ALPHA UPDATED!
 

- update dust to be like the main menu *DONE
- add enemy wreckage *DONE
- wreckage needs to fade out after a while *DONE
- add flames to damaged enemy and enemy wreckage *DONE
- explosion lights show for too long *DONE
- explosion lights are too blurry for the art style *DONE
- wreckage shadows are too long *FIXED
- enemies are drawn below the surface bunker *FIXED
- made the low batt and weapon temp warnings more prominent *DONE
- increase radius the player can wander during airstrike mission *DONE
- reset screenshake during room transfer *DONE
- small containers should get picked up by running over them *DONE
- add pickups when enemies are destroyed *DONE - enemies now drop metal in small amounts
- add new game to main menu *DONE - currently this just loads the tutorial map but you will not see the tutorial messages
- add urban terrain *DONE
- collisions are causing the vehicle to slow down and get "sticky" *FIXED

Is the environment is moving? Looks like the ground is moving or the rocks are being pulled towards something

Game looks cool btw, will check out the alpha soon

There is a dust storm particle effect running, I think it looks very cool but yeah, now that you mention it - it does look like there is something "pulling".

UPDATED!


- update dust to be like the main menu *DONE
- add enemy wreckage *DONE
- wreckage needs to fade out after a while *DONE
- add flames to damaged enemy and enemy wreckage *DONE
- explosion lights show for too long *DONE
- explosion lights are too blurry for the art style *DONE
- wreckage shadows are too long *FIXED
- enemies are drawn below the surface bunker *FIXED
- made the low batt and weapon temp warnings more prominent *DONE
- increase radius the player can wander during airstrike mission *DONE
- reset screenshake during room transfer *DONE
- small containers should get picked up by running over them *DONE
- add pickups when enemies are destroyed *DONE - enemies now drop metal in small amounts
- add new game to main menu *DONE - currently this just loads the tutorial map but you will not see the tutorial messages
- add urban terrain *DONE
- collisions are causing the vehicle to slow down and get "sticky" *FIXED

[Key Features]

"Born in dust, raised in darkness, we are humanity's last stand, we are Dusters."

- Anon

In a post apocalyptic wasteland, sentient machines have taken over the earth. Humanity survives, hidden in the ruins, and must scavenge to survive.

Dusters is developed in Gamemaker Studio for Windows OS.

DUSTERS is inspired by XCOM, RETURN FIRE, DESERT STRIKE and COMMAND AND CONQUER.


Key Features
    

• Design your own underground base. Build Dormitories, Armouries and Research Labs.
• Gather resources and rescue personnel from the surface to expand your base.
• Battle in real time for control of the map.
• Upgrade and Customise your vehicles and weaponry from scavenged resources.
• Craft new Vehicle Hull's, Weapons, Engines and Armor.

Alpha Download

Please note this is a VERY early alpha build containing the basic tutorial and some of the basic features. It is intended to demonstrate gameplay and is not indicative of the final product. It will crash, and you will hate it.

I'd really appreciate your comments and criticism - if you think this is a bad game, or just a bad implementation of a good idea - please say so!
 
Thanks for reading!
 
Ross Edgar.
Highland Gaming.

[Key Features]

"Born in dust, raised in darkness, we are humanity's last stand, we are Dusters."

- Anon

In a post apocalyptic wasteland, sentient machines have taken over the earth. Humanity survives, hidden in the ruins, and must scavenge to survive.

Dusters is developed in Gamemaker Studio for Windows OS.

DUSTERS is inspired by XCOM, RETURN FIRE, DESERT STRIKE and COMMAND AND CONQUER.


Key Features
    

• Design your own underground base. Build Dormitories, Armouries and Research Labs.
• Gather resources and rescue personnel from the surface to expand your base.
• Battle in real time for control of the map.
• Upgrade and Customise your vehicles and weaponry from scavenged resources.
• Craft new Vehicle Hull's, Weapons, Engines and Armor.

