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4X

10 (28.6%)

RTS

6 (17.1%)

Fortress

3 (8.6%)

Idc what you say I want that one you can't do

5 (14.3%)

I'm voting for the lolz

11 (31.4%)

Total Members Voted: 35

[engineer13]

Hey thanks.  I won't be able to get anything done today (I got a bunch of church stuff to do), but tomorrow I'm gonna go ahead and get started on a very minimalistic bare bones concept I have got that shouldn't take more than a few days to complete.

[Servant Corps]

I'd say to do a simple version of Aurora 4x but based on something a bit more grounded. How about being a commander of a base which is constantly under attack every night by robots/aliens/zombies. ...
You need 0 graphics and it's very easy to build on.

That's a really cool project, and I'd also like to try that out too. Thanks Retropunch, for inspiring two developers! (Probably not going to go with being a commander of a base though...possibly something more "abstract".)

[Retropunch]

haha glad to be of service

I was inspired by those old flash defence games that used to be everywhere as well as those zombie survival strategy games that used to be popular. I can imagine a much deeper version of that, with a whole load of things to manage and work on.
The best part is that it's so easy to expand on - you can start with just balancing 'var.men, var.basehp, var.credits, var.alienattack' and expand to having tons of interesting things. The hardest part is balancing things, and making sure that it's interesting enough that it isn't just 'take turn, buy as many men and turrets as possible, take turn' as that quickly gets stale.

Good luck to both of you, and I'd be happy to help any way I can

[Emma]

I'd say to do a simple version of Aurora 4x but based on something a bit more grounded. How about being a commander of a base which is constantly under attack every night by robots/aliens/zombies. ...
You need 0 graphics and it's very easy to build on.

That's a really cool project, and I'd also like to try that out too. Thanks Retropunch, for inspiring two developers! (Probably not going to go with being a commander of a base though...possibly something more "abstract".)

Make that three developers. Although I can barely be called a developer I've only finished one or two games and one got terrible ratings/reviews while the other was better but only got a little attention.

[engineer13]

I won't be making exactly what he said either, but definitely it helped to inspire what I have thought of.  I see no reason to try to keep it a secret so basically I'm planning on making a small ship combat simulator.  It will have two ships (one that you control of course) and in the beginning no customization or anything.  They both are exactly the same and you only have simple decisions that you can make (namely move to this side of enemy ship, rotate to point this side toward enemy ship and you will automatically fire at the enemy ship).  There will be a very simple damage and destruction mechanic.  I figure I start with this and build upwards.

[Emma]

Sounds cool. What will you be programming with? I'm going to be using Unreal Engine 4 for the first time because it's now free!

[bahihs]

I won't be making exactly what he said either, but definitely it helped to inspire what I have thought of.  I see no reason to try to keep it a secret so basically I'm planning on making a small ship combat simulator.  It will have two ships (one that you control of course) and in the beginning no customization or anything.  They both are exactly the same and you only have simple decisions that you can make (namely move to this side of enemy ship, rotate to point this side toward enemy ship and you will automatically fire at the enemy ship).  There will be a very simple damage and destruction mechanic.  I figure I start with this and build upwards.

If you make a decent AI for this, it will be epic. Its the kind of game I've been waiting for, for a long time. Code speed!

[engineer13]

Sounds cool. What will you be programming with?

I will actually be using a slightly more obscure language.  In all my time of moving from language to language I have basically been mainly trying to find a friendly language with complex enough functionality that made it easy enough to create a window.  So currently I'm using a language called freebasic.

If you make a decent AI for this, it will be epic. Its the kind of game I've been waiting for, for a long time. Code speed!

Thanks.  I won't really be making much of an AI right now.  The current AI is gonna have very simple rules and so it will probably be very easy to beat, but in the future I definitely am planning on making a more complex AI as well as adding more than just a combat simulation of course.

[engineer13]

Hey just wanted to let you guys know.  I have been pretty busy today so I won't be able to work on it until tonight, but I wanted to post my game plan (see what I did there?).

• Finish the starting game I told you about
• Add armour mechanics like they have in Aurora
• Add the ability to change ship size
• Add some different types of weapons
• Make the combat more RTS like in the sense of more free moving.
• Work on the AI (I will reduce this step into smaller steps when I get closer to it)

I just wanted to put this list on here so I can refer to it when I need to and you guys can make sure I'm following it as well as offer suggestions or revisions.

Edit* I think that perhaps I should go ahead and put some optimization in before I work on the AI.

