I'm wondering if there is a standard procedure to prevent this kind of issue.

The siutation I had in my mind myself is something like this;
- enumarate all kind of status [IGNORE_GRAVITY, DISABLE_MOVEMENT, etc]
- whenever an object gains a temporary status, put this status on a stack
- whenever removing a status, first check if there are any other status with the same enumarations, if there is the enumerated value can be reset.

Yup, a stack of "buffs" is what I would use in this case. Except don't use bare enums, instead have each buff be a class that can affect the base value. Then when you read the base value, iterate through all buffs, and let them modify (or replace) the base value. Finally if a buff expires, just remove it from the list.

This is a good patterns for all sorts of temporary buffs, eg. in rpgs when you can stack buffs like +3 attack from one spell and +30% attack from another spell (which is really "multiply by 1.30" and then you have order-of-operations questions to resolve), and so on, each with a different activation length.

So in your case, I'd do two buffs, both of which override gravity and set it to min(0,current_value); then as long as at least one of them is still on the list, gravity will read as zero. This might seem like overkill, but it gives more flexibility, eg. you can easily change the "hit status" to drop gravity to 50% instead of 0%, and dash functionality won't be affected.

Aaaaand... we're live!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/290970

Huge thank you again to everybody who helped us! 

And I should probably mark this thread as "finished"... 

Conway's Game of Life sounds like a pretty good starting point for discussion. The rules are so simple, and you can easily see the tension between growth rules, which causes expansion of cells on the board, which triggers either overcrowding or loneliness rules, which triggers death of cells and contraction / splintering into subgroups.

Similarly, you also need some rules that will counteract the "spread belief" rule, otherwise it will just spread without end. In terms of system design, you want a feedback loop, such that every expansion starts a process that "pushes back", and tries to bring the system back to previous state - but not immediately, and maybe not directly either.

So for example of a few different ways to implement it, just off the top of my head:
- Each believer can spread 1.0 faith to one unit per turn, but every unit loses 0.1 faith per turn. So in order to maintain faith you need to spend more and more time mutually reinforcing it within the group.
- Each believer only spreads faith within a radius, and units lose faith quickly if they're far away. So believers need to be moved around to keep the faith up, and the more of them there are, the more difficult it gets.
- Each believer can get faith from another one, but if they get more than one per turn, they go into overload mode and lose faith. So similarly to overcrowding deaths in GoL, you start getting pockets of disbelief, if your believers are too successful at spreading belief.

... and so on and so forth. The main point being - you need something that will counteract faith spreading, and try to bring it down, could be gently or abruptly, could be based on time or space, etc. and these will give you systems with different feels to them.

Hope this helps!

This might be interesting to the business-minded people here:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/216498/GDC_Next_2014_debuts_call_for_talks_reveals_themes.php

This year, the GDC Next Advisory Board is looking for content that answers the question, "So you've made a game, what's next?" Today's market is constantly inundated with new games, resulting in peak saturation. GDC Next seeks to provide attendees with knowledge about how to increase discoverability, gain exposure, broaden your audience, differentiate your work, and successfully create your game as a true experience. The advisory board will seek out talks that offer a practical path to success in these areas, and share ways to increase your fiscal and creative success at the same time.

Nice! They look like resistor networks. Reminded me immediately of electronics courses and Kirchhoff's Law exercises...

I'm really liking what you're proposing about branches and save files. It reminds me a lot of what version control systems do on one hand, and then on the other hand, what journaling filesystems and databases do with data changes that get queued up and commited into the database. Database journal entries are just a linear list, but turning them into a tree could represent "alternate realities" of the data model pretty well... (Like git does with branches, only branches get merged, and in this case they probably wouldn't.)

Anyway, just bringing up journaling because that might be a more familiar metaphor for CS people.

So it sounds like your event structure is kind of like a rule engine? In particular: 1. an event triggers if some conditions it needs are satisfied, and 2. once triggered, it modifies the world model (by appending new knowledge to the journal)? That sounds like a very general and powerful model, and the addition of ever-growing trees to query and modify would allow for some interesting functionality.

I'd definitely encourage you to experiment with building it, and making a game that uses this functionality! System design is definitely important to start with, but I'm always amazed after I jump into implementing something (usually bottom up, too), how often it informs and clarifies the design!

Good luck!

Surprise news: we just got greenlit in the April batch! Woohoo! 

HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who voted for us!
And an extra huge thank you if you participated in the beta! 

Now just to tie up all the loose ends, and actually ship the final version... soon...

We just released a second content update:

• Five new scenarios: You can head into the deep woods in Ukiah, gather supplies for a new expedition in Benicia, dig  into the Mother Lode in Sonora, create a steam ship network in Martinez and indulge in Sonoma wines in Santa Rosa.
• Hear the sounds of the Gold Rush. Now you can hear the clang of the hammers, the thud of the ax and din of your towns with new sound effects.