Alpha Download

Please note this is a VERY early alpha build containing the basic tutorial and some of the basic features. It is intended to demonstrate gameplay and is not indicative of the final product. It will crash, and you will hate it.

I'd really appreciate your comments and criticism - if you think this is a bad game, or just a bad implementation of a good idea - please say so!
 
Thanks for reading!
 
Ross Edgar.
Highland Gaming.

Hi Everyone,

It's been a very busy few months on "Dusters". We've implemented several new features

- The battle map

- The armory

- Enemy Events

I've going to talk about each of these new features below. But first, a word on the new title. Some of you may have noticed this has changed again. So we've gone from 'CASTELLUM', to 'Situation RED' and now finally to 'Dusters'.

So what is going on? Well, the first change away from Castellum was because of a major change in the gameplay. We moved from a pure 2d base building game, to a mixed base building /real time combat hybrid. The name Castellum just didn't fit any more!

So we moved on, this time to "Situation Red'. I actually quite liked this one. It was a play on the sectors of the battle map changing to red when you lose control. But the branding was eighties-wargamesy, and the tone didn't fit the styling of the game or the gameplay.

So... onto 'Dusters'. I feel the Gameplay, Styling and branding all align with this one. Plus it lets us do a little world-building around the Duster-People and their struggle against the machines!

So onwards and upwards! To new features!

The Battle Map


Ok so it's a little plain right now.

But ultimately, this screen displays the progress of your game, and will be used to plan your next moves against the machines.

This map and the gameplay behind it is heavily inspired by Desert Strike. You need to plan to gather resource, evade enemy scanners, take back captured sectors as well as deal with the dynamic events which will occur when out scavenging.

You also need to keep an eye on your battery life, plan your route to recharge batteries regularly!

The Armory


When built, and fully powered, players will gain access to the armory.

From this screen players can

customise the appearence of their vehicle
Change vehicles (currently we plan to include a Jeep, APC and Battle Tank Hull)
install new engines, weapons, armour and special weapons
craft new parts from resources gathered from the surface
This is a very exiciting part of the game. We want players to have to make interesting choices on what to do with their resources. Do you try to struggle on with basic weaponry so that you can save for a shiny laser cannon? Or invest in armor and engines to avoid the fight entirely?

Enemy Events


During the course of play there are 2 BASIC events that can take place

Enemy Alert - the enemy has seen you! Escape and evade OR destroy all comers!
Incoming Airstrike - Call in an airstrike on enemy bases under-construction. Remain in place until the airstrike destroys the base (pictured)
We are planning many, many other events. Such as the usual pick-up-drop-off-for-reward types but also convoy interceptions, rescue missions, and all out assaults!

Phew, thats a lot of information. The next step is to get the tutorial finished and polished up a bit so that we can make a playable alpha available for everyone to try. This will co-incide with the Greenlight/Kickstarter campaign later this year.

I hope you have enjoyed reading. Please let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Regards.

R.

Weapon Testing!

UPDATED!


Phew-EE!


Okay so development has taken an unexpected turn! I returned to CASTELLUM from a month long break, and discovered I didn't actually like it. I'd been developing it for 3 months at that point and thought "if this isn't fun yet, will it ever be?".

I do really think CASTELLUM could be a great game, but it's too big a project for a one man operation.


SO, I stripped back the complexity of the bunker, removed disease, radiation, flooding and so on. Then I added the SURFACE...




 

It's now possible (read: required) to venture out to the surface of the planet to gather metal and rescue people to expand your base. The Surface is populated by the enemy (insert plot here!) who will try to take over the map, you must expand your base, upgrade your vehicle and win the war before the enemy can conquer the whole map!


In practice this splits the game into 2 phases. A base building phase and a combat phase.


You start in the base building phase, then ride our to gather metal and people.