[engineer13]

I wasn't quite sure on any really good ways to get this to you guys so I just decided to upload it to megaupload since I have seen that before.  Anyhow this is the very basic game.  It's difficult to understand what's going on and most of the games only last 2-3 moves before it's over, but it works and that's what matters.  I think I have managed to work out all the bugs so there shouldn't be any crashes or moments where it stops working, but like I said you may not have any idea what's going on.  Without further ado here you go:
http://www.megafileupload.com/33Rx/main.exe

I do have to wonder if I aimed a little low here since I manage to program this whole thing in approximately 3 hours and it only takes up a total of 193 lines (including white space), but I figure its better to aim low rather than high.

[Emma]

Should I be able to wineskin this? Another few question, will you start a dedicated devlog for this or will you just use this thread, and are you ever planning on selling this? (Although that might be looking a little too far ahead)

[engineer13]

Should I be able to wineskin this? Another few question, will you start a dedicated devlog for this or will you just use this thread, and are you ever planning on selling this? (Although that might be looking a little too far ahead)

Not sure what Wineskin means.  I Think a devlog might be a good idea, but I'm not quite certain how to go about that (heard the term before, but not sure what it is).  If it gets really good I might choose to sell it.  If I do then I will use people who are consistently replying to my posts and giving good feedback or suggestions to be beta testers and they will get the game free.  Than again it might get really good and I instead choose to keep it free just because I like people enjoying it.  In any case any games I make besides and after this I'll most likely sell if they are any good and like you said this is looking pretty far ahead.  So if you wanna help me out with some of the stuff I said I don't understand then thanks.

Also I forgot to explain the mechanics so here they are briefly:
Each turn you get to choose to either rotate or move by 1 space either in the positive direction or the negative direction.  Your opponent does the same by using a very simple rule set and a bit of randomness to decide its move.  Your move and your opponents rotation are added together and then added to their current side that is facing you to determine what side of theirs is now facing you.  The same thing happens with their move, your rotation and your side facing them.  Once that is finished the game makes sure the side facings are within the 1-4 region (I accidentally start you with facing 0) and then each ship fires.  A health point is deducted from the sides that are facing.  If the side goes below 0 health then that ship loses.  If both lose on the same turn then it's a tie.

[Emma]

Let's me run this on a Mac. It appears to work but doesn't accept any input, I'm not sure if this is a bug or a fault of wineskin. I attempted to put input in both the command line and the game screen but to no avail. Also, the descriptions in the game for instructions were already quite good, and I can already see this shaping up to be very complex if you continue developing.

EDIT: Sorry, my fault, I didn't notice the change. Perhaps make the change a little more obvious by adding a line to the bottom of the screen telling you what happened that turn. That would also allow you to provide a little narrative description very easily and points out what happened and it's repercussions.

EDIT2: Er, it also appears that when you restart a new screen is made. I assume this is intended it was just a bit of a shock to see about 15 different screens.

[engineer13]

I see so wineskin is a program for macs to run windows.

Sorry, my fault, I didn't notice the change. Perhaps make the change a little more obvious by adding a line to the bottom of the screen telling you what happened that turn. That would also allow you to provide a little narrative description very easily and points out what happened and it's repercussions.

Yeah I had thought about adding that, but it was late and I was almost done so I just wanted to get it out.  Tomorrow I will go ahead and implement that though (I'm typing from my bed and about to go to sleep).

Er, it also appears that when you restart a new screen is made. I assume this is intended it was just a bit of a shock to see about 15 different screens.

Yeah sorry about that.  It isn't necessarily intended, but it's the way the programming language works in this case.  For me it always closed the previous window, but hopefully when I add some more stuff and change up the code it will stop doing that.

[engineer13]

• Make the combat more RTS like in the sense of more free moving.

I think I need to expand this goal as there is more to it when I think about it so here are the smaller steps I'm breaking it into:

• Develop very simple graphics to represent the ships (such as circles and squares)
• Add the ability for your ship to move where you right click
• Change the AI to understand this new kind of movement
• Add the ability to rotate your ship in real time
• Add a firing rate for each weapon

Also at some point I will need to implement a UI for the changes I'm going to be allowing you to make to the ships such as their size and their weapon loadout.

I went ahead and made some quick changes to the game:
Now it tells you some of what just happened each turn and I fixed the issue of starting with a side facing of 0.

I will most likely be updating this more today, but here is the quick fixed game http://www.megafileupload.com/2DZg/main.exe