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[RudyTheDev]

Hi guys!

Since October 2011 we (me and Philip Barker) have been working on our debut title Uproot (website). This started up as a simple TD game early this year, and is now slowly expanding in scope and growing more and more RTS elements (read: feature creep).

At the core, this is a TD game, so you stop waves of baddies coming at you. We implemented a tower system, where you start with 4 base element towers (earth, fire, water, air) and further transformable combinations thereof. We're trying to get these as unique as possible, so each tower has certain functions it can perform (instead of all just firing slightly differently colored projectiles). See the video below for an example.



The story (so far)

We dreamed up a world, where four kingdoms (earth, fire, water, air) are each holding a portion of the world's land and certain trade resources and are at a constant struggle. The player begins as a guard captain that happens to oversee the neutral marketplace, trading and meeting zone between the four kingdoms; but is really just a pawn for the wealthy kingdom representatives. The world is slowly falling apart (basically, they mine too deep and too greedily), but no one takes initiative to change anything. After all, several millennia old, bureaucratic, disorganized kingdoms split into factions and houses within can hardly work together to save the world. An outside push is needed.

Conveniently, some crazy fanatics attack the neutral marketplace city, and this uproots the status quo by awakening a previously dormant flying island that the inhabitants have long forgotten about and built the trade city around. The island "decides" to restore world peace by questionable methods (which according to legend, happens every few thousand years once the kingdoms go out of control). The player gets to control and upgrade the island buildings (that it took with it when it uprooted; thankfully the pub is there) and to fly it to the mission locales. Each locale offers different challenges and rewards, and the player has a choice of what to do with the conquered territories.

The world inhabitants are called "peewees", and are worm-like tall blobs that each belong to a certain element's race. "Wacky" (but explainable) is the word we try to keep as our core principle. We have a few ideas we will do, but we'd like to hear your impression/ideas too.

You can see an alpha gameplay preview video at

.



Progress

The progress for the very beginnings can be seen at my DevDiary/blog. What we have now is the result of endless iterations of different mechanics.

Engine

The game engine is mostly done, and any further improvements use the existing platform. It's isometric, with some clever tiling and arbitrary object positioning. There are various levels of detail on this in my devdiary.

Towers and resource collectors

We currently have 14 towers (4 base element ones, 8 transformations, and 2 even further transformations). We are expecting to add an upgrade system and further conditional unlockable improvements. We also have a resource collection system, where towers require the corresponding element(s) to work or be built in the first place.

Story

We have come up with the larger parts of the world's story. Ultimately, we want non-black-and-white decisions that the player takes for their own benefit, benefit of the world, or certain factions that often offer and promise bonuses to the player. In the end, you may be given a few end-game choices based on previous decisions, each with their own trade-offs.

Art

Phil's been busy trying to do all the things needed - tiles that tile, props that fit, towers that shoot, mobs that have animations, etc.; each requiring a slightly different approach. But "we are getting there".

Music and sound effects

We have a couple noises and free tracks in-game, but this part will need some love very soon. Any sound effect experts willing to work for free are welcome to contact us.

Last 20% (polish)

I just hope everyone is slightly exaggerating about last 20% being 80% of work...

If there is interest, I will post more updates here, though I primarily semi-occasionally post on my devdiary.

Thanks for reading,
Rudy.

[RudyTheDev]

A quick update. We implemented a bit more of resources and collectors (posting on DevDiary as well). This should put us to 70% tower/resource implementation-wise. Here are some graphics for our collectors so far:



.. as well as a system to track their usage and report this feedback to the player:



It's quite important that we get these GUI and feedback features right; even if it is just fluff code-wise.

Five resources does not feel like a lot right now (even though it might sound to players of less resourcing-oriented RTSes), especially since wood is universal for building and element essence is needed only for corresponding towers. Still, we want a level of resource management complexity and strategy/balancing in the game that would raise the bar above the "casual game" (what an oxymoron for a TD game!).

We are devising wacky plans to what the player can do once the towers and collectors are built. A test mission or two shows that the game is quite intensive at the very start, as the player needs to build up both collectors and towers in the right order at the right places. So there is a whole lot of clicking. But then at some point the towers are able to take down the immediate peewee waves, so the player starts to idle a bit. This is where some new stuff should come in, like upgrading, power-ups, unit item drop, etc.

I leave you with some pumpkins:



Oh, I missed Halloween didn't I?

[PhoYo]

Hey, Phil here

I am the artist and the other half of game design on Uproot! You can see my development log here  , which is my rather personal account of the development so far.

So instead of repeating what Rudy has said so far I will show you something new.


These are the four elemental keeps and the smaller nodes! Though their use has not been explained yet I am sure Rudy will have a lot to say about them sometime soon .

They are at the moment too plastic for my liking but they are a good base to apply the texture. I also admitted to Rudy that when designing these I began to see the game having more of a style or a list of rules that the art follows for it to be cohesive. We struggled at first to find the "look" we were going for but it is becoming more clear every day.

 

[RudyTheDev]

Well, we've been pretty busy with Christmas, New Year, and Ludum Dare (our entry). But no holiday can stop us from having this bad boy finished!



What you see is the (work in progress) version of player's island that appears in the game world. So this is where the baddies march to. This is the player's central hub and most of the meta-level interaction (upgrades, info, briefings, etc.) take place here. Each building plays a certain role. For example, briefings might be held in the pub; while world lore stuff is stored in the library.

We wanted this to be more than just a sprite and to serve a practical purpose besides being "the base". So we've spent plenty of time deciding how to do things. And I think it's coming along very nicely. Something many games lack is a proper player base that they can relate to across the missions. We certainly would like to add further customization and... stuff. At least this is what I like.

P.S. if anyone wants to do some free sound tracks for this, you can drop us a line. We're a bit stuck on this and all arrows currently point to getting some free music from the Internet in there.