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[MechPlasma]

All versions of the game can be found at this page!


Riiight. There's a big huge post that I could make here as an intro, but I already did that on the project's blog, so instead I'll keep it short:

I am making a new game! Woo! This game is essentially a 3D Dwarf Fortress! ...well, not actually Dwarf Fortress itself, but more or less the same system. ...aaand that's the entire description of the game so far. Long story short: I want it to be similar to DF, but much easier to play and less complex, but I also want it to be notably different enough so that people still have a reason to play both. Also: (very small) cross-fortress multiplayer capabilities!

I'm doing it as a final year project for my BSc(IT) degree. I have exactly 5 months to do it. It makes up 25% of the degree's marks! What that means is that I am guaranteed to finish this, as well-made as possible. In other words, no stopping four weeks later because I got bored of it.
It also means I really need suggestions and advice here!

I'm a big fan of DF, and really I'm doing this mostly for the people who have big trouble visualising the ASCII (particularly for LetsPlays) and interface. I still want it to have the same use-your-imagination feel as DF though.


So anyway, that's about it. The actual (Tumblr) blog is here:
cityofhammers.tumblr.com
The first post has a download link of the (made in three days) prototype. It's... not even remotely a game. I'll be making

And for anyone interested enough to read through a huge document of how exactly I plan on making this:
http://lugh2.it.nuigalway.ie/CityOfHammers/DefinitionDocument.htm
Buut other than the timeframe plan, most of it is really just Dwarf Fortress.


Really, what I'm asking for here is less of "Hey check out my game", but more of "Hey give me advice for my game". That's about it. I don't post in this forum much (or at all, I guess), but I thought this would be particularly notable for you guys.

Oh, and for anyone actually wondering what it'd look like, here's a screenshot of the prototype in question. It's... near-entirely placeholders, but it at least gives a good idea of how it'd look in 3D.

[alexpoysky]

Best of luck to you friend!

[finka]

What's the intended size of a voxel, compared to say a dwarf?  I think the voxelly chunkiness would feel a little less artificial if dwarfs were bigger than just one voxel... though that's offset by getting to build less in a world of bounded size, which is probably worse.  How are you going to do e.g. floors?  Kinda relatedly, I hope you're gonna at least track remaining volumes of a piece of raw materials so that there's not this "one tree --> one toothpick" thing. 

In multiplayer, each player gets their own 256*256*32, right?

How simulated do you mean the gifting to be in multiplayer?  If I want to gift something to you, does that mean I have to build a wagon and send out a caravan of my dudes, or is that part meant to be abstracted? 

Oh, hm, how hard would it be to support more than two players?  Lots more room for backstabbing politicking stuff that way, and the "cutting off other folks' trade routes" sort of mechanics could really shine in that context, a bit like Diplomacy.

[edit] Is the ultimate goal of sending NPCs to attack another city just to knock it down and antagonise people, or is it genuinely to take control of it?  The latter seems richer and desirabler (e.g. maybe you could have NPC cities to take over too?) but it would leave you with controlling >=two worlds at once, and you make it sound like that's difficult for memory and synch reasons. 
[edit2] though maybe the latter's okay, if the game is more turn-based.  I have to play out a day in all my cities, and you do the same with yours, then we synch and do it again. 

[MechPlasma]

Hmm...

Well, I was planning on keeping it as 1 dwarf takes up 1 space, but thinking about it now... I'd say it'd still be best to stick to that, but have walls be half as thin if you can't see the other side of them. That should make it look a lot less cubey.
I'll consider material volumes too - toys shouldn't take as much rock to make as an entire wall.

For multiplayer, yes, you'll need a caravan. Well, maybe not for small items - I might have some sort of agreements possible with third party trading caravans - but otherwise, you'll need transport and it'll take a (little) while for caravans to get through.
Multiple players would certainly be best, and it is a priority, but I haven't tried programming networking before, so I don't want to promise more than I can deliver. I expect to be able to though. And yeah, each player gets their own map - I'm also considering having the option of loading singleplayer fortresses too, if agreed on between players.


OH, actually, here's a question: do you think amateur miners should produce less rock then professional miners, like DF does? I get that it gives more of a reason to have professional miners, but it also makes it really annoying that you get less ore because a newbie took the job first. And doesn't seem to make much sense in the first place.