 



The combat map is split into sectors which you must defend, whilst also collecting metal and people, plus watching your power consumption. (running out of power == death)


At the end of each combat phase (when your vehicle is destroyed or you return to base) any remaining contested sectors become enemy sectors and will house an enemy spawning base on the next day.


Which gives us a whole new game! CASTELLUM was no long appropriate. It was taken from the latin for "shelter" and sounds too thoughtful and dark to be suitable.So a whole new name then...

At the moment it's all shaping up rather nicely. I can't WAIT to get stuck into the vehicle upgrades and customization. But there is a ways to go before that.


I hope you all like this latest iteration of this project. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Thanks beestings - it's a work in progress

I checked out your devlog and I would lean more on the side that theyre a little too cute.  imo, I think the shape/proportions of the characters are fine. Its the eyes and the color palette that are giving them their "cutesy" look.  theyre pretty close to FF saturated colors from the looks of it.  I think bring them down to somewhere between AA-DD you'll get a slightly more ominous look.  Also you have the added bonus of having really white/light gray backgrounds so I think you can afford to make the characters a little darker.

About the eyes, or more so the face, I dont have a specific suggestion in mind but 2 beady eyes with no mouth/nose/other facial features makes it look cute.  I just wrote that I didnt have a suggestion, but an idea just popped up to just remove the eyes entirely?  you might have to reshape the face a bit to make it look right, but it might look less cute/more creepy if they had a blanker expression.

Thanks everyone - that was really helpful. I've more or less followed CaLooch' suggestions and I'm pleased with the look (even if I am still a terrible animator )

Updated DEV log with GIF's
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=47397.msg1150336#msg1150336

This week i've been busy on presentation - music, lighting, sound and graphics!

Behold the new fangled look!





Notice the redone lighting effects, I wanted the outline of the shelter to be far more clear and sharp, without distracting flickering when survivors are wandering around.

I also added a slightly "gamey", but very clear, effect when rooms are inactive (notice the big red room). I think this is WAY clearer than the last look.



Next - I refreshed the survivor sprites. First I had a little chubby guy with wide blinking eyes, he was super easy to animate (yay!) but he's just too cute.




Next I went to a thinner, more pixel-art style of character. This guy actually looked great in screenshots. But this kind of pixel-by-pixel animation is far to labor intensive for my one-man-band operation.





So... following some helpful advice from the tigsource forums I took the FIRST cutesy-looking guy and:
- Made him thinner
- Desaturated the color pallet
- Removed the eyes
- Made him bald(!)





... now i'm not saying bald == evil. But there is no doubt he's looking alot more sinister and grown up!

What do you guys think?

I also FINALLY added an autosave feature. This has 2 advantages this early in development
- when testing, I can re-load shelters, rather than having to build another shelter from scratch each time. yay!

- When you are testi.. I mean PLAYING then you can build bigger more complicated shelters and hopefully expose more lovely bugs for me to squash.



Lastly I've been working closely with PIXEL NOISE, a 3 man outfit based in the states. They've been excellent and really seem to "get" the vibe i'm going for.

Hear the latest title track below

MP3 Link

I really want to get a proper alpha trailer or even just a bit of game play up for you guys to see in the coming weeks.

All the best!

R.

Hi everyone, I'm updating some of my artwork for my game - CASTELLUM (see signature for devlog link) - and I came up with these:



I worry they are too cutesy... what do you guys think?

Hey everyone - it's been a while since my last update - but the good news is things are really starting to come along.

I finally figured out what to do with Building Radius Effects - these are area-effect bonuses that speard outwards from your power plants and wells. (I may add other effects to other buildings later..)

Basically, if a building is irradiated by a power plant (for example) then it does not require as much power to run. BUT it is also more likely to suffer a fire if it is not maintained by an engineer.

Further to this I also added the flood hazard. This will crop up if a water connection point is not properly maintained. Currently it will just shut off power to any power connections it touches but I'm hoping to drown some people later..



