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[dreadmullet]

unrelated: I'm trying to decide at what point it makes sense to release an executable. there's no save/load feature, and even if there was, I'm not worried about trying to make sure old saves work at this point.

I would recommend giving the exe to at least one other person as early as possible to test if it even runs or not. Depending on what frameworks etc you're using it could be an issue. By the way, what language/libraries are you using for this project?

[telkoth]

I'm using MonoGame on C#. I've used MonoGame a bit before, but never released anything. (made a bunch of progress on a platformer, but never finished it.)

[telkoth]

alright! I finally got eating implemented. it was a bit more complicated than I expected... here's the rules as they stand now:

• if you're hungry, and not doing anything, go to the nearest food, and eat it. it could be that the nearest food is a berry bush, in which case, assign yourself as the worker for a harvest order on that bush (if the bush already has an order with a worker, it's not considered as a source of food; if it has an order, but no colonist has taken the job, then the job is taken by this hungry worker )
• if you're hungry, and in-transit to a work order, stop if there's a nearby source of food. the hungrier you are, the more lenient you will be about whether a source is "nearby"
• when a colonist is traveling toward a food source, he/she periodically checks to see if a closer source of food as made itself available
• if the food source a colonist was going for vanished (something else ate it first), find a new one, and go for it
• if a colonist, finding a closer source of food, abandons a harvest order, that harvest order is cleared if it wasn't one the player specifically created.

I realize that these can be a bit tricky to put together in a complete picture. here's an example:

three hungry colonists can't find any nearby food. each finds a berry bush to pick, which all happen to be in the same direction. (currently, an order can have only one worker, so each finds a bush further away from the last.)

one colonist reaches his bush before any of the others, and completes the order. 4-6 berries are dropped on the ground.

the colonist, completing his order, decides he's hungry, and finds some nearby berries. (how'd those get there? )

the other two colonists note that the berries are closer than the bushes they were going toward, so abandon the jobs.

it happens that the player, at some time in the past, had put a work order on one of the two bushes just now abandoned, but no worker had taken the job (perhaps the usual collector is asleep). the other work order, however, had been created by the hungry colonist, so it was marked as "temporary". this "temporary" order is removed from the game world; the other is left workerless, as it was before.

in the end, one bush is picked, and three colonists are no longer hungry


WHEW!

I also coded sleeping, but haven't actually tested it, so it could be broken. currently they just pass out wherever they stand, but in the future they should try to camp out near the covered wagon, or in the further-future, their house, if any, or any nearby building.

I also-also implemented oxen, which are super-adorable



they currently walk left and right (and, unlike the colonists right now, they actually turn to face left or right ) but never wander too far from where they started. I suspect we'll eventually need a way to move oxen, but that's a while off, yet.

when I implement hunting, the oxen will probably be the first to go. if I ever add more uses, though (milk?), we'll need some kind of "can eat/can't eat" toggle similar to Dwarf Fortress.


I mentioned a few posts ago that work was busy at the end of last week. we finished up a ton of projects, and have a new ton of projects (and new hires!) on the way, so this next week will likely be busy for me as well. consequentially, I may not get much coding done on this game. after a long day of coding, I'm usually not keen on coding MORE... so: sorry in advance if there aren't any updates from me for a few days.

[dreadmullet]

This is looking awesome, keep up the great work!

[Nienhaus]

If you ever need some help with spriting just PM me.

[burningpet]

Ill just second everyone else by saying this looks amazing!

ill also second the spriting help pro bono if you wish so.

Took the liberty to make a mockup of how i think this game art could be:
Rather than pixel art, it could benefit from a more painterly feel, while keeping the objects/people/animals with pixel art.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And a desert scene:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Nienhaus]

Ill just second everyone else by saying this looks amazing!

ill also second the spriting help pro bono if you wish so.

Took the liberty to make a mockup of how i think this game art could be:
Rather than pixel art, it could benefit from a more painterly feel, while keeping the objects/people/animals with pixel art.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I can do awesome things like that, Mostly only pixel art...

[telkoth]

whoa! burningpet! that looks... amazing! I never could have imagined my game looking so good; I don't even know how to properly express how exciting it is to see these mockups.

I find it difficult to expect someone else to do that kind of work for me, especially not knowing how far I'll manage to get on this project. I would feel AWFUL if someone did a ton of work for me - put together all these graphics - and then I got carried away by some new idea. but at least for now, I'll try to think about how I can code my game so that it's POSSIBLE to have those kinds of graphics... what's required in my code to draw terrain in that way; what do I have to do to implement this, etc. the way I'm drawing terrain now is extremely rudimentary. I'm not a very skilled artist, so have rarely needed to code anything super-complex for handling graphics within my games.

those mockups are truly beautiful; the pixel sprites on that painted background just WORKS somehow. I'm really blown away.

and thank you, everyone else who has offered to make graphics! for the same reasons above, I'm hesitant to accept the help at this time. I have, however, been designing the game so that dropping in replacement graphics is easy... there's a number of PNG files that would be easy to individually replace. additionally, I don't think it would be hard for me to add support for external graphics packs, similar to how Minecraft does it, so that would be nice as well.

but I currently have no such system for changing how terrain is drawn, so if I want anything like what burningpet drew to even be possible... well, I'm not sure how to do that yet it's something I'll have to sit down, think about, and figure out.

thanks again you guys

and your excitement for this project is getting ME excited to work on it more!

[burningpet]

don't worry about it. i cant speak for all, but if i do something its because i enjoy doing it, so i don't see it as hard work, i see it as fun times.