Edit: oh, and I forgot to say - I'm planning on just having no option for one-side pausing in multiplayer. Well, default setting anyway - there's nothing wrong with having it as an option when you set up a multiplayer game. But in any case, I don't have anything special planned for day-night synchronising if pausing is involved.

[finka]

OH, actually, here's a question: do you think amateur miners should produce less rock then professional miners, like DF does? I get that it gives more of a reason to have professional miners, but it also makes it really annoying that you get less ore because a newbie took the job first. And doesn't seem to make much sense in the first place.

Well, there are other ways professional miners could be superior to amateurs, like being faster (as DF also does), or being able to remove stone in large pieces as opposed to generating mostly rubble (I forget who on the suggestions board I stole this from). 

Or, you could mark certain mining designations with a minimum skill?

[eerr]

Ahh, so you won't be having extensive underground stuff!

I was wondering. That would make it complicated.

You know what I want?

Rampart.

Lay down oddly shaped pieces of wall, and a few holes of water.

Put in the drawbridge!

Phase: initial build:
Build your fortress and lay down the cannons!
Enclose houses and trees, land, and water, for points!

Goblins will approach, destroying walls with their bombs!
Shoot them with cannons!
(they run away, out of your range.)

Phase 3:
Fight the goblins!
Exposed cannons must be defended for a short time,

If you have no place to hide, you must defend the whole lot of dwarves!

Phase 4:
Rebuild!
Rampart style, with obnoxious blocks that do not fit.


Phase 5:, the goblins carry parts and start building their cannons in range of your walls.

Shoot them or attack them before they shoot you!


Phase 6:
Fight the goblins on foot!
Exposed cannons must be defended for a short time,

If you have no place to hide, you must defend the whole lot of dwarves!

Phase 7: rebuild.
Build your base again!

Complete, and the goblin siege will be broken for the winter.

[MechPlasma]

OH, actually, here's a question: do you think amateur miners should produce less rock then professional miners, like DF does? I get that it gives more of a reason to have professional miners, but it also makes it really annoying that you get less ore because a newbie took the job first. And doesn't seem to make much sense in the first place.

Well, there are other ways professional miners could be superior to amateurs, like being faster (as DF also does), or being able to remove stone in large pieces as opposed to generating mostly rubble (I forget who on the suggestions board I stole this from). 

Or, you could mark certain mining designations with a minimum skill?

Do you think marking mining designations with a minimum skill is better than having a constant volume of rocks though?

Ahh, so you won't be having extensive underground stuff!

I was wondering. That would make it complicated.

You know what I want?

Rampart.

Lay down oddly shaped pieces of wall, and a few holes of water.
Put in the drawbridge!

[...]

Complete, and the goblin siege will be broken for the winter.

So basically, you want... Rampart. Just... Rampart.

Yeeeah, I don't think I'll be doing that.

[MechPlasma]

Version 1 is now up! (16kb)

• Can now move and build up/down
• Half-blocks (placeholder for slopes)
• Added temporary lighting
• Unexplored land represented as slightly-transparent black

The controls now use WASD and mouse buttons. The NPC only builds half-blocks now, but you can still palce a full-block with Space.

Images of current version:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now it’s starting to take shape, and looking like proper DF in 3D. …with placeholder graphics.
I’m curious to know what you think of making unexplored black space slightly transparent. I quite like it myself! In Week 3, I’ll make it an option to change how transparent it is.
There’s a bit of default lighting now, so you can distinguish walls and such, but it’s far from final. I won’t work on that until… let’s say, Week 4.

Next week, I plan on having proper mouse support, resources, multiple NPCs, and placing multiple orders at once. A proper interface won’t come until Week 3, along with a proper sized map. And some actual graphics will only come afterwards.

[Sensei]

I think mining skill should affect speed. That's the easiest to do, and makes the most sense.

What if it also affected safety? As in, amateur miners might hurt themselves on difficult mining materials (perhaps explaining what makes them difficult)?

[MechPlasma]

What if it also affected safety? As in, amateur miners might hurt themselves on difficult mining materials (perhaps explaining what makes them difficult)?

"I want to mine this diamond , but my miners keep breaking their legs against it!"

Seriously though, that's not a bad idea! Getting minor miner injuries from digging, I mean.