Another BIG change is the "manufactory" building, prior to the world ending you are able to build your shelter at your leisure with infinite resources. But after armaggedon, everything you have needs to be produced underground!

Enter the Manufactory!



This building will generate materials, whice are required for construction. Engineers will now take materials from the manufactory to the nearest construction project. NB* They will only do this IF
* There is not something needing repaired
* There are no fire hazards nearby
* There are no flood hazards nearby

This new feature really makes you think about the paths your people take to get from point to point in your shelter. AND along with the bonues from Power Generators and Wells, it now pays to really think about the layoutof your shelter and how you are going to expand.

There has been ALOT of general bug squashing...
- fixed an issue where room connectors would not appear on the ends of corridors if the corridor was not yet finished construction
- fixed an issue where medium sized flooded rooms got the wrong sized sprite

- fixed an issue where
 lift names would draw outside of the lift shaft
- reduced the volume of the building noise. It's still a bit annoying but not as much. (alpha!)
- fixed an issue where an inactive (switched off) water/power plug would still keep supplying other nodes
- fixed an issue where adding new lift doors to an EXISTING shaft, BEFORE the existing shaft was finished building, would cause a crash
- fixed an issue where adding additional lift doors cost $0
- fixed a major performance issue with lift node pathing

.. and there is still so many features to add!

Monsters!
Taxation!
Birth Control!
Crime and Punishment!
Casinos, Markets and Bars!
Cinemas and Churches!
... argggh - *head explodes*

Speak to you all again soon!



R.

Looks amazing, man. When can we expect to see a download link? I'm REALLY eager to play it, haha. 

Around the same time as I can stop my little men from crashing the shelter and killing everyone inside

Wait... that sounds kind of fun anyway doesn't it?

Soon! I promise!

Hi everyone,

it's been a few weeks, and I've mainly been working on things UN-related to actually designing and programming the game. You'd be surprised how much is involved!




I've been working closely with a few different composers to get just the right sound and music into the game. I never thought I'd write "grinding, dark and driving is what I want" in an email to a stranger - but hey! Everyday is a skoolday.










I'm also trying very hard to find a good pixel artist to do the animation and drawing for the survivors (the little people in the shelter). I'm happy enough with my own placeholder "standing" and "walking in one direction" sprites. But I THINK that a commercial release needs more than that If anyone knows anyone - please contact me via this website!

Last, but by no means least, I'm now working heavily on a kickstarter campaign. There is just so much to do here and I want to get on with it so badly that my day job is actually getting in the way. Again, I never thought I describe what pays for the roof over my head, and the food in my fridge, as a "problem", but here we are!

I'm hoping to run the kickstarter alongside a greenlight campaign and a general press release. Again - if anyone knows anyone - i'd love to hear from you!





My new boxart!



Speak to you again soon!

R.

Wow it's been a busy one this week. I finally managed to get my head down and make some serious progress on new features and not just endless bug squashing!


The new Vandal is shaping up well, this character will appear when your people do not have enough recreational activities. He is currently only doing graffiti, which brings down morale. But I want to have him escalate gradually to more serious crimes if not caught.



.. Further to that, I also added the security guard. Once you promote a civilian to be a guard, these guys will roam around and arrest any vandals they see. Eventually, I want them to take appropriate action, based on values you set in the civ panel. for example you can set the punishment for minor crimes to be a beating, or jail time, or even death..

Building effects are IN! Finally I decided to simply go with the 2 effects I had decided on (radiation and flooding) rather than wasting more time huffing and puffing over all the eventual effects buildings MIGHT have in the future.



In the screenshot above you can see the dormitory affected by Radiation from the nearby power generator. You can also see the "sneek peek" window I added, this lets you mouseover rooms to see at a glace if they are working correctly and any buffs/debuffs applied!

