TIGSource Forums

EDIT: Ok, it looks like others have much nicer-looking thread starters, so let's adjust this a bit!

EDIT 2: MEH, I'll select this instead!

EDIT 3: DUHH, I suck.

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Description BWAAADLERGH! After all, I decided to change my cartridge to another cool one. AGAIN! Badooks, I can't seem to decide between all these good cartridges! I just changed my cart for the third time, how ridiculous is that. Anyway, my idea will be a sort of a real-time strategy where you dig into a planet to search for... something? Maybe you'll also protect it from all sorts of enemies. We'll see. Prepare for some procedurally generated sand snow planets, folks.		Inspired by (http://famicase.com/08/softs/35.jpg) (http://famicase.com/08/softs/35.jpg)

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I'm really sorry about this. :(

This is quite a popular case, by the looks of it. Good luck, and don't steal my ideas! :) gah

Will it implement some kind of tower-defense ?! ... that would be cool

:tearsofjoy:

There hasn't been a Hempuli game i didn't like.  I can't wait!

(http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3836/vuori.png)

This image may need some explaining.
I've worked on stuff for some 6-7 hours now, and everything seems to be going fine! The blue muzzle you see in the pic is actually a map of the mountains the player is going to scale. The red thing is supposed to mark the 'highest' point on the map, i.e. the summit you have to tackle. I've been playing with stuff, and currently you can draw lines to the heightmap and get that kind of nice statistic showing the changes in height on that path.
 The idea of the game will be to plan a path for each day, using a waypoint system, and then try to get to the end of the path before time/health runs out. The actual climbing would probably be done in a platformer-like manner, where the height changes would be reflected to the platform heights. Also I think of including some item-management for special feeling of survival, and some dangerous creatures etc.

(The mountain generator creates really boring mountains currently. Gotta do something about that!  >:()

Hah, that's looking awesome man.

(http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/985/vuori2.png)

Getting somewhere! Not far, though. Looking for a good path is quite funny, though I have to make the pathmaking a lot simplier. Also, since no mountain is scaled in one day, I'll probably have to put some restrictions to the distance you can walk a day. There'll probably be at least some kind of a counter that'd count the time of the day. I also thought that there could be weather effects forecasted for each day, so you'd have to think like "there'll be snow during the mid-day, so maybe I shouldn't take such a hard path for that time".

As a rock climber I've often contemplated the idea of making a game out of climbing, but my conclusion has always been "it miiiiight be possible, but I can't see how to make it not suck".  Your stuff is looking great though, I'm gearing up to be proved completely wrong  :)

Im loving the mix between strategy and platform mechanics.

I have a suggestion for injuries.

Say you get bitten by a snake half way though the path, that might start some form of pulsating sound. and every 5 seconds a letter pops up on the screen somewhere, which you have to press, say G. So you while trying to move on, every 5 seconds you now also have to press G within in 1 second, else your charachter makes this "oooow" sound and looses his grip, and depending on where you are currently clibing, that might result in falling down several meters, causing another injury forcing you to now have to press E as well every 8 seconds.....  ... so now you again, try to get a grip and move on, while managing the pain and injuries. Some injuries might fade out after a while, mainly being pain. other might worsen (unless an antidote is applied for example), forcing you to press more and more often up until the point where you have to constantly tap G not to die while still trying to get higher.

Just one more checkpoint, and you can rest and tend your wounds..... just 10 more meters!

you can imagine the chaos that can ensue after a series of unlucky steps...

The idea's fine, but I'm not sure if I like the idea of pressing buttons repeatedly to 'stand' the pain. That might make the game unnecessarily confusing, unless I greatly simplified the controlling system I have in mind. Thanks for the idea, though, I'll ponder about it! :)

I just got a simple statistic thing working, so now you get a nice picture showing the changes in the height for the next day. You can see the same statistic in the two screenshots I posted, but the really hard thing I had to implement today was to get it to be always the same width, with the values relative to the length of the course etc. Now I can just draw a huge route through the mountains, and the graph keeps its width and just adjusts to the new route.

