TIGSource Forums

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(http://25.media.tumblr.com/69dc3a067132730ec65d1a1540899912/tumblr_mg9g3sQ7cw1qg347wo1_1280.png)

So whats this all about?
Reprisal is a RTS god game inspired by Bullfrog's classic Populous. I spent many hours playing that game on my Amiga 500 totally in awe of its isometric pleasures and watching little people roam my landscapes. I wanted to produce this game, Reprisal, as a labour of love and share the fun I had all those years ago playing the original while adding my own twist.

Early game footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzA5Wxo9tyE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzA5Wxo9tyE)

Who's making this?
Just me and a talented guy called Eric who's made all the music. I set out at the beginning of the year 2011 vowing at long last to make a game. I'm a graphic designer who's worked in digital design for a number of years playing with Flash ever since it was called 'splash'. I always wanted to make a game with a strong visual style but be nostalgic to past gaming eras. I've been learning AS3 as I've been developing and reading vast amounts on A.I and isometric maths!

Where's it going to go?
It's being made for play over the web in a normal Mac and PC browser's that supports flash. I have been considering a port for touch devices but this will need some serious dev work and I feel I need to concentrate on getting this version finished first.

Background
“You were once a powerful leader of a distance tribe with the ability to harness power totems of nature. With these powers you guided your people.

Now you have been cast aside as three tribes who are at war have taken control and scattered your people and totems across distant lands.

You must now guide your people to become a powerful tribe once again, collecting your power totems throughout the lands and overthrowing those tribes that stand in your way.

Begin your Reprisal to reclaim your history …”

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/ea4a4b7da53665e3b698c17da8f8e703/tumblr_mlrfgxj6uc1qg347wo1_1280.jpg)

Reprisal now on Steam Green Light, Vote here!!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=141030686


[UPDATED LINK 04.03.2012]
Current work in progress build can be viewed at this link:
http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/playreprisal/

If everything goes smoothly and I find the hours that I need then this will be completed by end of the year 2011! More looking like the Q1 of 2012!  :)

Hope you enjoy it.

I absolutely LOVE this art style. I'm a populous newbie though and can't figure it out.

This looks ace!

+1 on the art style. This looks gorgeous.

Thanks for the comments guys, @grayfox88 yes it needs some serious tutorial / instructions :)

This looks like a whole pile of KICK ASS!  8)

Played the current demo and I must say this game is extremely engaging.  It is also quite nice to look at.  I know your icon states 70% completed, but I was wondering how far out you consider it.  Anyway, the gameplay seems very polished.  (And since you mentioned it first: I could see this being a perfect match for any of the wide range of mobile devices existing these days.)

Keep up the good work.

Eli.

The graphical style is super amazing! I love it when you can just look at one screenshot and think "I wanna play this!". You've succeeded with that!

The red and orange shapes in the screenshot, what are they? Explosions?  :eyebrows:

This looks totally awesome. Following.

I'm ravaging a village right now! It would be nice if the arrow keys went straight up and down and not se,sw, ne, nw. Pretty fun so far :)

looks nice.

still want to remind you to read the rules first: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=9.0

Really nice looking game.  Instructions would be nice, as it took me a little while to figure out how to do anything, but pretty cool so far.

I love this. Those graphics are adorable, especially the little guys, and I'm a sucker for extreme depth of field.

Oh my God


ed: I just wanna run through those islands. I love the presentation, and the powers. But, what's the plan for the game-game? it's still rather simple.

Great style, love the pixel art with the slight blur. Mechanics are a bit confusing, though.

Had a good play around with the game today during my lunch break.  Cool beans  :coffee:.  A bit of feedback though, I found it difficult to tell which ground tile I was targetting with the spells, the targetting reticule doesn't make it very clear and I felt like I was often fighting against the tile snapping rather than it working for me.  I think perhaps high-lighting the entire selected tile might make it more obvious exactly what you're aiming at.

Thanks for all the feedback and comments!

@Gainsworthy the final game will be a lot harder as the CPU players will start to attack and also unleash their own powers on your land. I'm putting a lot of work into the A.I balancing at the moment to give each of the 3 other tribes their own traits.

@motorherp thank you, yes I'll be looking into ways of making it more obvious which tile your on.

Just generally though, yep instructions will be added and hand holding to explain the basic machanics. I'm glad it pressing some buttons out there  ;D

Dude, it's pressing all of my buttons. At once. I'm making that weird beeping noise that dodgy keyboards make, it's kind of annoying my family.