Disease is now in! No screenshots as there is not much to see (your little men turn green for a while, then die ) but they way this is currently working is - your people become infected (currently they only get infected from dead bodies left lying around, but I'll add more later) then if they remain close to the source of infection they will eventually become diseased. Diseased people will not move and need to be treated by a doctor to recover. If not treated they will eventually die and become a source of infection themselves.

Objectives have been overhauled! The old system of do one thing, then get another objective, then another, was tedious and brittle. If the player deviated in anyway it broke the flow of objectives and actually the whole game.. SO! I've replaced it with something more similar to prison architects system. Eventually I want players to be able to choose their objective "sets" from a branching tree.. but I've not decided that as I want to have a think about it. Do I want players choices to be "cut off" if they go too far down one path?.. decisions decisions.

See the little panel on the left? That's the new objectives system. Shiny.



Last but not least, the END OF THE WORLD is in. Once you finish building your basic shelter the world will end in a flash and your shelter will be the last hope for humanity to survive. Try not to die!

Cheers!

R.

The depth and amount of systems you already have, and continue to add is really impressive. As you say, I imagine balancing all of this and squashing bugs must be a nightmare - but kudos to you for your work, and keep it up!

Thanks! Yep, this is by far my most complex project to date. But.. i'm going to be brave and say it's looking like my most promising too. Thanks for the words of encouragement - it makes all the difference!

Also - updated the OP with a new gameplay GIF, new screenshots, and new words.

It's been a busy few weeks since the last blog entry!

On a personal level, I've been moving home and learned that my soft computer hands are not made for operating drills and allan keys!

However the work continues, I am focusing alot of effort on one of the major systems in the game - Building area effects.

The system "should" work like this (disclaimer: Not actually tested all this out yet so the actual end product will change), buildings will have "effects" on other nearby structures - both positive and negative.

Examples
Power generators will irradiate nearby buildings.
This will make people sick if they drink irradiated water from an irradiated well placed too close to the power generator, BUT conversely, an irradiated farm will generate more food.

Wells will flood nearby buildings.
This will cause fires if placed too near a power generator, BUT conversely, people living in flooded dormitories are more resistant to disease.

I'm still working on alot of the details - but see below a screenshot of the new mouseover "peek" which you can use to check the status of your buildings. This will also provide a quick overview of the buffs/debuffs your building is getting.



As always, bug squashing remains a priority, but needs to be balanced against the need to move forward. Argh! who would be a solo developer?

In the next couple of weeks I'd like to have the building radius effect system working solidly, then I need to add security guards as a hard counter to the vandal AI.

After that, my next big project is the civics panel. This is a major piece of mid/end game functionality were you can (among other things)
- Ration Food and water
- Set punishment for crimes (Jail? Beatings? Death?)
- Control the birth rate
- Set shelter-wide policies to unlock special buildings and staff.

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading and look forward to any questions or comments!

Cheers.

R.

Hi everyone!

Been a few days since the last update! I THINK I managed to squash most of the little demolition bugs - you'd be surprised how many things are affected when you want to suddenly remove something from a game. #whyareyoudrinking



The vandal implementation is going well, I've settled on a look and got the basic "graffiti" behaviour up and running. The graffiti has an effect on overall morale and will be regarded as a minor crime for the purposes of civics (civic policies coming soon!).

First look at the vandal in game below



Pretty cool eh?

Maybe I should have some vandals smoking? Everyone knows bad guys smoke right? ..right?

[Picture of my largest shelter so far!]

Not much happened tonight.. was working on NAVPOINT promo materials before the steam release!

 

BUT I did manage to play at least 10 minutes without a single crash! Finally figured out an error checking mechanism for pathfinding - basically if a person gets stuck they will wait for a few seconds, then retry! Genius!

 
Picture of my largest shelter so far!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33539698/COG/FORUM/SCREENSHOTS/720/006.png


 

next week my goals are

- Fix outstanding bugs with demolishing buildings

- Implement vandalism (this will be one effect of people having no recreational activities)

- Implement wages and maintenance costs

 

Have a great weekend everyone!