thepaulhoey

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Posts posted by thepaulhoey


  1. 5 hours ago, Ben X said:

    Thanks!

     

    Okay, one small final question to everyone. Through this process I've gained a lot of (often spoilerific, immersion-breaking) Steam cards, all of which I traded in for gems. So I now have 1,415 gems, along with a Broken Age booster pack containing three cards. Is there any process I can go through to turn these into actual store credit or free games? Or am I just going to have to hope that they do another gem-based auction sale at some point?

     

    I leave them to sit in my inventory because it's not a business model I like at anymore, so I'd rather not take part in it. Even when I did sell them(pre convoluted gem system) I was lucky to sell one for more than €0.12 before Valve's cut so it only ever really amounted to a few euro off a game at some point. I know they've made trading more laborious over the years so maybe you can't sell cards directly anymore?


  2. @Ben X If you haven't seen it instead of it being a straight race from start to finish there was a 6 minute time limit per level, with the first team to complete the level getting the point then both teams move onto the next level. You then got a time advantage on the final level based on how many levels you won(which was a bit redundant).

     

    I thought the new format worked really well for it, I think the last time they did Mario Maker one team got stuck on a level so the race was pretty much over half way through. At least with this format they're constantly racing on the same level. I thought the final level seemed a bit too easy as they got through it incredibly fast.


  3. It's released, at least a super janky version is(we're having the best summer in years here, I couldn't bring myself to stay inside working on this all day). People come and go and you can build stuff but there's no game loop yet. Also the pathfinding needs optimisation so expect occasional 1 or 2 second hangs when lots of people arrive in one go. Instructions on the controls are on the page and in the README.

     

    https://thepaulhoey.itch.io/in-space

     

    I'm quite pleased with the state I've gotten this into and the general shape of the objects and the AI of the peeps is a really good starting point for continuing this. :)


  4. I've been making some more progress over the past few days when I have time and I'm going to be putting in a good bit of work today and tomorrow on this. Not sure how much game there will be but there's some really fun systems now. Inspired by something I read about I think Dishonored, I decided that entities in the game can give out various properties. Right now it's a core of DRINK, FOOD, ENTERTAINMENT, CURIOSITY, BATHROOM, ENERGY as a way to drive what object the peeps will interact with. Just now I was doing some testing, it's set so that if an attribute goes below 20 the peep will look for something to address that. So someone got hungry, found a vending machine and ate, they're no longer hungry but they keep on using it and their hunger goes from <20 up to 250(you get +50 for eating) and they just keep on eating. I'm looking for a bug where I'm not resetting the object they're interacting with correctly before it dawns on me, I've set vending machines to give off an entertainment value of 2 and this is literally the only object that gives off entertainment right now. So when people need to be entertained they will go off to a vending machine for a small little kick, which is kind of true of airports. I've wasted a lot of money keeping myself entertained on not particularly entertaining things while waiting for flights over the years. I love when totally unintentional quirks like this emerge.


  5. Video update! Really pleased with the peep movement and the way they use objects is working really well(the half size vending machine is a seat) and is super easy for adding new types in. :) The chunk system mentioned below is where I have some hard coded arrays to define rooms, then I can tell the map to put one in a particular location. I plan to expand it by having it then had corridors as needed, if there's time. Otherwise I'll just hard code a map to play on using the different room types.

     

    It looks odd that they're all moving to the next chair placed but literally all they can do is seat or go to the vending machine and if they're no thirsty they don't do that. I plan to add things like Departure Boards, TVs, Computers etc. for other activities for them to take part in when "bored" as well as expanding the types of vending machines.

     

    There still isn't a lot of game there though :/ Current plan is that you'll be placing vending machines in busy areas and adjusting the stock each day to match demand. Gonna be super basic I think.

     

    Dev notes:

    • Finally fixed all the pathing and activity issues with the peeps. While I was at that I added some new sprites and some code to make things looks less on a grid.
    • Added in a chunk system for adding rooms to the map. First test of placing vending machines.
    • Added seats! Yay! Some small tweaks so the peeps use things properly when they're not vending machines.

     

     


  6. I forgot that making games can be tough! :) Haven't had much time the past few days to work on this, spent some times yesterday tidying up the peep update loop so it's not buggy anymore and this morning I reworked the movement code to play nicer with the pace of the game. Given that there's a week left I'm trying to figure out the best way to reign in the scope a little.

