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[electrolyte]

Here's a new game and thread that I've currently been playing / working on.

The Concept
It's really early days but basically it will be defending your base camp, collecting gold for building defences and hiring new Cowboys to your posse. There will be game play influences from Dungeon Keeper and DTD style games with a bit of Dune II and even a bit of Syndicate all mixed together in a wild west setting.

Current look:



Here are some screen grabs from the dev as its been going along:



First few hows of dev getting basic path finding working



I'm actually keeping notes on this dev rather than them scattered on bits of scrap and in my head!



Basic 'fog of war'



Fleshing it out using some Battle Keep sprites for speed. You will see there is going to be a map display of some sort which grows the more you explore and you inventory / tools menus.

[electrolyte]

And an update as to it's progress, it's moving along at a good pace. Been playing with new sprites for it. Added in building room functions and side menus. I've currently been tackling line of sight / ray casting bullets. Will do a post about this soon. pew pew pew

[Pineapple]

Dat artwork evolution

[electrolyte]

Thanks it's still evolving  

So just wanted to post this about line of sight and the solution I came up with. A problem faced with the little guys shooting at each other was line of sight. From an early point in development it became apparent that the little guys would need to understand if their target was in view and if the bullet would actually reach them and not hit anything solid. Being able to shoot through walls seems like a cheat :D

After a lot of reading the technique I opted for is called ‘Ray-casting’. It takes the position between 2 points and looks along this project line between the start and target points to see if it hits anything. That’s the theory but the implementation took some thinking about.

The way I got it to work is to create a hidden bitmap which has all the current walls plotted in a solid colour. Next when a player shoots at a target I check this bitmap, moving down the target path to see if I ‘hit’ a pixel of colour using the getPixel command.

Pow! Raycasting line of sight!

[Pineapple]

Raycasting is a way to render essentially 2d data in pseudo-3d. Raytracing is what you're doing.

[electrolyte]

Raycasting is a way to render essentially 2d data in pseudo-3d. Raytracing is what you're doing.

  What a noob, sorry this is only the second game I've ever attempted to make, thanks for the clarification 

[geepit]

Sounds really cool and that art is very nice!

Are the cowboys robots? I noticed the robotic sketches on your notebook picture.

Anyway keep up the good work

[electrolyte]

Are the cowboys robots? I noticed the robotic sketches on your notebook picture.

There were going to be human cowboys and also 'steam powered' units that you could build in workshops, but I've kind of moved on from that in favour of just Prospectors and Cowboys of different abilities. Stronger ones being more expensive to hire etc. The workshops will be used to manufacture defences, barriers and gun turrets of some kind.



Today's visual tweak for cowboys!!

[jO]

That looks lovely!

[electrolyte]

Thank you, I think it's more in my comfort zone now 

[Alec S.]

Lookin' really nice.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.

What's the pacing going to be like?  Will it be a long-term base-building/army-building sort of thing, or will it be more streamlined quick battles?

[geepit]

Ooh the steam unit idea is pretty cool, but yeah having different strengths of cowboys and characters works just as well, and i guess keeps things more consistent (think that's the word i'm looking for) as in fits in more with the period. Plus you get the possibility of giving them proper cowboy/outlaw names
Also the little guy looks very nice!

[electrolyte]

What's the pacing going to be like?  Will it be a long-term base-building/army-building sort of thing, or will it be more streamlined quick battles?

It's going to be ... em, think Arcade meets RTS! So battles are frantic and quick, but you will need to make sure your defences are ready. In real life one bullet could / would kill, so the cowboys deliver a lot of damage with a hit accuracy stat given to each of them. Depending on their class, they may miss more than hit. Other's may not have a weapon and 'rush' your cowboys using fists rather than guns.

Been working a lot on the AI and making sure there is scope and range for classes. I also spent a very sleepless night 'thinking' about how to stack selected areas for the prospectors to dig. In past version, the game would work out if a selected block could be reached and if not would deselect it. This wasn't very nice, but in the newest version you can click and stack up grids for the prospectors to dig freely, and as soon as they can reach them they will dig them!

I might post up the full solution to that later as it was quite a revelation, but in essence it flood-fills colour into a bitmap from the camp outwards and if dig-able blocks are 'touching' this colour, then it means a prospector can reach it!  

[JobLeonard]

Nice amount of progress in a short time.

Is the cowboy hierarchy moustache-based?

[electrolyte]

Is the cowboy hierarchy moustache-based?

  I think all the cowboys will have tashes ... but the prospectors will have beards.

[electrolyte]

Just added the ability to make ... crates! You can place these to make defences, here you can see the bad guys are getting through. Oh I forgot, it's not just moustache-based - also hat size based!

It actually feels like a game now!  

[oodavid]

Looks fab, is it playable in any form?

[electrolyte]

Thanks, not as yet as it's still quite early days, only a few weeks into dev, and there's no real UI yet.

[DrunkDevs]

I'm loving the progress on this. I have two questions for you.
1. What are the base building mechanics going to be like? I see last of beds, and dressers anvils, and other stuff. I'm guessing you are going for something unique.
2. Will the units be able to change elevation?

[jO]

It actually feels like a game now! 

I love that moment :-)

Really good progress these days!