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[ActualDog]

Robot Time Game

Flixel 2.5 and FlashDevelop

This game is unnamed right now, but hopefully I'll have a good title for it soon!

This is my first time doing a devlog, and the game's not too far along yet, but I figured that doing this would encourage me to work on the game more than I otherwise would.

The basic idea of the game is that you're a robot created to save your village from an asteroid that's supposed to hit in 150 years.  To be able to stop it, you have to get to the top of a mountain near the outskirts of the village where you'll literally be able to catch the asteroid as it goes by.  In order to get to that point, however, you'll have to do what you do best; wait.  

As you wait those long 150 years for the asteroid, you'll have opportunities to help out the villagers with their own problems, and slowly make your way to the top of the mountain.  The game is full of time based puzzles, and by solving them you can get closer to the summit.

A simple puzzle might be that there's a ledge you need to get to the top of.  There's no way to climb up it now, but if you plant a vine and come back in a year, the vine might have grown up to the top, allowing you to climb up.  

As an example of a more complex puzzle, there could be a group of rats that you have to get rid of.  You can't kill them yourself, but if you can manage to separate the males from the females, they won't be able to reproduce anymore, and they'll eventually die off if you wait long enough.  

The interactions will play out similarly to how they would in a point and click adventure game.  There will be certain locations that the user can interact with, but it'll be up to them to figure out what to do there.  The game will have platformer controls, however, which I decided on to make the actual moving around a satisfying experience.  The player can also choose to shut himself down for certain amounts of time, and resume playing at a future in-game date.  Basically, the game is about time manipulation in one dimension.

I really want the game to pack an emotional punch, and I want to have the game show time in the small scale as well as the large.  You'll see minute to minute interactions as well as interactions that span 10's of years.

The biggest challenge for me is going to be the art.  I'm way more of a programmer than an artist, and this game requires a lot of assets, so it'll be interesting to see how that turns out.  

Everything you see so far is (hopefully) temp art, and was all, with the exception of the character and all his animations, done super quickly.  I haven't decided on an art style yet.  It's possible the game will end up looking similar to this, but it's up in the air at this point.

So far I have my base engine working.  It simulates time, shown in debug text at the top of the screen, and you can advance to any point you want.  Because the village changes over time, the game will load different XML files depending on what time and date it is.

I just got my conversation system working.  So now you can talk to people.  Conversations can also change depending on the date and time.

Also have a pretty decent little level editor.  It's easy to add assets, and it supports placing objects in either the foreground or background of the stage.  You can move objects and delete objects too.

So, I have a loooong way to go, but I've feeling good about this project and I just wanted to share.  Hope it's at least a little interesting to some of you!

[Destral]

Very interesting premise, your puzzle examples are intriguing. Not sure if you've played the Grow games, but this seems to follow a similar idea, albeit with a more developed setting and story.

Look forward to seeing where this goes.

[ActualDog]

Very interesting premise, your puzzle examples are intriguing. Not sure if you've played the Grow games, but this seems to follow a similar idea, albeit with a more developed setting and story.

Look forward to seeing where this goes.

Thanks, that's encouraging to hear!  I have actually played the Grow games, and they're awesome.  I totally never formed that connection until now, but they are sort of a similar idea now that you mention it.  Hopefully I'll be able to differentiate this game enough to make it worthwhile! 

[SirNiko]

This one looks excellent.

It's not clear from your description: will the robot have a time limit of 150 years to reach the mountaintop, or is that simply background story and you will have infinite time to actually reach the mountain?

Will the game be linear, or do you expect branching paths for the player to reach the goal? It could be fun if a fast player might reach a bridge before it collapses from disuse, while a slow player might find a tunnel has been constructed that allows them to take a new route.

I get vibes of Majora's Mask, where it would not simply be the player's position that matters, but also the year.

You should also consider breaking the game into multiple levels / scenarios, such as the robot spending years ending a feud between two families / cities or helping to repopulate an endangered species several generations at a time. The Asteroid scenario would then be the grand finale.

Hope to see this make some progress!

[ActualDog]

This one looks excellent.

It's not clear from your description: will the robot have a time limit of 150 years to reach the mountaintop, or is that simply background story and you will have infinite time to actually reach the mountain?

Will the game be linear, or do you expect branching paths for the player to reach the goal? It could be fun if a fast player might reach a bridge before it collapses from disuse, while a slow player might find a tunnel has been constructed that allows them to take a new route.

I get vibes of Majora's Mask, where it would not simply be the player's position that matters, but also the year.

You should also consider breaking the game into multiple levels / scenarios, such as the robot spending years ending a feud between two families / cities or helping to repopulate an endangered species several generations at a time. The Asteroid scenario would then be the grand finale.

Hope to see this make some progress!

Thanks so much! 

Sorry I didn't make it too clear; there will actually be a 150 year time limit to stop the asteroid.  Time's always running while you play, and you'll be in control of advancing the time simulation when you need to.

I'd love to have branching paths, but it's going to all come down to how much work I want to put into content that not every player will see.  I'm doing this game as my senior project, so I need to make sure I set a reasonable scope!  It's a great idea though, and I really do want to explore it if I think I'll have the time!

I'm not, at least right now, really planning on breaking the game up into multiple levels, but the way I'm imagining it right now is actually pretty similar to what you mention.  The asteroid thing is the overarching goal of the game, but doing things like ending feuds and repopulating endangered species (two awesome ideas, by the way) are going to be things you can/need to do along the way.  So, in a way the game will be made up of multiple levels, but all of the levels are going to be happening during the same 150 year timeline, if that makes sense.

[ActualDog]

Sorry it's been so long in between updates!  I've been pretty busy this past week with school.  I'm hoping to get a substantial amount done on this over the long weekend.