[MechPlasma]

Version 2 out now! (18kb)

• NPCs now move in real-time
• Added support for multiple NPCs
• Multiple orders can now be placed at once
• Digging out walls drop resources
• Building walls or slopes now requires resources
• NPCs now gather resources when given an order
• NPCs can now dig and build above their heads
• Cursor now controlled by mouse

Controls have changed again. Left Click now places an order, and Right Click cycles through block types to place (Build block -> Build half-block -> dig)

You have to dig before you can build. Start by digging around the half-blocks in the middle, or your characters won't be able to get the resources.

----

And now it controls like a proper 3D Dwarf Fortress! ...actually, there's a lot of new changes, but very little graphical difference. And without an interface, it's still pretty unwieldly. Particularly in that Right Mouse Click cycles through block types to place, but you can't see what block you have. Interface stuff comes next week.

At this point, it's become pretty evident that the AI needs work. It doesn't know where the closest item is, it doesn't know what the closest Order is, and it doesn't know if there's a guy in the way (resulting in a few cases of one guy digging the ground under another). In other words, it works, but it's really inefficient.

Also, there's still a few Basic Engine stuff that I still have to do, like saving (next week) and items falling (just didn't have time). Everything else will be done between Weeks 5 - 12.

----

Next Week: proper sized maps (still flat though), very simple saving and interface (Wekk 13 is when I'll do those properly), and a little bit of making the graphics Not Suck (those are really planned for the week after).

[Thief^]

As a game developer myself, my advice is to not plan on doing something in every day of every week of your available time. Otherwise when you overrun an estimate, you can't possibly finish. (Any underruns will get filled in by adding extra things or goofing off and you know it.)

Leaving 20% of your time unplanned is a good level.

EDIT:
Regarding networking: If you can't actually see each other's forts in multiplayer then it's fine to implement at the end, but if you want to be able to have two people playing the same map, either implement it now or drop it from your plan.

[Criptfeind]

Looking pretty good so far. Obviously the lack of ability to see what you are doing and the lack of ability to see what you are doing it too can be frustrating, so I was unable to make much more then a little fortified area and some stairs before I quit. But it looks like it is shaping up well.

Edit: If at all possible it might be a good idea to replace the blocks you can not see with black unexplored blocks instead of nothing. Frankly that would make it a thousand times easier to tell what one is doing.

Edit 2: And more layers that start empty.

[MechPlasma]

As a game developer myself, my advice is to not plan on doing something in every day of every week of your available time. Otherwise when you overrun an estimate, you can't possibly finish. (Any underruns will get filled in by adding extra things or goofing off and you know it.)

Leaving 20% of your time unplanned is a good level.

Yeah, I really wish I had thought of that when I was planning out my time.

I'll cut some time from that Expand On Gameplay section when I get to it, since that's very non-critical so it can be replaced for time overflow, and there's no problem working on it at the end if I don't need extra time for other things.

Regarding networking: If you can't actually see each other's forts in multiplayer then it's fine to implement at the end, but if you want to be able to have two people playing the same map, either implement it now or drop it from your plan.

The former. The latter is way too much work to do if I still want to meet a 5-month deadline.

the lack of ability to see what you are doing and the lack of ability to see what you are doing it too can be frustrating

Umm... what?

Edit: If at all possible it might be a good idea to replace the blocks you can not see with black unexplored blocks instead of nothing. Frankly that would make it a thousand times easier to tell what one is doing.

I plan on having a Settings option for how transparent that blackness is.

[Thief^]

As a game developer myself, my advice is to not plan on doing something in every day of every week of your available time. Otherwise when you overrun an estimate, you can't possibly finish. (Any underruns will get filled in by adding extra things or goofing off and you know it.)

Leaving 20% of your time unplanned is a good level.

Yeah, I really wish I had thought of that when I was planning out my time.

I'll cut some time from that Expand On Gameplay section when I get to it, since that's very non-critical so it can be replaced for time overflow, and there's no problem working on it at the end if I don't need extra time for other things.

Regarding networking: If you can't actually see each other's forts in multiplayer then it's fine to implement at the end, but if you want to be able to have two people playing the same map, either implement it now or drop it from your plan.

The former. The latter is way too much work to do if I still want to meet a 5-month deadline.

You seem to have quite a good handle on what you're doing then
Feel free to ask me any questions you like if you need some help, I tend to respond within a day.