I love it!  Also: is that a Metroid with a chef's hat?

Heh, you stole my working title! Only kidding, of course - although the main reason I just went with 'Incognita' and only as a working title is because there are a couple of other games already out there called 'Terra Incognita'.  Maybe not a problem, but something you should perhaps be aware of.

Looks pretty awesome, anyway.  I like the style of the graphics, particularly the title screen and character portraits.  Also, more games should include Nikola Tesla as a playable character.

[Update 28/11/2012:]

Update 28/11/2012:

Recently I've mostly been working on procedural level generation stuff.  That's sort of a long-term project though - it will need several different subsystems implemented and a database of information and assets built up before I can hope to actually get anything interesting out of it or even have any certainty that it's going to work at all.  I think it will.  Maybe.

So, as a 'quick hit' I took a break from that and added weapon trails to melee attacks:

This adds a subtle bit of extra dynamism to my attack animations but is useful for debugging purposes as well; the trail denotes the extreme of the 'harmful zone' of the weapon, so it's a nice visual indicator that I've actually defined that zone correctly for each weapon (which, as it happened, I hadn't).

While implementing that, I made a minor fuck-up at one point so that it was creating a new trail every frame rather than updating the same one, which was dumb but ended up producing a fairly cool 'grinding' effect:

I don't really need that kind of effect for anything at the moment, but I thought I'd leave this here as a note to myself in case I ever do!

I sort of prefer the original fire, I think.  You just need to round off the indiviual pixels somehow so that it fits in with the other graphics.  (Though that said, it's a bit hard to tell from still images, I guess the real test is how it looks in motion).

Thanks guys!  I'm a lot more comfortable with the programming side of things than I am with the art side, so it's good to hear that the graphics aren't completely awful.  I tried out a couple of different styles before I found one that I liked and felt I could probably pull off reasonably consistently.  In the end I went with something that felt like the natural evolution of a style that I had used previously.

Wow.  This is looking super-nice.  I like the black and white solid-colour units, it gives it a nice chess-y feel.

Oh you big tease!  Good luck with the degree, man.

Thanks 'monster!  Yeah, it is a bit dark at the moment.  Partly that's just because I haven't worked much on the lighting or shaders yet so its looking a bit dingier than I'd like (I'm holding off working on graphics stuff until after I've definitively settled on a theme).  But partly it's intentional - the game uses a line of sight system and that is visually indicated by shadows, so you can't see much of the level because, well, you can't see much of the level!  Also, the darkness plays a gameplay role and you'll be able to use torches etc. to increase how far you can see.

[INCOGNITA]

INCOGNITA
(Working Title)

I've been working on this (on and off) for almost two years now, so I figured it was probably time for a Devlog!

I have, in fact, been running a (somewhat infrequent) devlog already on my personal blog for a while, the previous entries of which can be found here: http://www.vitruality.com/category/devlog/.  However, as nobody actually reads that thing I will save that particular devlog for the more detailed philosophical chin-scratching that is mostly for my own benefit, and use this topic here for the more day-to-day stuff.

The game is (now) an action-roguelike. It's also bit of a sandbox project for me to experiment with some crazy ideas I have, principally in the field of procedural generation.

So far I've been mainly focussed on getting the basic gameplay elements in place - so please don't take these as indicative of the final look of the game - but just to prove I'm doing something here are some screenshots of current progress:

(Click for embiggening)

I think how much you like the new XCOM will depend a bit on where your preferences lie on the 'simulation <-> game' spectrum.  It's mechanics are more simplified and abstract than the original, but the gameplay feels a lot tighter and more focused.  Personally, I think that works quite well in the tactical mode (with the caveat that I'd prefer proper LOS) but I think the strategy mode is much worse than the original - the strategic options you have are pared down to the bone and it is abstracted to the point of ludicrousness.  On the whole I prefer the original, crappy 90s graphics and all, but it's still a very good game and an interesting and worthy new take on the material.  Also, heritage aside, it's a big-budget turn-based squad tactics game - it's worth buying purely for that fact alone.

Vaguely related question (and forgive me if this has already been covered somewhere in the last 40 pages): Will Space Hero Command have a strategic mode, or does it focus in specifically on the tactical battles?

This looks great.  I love how smooth and full of character the animations are.

It should be called Stovepipe Hat Adventure Land.

Since you keep insisting on those stovepipe hats I guess I have to include them in the game somehow

 

Hooray!  Another victory for terrorism!

Looks neat.  One thing that looks a little odd, though: the heat haze effect seems to also be applied to the black letterbox bar at the top in some of the gifs, which presumably shouldn't be the case unless there is actually meant to be a massive black UFO actually present in the scene.

Aha!  Ignore that post, then - it looks like you're already doing what I was suggesting.  I got confused by your first post where you said that each unit was generating about 200 mini programs and assumed that the GAs were only working on a unit by unit basis.  Really looking forward to seeing how this turns out - it should be a fascinating AI experiment at the very least. 

[horrifically]

The idea for genetic AI here sounds interesting, but I wonder if you're really using the right tool for the right job.  I've done a fair bit with GAs at work (using them to optimise the geometry of building structures) and find them useful, but generally they can only really get you 90% of the way for that particular problem - i.e. its 'best' design can still be improved upon by an experienced human.  Compared to other optimisation algorithms they are also horrifically inefficient.

The clear benefit I would have thought you could get from using them in game AI would be to give the AI the appearance of learning over time and adapting to the player's tactics.  But it seems like you're not using them in this way - you're treating each unit's move as a separate optimisation problem and running the GA only on that without reference to anything else, correct?  If so, what I would suggest is actually using a simpler algorithm for individual unit moves and instead using GAs for the broader-strokes medium- and long-term tactical decisions that set the Goals that the simpler AI subsystems would then try to achieve.  What would be super cool about that is, you could maintain a database of the most effective strategies that the AI has found in similar scenarios and mix those in as seed values, so over time the AI would figure out what strategies were effective and which weren't and so 'learn' the game.

That concept art is great, and the game idea itself sounds interesting - kind of like a fantasy version of Blast Corps.

I use an Allman indenting style (high five!) because I personally find it infinitely cleaner and easier to read than the alternatives.  I use lower camel case for variables and upper camel case for function and class names.  Private member variables I prefix with an 'm'.  I used to use an underscore for that, but discarded it as it's microscopically more awkward to type.

What I would find interesting and useful is if any of you who use C/C++ who want to post bits of your code? That would be handy for me to see the style & design you use.

Anything in particular you're interested in seeing examples of?  (i.e. is it class structure, naming patterns, code fomatting...?) My code is probably mainly useful as an example of how not to do things but I'm happy to post some if it will help!

On the other hand one of the worst examples of genre combining I've played was Brutal Legend.  I liked the game, but the RTS sections were frustrating and out of place, and it felt like that took over what should have been just a good third person action game.

I really liked Brutal Legend and thought it actually handled the genre shift quite well, slowly building up mechanics on top of the action-adventure base layer until you suddenly get to full-blown RTS mode - I like the way it does this only by adding abilities, not by restricting them.  That said, I can see why other people didn't like it - it does a pretty shit job of managing player expectations and I think it's understandable to feel a bit trolled when you realise that the game is actually an RTS with action-adventure elements when it initially presents itself as an action-adventure with RTS elements.

Of those names my favourite is probably 'The Founders' but to be honest none of them really grab me.

How about making Dwarfs interesting again by drawing on their original mythological roots?  'Dweorg Fortress'?  or, more seriously:

'Flesh of Ymir'

(Or something like that)