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[Alex Vostrov]

Since the last post I made about the fusion rifleman design was interesting to some people, I've decided to do something like this with another new unit.  A while ago I added a Technican class that protects your team, but it took several tries to get things right.  I thought that I'd tell you about the evolution of the new class here.

Technician

The way the final version works is by protecting all your units in a particular area.  Your units can still be damaged, but there's a maximum rate at which they can by hurt.  In other words, the Technician guarantees a certain amount of fighting time for your team.

Let's look at a real example.



Let's say that you want to capture the alien hive on the left, what would you do?



If you just run in there with your soldiers, the infested siege cannon that's guarding the hive will rip the team to shreds.



With a technician supporting the team, though, you can shrug off the siege cannon fire.  He projects force fields that deflect the cannon shells back towards the enemy and protect your troops.  You still take damage, but at a much slower rate.  This gives the team enough time to kill the hive and later the cannon itself.

Now let's look at how I got to the Technician concept.

Medics

When I was working on Infested Planet early on, I added a medic class.  The medic stayed around for months, but I never felt that he was all that useful.  He wasn't useless, just somewhat mediocre.

A couple of months ago, I finally decided to rework the medic class into something more interesting.

Invulnerability Projector

A while ago, I experimented with adding a temporary invulnerability skill to Infested Planet.  This was something that you could apply to your troops.  For a while, they would run around the map, shrugging off all damage.  That didn't feel right to me - it was too powerful, but I did keep the ability to make things invulnerable.

My first shot at reforming the medic was to remake him into a protector class.  There would be a large circle around the unit where your troops would be invulnerable.  He'd zap people with his field projector if they got damaged to protect them.  To balance this, I added a "heat" meter to the projector.  If it was used too much, it would stop working for a while.

My intent was to make the new unit provide endurance to the team.  This was something that you could use to get into long firefights with the enemy.  The idea was good on paper, but when I put it into the game, it ruined everything.

The game became too easy.  Yes, you had to manage the heat meter, but while it was green you could run around zombie crowds with no harm.  The field projector drained all tension and conflict from the game.  I knew that I couldn't keep it as it was.

Reflective Shield

I thought that if I took steps to add danger back to the mix, then the new class would be more fun.  To do this, I made two changes.  First, I shortened the field range by quite a bit, so that the guardian couldn't hang back from the battle and zap people from safety.  The second thing that I did was change the field mechanics.

After trying the invulnerability field, I thought that I was a bit too bland.  Yes, you were invulnerable, but so what?  I wanted something with a bit more oomph.

I changed the field projector the a reflective circle around the new unit.  Any projectile that entered the circle would bounce back, toward the enemy.  Conceptually, I liked the idea.  It was an offensive ability, which should make it more exciting.  The other thing is that it left some weaknesses in the unit - you could still attack via melee and get some hits in.

The idea was interesting, but still too powerful.  Most dangerous attacks in the game are ranged.  By blocking all of them, things still felt too safe.  I went back to the drawing board.

Technician

My final idea was to combine the two prototypes and to change the way the invulnerability worked.  Before, it would make you completely unkillable.  I changed things so that it would "filter" damage.  A little bit of damage would still go through, but a giant amount would get blocked.  This made the field really useful against overwhelming weapons such as infested cannons, but less powerful in ordinary situations.

The other change I made is that invulnerable units sometimes reflected bullets back at the attacker.  This allows you to trick enemy cannons into shooting their own friends.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my final version.  I solved the problem of power and made the technician interesting to use.  The only things that I might tweak are the graphical effects.  Right now it's a placeholder red beam that shoots from the technician to a friend.  This doesn't make it feel like the technician is having a huge effect.  I'll tweak the graphics so that they feel more impressive.

[Alex Vostrov]

I have a little update for you guys.  I’m still working on the campaign, but I’ve re-arranged things a bit.  Let me talk about the evolution of the campaign.  I’ve been hacking away at a lot of old ideas.  Thankfully, most of this stuff never got past the design stage or early implementation.

In the Beginning

Initially, I wanted the campaign to apply modifiers to the core missions, depending on which side-missions you decided to do.  For example, you could do a side-mission to sabotage the power grid.  If you did this, the main mission would no longer have infested alien cannons.

