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[Sorsy]

Hello, it's me again. Lately I don't have much time so I've been thinking about making some tiny little game to fill the void of not-finishing-anything.
This time it's nothing too ambitious. Cow Abductors is a game for Android where you control alien saucer and your goal is to abduct all cows in a level. Your enemies will be mainly FBI agents.
Lately I'm focused on learning more about game design and I thought it would be helpful if I made a diagram showing mechanics of the game.

you can find older version of the diagram for comparison here


dialog system for simple cutscenes between levels


simple AI for agents, explained here

Twitter

[Sorsy]

Hello guys. Today I added farmers to the game! How exciting! Also, the alien saucer now wobbles in the sky.

[Jeff Skyrunner]

Maybe you should add a different animations when taking farmers... an "oh noes" animation/explosion or something like that

[Sorsy]

It bothered me that the pitchfork just disappeared. Also new animation for cow and farmer, when being abducted. And farmers are stunned when you fail to pick them up.

@Jeff Skyrunner
I did another animation for farmers today. Not sure about the explosions though. Do you mean like particle effect or something like that?

[ananasblau]

All the UFOs I know have blinking lights. Fun idea, pitchforks being dropped and all

What's next, FBI agents on a stakeout?

[Sorsy]

Wuii. In this update I'm focusing on the game title itself. Just who are the Cow Abductors? Well, they are aliens. But really! Who are they? Do I know them? And do you?

I must say, it is nice to do something that is not serious. Are you kiddin' me Sorsy? Abductions by aliens are very real! And even more serious! ... I hear you say. Well, if you say so. Now you know who will work on putting that thing... into that... hole of yours.

This is something like trivia about characters you will be seeing throughout the game in like... cutscenes I guess. When you start every mission there will be Captain Egass and he will pick at random one of those who won't be available for the mission. You will then choose one from the available ones. Depending on who you choose you'll get following:

• Fid - nothing
• Kesp - quicker saucer, less health
• Eka & Ebe - 1 abducted farmer = 2 probed farmers
• Lokomu - more health, slower saucer

Also I would like some opinions on this: I was thinking about adding some mechanic that would make every level even if played repeatedly feel different. And I thought of this: maybe there would be more kinds of cows(piebald, different colours) and at the start of every level the game would choose which one you are hunting now. What do you think? It could be fun as the player would have to shift focus accordingly.

@ananasblau
The saucer is not really finnished yet. Lights are a good idea. I can confirm appearance of FBI agents in some harder level :D Thanks for your feedback ;)

[Yxven]

I don't think that changing the color of the cows you have to pick up is going to make it feel different for more than 30 seconds it takes to adjust.

[ananasblau]

Yay for the FBI.
If you wanna go crazy on the scenarios here's a few ideas. Basically everything humans do in a field:

• rock festivals
• mobsters burying a snitch
• making corn circles (how ironic is that?)
• a b-movie set with actors in alien costumes (irony overload)
• harvest cannabis
• excavate roman villas, viking houses, dinosaurs
• exchanging briefcases with glowing content or contraband like booze
• fox hunts, deer stalking etc where you have to choose between hunter or hunted
• satanic rituals at midnight
• and of course: hanky-panky

[mattestache]

Yay for the FBI.
If you wanna go crazy on the scenarios here's a few ideas. Basically everything humans do in a field:

• rock festivals
• mobsters burying a snitch
• making corn circles (how ironic is that?)
• a b-movie set with actors in alien costumes (irony overload)
• harvest cannabis
• excavate roman villas, viking houses, dinosaurs
• exchanging briefcases with glowing content or contraband like booze
• fox hunts, deer stalking etc where you have to choose between hunter or hunted
• satanic rituals at midnight
• and of course: hanky-panky

+1 for these, lol hanky-panky...

What a fun concept! 

[Sorsy]

@Yxven
The time to get through one level will be about 1-2 minutes so it's not so bad to adjust for 30 seconds. But I get that it is not so groundbreaking... I don't know man :/ Maybe choosing your pilot will be enough.

@ananasblau
Wow, thanks a bunch for a lot of crazy ideas! That is exactly what this game needs.

[Sorsy]

Like yesterday I did more things that don't have anything to do with gameplay. I created a simple dialog system, which will need a ton of work for it to look like something. Right now you can't really tell who is talking.

It loads text from external file, which will help when making translations.

[ananasblau]

Right now you can't really tell who is talking.

needs a spotlight, obviously.

[Sorsy]

More work done in the cutscene department:

That background took me more time than it should.

Now if you could bear with me and then tell me you opinion on this - I'm thinking about it as a standard Android game where you unlock levels as you go and in each level you get 1-3 stars. That is how it's made. Is there anything wrong with it you think? The star rating system is based either on score, time it took you or both. Now, in Cow Abductors you collect cows and I hate the idea that you have to do it quickly. Then again, you just collect cows and try not to be shot down by agents.
I think solution could be some kind of combo system which would score you based on your actions. For one cow you would get 100 score points. For a second one in a row you would get 150 and so on adding 50 to the score before. Now this combo could be broken by hit from the agent. And maybe you could get extra score for not being hit once or seen by the agents at the end of the game. What do you think? Am I on the right track?

