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[PetSkull]

Here I present you with my latest project (yeah I know, I have another project going, but it's on hold )

V.A.M.D - Versatile Autonomous Maintenance Droid


NPC threaded pathfinding with obstacle avoidance - The captain going to the mess hall to get some breakfast

Background

Somewhere out in space, a space station floats. It is occupied by human workers and scientists, doing everything they can to solve all the big problems of human kind. They can't do this alone, so they have droids helping them doing the daily chores.

The game

You are controlling one of these droids, doing maintenance chores and securing that the space station is functioning and that the humans are happy.

You do this by:

• Fixing broken items, doors, light bulbs, machines etc.
• Keeping other droids operational
• Clean up the space station
• Getting needed items for NPC humans
• Helping with food growing
• Eliminating space critters which interrupt the space station in various ways

The space station consist of 8 floors, that you can travel to, using elevator teleports, placed on each floor. One of the floors is sealed off, and demand a special access card to get access to. This card, has been broken and the pieces have benne scattered around on the other floors. Collect these card pieces, put them together again, and get access to the retricted floor.

Main goal

• Keep the NPC humans happy and they will work better
• Gain access to the restricted floor

Space station inhabitants (NPC)

• The space station's captain
• Guards - Both day and night
• Cooks
• Workers - In various functions
• Visitors
• Various droids

So far there are 33 NPC's planned for the game. They all have their own lives and daily routines.

The space station has a 24 hour day (1 game minute every 2 seconds) and day and night cycles are implemented.

Technology

The game is made in Java using the basics of the LibGDX framework. All floors and decorations are procedurally generated.


One of the bigger floors on the left. On the right, just showing the capabilities

Aseprite is used for the pixel art graphics.

Development

Development goes slowly forward. I don't have much time for development, but I usually get 2-4 hours of work done each week. I will update this devlog when ever some bigger (and visual) development has been done.

I will also post new GIF's to Twitter https://twitter.com/PetSkull

I hope you will enjoy!  

[PetSkull]

Been working a lot on my NPC's. Have now added two cooks to the game. They will cater to all the other NPC's needs. I've now finished the full 24-day circle for the captain of the space station and the cooks. They live their own lives within the space station and do their chores.

You might notice that the updates goes a lot faster in the end of this GIF. This is because I've implemented a time speeder, which I use for debugging purposes. In the final game, you will instead be able to sleep for 3 hours, where the simulation runs really fast.

[kason.xiv]

Love the idea! Following

[PetSkull]

I have implemented the inventory. Now the droid will be able to search most objects in the space station for items, which can be used in the daily chores. Hidden in all the closets, bookshelves etc are also parts of the broken key card, which will grant you access to a special area on the space station. More about this, at a later time

[KPas]

This side project is at an surprisingly advanced stage already ...

I wonder how the gameplay will look like. You gave some hints already:

    Fixing broken items, doors, light bulbs, machines etc.
    Keeping other droids operational
    Clean up the space station
    Getting needed items for NPC humans
    Helping with food growing
    Eliminating space critters which interrupt the space station in various ways

Will there be a task schedule which you have to work off, or are you wandering around and looking out for jobs, needs, accidents ect.?

Regarding elevators: you showed a floor map GIF on twitter recently which reminded me of good old Paradroid (C64)

[PetSkull]

Hi KPas, thank you for your kind words

Will there be a task schedule which you have to work off, or are you wandering around and looking out for jobs, needs, accidents ect.?

Both! You can get new tasks in different ways. Either by wandering around the floors and do chores, when you see them, ie fix a broken light, maintain the crops, clean up etc. But you can also find technical tasks by logging on to computers, where you can see a list of technical problems on the floor you're on and add them as tasks. Finally you can get tasks by being approached by nearby NPC's and do chores for them. All completed tasks will help maintain a happy NPC work force. An unhappy work force, is not something you want to encounter!

I've slowly begin on the quest manager, mostly on paper so far. I really want the quests/tasks to be more than just repetitive tasks, so I'm trying out different ideas right now. I want the quests to have some kind of impact on the main story... If I can 

Regarding elevators: you showed a floor map GIF on twitter recently which reminded me of good old Paradroid (C64)

You're right. Completely borrowed from ParaDroid  - Even though I like that overview the dialog gives, I'm still not sure it's gonna be this layout in the end - Mainly because of the blatant ParaDroid ripoff. But I have another layout on my mind, which I need to prototype in a near future.

[sbeast]

Looks like an interesting concept. Will you be needing music for this out of interest?

[PetSkull]

At some point I will be needing music yes

Today I began working on implementing broken doors and door locks. These needs fixing by exhanging faulty circuitry on a print board. Just one of the small puzzles in the game



Still need to actually implement the fixing part - But hey, 50% done already  All print boards, are procedurally generated and will start small and get bigger (and more faulty) by following your experience in this field.

[PetSkull]

Got the rest of the door fixing puzzle finished


The droid forcing a broken door to open, before fixing it

And I came to the conclusion that the droid should be able to pry a broken door open. This is because I have only placed door locks on the lower side of a wall, and if you come from above, there was no way you could fix the door  

So now you can force the door open from above and below and fix it. Yeah!

[sbeast]

At some point I will be needing music yes

Ok cool. Well I am a composer, and would be interested in collaborating when the time comes

[PetSkull]

First look at the computer consoles. Had fun with a scanline shader



This will be the place, where our hero droid can get some useful information about the current state of the space station. These computer consoles are placed on each floor.

[KPas]

That will do the job, but I guess the player wants it to respond earlier.

Just an idea: would it be possible to print out the lines not one after the other, but one every 250 milliseconds for example? So in this specific case the first line would start at 0.0 s, the second one at 0.25 s and the seventh (final one) at 1.75 s.

[PetSkull]

Hi KPas,

I had the same thoughts. I like the effect (even sped it up in my latests build), but I think the player will hate it after a while, so I will probably draw the entire lines at once, speeding the entire proces up a bit

[PetSkull]

I gave the font rendering a speed boost, and I think it works fast enough, so the play won't get irritated. But again, only testing will tell, right?



I've added the floor plans and begun on the personnel files. You actually need security level 2 to access the files, and I'm still uncertain about, how to gain this level. My initial thought is, that time will grant you higher security levels. But maybe you need to prove somehow, that you're worthy of the higher level...? What do you think?

[KPas]

Output speed looks just right to me.

My initial thought is, that time will grant you higher security levels. But maybe you need to prove somehow, that you're worthy of the higher level...? What do you think?

The player could pick one crew member and do more and more jobs for that person. Finally your reputation would reach a certain level and that crew member would give you access to higher levels. Depending on the crew member the kind of jobs may differ (food, electric, parasites ...).

[PetSkull]

The player could pick one crew member and do more and more jobs for that person. Finally your reputation would reach a certain level and that crew member would give you access to higher levels. Depending on the crew member the kind of jobs may differ (food, electric, parasites ...).

I like that angle - I will put it on my backlog, and keep it in mind once I get to the more gritty details of the NPC's...