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[Gauss Jordan]

I know it's far too early to post about it, but i just can't hold me back anymore. I've made so much progress the last days that I'm just exploding with inspiration.

Anyway, the game is an RTS. At this stage i haven't designed the complete gameplay yet, but I'm focusing on it being quite micro-centered, much like Starcraft.

The core concept of the game is that first of all you have a really huge robot. It's like... bigger than your house, much bigger. Moving it will be slow and will require strategical planning. But, you will be able to "zoom" into it (it will take you to another map set within the large robot) and build small robots inside it. With your large robot you can board the enemies' large robots to send in your smaller robots. While inside your enemy you should now destroy vital entities such as data-centrals (or maybe hack into them), powerplants, shield-generators and weapons of the large robot.

Last thing I did was implementing pathfinding, and it works so well! Yay! ^^



The units are modular and is connected as a tree. I hope I will be able to make some cool features out of this.

[nihilocrat]

Looks interesting, don't see many people making RTSes here.

I hate micro-centered RTSes, but hey, good luck anyways.

[Gauss Jordan]

I guess the reason we don't see many RTS'es here is because you will have to tackle network programming. Well, you could make a singleplayer RTS, but i don't see how a singleplayer-only RTS could be fun.

Anyway, I'm making progress and here is a WIP of one of the super-giant robots:

I call it "Heklastar"
The drawing is completely modular. If i wanted, i could implement a feature that allows you to blow off armor pieces off that robot. I think I will too :D

Now, for the worst part - drawing it in each of the 8 directions

Have a great day everyone!

[Montoli]

That is a fine looking robot you got there!

[keelids]

...awesome ...sounding .....idea .......

yeh the prospect of 8-direction sucks and I would never be caught doing it, so best wishes to you on that~

anyhow it sounds like a serious piece of work. A lot to be done, with the scrolling, coding the two-style gameplay (HUGE ROBO and SMALL ROBO modes) and the usual stuff like GUI, mapping, tweaking the statistics and getting everything scripted and edited....a lot to chew on.

Here's a good piece of article on scoping games using board (war)game as an example.
http://snipurl.com/oksah

[Just a quick edit, when I say 8-direction sucks I meant that doing artwork for a unit you already designed and mapped out in 8 directions sucks, not that having the 8 directions in -game sucks, you could actually simplify it, a la Shades the flash RTS game. That'd mean less waiting and drooling ]

[Zaratustra]

So we're basically giant robot pirates?

cause that's awesome

[Gauss Jordan]

Thanks for the feedback!

@keelids:
You're right, there's very much work to do. I do welcome all help I think I will manage to find some people at my university that can help me though.

Actually, it's not such a horrible pain drawing all directions. I can reuse many of the parts and rotating one part individually isn't that hard, except for the parts that are depending on the other parts positions.

I just got finished with one more direction so I'll use that one to show what I mean with different parts:


I couldn't find anything about the game "Shades". Do you have a link or something?

@Zaratustra:
Hehe, that's one way to look at it, except their "boats" will have huge freaking legs!

[EchoP]

I just got finished with one more direction so I'll use that one to show what I mean with different parts:

I love this image and everything to do with it. Seriously, that's a damn fine idea/game you have got going there. 

[Gauss Jordan]

Body parts now done! Well, some small thinks to do, like flipping it for the left pointing directions and change the shading for them, but yeah, it's mostly done. But you will not see it with the legs until it's ingame.

[Xion]

holy tits man I would kill myself if I had to do something in 8 directions that big.

uhh...Good luck with this. Rad sounding idea etc.

[shrimp]

Interesting! I've always liked two-level games like XCOM/UFO, Total War, etc. There's something really compelling about it... maybe the outer level providing context for the inner game and the inner game affecting the course of the outer game. They're usually (always?) single-player too...

I guess when two giant base-robots meet, the large-scale game pauses whilst the indoor fighting is resolved? Or will you have two battles occurring at the same time and be able to toggle between them?

Nice robot design too! (Will you have a damaged version of each one of those components for each direction?) 

[Gauss Jordan]

Yup, the two battle levels will occur simultaneously. The indoor battle will affect the large scale with systems being shut down from the inside.

Each large robot will house a number of power-plants. Generating power will be an essential resource when moving, shooting and shielding the large robot as well as constructing the small robots. You can only produce a certain number of power at a time so you will have to prioritize what to use it for. You may also harass your enemies to using up power by shooting at them so that their shields will activate and draw power.

The weapons you build on your large robot will also have a connection to a system inside it that you may destroy to eliminate that weapon.

There will also be hacker robots that can hack into parts of the enemies systems giving you access to cameras that gives you vision or gives you control of some doors. And ultimately if you hack into the core system you may steal that whole robot :D

I don't know about the damaged parts actually. It would be neat although it's lot's of extra work. I will make general purpose gibs at least, that throws out when a part explodes.

[shrimp]

Yeah don't worry about the damaged parts

The power system sounds great, I'm already trying to think up strategies...

[Gauss Jordan]

Yeah don't worry about the damaged parts

The power system sounds great, I'm already trying to think up strategies...

If you have any interesting gameplay ideas for this game, don't hesitate to share them

I'll give you some more things to consider for your strategies:
Building units also requires metal which will scattered around the large-scale level, or eventually pop up from the ground at random places at random time. This will give some movement for the large scale battle and something more to thrive for there.

The large robots will also have some holding mechanism that locks the enemy robot from escaping. Moving will now become a matter of strength and power resources. You may also destroy leg control systems to weaken your enemy. Then you may push away your enemy from the metal resources you wanted so badly or even push your enemy down a cliff 

All these ideas aren't solid yet though. Even if they are awesome I have to make sure they create good gameplay and challenges. I hope these are ideas that will create fun gameplay though.

[Gauss Jordan]

Next giant robot in progress :D

You may perhaps recognize this shape. Yes, it's inspired by "Bigdog"

[Destral]

Wow, that is really impressive! Are you using onion skinning to 'cut' each individual part from the main picture, or are you drawing each module by hand?

I commend you on your dedication! 

[Kaworu Nagisa]

As I would love to see more indie strategy games and I'm impressed with the graphics so far I wish you best of luck

Keep us updated, sir!

[dbb]

This is awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I've finally opened an account here, just so I can tell you how awesome it is.

Years ago, I started planning an isometric sci-fi RTS, then I learnt a bit more about game design and programming and realised quite how over-ambitious I was being.

I really hope you manage to finish this game before the huge amount of pixelling you're going to have to do sends you insane  .

[captain catton]

this is looking great, really want to see how it turns out!   

[TheCube]

Looks brilliant.  Good job.

Actually, the idea of smaller units tackling a much larger unit from the inside reminds me of Rocket Slime for the DS.  Sort of.  More hardcore and awesome though.  Rocket Slime + Starcraft?