[Sorsy]

Yay, today I started working on AI of the agents, who are one of your enemies.

Not really something too complicated. They just wonder around in their spawn area (big blue circle). Once they can spot you (big black circle around the saucer) they mark your position and start shooting (animation not included). If they lost you they go to the last known position and if they still can't see you they just go mind their own bussines in the spawn area.

I don't really think it's all that necessary to have it more realistic. They could for example call agents from around if they couldn't find you and start searching where they last saw you. But they don't need to be that clever. What do you think? I'm afraid that if they could communicate your position you would be able to kite all of them around. Right now it's just the one who sees you.

[Sorsy]

Hello guys, long time no see. I was quite busy actually. I tried adding shadows to the game but I failed... because Game Maker failed me. For some reason one of the blend mode I need for it to work doesn't work on devices. I already posted a question on the official forums so I hope they will come up with some solution...
But hey! I had some succes at least. I added path finding for the agents, so now they can follow you around obstacles instead of through them. Note that the fences sprites are only placeholders and also that there are flowers now!

I also wrote small article on my blog regarding AI in this game. It's just a little bit more in-depth look. Something about Game Maker and moving with physics instances along paths.

And then I was working on an icon for the game. Nothing fancy and I'm not even sure if it's the final. Looking forward to your comments!

[Sorsy]

Today I was thinking about the whole "enemy thing" since I wasn't sure what to think about it. Now I think it would be best to introduce two kinds of enemies. First, Agents. I'm not giving them too much credit since they are not really all that threatning. You can get an idea of them from the gif in the previous post. Slow walking, slow shooting. Second, Soldiers. Those will be something else. Faster moving and shooting and also able to climb over fences so they don't take that long to move around.

I editted this diagram so it's corresponding with my ideas. As you can see, farmers are no longer a threat to you. Once you capture them and "fit" them with anal probe the work for you. They will run after close agents and once they knock them out they will also pass out. Kind of one time thing with them. If they are seen doing that, agents will shoot them. That's just the way the cookie crumbles. But soldiers? Oh no, they don't take any of that. They will shoot probed farmers on-sight and won't ask questions.

[Sorsy]

Hey guys! Today I have two gifs for you. In the first one you can see the agent and the soldier enemies side by side. Soldiers climb fences like nothing and are also quicker. Pretty hard to run from them without a scrach because they shoot a lot faster than agents.

The next one shows probed farmer who knocks down he agent. Nothing fancy in animations department I guess but it works.

I'll have to work more on the shadows as some objects don't have them and on some they are offset.

[Sorsy]

Hello guys, I have some news regarding visuals in Cow Abductors. I wasn't sure about graphics in the game so I was experimenting a little bit. I kinda like the style that can be seen in the game Gods will be watching and I'm sure there are a lot more.

I think it looks soo cool and I just love it. But when I made a mockup of it it just wasn't right. I have pretty limited space on screen because that is just how mobile devices are and those characters are just too thin and tall for it. What I mean is that they are not compact enought for it to work. The old ones are in overall shape more like ellipsis while those are more like just lines (which is it's charm, but only when you can see them) so targeting them would be a pain. So that is why I tryed to improve the former style.
When I first made them it was more like a placeholder so I think it was inevitable to redo them. There wasn't anything in terms of shading or so. I guess the result image comparison will say it all so I will quit jabber about it.

Also, I googled how exactly FBI agents look like and I totally know how they look but for some reason when I first draw them I was thinking only about the word "agent" which evoked more like Matrix's Agent Smith in me. So that is why I got it confused I guess. What a flop! To remedy this I made two versions right away:

I guess the female version looks more like the male with a wig... I'm not really sure how to make it look more like a female apart from making whole new run cycle and I'm definitely not keen on that so I will leave it at that.

When I was thinking about more types of enemies I just had to remember Men in Black. I'm not sure how I would implement them in the game. It just seems like a cool easter egg.

That is all for today. I'm currently working on menus apart from reshading animations. The menus are not in any way done though so there is not much to see and show. When that is done I will release something like an alpha version for you to try and play with. Thanks for your attention!

[Sorsy]

Did some more work on visuals. Trying to find a good balance between colours is not an easy task.

the original colours


new colours #1

I'm still not sure about it. The original didn't gave me the feeling that it's night out there so the new colours are doing it much better. On the other side it seem a little bit less clear what is going on. I also tried version without outlines. The first image is just #1 without outlines and second is pushing background more back so the important objects are more visible.

new colours #2


new colours #3

What do you guys think? It would really help to hear some other opinion on this. I personaly like #3. What about you?

[Thomas_]

I prefer #3 too, for sure.
Btw, nice gfx, hilarous aliens and fun gameplay.
I'll watch your game closely.
Good luck with it!