Now that I’m further into the campaign, I don’t know if adding and subtracting factors like this is a good idea.  I like the concept of changing the core mission, but giving the player control of this is self-defeating.  The players will naturally want to de-fang the most vicious defences, making the main mission less exciting.  Yes, having evil siege cannons in the mission is a pain in the butt, but finding creative ways to kill them is what makes the game interesting.

I think that I’ll keep my idea for mission modifiers, but maybe I’ll reincarnate it in a different guise.  It could be a random factor in the skirmish mode and provide some variety to the campaign missions.  I doubt that it will be something that the player can wave away.

Mission Planning

My second thought about the campaign was to add a planning mode.  You would still do side-missions to get benefits, but you’d arrange them in a mission plan.  As the mission would progress, the different parts of the plan would activate, giving you bonuses.



I had one major concern about this approach.  It front-loads a lot of important choices.  If you screw up, there’s no flexibility to fix things or adapt.  I don’t consider this good game design.  Games should be interactive, which means giving the player a chance to fix their mistakes.

Attack Planning

My next idea to make the planning more interesting was to hook it into the capture system.  You’d use the screen below to lay out which bonuses would activate when.  For example, if I captured that middle hive on the picture below, the aliens would get an extra mutation, that’s a bonus for the aliens.

With this setup, you have more flexibility; you can still choose what you want to attack and when.  The planning stage is all about combining bonuses in such a way that helps you attack that particular area.

There was still something bothering me about this system.  It still felt too static and I didn’t like hooking more side-effects into point capture.  You already have to process what mutations happened.  Now you’d also have to keep track of bonus effects.




Instant Powers

Right now, I’m experimenting with a special power system.  You unlock special one-time powers during the campaign side-missions and then use them in the main mission.  What I like about this approach is that it’s a lot more immediate than the planning systems.  You plan what tools you’ll have, but the use of these tools is very flexible.

Another thing that I’m considering is mixing the upgrade system and the instant power system.  There could be an interesting balance between doing research to upgrade your troops and calling in short-term weapon strikes.

[Alex Vostrov]

I'm back from hibernation everyone!  I took a bit of a break, because I was busy working on the game.  Now the game is close to being done and I'm ready to talk about it again.

Let's get started.  A lot has happened since the last post and the game has changed quite a bit.  I’ve decided to start from the beginning, so that people who haven’t been following the game’s development all this time can find out why it’s neat.

What is Infested Planet?

Let me talk about why I find the game cool.  First and foremost, Infested Planet is a game about exciting tactical skirmishes. It’s about fighting against incredible odds and coming out on top. That’s what happens when you land on a planet with 5 marines and blow the heck out of 10000 aliens.



It’s hard to describe how strangely compelling it is to mow down a 1000 bugs with a minigun.  You’ll just have to take my word for it.

You remember that moment in your favourite RTS game? You’ve built up a powerful force, smashed through the enemy’s defences and your soldiers are closing in on the heart of their base. That’s the feeling that Infested Planet captures – striking hard at the enemy and blowing up their stuff.



For me, that moment is when you’re rampaging through a Zerg base in Starcraft with a horde of space marines.  I tried to take that feeling and amplify it many times over.

Once you learn the basics, Infested Planet is about shrewd tactics and squeezing that little bit more out of your resources. It’s about looking at the battlefield and making a strategic decision to abandon a position for better ground. It’s about seeing through your enemy’s strengths and picking a tool that punches them right in the gut.



Finally, Infested Planet is about unpredictability. The game was built from the ground up to be extremely replayable. The enemy dynamically evolves and mutates, giving you new challenges every time. I’ve been working on it for more than a year, and I still get pulled into trying to finish off a mission when I should be coding.

What’s Next?

Since I’m rebooting my efforts to talk about the game, I’ve decided to take a different approach this time.  This game is pretty personal for me – I’ve spent a year of my life on it!  Strangely, I don’t think that I’ve ever talked about why I find the game exciting.  I talked as a game developer and not a game player.

From now on, I’m going to talk about what it’s like to play the game.  My next post will be an action report from a random game that I’ll run.  That should give you a good impression of why Infested Planet is unique and compelling.

[Alec S.]

Glad to see this back.  It looks like it's coming along really nicely!

[Chris Pavia]

I want to see video of all them buggers being mowed down!

[Destral]

Sounds pretty awesome. I look forward to seeing where this goes. 

[Alex Vostrov]

I want to see video of all them buggers being mowed down!