I've never played* the original Populous** but I do love Populous 3. There's just something joyous about watching your people potter around, build little houses, dance around campfires and subsequently burn another village to the ground. Also, terraforming. Man. Love terraforming.

So, naturally, getting a seriously similar vibe off this, it's gorgeous.

The reason I asked the game-game question is that I'm a little worried about 3 tribes unleashing Terrorform on one another. Contingency against the other spells is fine, but at the moment, all I have to do is carve lines wherever an enemy house is being built. Are you planning on making it more expensive, or having a range of influence or something? I just see it getting chaotic at the moment. Unless, of course, chaotic is what you're going for. In which go for it.

All the best with this, I'll be watching it closely. Have you worked on any other games I can play in the mean-time?  :)

*_HERESY
**HERESY

I second this question.  After toying with it some more I've witnessed this exact same issue.  I'm assuming you have a plan for this? I would also think a range of influence would make sense - maybe slightly outside of your village (or whatever you're calling it.)

Eli.

I agree with everyone here, this is pretty and I like it.

On a more technical note, mind talking about how you're doing your blur?

Are you assuming that because of the near-fixed depth you can just do a bottom to top blur knowing that the height of objects will make little if any difference?

Or do you actually have height and depth values per object for an accurate blur? For instance: Will the top of a tree be slightly more blurry then the ground pixels beside it?

I can't tell from the screen shot. And the pretty factor is too distracting to analyze.  ;D

Also:

I just played your game for almost 1.5 hours. I really like it.   :handthumbsupL:

Ah, my bad, I left in the ability to raise and lower land outside your populants range. You can only raise and lower land if one of your houses or populants are in the view port. This stops you from going and drowning CPU players outside your range!

The final maps will be weighted, the 3 islands in the demo are put together quite quickly. Thanks again.

Now thank makes more sense.  You've certainly got a more intense game on your hands now then.

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/12282004907/1/tumblr_lu34a5fmwI1qg347w)

Some updates to the engine adding more particle systems (v0.3). 'Fire rain' now has some impressive earth scorching effects. Sprite walk cycle animations have been tweaked. A new bitmap selecting system has also been added behind the scenes allowing different world environments such as snow, rain, desert etc. Great more work!

This game is boss.  Could you make the tile-selection cursor vaguely outline the tile?  I have trouble telling which tile I'm on with all the elevation differences...  Also there needs to be a rule about terror-forming on enemy territory because as it is I can just sink the enemy without even approaching them.

Ahh, that's the stuff! Already trickier.

Funnily enough, I left the game for an hour-or-so whilst I had lunch, and when I returned, the entire map was covered in land, positively full of red buildings, interspersed with swathes of ruined buildings and burnt land. Two of my palaces remained.

Needless to say, it was pretty odd.

As in you through it was a bug or something? :)

Awesome, I'll check it out as soon I get to my PC! I looove the style!

Oh no, it was more astonishing. The mechanics going on behind the game allow it to play and change itself - and beat your ass when one isn't paying attention.

The swathes of destruction were the strangest bit.

Though it does bring to mind - what are your thoughts on natural decay? It seems that houses build land (when the flags go up?), but maybe land could sink if it's damaged, deforested and bordered by water?

Also I have no idea what trees do. They're super pretty though.

love art, love game  :toastL: :toastR:

It's a nice looking, fun game.  I found it a little confusing at first (possibly because I've never played populous) and as has been mentioned before it can be hard to tell which ground tile you are actually over.  I also found it easy to disrupt the enemy just by sticking a bloody great mountain wherever they were trying to build, however the fireball, lightning spells etc don't seem to actually have much effect.  Sometimes I could terraform the enemy land and sometimes I couldn't, it wasn't entirely clear why.  However, I'm guessing that these are issues which will be adressed anyway as the game develops.

Friday, Day 224 into development.

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/12644045808/1/tumblr_lui7qtCBED1qg347w)

So I decided to quickly do a little round up. Looking at Mine Craft today I realise how easily the game could have taken on some of its game play mechanics. The early engine for Reprisal was based on a 'block' generated landscape (see above image) and was very fast to create.

