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[astrospoon]

"The spring would come late, and summer would never seem to really arrive, with the winter snows appearing as early as September. The next winter would be brutally cold, and the next spring didn't happen at all, with above-freezing temperatures only being reached for a few days during August and the snow never completely melting. After that, the summer never returned: the snow simply accumulated and accumulated, deeper and deeper, as the continent came to be covered with glaciers and we were forced to flee southward."

In Heat Line, you have just been informed that military assisted evacuations to the south from the New Northern Territories have been discontinued. However, a heating pipeline - the "Heat Line" - will remain active for 2 more months. Installed to provide warmth to traveling parties, it leads to an evacuation station that provides voyage to the South Sea Islands. Using the family's trusty RV, you must guide your pregnant wife, young daughter and son to safety before escape becomes impossible.

Heat Line's gameplay will be a futuristic mix of Oregon Trail, a Rogue-like, Elite, and Zelda.

Stay warm. Stay alive. Stay on the line. And save your family.

Note: opening quote is slightly edited text from a site on global warming.



Early picture of some randomly generated terrain so far. The ice and water graphics in the above screenshot are (obviously) temporary. I also still need to add many more random details to liven up things (extra rocks, twigs, piles of snow etc..)

[george]

Heat Line's gameplay will be a futuristic mix of Oregon Trail, a Rogue-like, Elite, and Zelda.

Stay warm. Stay alive. Stay on the line. And save your family.

hell yes! Keeping my eye on this.

[MalcolmLittle]

Wow, this could be incredible! The premise for the game is totally intriguing and playing as climate disaster refugees is just too cool.

[shrimp]

Sounds and looks fantastic - good luck!!

[JaJitsu]

This is looking pretty cool.

[dspencer]

I will play this, when it is done.

[Hempuli‽]

Sounds like very a huge project. I really hope you manage to finish this!

[astrospoon]

Well, the game design requires the RV for the family to roll around in, and I didn't feel like hand spriting 16 (or even 8 ) different directions of such a big object. So I buckled in and learned some low-poly Blender modeling this weekend, after checking out just about every other cheap/free option as well. It was a bit of a bumpy road, but I think I have a pretty decent grasp of things now:



Vroom, vroom. Tomorrow I'll actually be implementing it in the engine, instead of just placing a static picture of it in the level

Sounds like very a huge project. I really hope you manage to finish this!

The concept is huge, but I am actually keeping the game play mechanics as simple as possible and still get the ideas across.

Also, you may have seen me post in other places about non-violent games. This game is going to not be a bloodfest (sorry if anyone was hoping for that). There will be freezing to death, and sickness, and hunting animals for fur and food. But "combat" won't be taking place. (ie- nothing worse than Oregon Trail) It is possible that you may have to *flee* from violence in the game, but the premise is that you are a regular dude with a regular family trying to escape alive.

I'm thinking of it as an exciting PG-13 movie that focuses on the relationships of the characters and their struggles. I'm really going to try to make the player feel responsible for the lives of the rest of the family, with real consequences if you fail them.

[Bree]

This looks absolutely amazing. The art style really seals the deal for me.

[Tom Sennett]

Great idea, looks great already.

What are you making it in?

[astrospoon]

I'm using MMF2 Hardware Accelerated, but all of the coding is done in LUA that interfaces with the MMF engine. I wanted the extra control I could get by doing this, and it should also make porting it (somewhat) easier if that even happens at some point.

The screens above are at 100%, but they are just sections of screen shots. The game actually runs at 1280x1024. There are some HUDs and stuff that aren't done yet that will fill some of it, but I also wanted to give a kind of lonely empty feeling by leaving the player nice and small in the vast wilderness.

[Derek]

Hurray!

This game is going to not be a bloodfest (sorry if anyone was hoping for that).

There's no need for parentheticals like this.  I'll bet pretty much everyone on this forum is behind you 100% for making a non-violent game.

[dspencer]

DAMMIT. I WANTED GORE.

no, what I -AM- angry about is how this wont work on my computer. But please please please finish this, anyway! It sounds REALLY cool.

[astrospoon]

There's no need for parentheticals like this.  I'll bet pretty much everyone on this forum is behind you 100% for making a non-violent game.

I know I just had realized that a bunch of the game I had listed in the first post (Rogue, Elite, Zelda) involve killing/shooting/stabbing, so I figured I would hone the definition of the game a bit more. Forcing myself to post coherently here about the game as I work has been really helpful so far at keeping me on track though. I think I was partly reminding myself not to give in and just start adding guns when I am having trouble finding the fun in less explored play mechanics.

To be honest, I was also a bit worried someone would call me out for being so adamant about non-violence in games, and then posting a dev thread about what (admittedly) looks like a standard top down action/adventure game so far.

[george]

I know I just had realized that a bunch of the game I had listed in the first post (Rogue, Elite, Zelda) involve killing/shooting/stabbing, so I figured I would hone the definition of the game a bit more.

it's funny though, because when you listed those influences the first thing I thought of was procedurally generated + multiple modes of play + exploration + questing, and that's what I reacted to. Though on second thought while yeah, those games center around combat, I don't think they necessarily say 'combat'.

Plus Oregon Trail.

[Alec S.]

This is looking pretty awesome.  I'll keep my eye on this.

[Hempuli‽]

I was surprised that this is MMF 2. That's cool.

I order you to create a white fog-sprite that appears from the character's mouth when he breathes.

[astrospoon]

I order you to create a white fog-sprite that appears from the character's mouth when he breathes.

Oh you better believe it! With so much of the gameplay centered around heat, there is going to be clouds of steaming air all over the place. Especially if you manage to puncture the heat line itself!

Today I managed to get my collision code cleaned up and ironed out. When something gets collided with, it gets a function called on it right away to inform it of the type of collision occurring so it can react accordingly. ie... physical collision of X force, or heat collision of X temperature, etc..)

To test this, when the little guy walked into a tree trunk the tree would flicker and burp in response. It is my go to sound effect to register if something is triggering correctly

Also, how does everyone feel about the size of the character sprite, given that the final game will be 1280x1024? Should I move up the size of everything a little bit? It'll make navigating (especially in the RV) a bit tougher since you won't see as much around you, but it would probably make things look a little better and make things like wild berry hunting a little easier to see. Opinions?

[JaJitsu]

I thought the size of the character was fine.
I don't see why you would need to change it.

[shrimp]

I would kinda like him to be bigger, just to appreciate the character a bit better, but maybe the small character sprite makes the wilderness look bigger? Dunno.

Really looking forward to see how the survival/foraging stuff works out, since I'm planning on implementing the same kind of stuff myself.