(http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/3910/simplej.png)

I just added a system that generates some walls according to the height changes. There's no gameplay yet, but it's a start!

(http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/2053/ukkeli.gif)(http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/2053/ukkeli.gif)(http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/2053/ukkeli.gif)

Working on the basic engine currently. I'm not sure how the climbing will be done, but prepare for some sort of hookshot system. Sexy Hiking?

(http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/4365/guyp.png)

Oooh, the platform engine is in and the guy is animated! I've always wanted to do that kind of 'cold breathing', where white steam comes out of the character's mouth!

Man, I'm up against Hempuli?  :I

Looking good so far.  If your LD entry is any indicator then this is a game to look out for.

I always love the puffs of breath you get in the cold. Can't wait to see that in motion in-game.

(http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/5474/climb.png)

Climbing is there! It needs a lot of work, still, but the basics are finished. I really gotta add some hazards like birds, stalactites and lumps of snow - the climbing might become a tad boring over time. Just a tad.

The climbing method I implemented isn't very good, after all. I gotta think of some altrnatives. It's a bit hard to find way of ascending vertical walls that wouldn't be boring and still give the sense of mountain climbing!

Maybe if you changed the perspective, so that the character is standing in front of the wall. Then you could add a mechanic to find hand-holds and sturdy platforms along the mountain face. That might be fun- you'd have to find the best paths to reach the top.

Ooh, this game looks neat! I like the simple, lo-res style.

I like Soulliard's suggestion. You could mix normal platforming with climbing with the character's back to the camera, using all the elements of real rock-climbing. If you do that you should also add a way to move the camera and scout ahead so we can plan our climbs.

Hmm. It seems that I can't come up with a good way of climbing. I'll look into the suggestion you gave, Soulliard.

I was thinking about doing a game on this cartridge and my idea was something like what Soulliard suggested. I wanted the climbing to be seen from the back of the player and you had to plot the course with your mouse. Either you'd plot the entire course and it would be sort of a visual puzzle. Or you'd have to click on things for your feet and hands to use them. If you clicked on something that you couldn't hold on to you'd get a chance to click on something else to gain footing again before falling.

Something like that. It seems I suck at explaining things today but I hope you understand.

I guess I'll change the game to the view Soulliard suggested. The planning would still be there, and it wouldn't be just climbing - on less steep parts, there could be platforms sticking out from the wall, allowing you (and some creatures) to stand on them, and in steeper areas you'd just have to climb. Of course there needs to be surfaces one can't climb, like ice or some 'rough surface', and surfaces / weather effects that make climbing and overall behaving harder.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone, I guess this game'll head somewhere after all!

Hempuli‽ did you need any music for the game by the way? I may have incidentally made some music based on the idea of a wall climbing game. There's a story behind this but to sum it up, my memory is just really bad. Anyway, send me a PM or something and I can show you the demo.

badoomph! No luck with that project. I couldn't really bring myself to work on it, so I decided to start working on something else entirely. So, now the game is called Planetary cavity syndrome, and it'll be about digging a planet. And something.

www.hempuli.com/planet.exe
(http://a.imageshack.us/img149/3968/planetx.png)
(I have to add more layers, currently it's a bit too tight)

Aww, that's a real shame.  Even if it does give further evidence to my opinion that "you can't make a game about climbing" I'm still disappointed to know it.

New game looks like it has some interesting potential though :)  I'm sure you're aware, but the colours are iiiick!

www.hempuli.com/planet.exe

Updated with bigger planet and possibility to create walls.
I'm not totally sure to which direction I want to take this - My first idea was to make a lemmings-stylish RTS/rescource management game where you dug into the planet, defended against monsters and collected rescources. However, there'd also be the interesting possibility of a roguelike-like. The level would be a bit small for that, though, but I think the different view to the level might make it interesting. There's one thing that I'm absolutely sure of: there'll be no arrow key movement, unless I find a way to rotate the whole thing. It's very confusing to try to remember the 'swapped' controls on the other side of the planet. However, with some pathfinding, I could make a rather nice mouse-based thing. Hmm. All suggestions would be welcome(d?)!