Wanting to move it towards the current angular less block feel did take a fair bit of thinking about, maths and code but from a design point of view I think its working a treat. I do however like the idea of making players mine or gather resources to let them build and terror-form land rather than waiting for mana collection. I'll be thinking about this a bit more as there is a possible angle here...

In other news been addressing some usability UI issues to help you locate which tile your on easily. This was brought up in feedback from this forum.

Hope to get my head down with a new playable release update soon.

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/12879139676/1/tumblr_lur6jsliaI1qg347w)

++ Playable Island 4 ‘Big Freeze’ released [v0.4] ++
http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/yiro9384j01/ (http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/yiro9384j01/)

Another beta island has been released to mark a new release of the Reprisal engine. Island 4 - ‘Big Freeze’ supports some early versions of new terrain types.

(http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/blog/element_1.gif)

Various bug issues have been fixed and you will be able to play with a new power on island 4 - ‘Big Freeze’, but you will have to find that! Don’t forget you can gather populants by placing and gathering them with your ‘Waypoint’ marker power.  :)

(http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/blog/element_2.gif)

Pretty tumblr Dev blog can also be found:
http://mlmgamedev.tumblr.com/ (http://mlmgamedev.tumblr.com/)

LURV IT. LURV U.

Thanks! :D

For those that are interested I've posted a video showing land in-game bits and bobs.

You can watch it here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzA5Wxo9tyE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzA5Wxo9tyE)

(http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/blog/grab.jpg)

Haven't played much more past stage 1 yet, but I had to throw my 2 cents in after my unintelligible lolspeak post before.

pros
-art style is catching. I like the way the sprites move and the interface is colorful and easy to look at. Great use of DOF to create a focal point, something I like to see since it's a decidedly retro-style game (but it doesn't mean that it cant' have modern effects/mechanics!)
-gameplay is super-simple. Easy to control, but even though others who have said they couldn't understand how to complete objectives, I had little trouble getting there. Still, I can see how the lack of helps can make the experience kind of confusing.
-dynamic change. I like how the towns and cities grow by themselves based on the amount of land you give them. It feels alot like an old win95 game called "Baldies 95" (back in the day when games had the OS attached. LOL!) which required both land and people to have them grow and thus produce bigger and better things. It gives me a sense a mystery and wonder, hoping that the little huts I help plan will eventually turn into mighty fortresses.

cons
-interface is a bit imprecise. also theres this issue of being able to raise mountains and then flatten them to create a huge amount of flat land for half the cost of raising it square by square. I don't know if its intentional, but it might have been missed, because it does make sense that point-raising would raise the land around it a la SimCty 4. But it seems exploitable.
-it's too...easy? Well. I dunno. Haha

misc.
-not much gameplay. It's a prototype/WIP, so I imagine you're still fleshing this out. I'm aware that the primary mechanic is this indirect control of what happens, but I'm hoping that it incorporates some amount of direct control or perhaps an evolution of your town/fighting force (or peace force) via a series of choices outside each individual map. I guess the closes thing I can imagine is how SPORE allowed you to characterize your "tribe" via its actions, and thus unlocked new actions (but locked you into a path). It adds a sense of consequence and maybe could introduce new gameplay choices for the player.
-no opposing gods. Right now the game is pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and because there are no real dynamic elements aside from the other tribe, you can take your sweet time building a pretty unstoppable dudeforce. Maybe a note from "From Dust" can be taken to introduce a kind of dynamic obstacle that messes with your towns, like a volcano or tsunami that will periodically try and shake things up, that you have to "defend" against.

There you go! Otherwise, this is looking great and super fun so far. Played it for quite a bit last night!

Thanks for the feedback, In response to one of the points raised ...


Yep the other tribes will be unleashing their own powers against you. I'm just working on the A.I for this. The routine will allow the CPU players to show an 'interest' in a part of the map and then depending on the CPU's own mana score will take action by unleashing a power. The biggest thing will be getting the balance right as it will be kinda bonkers when your up against 3 CPU players! Rest assured there will be a lot of play testing.

(http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/blog/ai001.gif)

Started working on the CPU player’s A.I for controlling and unleashing their own powers against you. This is going to dramatically ramp up the toughness factor to conquer islands with each CPU player having their own play style. I’m not going to go into too much detail and bore you all with the in’s and out’s but the A.I looks for ‘intresting’ areas of the game area and weighs up what it should do depending on what it finds! Watch this space…

** Update made to demo link [v0.5] includes early A.I routines **
http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/yiro9384j01/ (http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/yiro9384j01/)

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/13871653169/1/tumblr_lvu5h0jZXv1qg347w)

Been more updates in game play. 'Twister' power is almost finished off and will be in the next beta build update. This proved very difficult as plotting dust points and converting to Isometric coords needed some serious head scratching maths!

