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[Jeferson R. Silva]

Pandora is going to be a real-time strategy game featuring intercellular battles between viruses. Genetic sequences are used to generate viruses with different characteristics and abilities. The missions where the player battles infections using his own custom set of viruses will probably be procedurally generated too.

Viruses depicted in the shot above were generated by the current implementation of the virus generator using the genetic sequences shown below each virus. I'm currently working on the other two classes of viruses and then I'll start with the gameplay implementation.

More details coming soon.

[mewse]

That's totally awesome.   

I can't wait to see more!

[Melly]

This looks potentially win.

[Alex May]

Yes! This sounds really great. Bring it on!

[Jeferson R. Silva]

Thanks for the encouragement words

Finally got some time to work on this game again and I managed to finish the virus shape generator. Here is a screenshot showing some of the resulting viruses.

And this is a screenshot of my stress test just for fun :D

I also started working on the gameplay and I hope to make some advances towards a playable demo before the deadline. Meanwhile, I'll share some details on what I expect to do. First the basic elements:

• Maps are composed of cells that are impassable by viruses. These cells can be of three diferent types indicated by the symbol on their borders: square, triangle or circle.
• Viruses, as seen on the screenshots, may have some combination of these three symbols on their borders. Viruses possessing the square symbol may reproduce on square-type cells, viruses possessing the triangle symbol may reproduce on triangle-type cells and so on.
• Viruses that possess more than one type of symbol may reproduce on more than one type of cell.
• Viruses can attack each other by using different types of antibodies. The antibodies may vary in color (red, blue, green and yellow) and in type (square, triangle and circle).
• Antibodies do double damage to viruses possessing the same type. They also do extra double damage if they have the same color of the target virus.
• Antibodies that differ in types from the target virus cause no damage. Antibodies that differ in color from the target virus cause normal damage.
• Viruses have different stats like HP and movement speed and a passive ability that may include resistances to attacks, invisibility, area-effects, effects that activate when they die, synergies with other virus types, etc. The types of antibodies used by the viruses are different for each virus too.

Now the gameplay flow:

• A random map is generated with different proportions for each cell type. That means a virus type may be useless if there are few cells of the corresponding type for it to reproduce.
• A set of a few viruses (probably 1-5 virus types) is generated and used to populate the map. Difficulty level settings will affect this.
• The player may study the map and the viruses types and then choose a set of viruses(1-5 virus types).
• The game starts with the player choosing some starting cells for his chosen viruses.
• From this moment on the player may produce new viruses only by infecting new cells with his viruses that are on the map.
• Enemy viruses may reproduce by using the same process.
• The game ends when all player viruses are destroyed or when the player manages to destroy all the enemy viruses.
• Optional: The game ends with the player losing if too many cells are destroyed.
• Winning or losing the player receives a number of genetic codes of random viruses that can be used on the next games.
• After each game the player may research a number of new viruses by entering genetic codes. By using this feature, players may share interesting viruses.

Finally I'd like to know your opinions on the following:

• Movement: Should the viruses be controlled like a normal RTS by selecting and moving or should I go for a different movement scheme like positioning colored markers to move all viruses of the same color to the position of the markers?
• Active Abilities: Should the viruses have active abilities that can be activated by right-clicking them when you have enough [insert-mana-like-thing-here]? Example: by right-clicking a virus it can explode and cause massive area damage. My problem with this is that I won't be able to make the AI use these abilities efficiently. So the player will have some advantage but it can be compensated by making the AI have a greater quantity of viruses.

Feel free to comment on the other features and gameplay too.

[increpare]

Viruses that possess more than one type of symbol may reproduce on more than one type of cell.

Is the reproduction rate related to the complexity of the virus?

Movement: Should the viruses be controlled like a normal RTS by selecting and moving or should I go for a different movement scheme like positioning colored markers to move all viruses of the same color to the position of the markers?

Hmm.  What about the option of giving orders to each cell along the lines of (be aggressive/reproduce/do nothing)?  And let them figure out things themselves. 

All of the various entities do look quite large: is it a case that there's going to be a lot of scrolling about involved when you're playing the game?

[Jeferson R. Silva]

Viruses that possess more than one type of symbol may reproduce on more than one type of cell.

Is the reproduction rate related to the complexity of the virus?

Yes. Initially I thought it would be related only to the stats and/or abilities but using the complexity of the shapes makes it more interesting since you can recognize viruses that are more complex and more dangerous.

Movement: Should the viruses be controlled like a normal RTS by selecting and moving or should I go for a different movement scheme like positioning colored markers to move all viruses of the same color to the position of the markers?

Hmm.  What about the option of giving orders to each cell along the lines of (be aggressive/reproduce/do nothing)?  And let them figure out things themselves. 

All of the various entities do look quite large: is it a case that there's going to be a lot of scrolling about involved when you're playing the game?

Yes, it would be possible to give orders for each type of virus chosen by the player. I would certainly play it like that too.

About the scrolling and the entity sizes, the player will be able to control the zoom and hopefully he will be able to easily scroll around the map by using the mouse or the arrows keys. I'm finishing map generation and then I'll start playing with map sizes to discover what feels best.

[Jeferson R. Silva]

Unfortunately I had less free time than I expected on the last weeks so I couldn't work as much as I wanted on this project. That means I don't have anything interesting to show at the current moment.

I'll continue developing the game and as soon as I have something playable I'll post again with an update.

[Alex May]

That's a damn shame - I was really looking forward to this one.

[Melly]

Goodluck developing it, it's a very interesting idea.

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

This looks cool, it'll be great to play it 

[Melly]

This still seems interesting. Any post-compo updates?

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

Yes please