... plus a whole lot of behind-the-scenes work for the tablet build (but it's nothing player-facing so it's hard to write about that ).

More info on the blog, as always:
http://www.somasim.com/blog/2014/03/early-access-update-2-the-mother-lode/

Some NPCs hard at work, and their workplaces:

You got my Greenlight vote! I would vote twice if I could. This is awesome.

We've released the first content update today! It includes a bunch of new stuff:

• Five new scenarios: You can stock up on food and drink in San Jose, dig for gold with the jumping frogs of Calaveras County, head into the unknown northern Sierra Nevada in search of a new claim, embrace the good life by making fine wine in the Napa Valley, and join the otters searching for sardines in Monterey Bay.
• Break out the headphones and turn up the speakers because we’ve added the first few tracks to 1849’s soundtrack! Just be warned – the tracks may get stuck in your head.
• No more windowing. Full screen mode is now available.
• Wandering peeps. You’ll now see a lot less of our friend the farmer. Houses now generate all types of NPCs and there’s a surprise new one in the game.
• Trade UI updates. Many of you have asked for it, and now it’s here. When you open the trade menu, you’ll now be able to see the amount of inventory you’ve got in storage right there in the menu. No more clicking back and forth.

Check out more details on our blog: http://www.somasim.com/blog/2014/03/1849-early-access-update-1-the-way-to-san-jose/

And of course, if you could vote for us on Greenlight, that would be just awesome   

Here's a slide show of a small settlement growing into a busy town:



(Click through for full size 1024x768 version)

And here's a slide show of a small settlement growing into a busy town, cross-posted shamelessly with the screenshot saturday thread



(Click through for full size 1024x768 version)

Some updates to our building art: refreshed houses, especially the red townhouse, and brick mansions with white columns.

I'm looking forward to this game so much

Hehe, thanks! 

Just this week we put up an early access build, but we're expecting an early May release for the full game with all cities etc, so still a couple of months away.

But there's light at the end of the gamedev tunnel! I can't wait.  

Some updates to our building art: refreshed houses, especially the red townhouse, and brick mansions with white columns.



(Click for full size)

Hey, thanks! It's a pretty exciting moment.

And good luck with office management! Looking forward to it.

We're finally on Greenlight!

Vote for us if you like what you see - every vote counts!



We're still in beta, looking to be ready for a full release in May.

In fact, we've also set up an early access release for sale on IndieGameStand, for people who would like to get into the game early, and help shape how it's going to evolve: https://indiegamestand.com/store/788/1849/

Here's another set of data, specifically about tablets:
https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/top_tablets
There's a good mix or resolutions and pixel densities there.

We try to support all sorts of tablets from low-dpi 960x600 to high-dpi 2560x1600 (Nexus 10) by doing the following:
- We don't assume any specific aspect ratio, instead all UI elements are anchored to corners, sides, or center
- For things like main menu, they come in two layers: background scales up to fill the screen (so no letterboxing), while foreground is anchored and independent of aspect ratio
- Game and UI assets come in two flavors, lo-res for standard displays, and hi-res (2x larger) for retina displays

You know what, I'm sorta interested in some tips as well. I have been to GDC before, and it wasn't as great as I'd hoped. I mean, our goal was to talk with the media (I think for indies, that's pretty much the number one goal), and to an extent, we did talk with some, but not as much as we'd hoped. Heck, we didn't see much media at all.

Here's one GDC tip I picked up along the way: to talk to the media, it's best to arrange a meetup ahead of time (over email etc), to make sure you're on their calendar. Email them and offer a quick game demo etc. Otherwise they're impossible to just run into.

Very cool! At first the UI had me confused, but it's not unsurmountable - my second game went much better, and I was dispatching baddies like nobody's business.

Some notes:
- The mood is great: a camp in the wild west that will be under attack at any moment, and everybody needs to circle the wagons. Great choice to add sound/vfx this early in the dev process to reinforce it.
- Destructible terrain is strategically interesting - it took me a while to figure out that the enemy was also using it to get to me (not sure whether deliberately). And the scorched earth holes are a great touch!
- Wild west theme is great, and underrepresented. Then again I would say that, wouldn't I?

Some low hanging fruit:
- I would dearly love:
1. Mouse pan (maybe shift + drag?)
2. Zoom in/out with mouse wheel
3. A pause button! :D
- Fog of war currently looks like a glitch in asset loading, it looks like tiles have failed to load - see screenshot: http://imgur.com/BBq7Shr
- I couldn't figure various parts of the UI, or couldn't figure out where I can place the mine.

All in all, cool stuff! Right now it plays like a TD game more than an RTS, so I'll be curious how the gameplay will evolve!