Tweaks have also been made to the A.I. and now providing a more challenging game. An additional land type, Desert, has also been added. Expect to see this in the new Beta update due to land within the week!

Build 0.6 released … with ‘HD’ 800 X 600 game view!
http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/yiro9384j01/ (http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/yiro9384j01/)

The full conversion isn’t finished so some of the dialogue boxes may be placed weird and out of place.

With the new size conversion almost finished it’s been coded in such a way that in theory any width and height can be supported with the game adjusting it’s display and hud.

(http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwgbwjYRaU1qg347wo1_500.jpg)

Damn, this looks great. I just started out the flash demo and the presentation is fantastic.

Back! Added another Island to the beta build which will let you play with a couple more new powers (Twisters and Whirl pools). The port over to a larger, dynamic game area is finished. Started work on in-game 'Awards' which has just been popped in so has sprite holders for the moment. Erm, new music added, new island type added ... improved populants A.I. ... !

You can play the most current build on a brand new link:
http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/playreprisal/ (http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/playreprisal/)

And as ever all the Dev chatter and work-in-progress can be seen here:
http://www.reprisalthegame.com/ (http://www.reprisalthegame.com/)

And I know its a bit late but ...

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/15131520209/1/tumblr_lx4s0aFStM1qg347w)

Day 386

So at long last im trying to tackle the tutorial / how to play section. I've been playing with some ideas but really can make up my mind. I programmed up a whole in-game movie player to play tutorials but have decided against this now. I'm currently thinking about have an interactive in game overlay but im still not sure its the right idea, the problem that's facing me is that the game can be described as its most basic as:

"Your the blue team, take out any other teams by building land to increase your population"

But behind that is so much more in terms of using Mana, Powers, building larger building for stronger troops, set rally points etc ...

Heres a mock up of the interactive overlay im currently thinking about:

(http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/blog/tutorialScreen1.gif)

In terms of presentation, consider dimming down the entire screen and only highlighting/brightening key objects pertaining to what's in the overlay. For instance, if you were explaining how to use the blue circle in the top left corner, darken everything else in the UI except it so I know exactly what you're talking about. People commonly skim read during tutorials, so whatever you can reinforce with visuals, the better the chance you have of that information actually sticking.

I'd also drop the overlay down so you can still see the game behind it.

I'm curious to know why you killed the movie tutorial idea tho?

(http://www.jakobhaglof.com/items/reprisal.jpg)

@CEDE ... wow thank you so much! That's very cool, ive seen a few more of these that you have done on this forum, are you going to collect them together for an on-line project? If you don't mind im going to re-blog and credit you on the reprisal dev blog  :coffee:

@lowpoly, thanks for the feedback. Yep I think dimming other bits is a good idea. I went off the video idea as after some testing my server was too slow in a response time and I really wanted something 'instant'. Also I felt it was nicer for the user to "click = give me info on this bit" rather than watching pre-amble. All that said I will be doing an overview video which will be viral. I just have to find the time! Juggling a full time design job and other commitments means I have to keep my eye on the finshed game and its now been over a year in development!

Thank you to you both as I had a low day with it yesterday but your responses have lifted me  :)

Actually I have been mailing the post-its directly to those who have PM'd me their address. You are welcome to do the same.  :)

How have I missed this!  I love the look of it, I'm a big fan of Populous, and I can only imagine how tricky it must be to code.  Looks awesome.

Oh I'm sorry it's already playable.  I just had a quick go and it looks even better in motion. So far it plays very similarly to the games it's a homage to. 

Visually it would be nice to see some surf where the waves meet land possibly?

For some reason the scrolling ran sluggishly.  The interface took a while to figure out.  I think I wanted to be in terraforming mode by default, or at least I expected to be and thought there might be something wrong with my browser or something.

I love the GUI (I think it would work in higher res actually, but you may want the purity of it which I can understand.)  Love the blur as others have said, and the slight texturing.

Haven't played long enough to comment on balance and so on yet, but look forward to trying later builds.

Thanks Jasper, yeah I loved the original Populous games.

Thanks for all your comments. Just out of interest what spec is the machine your running on as you mentioned the scrolling was a bit sluggish? I've been trying to test it on a wide variety of machines from an old Intel PentiumD PC, a 2 year old Mac Book and a bang up to date Intel i7 so would be cool to know.

thanks

Been struggling with this for quite a while, but am getting a little closer to finishing the help section. Taken on board dimming stuff in the hud so only things being talked about are highlighted. Really don't know why it's been such a struggle, kinda dented growth on the actual game but I think things are back on track now.  :waaagh:

Here's some shots ...

(http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/blog/tut001.jpg)

(http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/blog/tut002.jpg)

Also my PC is over 10years old now and takes ages to compile code for testing, so having to link a Mac laptop to the PC using dropbox, but still have to publish on the PC at the end result as the Mac screws up font alignment something crazy. Sigh!

If anyone knows a good workaround for text displaying fine on PC and Mac when publishing in Flash please let me know ...

This looks and sounds beautiful!

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/mlmgamedev/17216527567/1/tumblr_lz1c04qZNo1qg347w)

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the overall game play and how the story / challenges pan out. After some careful thought I’ve decided that at the moment the game lacks any sort of progressive pace, so I’ve come up with two types of challenges which are more linked to a back story.

1. Normal Reprisal level - Island is completed once all enemy populants are taken out.

2. Power Collection - Island is completed once you have located and collected a new power totem somewhere in the island.

The new Power Collection challenges will add pace to the game by gradually rewarding players with powers to use. And here’s an overview of the Reprisal Back story [draft!]:

……………………………………………………………………………..

“You were once a powerful leader of a distance tribe with the ability to harness power totems of nature. With these powers you guided your people.

Now you have been cast aside as three tribes who are at war have taken control and scattered your people and totems across distant lands.

You must now guide your people to become a powerful tribe once again, collecting your power totems throughout the lands and overthrowing those tribes that stand in your way.

Begin your Reprisal to reclaim your history …”

Just checking in again, having played it for the last 15 minutes. I like the improvements you've made so far.

Classic Populous gameplay is still intact, and the challenge has increased dramatically! awards and award progress is cool, but seems vague right now. Hope some more of the game mechanics get a tooltip attached (like how to switch your settlers from "build" to "fight" mode and how that affects their behavior), but overall it definitely feels like its moving towards a full-blown awesomely playable game. Sandbox mode perhaps? Or randogen skirmish mode?

Also, cool premise, sounds similar to the one in From Dust, but with a bit more actiony kaboom power behind it. Here's to hoping for some more dramatic actiony kaboom moments in the game. I was thoroughly surprised and frightened when the first level god was casting fire all over my settlements. That bastard.

Anyway, keep up the great work :)

Ha thanks, yeah want to add some serious Kaaaaboooom to it! 
:coffee:

Hope in next build release there will be a new island and the new challenge system.
It's little by little ...

forgot to put this in last post  :)

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/mlmgamedev/17316993952/1/tumblr_lz4o7eDdfH1qg347w)

Jelly.. :)

I know it's a mock-up but everyone should remember to run all on-screen text through a spellchecker and run it by proofreaders before committing it to the game.

The caption here should be:
"These mysterious discs show other team totems. Yours is the blue disc. Each shows a team's Populas amounts."

Underlines show corrections. (I assume "Populas" is an in-game term. Just started delving into this devlog.)

Seriously love the look of the game! Not sure how I missed this devlog until now.

I am furiously masturbating to this. GODDAMNIT THIS LOOKS SO GOOD

It is good, you should play those first five levels.

...Or are they not up anymore?

Hello! I'm new here. This looks great.

:facepalm: yeah I'll be getting everything proof read before beta launch! Thanks for your comments.

I hope to update the playable version soon with new stuff and a big performance increase, managed to code tweak yesterday and get the 70meg memory footprint down to about 47meg!

Been a little quite here, apologies, had my head down doing a lot of the boring stuff ... like fixing bugs, but in the process improving things also! Hope to have a new build up very soon but in the mean time here's two pretty pictures showing some things I've been working on.

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/mlmgamedev/18385190243/1/tumblr_m02bzfucKx1qg347w)
This is a new sprite for a 'Hero', as you can see they are bigger than normal populants

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/mlmgamedev/17951982022/1/tumblr_lzpb1jCsQZ1qg347w)
A large stitch of one of the islands

Like these guys. They look like big bears  :)

Ha yeah, bears, badgers and ... Lions ...

New build released!  :)

Has a total of six islands which consist of Challenge mode in which your aim is to collect a ‘Totem’ and Reprisal mode which requires you to take out any other tribes that may be on the island.

You can begin your Reprisal on online here:
http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/playreprisal/

Been a lot of tweaks and performance increases. I'm still not sure how the achievements will work so that screen section of the game is very much work in progress and does not reflect the finished artwork and function.

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/mlmgamedev/18690787137/1/tumblr_m0c1cpJiWm1qg347w)

It's very cool to see a lofi aesthetic meet nice graphic design sensibilities.

Holy crap my friend, I am so thoroughly impressed by how cool this game is!  KUDOS!   :toastL: ;D :toastR:

..
Whoa.
THAT IS ALL.

This game is very cool, such a slick aesthetic. I think a good thing to add would be a short tutorial, as well as an option to turn the blur on and off - makes me go a bit cross-eyed.

As everyone has already said over and over, the game looks great. It just looks...great. And I love the chiptune soundtrack. As for the game...

It's getting so much better! Fighting has a nice arc now, from your little fighters entering fortresses to their eventual victory which ejects enemies out of their homes into the unforgiving sky (or their unfortunate defeat which just kind of plops your dudes out), it helps to create a sense of progress within that particular mechanic. It's pretty satisfying!

Spells are getting there too, but some I still don't fully understand the purpose of. Quest dialogue is cool, and it gives your people a bit of character and a voice. Keep up the good work :)

Thanks guys, glad the visuals are hitting a button also. Im a graphic designer by trade so don't have loads of experience when it comes to games graphics so it's encouraging to hear. Was really trying to tap into retro / pixel / illustrative / 16bit classics :)


Yeah the game play is constantly being tweaked, it's getting there I think. Having to check and test all possible outcomes of events in the game is a massive task though. I'm putting a lot of effort into getting the game finished in the next couple of months, it's been over a year in development. I cant wait ... and neither can my wife!

As the finish draws up, I've been waiting and hoping for a new trailer-ish video that might look pretty on the frontpage with a little write-up... I don't suppose you happen to have one in the works?  :gentleman:

EDIT: Hmm, for some reason I was thinking about the stress-test video, and had forgot about the "Early Game Footage" video  :-[. The footage one actually serves pretty well as a trailer, so unless you feel it's not up-to-date I can just use that!

Cool thank you  :coffee: if you can wait a couple of days I will get a new footage video put together. Since the "Early Game Footage" video the display has been increase  :)

New game play video
So a new game play trailer is up which you can view here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_T1WIeF8NM

Pre-Beta build updates
Also for those that haven't seen the current 'pre-beta build' this now has 6 islands to compete in. There's been tweaks to terror-forming tool meaning that other tribes buildings has an exclusion zone around their buildings preventing you from just sinking an entire tribe and making it fairer!

http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/playreprisal/

Trademark issue!
One small recent hickup was a comment posted on the game page claiming to have TM rights to Reprisal. I say claiming because I've seen no evidence as yet of a vaild registration and because the post was anonymous I cant get in touch with them. So I'm just waiting to see what happens on that front. If anyone has advice on Trademarking etc or knows who this is please let me know so I can get it sorted out  :)

As far as I know, copyright doesn't protect the name...but trademark does (but mostly the image of the logo). You can search for the trademark here: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4006:rbv2kn.1.1

I didn't see it when I put in Reprisal, so... :shrug2: Good luck figuring this out.

I'd definitely look into it.  From what I can see on the web they haven't touched it in at least 6 years and it originated back in 2001.  Their websites and domains are long gone also.  Good luck, love the game.

Thanks guys. Yeah I cant find too much out about them because a lot of their sites seems to be offline now.

@zede05, thanks for that link. As far as I can tell Reprisal is used for a clothing company, which has now expired and besides that it only covers US trademark, I'm based out of the UK so not sure what the coverage is. Will be digging a little deeper as it would just be good to sort out and peace of mind. Fear not game dev is still continuing regardless  ;)

Nice new gameplay video and great music.

Sucks about the random Trademark issue, hope you get it sorted out  :)

Thanks, yeah I think it's sorted out now. Keeping Reprisal.

