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[Hempuli‽]

Note that the thread has moved to: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=18908.0

My intention is to create a simple team deathmatch-like game using the Lacewing protocol for the on-line engine. My idea is probably too ambitious, and will require too many players to be enjoyable, but hey, trying wont hurt.

The gameplay would probably something like TASO combined with Minecraft and so on. Basically the world can be destroyed pretty easily, and the players will be given some time occasionally to fix their tower. I also thought that it'd be cool to feature some sorts of jobs, e.g. doctor, soldier and builder, but that's again slipping to the way-too-ambitious -area.

I did a little mockup:

The mockup is hugely based on a certain other mockup from squidi.net, but hopefully the final game wont look like that. I'll probably try to make it to a bit higher resolution due to gameplay reasons, but to be honest the 8x8 pixel one looks kinda snazzy, too.

EDIT: Let's just add all these to the OP, so that people can see just what I am doing without reading it all:


NEWEST VERSION GET!
While playing, type your preferred nickname to the first textbox and press 'connect'. In the lobby, you can create games by typing to the textbox in the upper-right corner and pressing 'create', and when joining you'll have to press 'refresh', the select a game and press 'join'.

V = shoot
C = jump
X = use/pickup

[ChevyRay]

Oh god yes Hempuli's hat is in the ring. It's ON!

EDIT: make sure to set the topic Message Icon to "Versus Competition" too dawg

[Hempuli‽]

Oh god yes Hempuli's hat is in the ring. It's ON!

EDIT: make sure to set the topic Message Icon to "Versus Competition" too dawg

Prepare yourself for some serious OVERKILLLL

Thanks for pointing that out!

[kavs]

Love the mockup! Reminds me a bit of some kind of 2D Rampart. 

[Hempuli‽]

Worked today mostly on getting the joining/game creating work. You can now connect to a game, move around and set yourself a nickname and so on.

I'm not quite sure about what direction I should take with the game. My initial idea was some sort of semi-complex team battle where both teams build their own bases and then fight, but then I thought that it'd be better to have a bit simplified style of playing. Perhaps each player would be fixed to a role, and they'd do whatever that role was supposed to, with a 'builder' being one of these? What do you think?

[rivon]

What about 2v2 or 3v3 players to not overcomplicate it. In each team one builder/engineer, one user (of some turrets or something) and one repairer. When 2v2, the builder would also be the repair guy. The roles would be chosen randomly on the game start.
Then just build the base and destroy the other team. Cooperation would be crucial.

Probably the roles could be different but whatever, you're the one who makes the game

[Hempuli‽]

That's some nice ideas! I'll think more about them tomorrow.
Here's the last addition I did today, not big but anyway:


Since it's probably impossible to see what's going on, the addition is that now every player sees which team they're in! This was actually harder to code than I thought, but now that I have it made I can easily make distinct outfits for these possible jobs and so on.

Oh, and as for the player numbers: I think I'll make the game not restrict the number of players to 2v2 or 3v3 or such, but instead just code some upper limit of players to avoid tremendous slowdown and absolute chaos (I've been thinking of 10 max players, or possibly even 20, depending on how big the level ends up being).

[Hempuli‽]

I did a little picture to show off the possible jobs, drawn on our school computers that are so good that MSpaint lags:

As you can see, this project is hopelessly ambitious, but who cares, I find that fun.

[Hempuli‽]

So, here're the things I did on day 2 (or is it 3 already?):

-I started working on a simple lobby thing that'll display the available games.
-I sprited the jobs listed above and made a simple textbox that announces stuff. Due to the stupidity of MMF, it took me a couple hours to get a chatbox that supports different colours to work!


The lobby is a bit ugly and lonely, but should work allright.


Not too glorious, but here they are. (From left to right: Miner/Builder, Soldier, Scientist and Technician).

Tomorrow I shall finish the chatbox, and probably start adding some job-specific base features. It may seem that I've done an immense amount of stuff in these first few days, but I can tell you that with MMF the beginning is the fastest part and the problems start only in the end! gasp.

[Carrie Nation]

So a fort based minecraft/tf2 thingy?

That would be a wonderful thingy indeed.

[Sos]

I see future in that! Good luck Hempuli

[Ashkin]

I'mma keep an eye on this. Don't let us down Hempuli, your games are always amazing.

[Inanimate]

Why are they all sad. 

This game is going to be amazing, I can feel the greatness quivering in my bones. Can't wait!

[J. R. Hill]

Reminds me of lemmings.

[Pishtaco]

Sounding promising; good luck with the networking stuff.

One suggestion - maybe the scientist should be carrying a cup of tea rather than a test tube? That's how it looked when I first saw the image.

[shojin]

Need music? -shamelessplug-

I'll just leave this here...
http://artembank.bandcamp.com/album/popstar-ruler

[kavs]

Looks awesome Hemp!  Keep it up!

[Wowk]

Looks amazing! Go for it! 

[Hempuli‽]

Ahoy, another day of productivity is at its end. Today I still didn't get to do much cool stuff, instead finalized the base of the online code and fixed a lot of little quirks. Also made all players see eachother's class (which sounds lame but needed a certain amount of struggle ).

I tested the game today for the first time with 'proper' testers (i.e. not just using localhost to connect to my own game), and the results were promising. I also added the important ability to talk in-game (later on I'll also add team-only speech). At first I thought of using a dynamic talk system where only players in your vicinity hear what you say, but I guess I'll have to save that for a 'deeper' online game, since most players just wanna fight and not think about where to talk.


Also a silly WIP class selection screen!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get to the 'fun' part, i.e. where I can add actual features and not just try to get the engine to work. Before that I have to think a bit about the UI, though. My idea was to have 4 actions for each class, and then use them with 2 buttons: One switches the action to use and the other actually uses it. We'll see if this works at all. More about that later.

Also, thanks everyone for the sweet amount of kindness you've poured here! That's always appreciated. Shojin, your stuff sounds pretty snazzy, but I'll wait a bit before thinking about the audio: the game is still so early in development that it's hard to say what kind of atmosphere it ends up having. And Carrie, yes, it's basically TF2 meets Minecraft Lite.

[kavs]

Looking sexy. :3 Love how much progress you have made here!

I'm curious to see how you make the miner work. His description states he'll be gathering resources, so it could be cool to see some players have to be the 'economy' for the team while they shell out money on ammo, machines, and defenses. I've always liked the idea of a player-controlled economy like that. The only other example I can think of are the ANT drivers in Planetside (oh so long ago...).

Keep it up!