(http://a.imageshack.us/img202/7206/dootc.png)

What's wrong with rotating the level? That's the solution I would be shooting for.

Love your games Hempuli, this one is looking great too.

the thing wrong with rotating the level is that it's not supported in this case :-[ . I'd happily implement it otherwise.

But Mountain Climbers...

OK, I actually found a way to do the rotation. Now I should just think what I want to do with this.

Rogue-like with RTS elements. Defend a generated planet against generated waves of foes, with a variety of tools (building tool, destruction tool, offense tool, exploration tool?). Mix the best parts of both of your ideas!

Try some stuff like the winner LD17 entry Gia-something. I think those general concepts could fit well in your game.

OK, I'll take that spherical view away temporarily, it's really confusing to design the level with it. I'll incorporate it to the final product, though!

So, I guess the game will be like a bare-bones version of Dwarf Fortress meets lemmings - you collect rescources and fight underground beasts in a mouse-driven interface-thing.

Ohh-kay. I've made a really simple pathfinding thing to test the movements of the characters. There were some weird problems assigning the ID's, but those should be gone now. I fear that the game requires .NET framework to run. :(

(http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/7627/shoopwoop.png)

www.hempuli.com/path.exe

It should be able to support some 50+ units.

Apparently it DOESN'T require the .NET framework. Eh. Good.

Anyway, today I implemented hauling. The blue guys now carry boxes around into nice piles on their own. You can also command the red ones to haul if you want. The haulers always want to return to their 'base', so they wont stay in place if you command them about. I think I'll make an on/off switch that can decide if the character does hauling. Also it might be cool to have a specific 'hauler' -class. Slaves? :D

www.hempuli.com/path.exe

(http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/6569/haul.png)

(http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5097/landz.png)

the game now creates nice landscapes! Next I have to do some construction/rescource stuff to see if the hauling breaks the whole thing. Also I have to add underground caves. It may be that I have to remove the hauling altogether and instead use just some sort of rescource counters, because there can be (and probably will be) annoying bugs related to getting the resources to the building sites. We'll see. I'm quite happy with the project this far :>

Just a thought, but could you do a similar pixel-noise filter on the background too?  I think that would be awesome.

Excellent idea. Thanks! :)

(http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4769/anygood.png)

Any good?

Awesome!

Losing some contrast between background and foreground near the bottom though, maybe you should scale it to a light desaturated purple instead of gray?

Not that the aesthetics are as important as the gameplay though haha.

Looks pretty cool Hempuli! Go for it!

(http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/9935/digig.png)

Progressing nicely! The colourful blocks are designations for what should be digged. The colours represent different blocks - green is a tile that needs a ladder after digging, red needs a ladder too, unless the corridor it is in is only one tile in height. The blue one (and yellow, which can't be seen here) is just normal wall to be digged. I colour-coded them because I want to ensure that the astronauts wont trap themselves too easily while digging. Kudos for HangedMan and Fartron for the suggestions on how to plan it out.

There's something rather annoying going on with the slope tiles which I have to figure out - if you command an unit somewhere, it may occasionally get stuck to the slopes, which is a result of the tricky stuff related to the shape of the slopes (they're basically half-tiles, and because the pathfinder is strictly tilebased... so yeah).

I should also test some buildings, to see if the astronauts (the brown ones are 'slaves', they are only for carrying stuff) can manage to prioritize it out and get all the necessary rescources from the stockpile.

There's lots of stuff to do, but it's coming up really well! :)

just might want to rethink that :P im sure its unintentional, lookin good so far, sucks to see you abandoned climb tho :(

Well yeah, I thought of them more as being on the rusty side.
I hope we get some good climbing games out of this compo. I guess I'll eventually try the climbing game idea again with better ideas.

This is looking really interesting!

I love the direction this project is taking, the color you choose, the visual simplicity ...

Cancelled? :(

 :'(

Just like my favorite TV shows. Is nothing sacred? :(

Would you finish one (or all) of these games if i said please?   :beg: