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[WonderlandGames]

Survival of the Fittest, a light-hearted 2D sandbox RPG made in Engine 001 set in the stereotypical cavemen times with dinosaurs and stuff like that.
 
You're a man/woman who recently turned 16 and decided it was time to leave your tribe and see the rest of the island off of Pangaea you are on, and that is exactly what you do. There is not going to be a main story, to let you go explore and create your own adventures.
 
Planned features include:
 
-A wide-open, living and breathing (day/night cycle, random weather, etc.) original sandbox world to explore with quests to do, dinosaurs to beat up, loot to grab and weird people to meet.
 
-Customizable characters. Perks to choose from on every second level up, so you can choose how you want to play.
 
-Crafting system.
 
-Full sound, with sound effects for everything and lots of music.
 
-Survival! You’ll have to drink, eat and sleep to survive.
 
-Dinosaur fights! Kick dino butt!
 
-Factions… Fight for the cause you believe in or go it alone!
 
-Achievements. Gain bonus XP for doing optional tasks.
 
Follow for more updates on my progress, as well as news and more screenshots.

Site: http://wonderlandgamesblog.wordpress.com/survival-of-the-fittest/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/WDL_Games

I would love feedback and any help getting the game out there. Thanks!

[joe_eyemobi]

Looks interesting - a bit like a top-down Terraria or 2-d Minecraft.
Will your game be similar to the above, or will it have a bit of it's own flavor?

I guess if it's set in prehistoric times, then you'll be limited to the tools/weapons of that era.

[WonderlandGames]

It should feel different. It will have quests and stuff, and the world will not be procedurally-generated.

EDIT: This should probably be in the devlogs section for now. Sorry, I am new so I didn't notice.

[WonderlandGames]

I would really like some feedback on this.

[koiwai]

I would really like some feedback on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyGHsMeIjGs

[ANtY]

I don't think that the ppl in these ancient times were turning adults once they hit 18, it was much faster tho

[Nathan Cash]

 IMO the lighting system needs a bit of work. Try using a light extension to engine 001 if one exists. Besides this the health bar looks a bit awkward.

[WonderlandGames]

I don't think that the ppl in these ancient times were turning adults once they hit 18, it was much faster tho

Good point, never thought of that. When do you think they would be considered old enough?

IMO the lighting system needs a bit of work. Try using a light extension to engine 001 if one exists. Besides this the health bar looks a bit awkward.

What exactly is wrong with the lighting system, cause it might not be able to be fixed. There is no light extension.

Is the health bar too chubby? People keep saying it looks awkward but I don't know what they mean.

Thanks!

[Windybeard]

Is the health bar too chubby? People keep saying it looks awkward but I don't know what they mean.

I think it looks "awkward" because it is just sitting there, you should shrink it down a touch, it is too chubby, I would also place it inside some sort of housing or at least design some sort of cap for either end, that way the player will both know where it starts and ends. Hope that helps.

[WonderlandGames]

Okay, I will try that, thanks.

[ANtY]

I don't think that the ppl in these ancient times were turning adults once they hit 18, it was much faster tho

Good point, never thought of that. When do you think they would be considered old enough?

12, at least this was the age in Ancient Egypt so it's close enough I think

[WonderlandGames]

I guess I will choose between 12, 13 and 14. He doesn't look 12 though.

EDIT:

Progress is still going smoothly. Or perhaps, better than smoothly! I finally managed to get the combat bug fixed, making the game that much better (cause now combat works! )
 
I am continuing to add to the world, making more monsters and soon, friendly NPCs, which will likely be a focus of the coming week. A good chunk of the achievements system is now implemented as well. A lot of this week’s work went into hyping up the game and (very slowly) growing the audience. I would love it if you told your friends, tweeted about it or something! Anything would help and would be gratefully appreaciated. Of course, this is an ongoing process.
 
Like I said, in the coming week I expect to add some friendly NPCs, add more to the leveling and achievements system and the world. Unfortunately no new particularly screenshot-worthy things have come out, so nothing to show. A lot of it was background work.
 
Cheers!

EDIT:

How does the bar look now?

[WonderlandGames]

Story update!

You are on a little island off of Pangaea, and you leave when you are 16, not 18.

[WonderlandGames]

Well, it has been a long week. Most of it was spent solving my own problems (such as getting a retainer and my braces off – damn retainer) but some of it was spent working on the game, which is slowly beginning to get boring and un-fun to develop, but I will try to push ahead.
 
Besides the story changes, I did a lot of systems work and edited the HUD as well as added the foundation to a Karma system (more on that later on). As well, I fixed some bugs, changed a few numbers and lessened the lag and added the traveling merchants to interact with.
 
In the future I hope to add some more friendly NPCs as well as fix more bugs. Check out the screenshot below to see the new HUD. Apparently cavemen used money.

[WonderlandGames]

I’ve discovered the solution to the game’s (Survival of the Fittest, that is) fatal flaw around the beginning of the week, and next week I shall start to use it to rebuild the game world yet again.

The day/night system was “infinite looping”, that is, looping on and on OR a script is lagging so much it appears that it is looping. It is the first case for sure because of a stupid error on my part that wasted a lot of time and upped the development time by a month approximately. It was infinitely looping because I accidentally told it to continuously loop in the script. Derp.

Well, I am back on track now, or close to be, so the one major thing to take from this is now the game world is split up into parts instead of one continuous landmass which was a major memory hog.

The other major news is Genericopolis - Guns n’ Gangs is cancelled due to similar but not fixable technical issues, and as well, this game didn’t interest people as much as the one I am now focused on. Doesn’t matter to me. I’ve learned many a lesson the past weeks.

The achievements system was ditched because it lagged so I added a screen with all kinds of stats about how you play which I will show when it is completely done. I also made and found new graphics for houses and the ground (dirt, grass, etc.) respectfully, which are shown below.

[WonderlandGames]

Okay, so progress was slow this week as I was busy with Independent Gaming responsibilities, Easter, schoolwork, etc. but I still got a bit done.

Survival of the Fittest is finally getting work done on its crafting system. I am testing the waters, not sure how the current one I am placing will feel overall, but I can change it if necessary. Basically, it is simply a part of the pause menu right now and whether or not it expands is yet to be seen.

Map splitting is also being done and that has given me a lot of trouble but this will most likely be the last time I redo the world map. I am trying to develop (with help) a script that lets me walk from one map to the other seamlessly without hopping onto a set area as that would break the open world exploration.

Things are going alright, if slow. But no hurry, right! For now, enjoy this screenshot of the half-finished statistics screen.

[WonderlandGames]

A very good week.

Most of the work was done on world-building. I started by mapping out the game world (on a piece of white paper and a blue pen - horribly messy and not worth showing!) which is huge. The original game was seamless and was about 500X500 tiles in size (think of tiles as feet or something in the game world). Now the game world is 150X150 (approx.) X 27 separate maps. I have quite a few of them done already in terms of layout, design and scripting. I found out (with lots of help from a fine fellow named GamerDude at the Engine 001 forums) how to make movement between the maps seamless.

Some of the time was spent on the crafting system which is still underway and making good progress. You can now craft some things. Yeah!

I also developed a system where creatures can be randomly-generated as different sizes and levels of toughness (with a corresponding XP reward for each), but I apparently took it to far and had to scale it back due to this giant, pixelated snake below.



Scary… hope to not see that thing in the wild!

I will continue working on this path and will hopefully have more to show as time goes on. Thanks for continuing to support my game’s progress!

[WonderlandGames]

I have decided to do a update every two weeks to save time for development and to cut down on boring updates. This past couple weeks was a busy one. Last week multiple things happened, including a trip, and construction work on my yard. Both of these cut into my time so I didn't get much done last week but I got a lot done this week.

The world is being built and worked on still, and slowly but surely I am getting there. I am starting simple first and adding in more details later. The world is HUGE. I recently did calculations to figure it out. I based it on the fact that every tile is a foot. I multiplied the number of tiles in one map (they are all 150x150) by the number of total maps (was 27, now 26). I ended up with 585,000 tiles total. I am Canadian so I use km and metres so I converted that into metres by dividing by about 3. 195,000 square metres divided by 1000 is 195 square kilometres. To put it in comparison, a little over 5 Skyrims, not counting the size of dungeons and stuff like that. I am hoping to get some tameable rideable dinosaurs in there soon.

I also got a variety of systems working, albeit simply, such as fishing. I once again dialed-down my creature size system to stop it from creating too big of creatures.

In the next few weeks I hope to get the basis of the world down and add herb collecting and stuff like that. I unfortunately don't have any new screenshot worthy action. For now, thanks for listening!