader transforming the edges to be clipped off screen if they aren't supposed to be visible. I got it to look a little bit like a pen outline:

But I wasn't too happy with the look. While working on it I also got a cool blueprint chalk line type look that I think I might use for buildings that are still under construction:

But I think what you posted might give me the more painted look I'm going for.

[brynsane]

Cool. I'd love to see some screenshots. Like I said, I didn't implement their algorithm, but went for a more "hand sketched" look more than painted. But I would love to see the painted look in action.

[msilver]

I did a rough pass at the "Painting With Polygons" technique. It seemed simpler than it was and I'm still not happy with my version. There wasn't too much info other than the video to go on which was kind of a shame. If I figure out more I'll explain it more explicitly.

Here it is with cool lighting:

Here with warmer light:

First off, there are tricks involving the lighting that I'm not replicating here including a bump map to "simulate extra brush strokes." Secondly, I'm not exactly sure how the motion blur in the video works b/c a global motion blur adds a motion blur effect well... globally. The original vid seems to be selecting N random normal displacement seeds, rendering the image N times and then combining them. I render once per frame and then blur which creates ghost images and streaks and so on. Another issue is that I don't really have interesting geometry to play with. Finally, the normal displacement works great on geometry that has smooth normals without creases. The cones, for example, end up with gaps when displaced.

Anyway, if I keep messing with it I'll post an update.

[brynsane]

Yeah, that video is geared more towards artists using 3d tools instead of programmers, but hopefully you'll find something useful out of it.

Have you tried using the technique on your level geometry?

[msilver]

I haven't, but I'm concerned about the fact that my terrain is so low poly and blocky right now. Once I get smooth hills working again I'll see if it works.

[msilver]

Added global erosion. Its very aggressive right now but even if I slowed it down it would still eat away at the ground too fast for the player to build everything up. I thought making more terrain would make things easier but it essentially just makes the erosion faster b/c it is global so if there is more terrain the number of blocks that are disappearing at any given moment goes up.

Here's a link to the youtube:

Anyway, I won't be posting for a couple of weeks, maybe 4, b/c I have other projects I have to work on and I break things up into 2 week chunks.

[Poya]

I'm really impressed with what you have here...it tickles my imagination

I especially like the concept of having new areas that you have to build your way to. I can just imagine amazing structures visible in the distance which you have to work hard to get to.

[msilver]

Back to working on this.

I've been playing with fluid simulation rather than erosion as the force that causes you to lose. The idea is that the water rises and falls in predictable ways so you have to build up terrain and structures that won't get flooded. I've been working on a mini prototype of the mechanic before I go full scale on the big grid I have in my game currently:

So far it seems less hopeless to the player than stopping erosion because you can focus on a small area to protect from flooding and grow from there rather than watch the whole universe dissolve.

I also have a rough tech tree I'm working on as the main goal of the game. Finally, I've been able to import .3ds files with the help of "lib3ds" Its open source under the lesser GPL which means you can add it to your project and still release it commercially. It works great so far, so if you need to load 3d meshes I strongly recommend it.

[msilver]

I got a basic tech tree working. This is only part of the final tech tree to see if its fun to play with. Generators will be used to make building easier and won't be the final game winning technology of course. It still needs play testing to tweak the costs and all.