Added standalone Windows exe on the first post. (requires flash player 9+)

This is really impressive work so far

I understand this is Alpha build so there simply has to be a lot of bugs and unfinished stuff, but what I found particularly annoying was the fact that I had to unequip the item I was using to equip another one, while it should unequip autommatically when the other item is equipped.

Still It was fun to play.

BTW, I would be totally up for a co-op competition!

I totally second that.

<div style="padding: 5px; padding-bottom: 0; float: left"><img src="http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9420/railroadduel.png" width="300" height="200" /><p style="margin-top: 0"><a href="http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17606.0">Railroad Duel</a>, by Michal Stanisz</p>
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Railroad Duel, by Michal Stanisz

update on the first page!

So if I get this right there's still ~15 hours to go ?

It's getting intense...





Argh! still so much to do and so little time.

I'm getting rid of the "experience points" for the sake of having this finished in time.

gameplay is still buggy and not balanced well, I also get occasional crashes. I'm working to fix those issues first. Also a few minor yet important things remain to be done.

This looks very promising!
Maybe you should have the trains able to interact with the track more- for example, have splits in the track so, while fighting the other train, you have to flip a switch to go one way or the other. Hazards and that sort of thing.
Then you could create multiple arenas for variety, if you have the time.

These are good ideas and I have many others on how to expand this project but I won't be able to make it for the compo. Right now I'm just striving to deliver a playable game. Curse my bad time management...
Anyway I will continue development after the compo, first thing being general refactoring of the code.

I hoped to have a playable version today but I did'n make it. Still a few things remain to be done like victory conditions and explosion effects. I was thinking about pulling all nighter today but its 1:16AM and I'm so tired I can barely put two lines of code together.

Seriously, this game is really good and fun to play. Don't give up just like that.
Look at how much you have already accomplished instead

[#1]

Big update!

So this is what I have done for now:
Turret AI and all the weapon related stuff works fine. I've also implemented damage system into the game and basicly most of the game logic is in place.

This is the menu and crappy game logo I quickly put together (though only the 'play' button works for now)



At start you get to setup your train



And this is how they fight



As a bonus - this little plane that will be dropping bombs on your enemys head if you call in an airstrike



Now the major problems still ahead of this project :

#1 Unfortunatelly a friend of mine whom I asked to make music and sfx for this game won't be able to do so because he's busy with other projects. So that leaves me at best with sfxr sound effects and no music at all... 

#2 I'm soooooo behind schedule...  I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish everything before the deadline but I'm not giving up just yet. Even in the worst case scenario it should still be something at least playable. Anyway it's still 3 days to go and fortunatelly I have no other plans for the weekend so hopefully I will spend all the time left working on the game.

Next on "TO DO" list:
- add the rest of the train cars to the game (most of the graphics is still not complete)
- replace enter key with timer during "configuration" phase
- make some explosion animations and other effects.

Ok, It's almost 2:00 AM in my timezone , so see you tommorow.

I like the graphic style, reminds me of Xcom

I'm not sure wether I'll manage to finish combat AI this weekend (because there will be a combination of friends & preventing me from working on the code later today)

Still, you can expect bullets to start flying soon!

[Known issues/problems :]

First of all sorry for a long break since last update . Hopefully I'll manage to keep this tread updated more often from now on.

Maybe you get some kind of experience points when destroying cars? At every LEVEL UP! you can gain (choose?) a superpower? Plus, experience would be a good indicator of how each side is doing (maybe that's a bad thing?)

Giving superpowers to those doing better would create a positive feedback loop and help them win that much faster. (The last 1/2 hour of Risk, for example, when you know you're going to lose and it's just a matter of time is the worst).

I took your advice There will be upgrade system based on experience. Whenever a player levels up he will get to choose one superweapon, perk or other upgrade.

So I've done a few things by now: I can easily edit maps, both background and the train tracks. I can easily manage train length and composition. I also finally managed to make trains move exactly as I wanted them to. For now trains run their track once when enter key is pressed (there will be a timer in its place to rush things up in order to avoid stalemate situations).

At the moment I'm working on targeting and firing AI for the turrets and damage system for the train cars.

Since I barely have any new content to show you since last time (because I've been mostly coding stuff) , there is a real screenshot from the game with player interface layout.




Known issues/problems :

- Curves are not yet displayed properly but it's the next thing on the agenda.

- I will eventually update those background tiles and add more tilesets as I'm planning to add more game arenas with different backgrounds and railways but it's a low priority now so forgive me for putting up same scenery again.

- "Nukes" are only placeholders for future superweapon indicators.

[Locomotive]

This sounsd like a really cool idea! Looking forward to see where you take it. A few questions/thoughts:

Will you be using some form of rock-paper-scissors strategy where certain car weapons deal more or less damage to certain other car weapons?

I'm planning to have both average and specialised weapons, where specialised will do more damage but there will be a way to counter their attack, ex. if your enemy is using guided missles, having ECM car will make them fly at random making them almost useless.

How many different types of train cars are you aiming for?

The ones I already have graphics for:

Locomotive

- unarmed but packing heavy armour.

Empty car

- you get those at start, they serve no other purpose than adding HPs to your train

Machinegun

- the weakest weapon but useful against enemy saboteurs/infantry (I'm planning to implement this later)

Napalm launcher

- shoots fireballs that explode on hit
- does extra damage by setting enemy cars on fire - they slowly lose HP for a while

Missile launcher

- shoots guided missiles at long range, deadly accurate.