Anyways, progress.  I haven't done much programming that I can show.  I added a small icon that appears above the player's head when he can interact with something, and I started working on the time travel menu. 

I *have* done some concept art, however.  I'm thinking about maybe doing the game in this sort of style.  As I've said before, art's difficult for me, so thoughts are much appreciated!  I did these all without references, but I still have this horrible feeling that I've subconsciously exactly copied an existing game's characters, so please let me know if that's true, because I would feel horrible if it was.

[ActualDog]

Been doing some fairly steady work.  I just got the menu finished for when you shut down and advance time.  Obviously some temp graphics in there, and that right 'OK' button is actually the cancel button.  This menu took me way too long to do because I couldn't keep myself working on it for any decent amount of time.  I really hate programming menus; it's soooo boring.    

It's exciting though, because the completion of this feature means that I'm at a point where I can actually start making the game itself.  I should be able to start adding content now!  I just have a few more things to work out with the art style and then I'm good to go.



I decided against having the player be able to advance to any point at all on the timeline, because that would either require about a million more assets, or a sacrifice in the believability of the world, neither of which sounded like good things to me.  I might re-visit that in the future, but for now I'm proceeding with the assumption that the player can only sleep until specific events. 

I've also thought a bit about the resolution.  It's currently 640x480, but I'm thinking I might bump it up to 800x600.  Not sure yet.  I think I'll try to throw together a mockup tomorrow with that new art style to figure it out. 

[ActualDog]

Second post for today.  I hope that's not horribly taboo.

I made a small mockup.



This is if I went 800x600.  I might still shrink all the assets a bit to give myself a little more screen space, but I think this could work nicely.  I'm a little concerned that there's not enough depth to the screen.  I might need to add another layer or two to get more stuff packed in the background.

[ActualDog]

Got the game working with its new resolution.

Also decided to shrink down the graphics a bit based on that mockup.  I did a little idle animation for the robot to make sure that the graphics would still look nice in the size I was thinking. 



I'm mostly liking the way it came out, but I'm thinking that spark might have to go, because it might look weird during animation transitions, and making it line up isn't really something I want to spend time on.

[droqen]

That's adorable :3

The spark could be a separate animation, simply overlaid?

[ActualDog]

That's adorable :3

The spark could be a separate animation, simply overlaid?

Aw, thanks!

Yeah, I think that would be pretty simple to do as long as I don't make his bobble move around too much.  I'll see how the transition looks once I get his run cycle in and then go from there.

[Montoli]

That robot is awesome!

I vote you at least try it leaving the spark in, before you spend too much time on taking it out or other solutions.  A lot of games get by just fine with abrupt animation state changes.  People are pretty good at filling in the gaps in their head.  Even if the spark only lasts 1 frame instead of 3 or whatever, I give it a good chance of still looking ok.

[ActualDog]

That robot is awesome!

I vote you at least try it leaving the spark in, before you spend too much time on taking it out or other solutions.  A lot of games get by just fine with abrupt animation state changes.  People are pretty good at filling in the gaps in their head.  Even if the spark only lasts 1 frame instead of 3 or whatever, I give it a good chance of still looking ok.

Glad you like it! 

I'll definitely wait until I can test the transition between animations before deciding on what to do with the spark.  That's a good point about people's brains filling in the gaps, and hopefully it applies here.  Thankfully, the spark'll be really easy to take out, since it never touches any other part of the robot, if that's what I end up needing to do.

[ActualDog]

This makes me happy. I want a robot buddy.

<3

[droqen]

btw I had an idea incredibly similar to this one some time ago (3~4 years or so), so best of luck and I'd like to see it go well! o-o

[ActualDog]

btw I had an idea incredibly similar to this one some time ago (3~4 years or so), so best of luck and I'd like to see it go well! o-o

Man, it's crazy how that happens, right?  Hopefully I can do the idea justice!


Also, devlog update.  Did some work on the screen loading, and now you place start points and exit points from the level editor.  Before it was all dynamic and kind of funky.  Also, before you could only exit screens on the right, not left, so this is better.

Tonight I'm going to be doing some more design work to lay out the actual game.  What puzzles I want in the game, which go where, how the overarching story fits into it all, etc.

[ActualDog]

Wow, I haven't updated this in a while.  I've been working on the game, but there isn't much concrete stuff to show.  I've gotten a lot of the game and story laid out, and I'm excited about how it's coming along. 

I've also been doing some work on the art.  I did a walk cycle for one of the people.



Now that I know how they walk, it'll be easy to apply it to other guys if I need to.  I also have a new level mockup.



I like the way it's looking, but I'm not sure what to do with that empty space on the bottom of the screen.  Might move the camera point so that you get more sky and less ground.  Might lower the line thickness on the background objects too. 

Also been working on a walk cycle for the robot, but I'm not happy with how it's turning out, so I think I'm going to scrap it.  I need a way for him to walk that really shows off his character.  Thinking of having him toddle around.

[Falmil]

So, how will "losing" be handled? Is it possible to simply mess things up to the point where you can't win and end up destroyed or will you be forced to do things correctly before being able to go dormant for a period of time?

[SirNiko]

You could use the area on the bottom as real estate for a fancy clock. Show the day, month, year, maybe with some fancy but superficial cogs and dials. You could also host some information about the current quests or events there, for quick reference without going to the menu.

[ActualDog]

@Falmil 
I plan on allowing the user to abandon tasks, or skip things altogether.  The story's not going to be super dynamic, but currently I'm planning two results for each task, depending on whether you did it or not, some of which will have an effect on the story and what future tasks you can receive.  I also have three different endings planned depending on how "correctly" you do things throughout the game.

@SirNiko
That's a pretty good idea; thanks!  I'll definitely start playing around with that.