Still cracking on with the development. Have got all the basics in of an intro which has taken a while as all the motion is coded. Will be opening up a private beta of the full game soon for players to feedback before general release.

It's almost there, I think it's probably on the final 10% now so trying to keep focused to get it finished. I can't believe how hard it is to actually finish it!  :o

This is awesome news.  It sucks to see legal bullshit thwart interesting developers and games.

 :) :toastR:

Definitely great news :)

Almost there!

Just released the first batch of public beta accounts for people to play with levels. The levels will be released each week and even each day. Idea of this is so players can provide feedback on specific levels to help test. I've decided to do it this way for a couple of reasons. Making the full set of levels was proving tough as the only feedback was me, so this way it helps spread the load and makes sense to crowd source testing.  :coffee:

You can grab an account here:
http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/beta/

Also in this build is an intro and new 3 slot game save system...

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/mlmgamedev/19736461608/1/tumblr_m1aqgg1taR1qg347w)

Some news, after some inital feedback from the beta testers it seemed that Pathfinding was a problem. This I kinda knew about and it seemed like a big change. I had earmarked writing proper path finding for Reprisal 2 if I ever decided to do a sequel.

After some thinking, I spent the last few days and late nights up to my neck in code finding and implementing proper A* pathfinding. :tired:

As maybe other game makers have experienced, its very un-nerving knowing that your current code build is in pieces. But I'm happy to say that A* has been updated in the current live Beta version!  :)

If you need a Reprisal Beta account you can grab one here while they are available:
http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/beta/

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/mlmgamedev/20463292729/1/tumblr_m1yffgt6UY1qg347w)

AI tweaked, added more levels to beta and updated Hero's ... tweaked pixels!

(http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/mlmgamedev/20531886636/1/tumblr_m20m0iGCuK1qg347w)

If you can pull yourselves away from Fez :gomez:, here's some more pixels in an RTS stylee

Public Beta Re-opened

http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/beta/

A lot has changed since the game was last public, so after an intensive private beta crunch and push from a code and levelling point, I've just re-opened the game for all to play with the updates. In a nut-shell you'll find more levels, better path finding, better cursor tweaks, more aggressive CPU AI. :tired:

(http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/_images/screenshot/screenshot_thumb_0001.jpg)

Just completed the last level islands data base.
That's all 30 completed! Yes! Air punch!  ;D

A big piece has been added today in the shape of in game tutorial. It's been requested a lot and I kinda put it off till now as the game is nearing completion.

The latest beta build has been updated with this in. Island 1 and 2 have tutorials to introduce players to the games controls. Any feedback on this would be welcomed as Ive never done anything like this before :coffee:

http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/beta/

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m33bmn7dGx1qg347wo1_1280.gif)

How is was handled
For those that are interested, the way it was coded was to create an array of interactions. This keeps a record of what the player is clicking on or doing. Also with each interaction is a 'usage' total and any other handy bits of data that may need to be checked.

A main 'interactions' function is called in the game loop which monitors what your currently meant to be doing, for example clicking on a button. Once the 'usage' total of this interaction is above 1 then the game knows it's been completed and moves on to the next part of the tutorial resetting the interactions array.

It took me a while to come to this solution which I think is the best as it allows me to add as many different tutorials as needed.

(http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/blog/tut.jpg)

yes! SUPER YES!

Also, you need to release the soundtrack for this game. Do you have a bandcamp where I can toss you a few bucks for the tracks?

@sonicblastoise thanks! the tutorial was a mission to code.

Been a bit quite here as had to get my head down doing work work to pay to survive! :tired:

But Reprisal is now close ... so very close, like a week'ish away from launch. Most recent private beta includes 'export' game saves which allows you to transfer your games between computers etc. Ended up with a system that needs no account sign up but instead makes game saves into an encrypted string that can just be copied and pasted.

Oh, and also got this in the post which is nice :D

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3wujh7bn11qg347wo1_1280.jpg)

Public beta is is playable here:
http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/beta/

Private beta users can still use their account details to see the most bang up to date version with all the bell and whistles in.

I love that print. :-*

Thanks! There's also a 'limited edition - numbered - tilt shift - A3' version which will be available for order soon ... I hope!  :)


(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m40iou74Qa1qg347wo1_1280.jpg)

This looks neat. I wasn't sure about the blur effect at first, but it looks okay in that print. You've obviously got a good eye for graphic design.

