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[oodavid]

I'd seriously consider playing Desert Strike before ruling out an "open world" in these games they have a big map within which are a series of missions that see the player visiting the same areas time and time under different circumstances.

In that manner I think you could feasibly create a rich and interesting world at about the same cost as a series of levels with re-used assets...

[Sorsy]

So I played the Desert Strike and I must say it's a really good game. I can see why Cow Abductors reminds you of this game. I would say it's the movement and that ladder/hook thing.

I really like those smaller worlds with missions in them but I'm not sure if it would work for mobile. You see, when you play on mobile device you don't usually have a lot of time. One level in Desert Strike could take maybe 20-30 minutes from my experience. So this means I would have to make a save system but I'm not sure how that would work otherwise it would be frustrating to start always all over. Maybe when you are not attacked you would fly into an orbit and the game would save? Or how do you think it could work? Save after completed mission? Small levels just seem ideal for mobile devices but maybe those more open levels could differentiate the game from others and make it more attractive?

What do you guys think? I'm seriously indecisive because on one hand I have comfortable building of small levels and on the other the challenge of making something bigger and then fill it with objectives. I do like challenges but I'm not sure if it's worth it. And as oodavid said, it's not really question of assets since I will have to make a lot of them either way.

[Sorsy]

Hello guys. Today I was working a little bit on tilesets. This is no way finished and a lot of things are missing but you can kind of see a part of bigger rural area as I think I'll go with bigger areas with multiple missions. I need a lot of things to do like:
benches, lamps, wells,
signposts, cars, more trailer houses,
sheds, tiles for grain fields, hoses,
corn fields, droppings, trees and so on and on... It's a lot but I think it will be worth it.

I did one more trailer house and caravan from both sides:

It is maybe too contrasting so I will have to tune the colours down a bit.

[oodavid]

Looking awesome man! Glad you had a play of Desert Strike, I enjoyed that game a lot as a kid, and yeah remember the pacing being slow and occasionally irritating when having to pass through heavily armoured areas.

Have you ideas on what kind of missions you will have? I know you mentioned a points-based system, but I have an idea of my own:

I think you should have a global "fear" level that you can control through your actions, as the fear rises, the general populace become more alert and eventually the forces are called. The fear also dictates your bonus multiplier, so it's a trade-off.

You can increase the fear by: being sighted by disreputable sources (kids, drunks, alien-crackpots) or being partially sighted by normal folk (farmers, normal folk), if they take a photo / video then it's going to increase the fear moreso. Maybe you could upgrade the ship to have photo evasion abilities like "blurriness" or "camouflage" that modify the look of your ship at the time of being viewed.

Edit: Goal ideas:

• Abduct Cows / People
• Return Mutant Cows / People (with implants or GM)
• Re-Abductions - if the Cows / People have names or stats there will be a sense of enjoyment / attachent
• Instil Fear - get photographed and get away with it

[Playaction]

Love the look of this. The shadows adds are really nice!

[Sorsy]

to Playaction
Yep, I think so too, thanks!

Hello guys, it's been quite some time I did one of those. I had to do some personal stuff around school. What a load of fun. This however let me think about the game some more and let some ideas ripen.

I really like your idea of global fear, oodaivd, so I was working with that. Not necessarily fear but more like "awareness" of cow abductors being there. It complicates things a bit. But I think it is for the good of the game. Before it was more like a puzzle game, where you had to combine your actions in such a way that you get the best score. Now it will be like a simulation, where you have to choose either to be really stealthy or be sure to not be surprised when there is army going after you.
This awareness will rise when someone will successfully call the police or send a photo of you. This moves us from 50s-70s to our day and age, where everyone have a smart phone with them. There are however ways you can permit civilians from telling on you. First you can always abduct those who are calling the police. And second, you can "catch" the photo that is being uploaded to cloud. I have to think some more about how will they choose what to do because catching a photo is easier than abducting someone - you can just tap the icon near them unlike actually having to hover over them.

So your awareness is rising and finally it's from multiple sources so the police force doesn't think it's someone crazy or just a prank call and they send in a patrol. I'm not sure if I should make like an entry point on every level, so you know where to expect them or if they should just be visible on some kind of minimap. Either way, if they confirm you they will call an army and this is where the fun starts. Those guys will be there until you finish the map, because they already know you are there.

That being said it's clear I needed more animations for taking photos and calling so here they are. Also you can see some palette swapping being done ingame so I can just make one set of animations. This however doesn't work too well on mobile (it swaps just some of those colours) so maybe for that I will have to sacrifice some variation if I don't find fix for that.

They run faster than they should.

Also I'm playing with an idea of making this also for PC because it's starting to be quite a big project and I had some people asking about it.

[Playaction]

They are definetly taking selfies, I can tell by the (very nice) lighting effect. So they should turn their back to the UFO 

[bounds]

Great concept and execution so far, I'm getting a wonderful 'Sensible Software' vibe from the screenshots/gif's.

A lot of interesting ideas for missions has been suggested, one thing that popped into my head would be a rescue mission where you save fellow aliens having crashlanded in Roswell while being pursued by the military .