I'm working on a code right now so I won't be adding any more train cars in a while but I'm leaving this open for discussion if someone has ideas for more train cars you're welcome to share your thoughts

the ones I have planned:

heavy cannon  
- high range
- armour piercing - ignores armor boosts
- vulnerable - lowered HP

pulse blaster
- fires bursts of "energy balls"
- medium range and damage

laser cannon
- constant beam fire
- medium range and damage
- vulnerable - lowered HP

mortar   
- high damage and range
- extremely inaccurate

ECM car
- makes enemy missles ineffective

extinguisher/fire engine  
- spreads foam (which also works as dense fog) on friendly train cars whenever they are set alight or fired upon by lasers - largely reducing laser and napalm damage

engineering car
Either increases armor of the whole train reducing damage or repairs damaged train cars during fight

battery    
- increases strenght of energy weapons (laser, pulse)

barracks
- deploy infantry/saboteurs to plant explosive charges on enemy track charges will detonate on next round causing massive damage.
- infantry is extremely vulnerable to machinegun and vulnerable to napalm and mortar if hit ocassionaly (they will be ignored as a target by everything else than machinegun)

Are you going to allow players to do anything during the 'fight' phases, or are those specifically set aside for players to observe the carnage, the opponent, and formulate new strategies for when the car pulls in again?

I was thinking about some sort of "super powers" players can use during fight but I have no idea how players should be able to obtain them.

If the set of cars you are getting each round is completely random, are you going under the assumption that players will sometimes get screwed over by the RNG?

The idea is that the best weapons will be rare so it won't be completely random. Also there will probably be a limit of the "utility" train cars (which are unarmed but will give you certain bonuses instead) so you won't be stuck without weapons and with utility cars only.

These rules will be precised during gameplay balancing.

Perhaps while the trains are fighting players can scrap cars they don't want in order to somehow affect the random ones they get when the train pulls in again? Or maybe you can try combining some of the cars you get to make new/different cars?

Combining cars is a great idea. I will think about it.

Thanks for every encouraging word. You have motivated me even more to work on this project .

The idea is quite different! Where'd you get the idea for this?

To think of it I was probably influenced by Transarctica (also known as Arctic Baron) - the only game I know to feature train vs train combat. But basicly the whole idea just struck me out of nowhere

[UPDATE March 24 03:11 PM]

UPDATE March 24 03:11 PM
- fixed player 1 status bar
- minor balancing

UPDATE March 01 03:27 PM
- fixed crashes upon exiting help
- fixed some graphic artifacts (but I'm still unable to trace all of them...)
- fixed victory conditions

UPDATE Feb 28 11:19 AM
- fixed annoying bug which caused napalm to sometimes repair enemy cars instead of causing damage


**************************************************************************************
Changes to the original gameplay idea:

- locomotive is restored every turn as it simply dies too often anyway being the first target in line;
- game starts with each player having 10 train cars to choose from and they get 2 less on every round so 8,6,4 and 2 they also have less time for reconfiguration each round. Game ends by draw if neither player has destroyed the other one after the round where they only get 2 train cars to replace; I might replace that later with them fighting til the end not being able to rearrange train anymore.

Note:
It's basicly not what I'll call a finished game, rather a crude Beta... It was rushed into completion so it lacks many planned features still ... it's playable.

More than that there's no sound in the game due to recent difficulties and me being complete anti-talent in that matter. I even abandoned the idea of using sfxer as amassed samples of this kind created chaotic noise instead of sounds of the battle that I wanted.

Anyway, I will continue development of this game after the compo.

Instructions
Gameplay is divided into 2 phases. Combat phase and setup phase, starting with the first one. In setup phase players have limited amount of time to configure their trains using the ones from the stock (which are randomly generated each phase) as a replacement. When the time limit, which is indicated by the bar in the middle of the screen, fills up trains rush into battle and fight each other, and players have no direct control over them (its a planned feature that they will have some sort of superweapons or other possibilities to influence the battlefield at this point). Then they come back to their stations, and another setup phase begins. Game ends by either one of the players destroying the other one or by draw if neither player has destroyed the other one after the last round (where they only get 2 train cars to replace).

Controls
- Arrow keys for the first player
- WSAD for the second player

- Train car types and controls are also described in ingame help


Play it online:
http://gamejolt.com/online/games/action/railroad-duel/4655/
Or in case of problems download swf standalone Windows version from here:
http://hotfile.com/dl/107874433/3ca7ee8/railroadduel.swf.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/108458686/15da4d5/railroadduel.exe.html

Platform : Flash (Flashdevelop with Flex SDK)

Screenshots









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Greetings everyone, as it it my first post here.  

Game will be played by two players on one computer. Players will start at their bases (or stations for that matter) having an empty train and receive a few random train cars armed with variety of weapons. Then players will be able to replace initial empty train cars with the armed ones and arrange them however they like. Once the setup is done trains roll out of their bases to fight each other. Players have no direct control over the train - AI will handle combat. After the fight trains return to their bases and players receive another shipment of random train cars to replace the damaged or destroyed ones. Time for reconfiguration is strictly limited (10-15 seconds) then trains go back to combat again. Game ends if one of the trains is completely destroyed.