Anyway, tried to extract tiles from the mockup, but there would have to be the option to have tile connection maps and a sort of post processing to achieve that look.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[zombie urist]

How long does it take you to make those? 

[burningpet]

The first mockup took a while, i'd say about two hours, most spent on the trees. the second mockup was/is just some recoloring and the waterfall which is extremely not polished so it took less than half an hour.

The tiles took bit longer as i had to make sure the cliffs are seamless across all borders and look alright when massed together.

Got some questions:
Is the caravan supposed to be moving? do they all need to travel along a trail? if yes, what is the purpose of built houses, wouldn't they be just left abandoned?

[telkoth]

the wagon is not intended to move, although it occurred to me that maybe moving it should be an option.

my initial thought for the game was as a chronological sequel to Oregon Trail: you've now arrived to Oregon as colonists/settlers, and are going to build a new city.

I've never tried making a game like this before, though, and to be honest, when I decided to make this game, I never sat down to think "alright: what's going to make this game interesting to people?" or "what will keep players invested?"

so perhaps it's worth talking about those things! better sooner than later!

what are the challenges you will face?

• starvation
• the elements/hypotherma ("winter is coming", as they say... no zombies, though )
• raiders

I think it could also be interesting to explore the relationship colonists had with Native Americans - both good and bad - but I also worry that this could come off as... offensive? it's nice for us that we, the U.S., "won" in the end, but if anyone was going to write an honest children's story based on our colonial history, the U.S. could only play the role of the villains. so to have the player, as colonists, playing as "heroes", possibly fighting off Native Americans... it seems... not-good >_> but then, to only show the positive sides - those times when relations were good - seems dishonest. is it better to ignore the issue? is that as harmless as ignoring the realities of being a pirate in pirate movies?

this is an accident of the setting I chose - The Oregon Trail - but since it's there, it's at least worth thinking about. do people have opinions on this? I feel like I'm bad at correctly judging these things.

what motivates the players to move forward

• building something cool, in the face of the above dangers
• telling a story

these are the two biggest elements I see in games like Dwarf Fortress and Spacebase DF9. I'm sure there must be others, though?

since the game is still SO early in development, it can still go in many directions! I had envisioned a colony-building god-game, and maybe that's what we want, but maybe there are other elements that could be put in here. since the setting is colonial times, I think to compare Colonization with Civilization: Colonization had many of the same core mechanics, but was ultimately a very different game. it had a sort of fixed story, and different goals. in the same way, maybe we could wrap all the normal god-game elements in something a little different? or maybe an Oregon Trail-themed god-game is enough in and of itself!

I'm just rambling at this point I'd love to hear from you guys on what would make this game interesting to YOU. (it'd be lame to make a game no one wants to play haha)

other things?
I think, to repeat myself just a sentence ago, I would really like to know what you guys would like to see from this game! I definitely want to make a game that people enjoy, and my only direction right now is "build stuff! have dangers!"

there are probably inspirations to find in history. I did spend a day - about a week ago - skimming over wikipedia pages, reading about how to collect salt, relations with Native Americans, recent inventions and scientific discoveries, and other such things, to give me an idea for the setting. but a deeper look might yield some interesting game-play possibilities. in school, I was never very interested in colonial America (I found ancient civilizations much more fascinating!) so I'm sure there's a lot I don't know!

sorry about such a long and rambling post.

in other news, I think I will put aside other items on my to-do list in favor of trying to get some of your graphics into the game, burning pet thanks again for making them! it will be a fun learning experience for me, too, getting the terrain to look as beautiful as your mockup! Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, however (ha: it's colonial America again)... I hope I can find a good chunk of time soon!

[GiglameshDespair]

While for quite a lot of it Europeans were the aggressors there were also tribes (such as the Comanches) who were basically evil raider tribes. You don't have to put an moral judgement in your game: leave it up to players - as they expand, conflict may become necessary. It is part of history - it should be no more offensive than those who's ancestors were murdered by pirates unless you put in a whole "mighty whitey civilising the injuns" theme, which i somehow doubt you will.

[burningpet]

The premise of always travelling forward, kinda simulating a nomadic tribe sounded better, to me, than a side scrolling colony-building game ala dwarf fortress, which is something that is already being done with "craft the world" and "survivors of ragnarok", although, there is still a lot of room to improve in this take on the genre.

What i initially thought upon seeing it was more like - oh, hey, this is a game that somewhat simulates what happens to the settlers on their way to the settlement rather than the actual settling. kind of like telling the story of what happens to the dwarves on their route to the embark point.

I like it better because you can throw random events at the player that are tied to the "physical" progression, you can explore more areas in one game session, you don't have to deal with managing a fortress on a side scrolling view which tend to get confusing and messy once the fortress/town is big enough, you have a clear goal in mind that you are trying to complete, hence encouraged to keep moving forward, and, due to starvation and resource depletion in your area, you will need to keep moving if you want to keep the settlers alive.

Again, a 2d side scrolling colony game can also be terrific, so if you like it better, forget everything i just said.

[GiglameshDespair]

Maybe have elements of both? Like the gold rush towns, build a colony, strip the land of everything you need (buildings make your colonists more comfortable and healthy while they work, giving them somewhere to shelter during winter, etc) and once the land is stripped bare you abandon your town and move on, like a four-wheeled plague of locusts.

It could be a metaphor for humanity's endless, destructive nature interesting to try to decide when to abandon your town or try to weather another winter here, etc.