Flawless, man!

Fantastic. Keep us posted, I'd love to have that print hanging from my wall

Stick a fork in it, it's done!

Reprisal is launched:
http://www.reprisaluniverse.com

Also, if you want to get your hands on some wall paper like this, then click here:
http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/media/wallpaper_001.jpg (http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/media/wallpaper_001.jpg)

(http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/media/wallpaper_t_001.jpg)

Thank you to all of you that have given feedback, it's been almost a year since I first started. One of the hardest things was knowing when to say, "yes this is done" and to stop tinkering around. Learnt loads, this being my first ever game, and it's been a worth while experience.

 ;D

Awesome!!!

Congrats on the release! It looks absolutely gorgeous  :-*

Rockin' that wallpaper now.

Congratulations. Game turned out great and website is looking good :gentleman:

yay :) good work!

Thanks guys, appreciated all the feedback from these forums over the past many months.

Just seen Edge magazine have picked it up :D
http://www.edge-online.com/news/populous-reborn-your-browser

Just wanted to say good job, and you were one of the reasons I started game dev. This turned out great, it was fun following the development.   :handclap: :tearsofjoy:

Huzzah!  ;D :toastR:

Oh wow. Outstanding!   :monoclepop:

I'm in shock! in 34 hours it's had nearly 11,000 plays now, 10,375,330 little populants have been spawned and 17,658 islands have been reprised ... and at this precise moment 66 people are playing :o

It's exceeded all expectations, I thought getting 1000 plays was going to be amazing!  :handshakeR:

That's fantastic!  And for your first game :)... Can't wait to see what you do next.

Can I ask how you are doing those stats? I think that's an awesome thing to see how many people have played.

Sounds good. Loving the art style to.. I'm a big fan of pixel art. :epileptic:

Stopped playing on the second level of my first go because of how heavy the tutorial was (people who know who I work for can enjoy that comment).

Gave it a second chance, really got into the populous style of play. Fiddling with the land is a lot of fun. Good game!

:gentleman::handthumbsupR:

Congrats on the release! Been following this for a while and happy to see you finish it. :beer:

Thanks all for the comments! It's been a crazy 48 hours, 30,000 plays and climbing.

@JasonPickering I'm storing stat's in my own DB to help me keep a count of populations, island reprisals and plays, kinda like the universe.

@st33d I'm glad you gave it a second chance, there has been chatter about the 2 island tutorial, it's a rock and hard place thing. You can see I struggled with it in the past posts  :tired:

... but onto the next project which is already under way, and this time it's an ... app! ;D

Oh and this one (web) has been hanging around for a while and needs finishing!!

(http://blog.electrolyte.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/mockup_0004.gif)

Just one last final update  ;)

Desktop version is now available on Desura which I'm proper happy about, got posted up this morning (PC, Mac and Linux) Includes new unlockable 'Challenge' islands and super (• stereo •) chip tunes. Thanks to eveyone that helped with this games development  :beer:

http://www.desura.com/games/reprisal

(http://www.last17.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Desktop-Advert1.jpg)

OK, so this is a blatant request for help!

Reprisal has had the honour of being short-listed in this years Golden Joystick awards. Voted exclusively by the public, the GamesMaster and HMV sponsored awards will be entering their 30th year.

If you have a spare moment and would like to vote for Reprisal, please head over to Golden Joystick page to register your vote, it only takes a moment.

http://www.goldenjoystick.com/best-free-to-play/reprisal

It's in some massive company like Kingdom Rush and Triple town so this is really a massive thanks to all the players out there and also to this Forum for the help and support it showed over it's development.  :) :beer: :coffee:

(http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/109/108745/auto/large_nomination.gif)

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/ea4a4b7da53665e3b698c17da8f8e703/tumblr_mlrfgxj6uc1qg347wo1_1280.jpg)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=141030686

Reprisal's Green light page has just gone live. If we can get this onto Steam then all previous purchaser's of the Reprisal Desktop will be issued a Steam key as a big thank you to you all.

It needs all the votes it can get to be voted into their system so please, please spread the word, face book it, tweet it, reg it, write it on a postcard, send it, spread it ...  :coffee:

Just been Green Lit! Woop  :)

(http://24.media.tumblr.com/4c32877086a6904a828615b32c275d4d/tumblr_ms8z67pr2P1qg347wo1_1280.jpg)