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[seregrail7]

Russian Landmine Patrol

Clear mines and help the peasants get food to survive.



Download Here!(~1MB)

Updated Read Me to make things more clear.

Controls
Arrow Keys - Move
Space - Defuse Mine when near
A - Tell Peasants to run across the screen and get food
S - Spawn a new peasant(max of 40 active at any one time)
D - Respawn yourself

Scoring works like this:
10 Points per mine deactivated(press Space when near one)
4 Points for each food a peasant returns
-20 Points for killing a peasant

Using your food:
Then you can use up food(this doesn't have any effect on your score) to respawn peasants(-20 food, press S) or respawn yourself(-100 food, press D)

Trouble Shooting
XNA 2 Runtime:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=15fb9169-4a25-4dca-bf40-9c497568f102&displaylang=en

.Net 2.0 SP1 //**   Only if using Windows XP   **\\
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=79BC3B77-E02C-4AD3-AACF-A7633F706BA5&displaylang=en

DirectX 9.0C //**   Run this even if you think you are up to date   **\
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3

[jeb]

I like how the word "Patrol" makes this game awesome already. I mean... you better patrol the border, in case more landmines tries to sneak in!

[seregrail7]

Really early image of the game.

[team_q]

MMMMmmm Delicious C# XNA

[seregrail7]

Alrighty, I've updated the graphics. This is the style I'm going with for the game, I'll add a larger variety of tiles to hide the tiling even more.


And oh yes, there will be blood! Well there will be mines blowing up, right?


Also here's a gameplay summary:
Each round starts with you on the mine field, and peasants at the start line at the bottom. You have to find the mines(some are half buried, some are fully buried) by listening to beeps, they get faster as you get close to a mine, there'll also be a flashing red light on your mine detector(for people who don't hear so good). When you think you've gotten them all, you give the thumbs up a man at the start line, he fires off his gun and all the peasants make a dash for the other side of the mine field to get to the soup kitchen. Score is a mix of the time remaining(after a certain amount of time the peasants starve to death and you lose), number of peasants who made it across, and number of peasants who got blown up.
Then you start a new round with either more mines, or more fully buried ones, or less time or something. I'll work that out when I have enough programmed to test out which works best.

[Gorman]

I love the general idea, and i love the title, and i love the graphics, but it seems to me the best bit of the game happens when you lose (watching the peasants run and explode). and the joyful carnage of watching this is diminshed by your very actions.

Possibly, for what its worth, you could reverse the gameplay:

You, as a russian landmine expert, must place x number of mines to inflict the largest amount of damage.

Place mines, press go, watch splosions as peasants run across an idllyic field.

if you ponder this, it may solve the difficulty increasing conundrum, and point scoring conundrum and possibly opens up the gameplay in a large way


/edit to remove some bolds. i suddenly got embarrassed by them

[Zaphos]

I agree with Gorman 

[Gorman]

you are awesome zaphos!

[seregrail7]

I get where you're coming from, but I don't see it working well. There's only going to be so many spots you can put the mines in to cause the most damage. If I have time  it will be a bonus stage. It would be a nice way to break up the gameplay.

Also, seeing people explode doesn't mean losing, it just means losing a lot of points.

[Farbs]

I get where you're coming from, but I don't see it working well. There's only going to be so many spots you can put the mines in to cause the most damage.

It all depends on how the potential explodees respond to the environment and each explosion. If they run away from each successive explosion then you might find yourself with a funky herding type game.

I'm pretty sure the IRA used to use similar tactics.

[seregrail7]

I don't think planting mines is staying very true to the patrol part of the title, though.

[Μarkham]

It'd be pretty cool to watch the potential chain reactions - the blast radius could send peasants flying into other mines, blowing those up along with nearby peasants, and some mines could fling particles in a direction determined by the orientation of the mine, blowing apart more peasants.  Whatever it takes to stop the people from creating the people's government!

[Corpus]

I don't think planting mines is staying very true to the patrol part of the title, though.

Sure it is. You're blowing up the titular patrol.

[seregrail7]

UPDATE!
Added:
*Mines blowing you up
*Gibs when you get blown up
*The code for detecting if you're in a spot that allows you to disarm a landmmine

To be added this evening:
*Disarming landmines
*Peasants

As soon as peasants are in and explodable, there'll be a movie for you.

And with regards to how the game will play, I think it will play both ways. You can either help the peasants, or kill them. I should have time to program both, it's not a lot more work after I have the main mechanics in place.

[seregrail7]

No time to get the peasants in last night, that's the plan for today. To keep you going here's a movie.
Russian Landmine Patrol

Here's the peasants!

[team_q]

That looks cool so far, My only suggestion is  staggering the peasants leaving so its less of a solid line.

[seregrail7]

That's already done, the video was just a quick test.
Since that video:
*Explosion sounds(I'm recording the screams at the minute)
*Staggered starting positions
*Smoke coming from the mines
*Peasants running away when a mine goes off.

[seregrail7]

O.k the improvements are in place... is it alright for the peasants to sound Irish? I'd do a Russian accent but it may offend someone.

[deadeye]

*Peasants running away when a mine goes off.

I watched the video before reading this, and it caught me by surprise.  Good work on that one, it's a nice detail.

[team_q]

That video was delicious.