I really want to put out a trailer too!  There's still some last-minute work to be done on the sounds and art though, so it'll have to wait a bit.

My plan for the next month is to spend a week making the alien death as gratuitously splattery as possible.

[Scut Fabulous]

Great to see some fresh news about the game, I'm still excited!  I vote you post up a Let's Play.

[Alex Vostrov]

Welcome to the first Infested Planet battle report.  This is the story of a random game that I played yesterday.  I decided to play at "Master" level, to make things interesting.

I've taken lots of juicy screenshots to illustrate what happened.  Click them to zoom in.



This is our randomly generated map.  Looks like the random generation gods have gone easy on me today, since the basic strategy for this map seems easy to figure out.  My plan is to knock out the bases on top and bottom of me and then steamroll down the middle.



The first question that I have to answer - how am I going to defend my initial base?  I have a couple of choices.  I can leave a member of my squad, I can construct a defensive turret or I can upgrade my base bunker to shoot at enemies.  I don't like the idea of leaving my attack team short on soldiers, so I'm going to build a turret.



With that matter settled, I'm going to head north to destroy the aliens there and plunder their resources.  With what I've left, I make a fusion rifleman.  It's not much, since I used most of my build points on the turret, but it helps.



As it happens, taking out this hive is pretty easy.  There is a crate full of ammo points next to it, so I can toss grenades and then immideately get back the ammo from the crate.  The first hive quickly goes down and I get the delicious resources when I capture the point.



It's here that a slight misfortune strikes.  The alien hive that I attacked specialised in ranged poison attacks and my team was dead or poisoned when I captured the point.

This gave me some extra resources to play with, so I thought that I'd be clever and upgrade one of the remaining soldiers to a medic.  Well, as it happens, the aliens mutated "Virulence" - a mutation that prevents the healing of poisoned soldiers.  I noticed this too late and everyone dies.

Thankfully, this is early in the game and I don't have to defend that much territory.  My team respawns quickly and I'm ready to attack the base below me.  I research "Regeneration" to allow my marines to slowly gain back health.



Now, this will require a little bit of finesse.  Their base is protected by an infested shield generator.  This means that if I just went in with my team from before, they'd barely make a scratch.  I'm going to need something to take out that generator - like a sniper.

I don't have enough resources for a sniper though, so I have to tweak things a bit.  I sell my defensive turret, since my team can protect that area anyway.  I could have sold the "Regeneration" research, but I thought that I would need it up ahead.



With its generator down, the hive goes down in a barrage of grenades and machine gun fire.  For my efforts, I get some more build points and the aliens get a nasty mutation - "Mimicry".  This one's pretty evil.  Every time I kill an enemy hive, it leaves behind mimic eggs.  These can hatch into clones of my team, if I let them live.  Yikes!

The good news is that the alien base has a resource crate nearby.  I'm going to tow it back to base and buy some more hardware.  My general plan is to parry the enemy attackers with a turret and then swoop in on the side.



I sell my sniper and buy 3 fusion rifles.  These guys are good against crowds, which is something that I'll need up ahead.  As I charge down the middle of the map, there's a small barrier.

A proto-hive is sitting in between me and the next point.  It's no match for my team and we rip it to shreds with well-aimed fusion bolts.  Those proto-hives can be dangerous at a distance since they spawn reinforcements, but they're wimpy up close.



I tweak my team to include a sniper and stomp all over the next hive.  It seems that the random generator really liked me, because right to the next hive rest two build point crates.  Once I get them, things will be a lot easier and I'll be swimming in cash.



And the hive explodes in a shower of purple!

As a last-minute complication, it leaves behind three mimic eggs.  Because of this nasty mutation, I lose my sniper to clone attacks.  While he's being brought back to life, I kill the towers guarding the goodie crates and drag them to base.



Pumped up with my new resources, I immideately attack and capture the point below the current one.  It's the first of a chain that's soon going to give me lots of trouble.  For now, I'm doing pretty well and I use my new resources to secure the area that I've just captured.

I'm going to need more resources to take on the next hive, so I look for things to recycle.  I decide that I can hold the advancing horde where I'm standing.  I sell all the other defenses that I made and purchase a team of 6 fusion rifles.  That's going to pack a punch.



I also invest heavily into technology.  I buy tech that allows me to toss more grenades, gives me an extra soldier (up from 5) and disperses damage among the whole team.

As things stand, I really need that last tech.  The aliens have evolved "Sharp Spikes" and "Hardpoints".  Now their spit towers will do damage right away, instead of just poisoning me.  To make it worse, they get the ability to grow structures that deploy more spit towers.  The dispersion technology should give me a measure of protection against their attacks.

Having countered their mutations with my technology I descend upon my next objective.



Here's where it gets tricky.  I get the point, but the job is only half-done.  Its sibling is still pumping out swarms of aliens in my direction.  What's worse, I come within the field of fire of an infested siege cannon.  This is going to make my life much more difficult.

I decide to make a tactical retreat and to attack from the flank.  I'm a bit worried about the aliens growing hardpoints out there.



While I'm occupied with the battle on the western flank, the aliens retake the location I just captured.  Looks like I was overconfident in the effectiveness of that lone turret that I plopped down.  Worse, I didn't even destroy the hardpoint in this debacle.

I swivel back to the lost point and rush to recapture it.



Fortunately, my veteran team quickly cuts through the newly built hive.  If I had waited longer, then it would have regrown its defenses and I'd be in some trouble.  I finally face the fact that I'll have to deal with the hive that's two steps away and that infernal siege cannon.  I focus my efforts on cracking those defenses.



My new plan works perfectly and I make a turret to celebrate.  The question now is whether I want to head north or south.  Still smarting from my retreat from the western flank, I decide to finish what I started.

Since I have more build points to play with, I upgrade one of my guys to a flamethrower.  They can be deadly up close and I'm going to need their fire to get through the shell of the hardpoint.



Over the next couple of minutes I spar with the aliens.  They try to sneak past my defenses to my unprotected bases, but I kill them with my team.  I rack up another small success and kill the hardpoint that's been blighting the western flank.

While all of this is going on, the aliens punch trough my eastern frontier and take back my point.  I have to turn around and push them back into their slimy hole.



Clearly, my current approach isn't going to work.  I'm nervous about the western flank, so I'd like to make a push from that direction.  Still, it's obvious that I can't leave the east to fend for itself.  I could leave some soldiers there to prop up the defenses, but I dislike weakening my team.

I decide to sell my two flamethrowers and to buy the "AP Grenade" technology.  This gives all advanced units and turrets free grenades to toss at the enemy.  I still have to use ammo to kill buildings with grenades, but I'll have less trouble with crowds.  At this point I've researched all but one of the available technologies.  I'm the science king!

Now that my turrets can handle themselves a bit better, I charge down to the southern hive.



Using a team of 6 fusion rifles, I smash their defenses, though at a heavy price.

My entire team is completely poisoned.  Their health dripping down, I know that I only have a few seconds before they all die.  I decide to dive in for the point that I'm attacking.  I might have saved the team by retreating, especially since I have that regeneration tech, but I choose not to.

The advantage of pushing forward is that I can get the resources from capture, even if I lose the point afterwards.



My team is dead.  The site of their demise is marked with 6 mimic eggs.  This is the effect of a previous mutation - "Necrophage".  Thankfully, my dispersal tech meant that they all died at the same instant.  Otherwise, it would have been a ton of trouble to fight mimics as each soldier died.

While my team respawns, the aliens send a strike team through a crack in my defenses.  I manage to catch them when I get my soldiers back. and disaster is averted.



At this point, I have to decide on my next plan of attack and I choose to finish off the hive in the north.  I was a bit reluctant to go so far from my main defenses, but there are compelling reasons for the attack.  The main argument is that I'd be fighting one hive up there versus two in the south.  I could kill it, consolidate my defensive perimiter and win the game.

Before I do that, I need to make sure that nobody's going to sneak through again.  I can't afford to split my team to fight infiltrators again.  I decide to firm up my defenses in the west.  Thus begins a comical and almost tragic misadventure.



The first thing that I do is reposition the old turret to cover the bottleneck better.  Nobody's going to creep past this time.

Then I get the brilliant idea to put a minefield in the path of the advancing horde.  This will make sure that nothing can pass through that area.  I foolishly decide to send one marine on a suicide run to build the minefield.  Thinking that I'm just going to run in and out, I forget about the mimic eggs that were left over from my previous death.

You can guess what happens - the mimics hatch and copy the form of my fusion rifleman.  I'm in a pretty bad spot right now.  If things get worse, the mimics could blow though my defenses and undo all my work.  On top of that. I could also lose my entire team.  Even though it's only one soldier getting attacked, his health is linked to the rest of my team through the dispersal technology that I've been using.

I run for my life with the mimics after me.



Thankfully, the turret that I had up north shreds the mimics to bits.  As it happens, fusion rifles are iffy against small, single targets like a turret.  Also, my turret can regenerate health and shoot grenades due to my technology.  So in the end, I probably did myself a favour.  Those mimic eggs were going to be trouble later, and taking them out was a good idea.

I decide to build the minefield much closer up and resume my original plan to capture the northern hive.



Things work out perfectly.  I pounce on the northern point, get its resources, and run back to destroy the two remaining points in the south.  The aliens give me a bit of trouble, but it's nothing that retreating and healing up can't solve.  At this point I've gathered so much resources that I'm unstoppable.

I punch through the last two points, ignoring the other side's feeble attempts to mutate their way out of the box that they're in.



Victory!  I managed to defeat my slimy opposition in 17 minutes.  16,596 bullets were fired in the production of this battle report and 34,156 aliens were blown to purple bits.  Their spokesperson couldn't be reached for comment.



I hope that you liked this report.  I want to do a couple more before the release of the trailer.  Things would have gone very differently if the map that was generated was more sprawling in nature.  Also, I didn't even use the majority of my weapons, due to the mutations that were thrown at me.

I hope that you check out the next report when I post it.

[RCIX]

My reaction:
   
How long before i can decimate my pocketbook with some of those tasty fusion rifles?

And if i may recommend music, i believe that this would fit quite nicely.

[Alex Vostrov]

No definite promises, but in June it'll be one year since I went full-time indie.  I really want to have something out by that time.

[happymonster]

That battle report was a great read, thank you very much for writing it! 

[Gainsworthy]

Nice battle report! Way to be a tease. This is gunna be fun.

Also, 34,000 enemies killed? Good lord! How are you running so many enemies at once?

[dEnamed]

I greatly enjoyed AotPZ and now you're telling me it's getting even better? 
Do you have any plans on how you want to sell it? Popular Online Services like Steam or hosting and managing sales yourself?

Those new screenshots are beautiful by the way. From the colors to the interface and the composition, it works.

[Alex Vostrov]

@AmnEn

Greg Wohlwend's done a great job on the art.  He's rescued me from an art hell last year. Go Greg!  I'm also adding particle effects and they're looking pretty slick.

I'm going to be selling it myself, as a bare minimum while the beta and preorders are happening.  If I can get onto Steam and such, I'll definitely take the bait.

@Gainsworthy

That's nothing.  I had a particularly tough game this one time - was stomping the enemy for an hour.  At the end, the stats page said that I killed over 100,000 aliens.

As for how, I'm doing it.  Would you believe it if I said that inside every copy of Infested Planet will be a miniature universe that powers the game? 

[Inanimate]

That was quite the entertaining read! This game looks like crazy, frantic, strategic fun... hopefully I'm not too stupid to enjoy it properly. 

[Alex Vostrov]

Big news guys! I announced Infested Planet a year ago, not suspecting how much work was ahead of me. I thought that I could get it all done in 3 months – hah! Well, that journey is almost over.

On June 21st you will be able to play the game yourself. Everyone who pre-orders the game (at a discount) will be able to download the latest version and see what all the fuss is about.



Greg Wohlwend and I have been working very hard on this game. I look forward to the day when I can share it with you.

Oh and don't forget that you can follow the development of the game on www.rocketbeargames.com/blog.  It's usually more current than this thread.

[dEnamed]

Beautiful. I guess those two essays I've got to do for University will have to be scheduled to an earlier date. Depending on the payment options, I'll buy it right away or will have to wait a bit.

[Alex Vostrov]

Hey AmnEn, not that I want to sabotage your education, buuuut...  What payment options would work for you?

I'm willing to be paid in camels.

[dEnamed]

I kindly offer you two camels and one grandmother, if that suffices? Jokes aside, about the payment options:

Due to me being citizen of two states , Banks are somewhat reluctant with credit cards and so am I. I'm aware that the way I can pay are somewhat limited with either Paysafecards or a direct transaction.
Naturally, I can probably just involve a friend and use the normal paths like Paypal - but that would depend on time as I need to organize it first.

So in the end, you're fine. It'll fit one way or another, so don't worry about it.