     

    Decided to finally put into place some code to make the peeps more varied. Quite happy with how this is looking now(the blur effect looks really neat), also doing a test with 1000 of them milling about to make sure it's all working OK, so far so good.

    image.png.54d2e72d59815ff4bc1d5d30e2144500.png


  7. Quote

    git commit -m "Lots of work on loading the map and having different tiles. Work on the movement system for the peeps. Need to rewrite the update logic and how they 'do' things, it's a broken mess."

     

    Some progress and a frustrating evening of trying to work out bugs in the peep's AI led to this realisation. Ah well, probably won't take too long.

     

    Starting to look more like something now though! All of this is loaded form some json files, super simple number array stuff but it gets the job done.

    Capture.PNG.cb31772be4f6e58e77ee26f2df6f02ea.PNG


  8. I was incredibly bored during the Nintendo Smach Bros. Patch Notes, I know there's people who love getting all that info but I feel it should have been a separate video.

     

    My highlights of E3 this year are TLOU2, Spider-Man, Rage 2, Resident Evil 2 remake & Shadows of Tsushima. Also quite interested in Fallout 76 from the new details revealed.


  9. I created a gif of the effect in motion: https://j.gifs.com/KZoEOR.gif

     

    Having some weird issues with the peeps not doing anything after a while, could be any number of things that's blocking them from doing something. Next up I want to implement them arriving and leaving the space station, I did some work on spawners to spawn them at specific locations, after that they'll have a location and time to leave at and while they're there it's your job to convince them to use your vending machines.


  10. Small bit of progress today, started working on some basic graphics more inline with how I plan for the game to look. Made a bunch of changes to the speed of the peeps, I want it to appear as if it's running in fast forward(hence the blurring, looks nicer in motion and when there's less wide open space and more differently coloured peeps on top of one another I think it'll work well) so a full day passes in a few minutes etc. Made some changes to path finding and there's the initial crowding around a machine waiting for it in there. I'll probably add some logic for the peeps to give up if they're waiting too long and find a less busy machine. Given the time to complete this I'll probably scale it back to vending machines and adverts you can place in the Space Station. Then maybe some options on bidding on ads etc. I want it to be a relatively fast paced game.

     

    Capture.PNG.6c79b04ff478bb6a600ddce05928eb49.PNG


  11. As an update here are the two commit messages from today.

    • Lots of work on the dispensers and how people interact with them.
    • More adjustments to person behaviour, they now get bored and can kinda handle a failed request e.g. there are no dispensers available. They just stand there and don't do anything else...

    Did some testing with lots of people using a single dispenser and it running out of stock. Probably not going to bother refining things like multiple people on the same tile while waiting for the vending machine, there's bigger fish to fry.

     

    Here's an image with 100 people using the vending machine, performance is fine aside from at the very start when everyone is trying to calculate paths. I'll add a proper manager class at some point to stagger that on load.

     

    Capture.thumb.PNG.b62b042ca39ebca200ebaec1d8708733.PNG

     

    Next up is expanding the vending machines and implementing a way for the people to find one to use based on its stock and distance.


  12. It's released, at least a super janky version is(we're having the best summer in years here, I couldn't bring myself to stay inside working on this all day). People come and go and you can build stuff but there's no game loop yet. Also the pathfinding needs optimisation so expect occasional 1 or 2 second hangs when lots of people arrive in one go. Instructions on the controls are on the page and in the README.

     

    https://thepaulhoey.itch.io/in-space

     

     

    In Space is going to be a management sim set on a space station. I'm not totally sure the direction it's going to go in just yet, the current plan is that you will be operating vending machines and food stalls at a space station with the goal being to grow your business.

     

    Features I think will be fun:

    • Bidding on new units/space for vending machines, so there's a cost to operating them and having good spots.
    • Some sort of lobbying system. For example the space station is refurbishing an area, there's 3 possible areas so you want to lobby for the area you operate in to be refurbished as people will want to be in that area more. Other things I think it'd be cool to lobby for would be which space flight operators get the various gates, so you want to try to get an airline that caters for the type of creature you cater for.
    • Employing market research teams to spy on competitors and discover trends in the market.
    • Staff to restock vending machines, repair them.

     

    What I'm making it with: MonoGame Extended(https://github.com/craftworkgames/MonoGame.Extended) and Paint.Net.

     

    So far I have a bare bones map with people who can walk around and got to a vending machine to get a drink, although I've written it in a way that now it's fairly simple to just pile in different types of vending machines and then instill into the people the types of food they like. 

     

    Capture.thumb.PNG.b5c561ab2367f03a52d2bba700a3c90e.PNG


  13. I wound up Gunslinger this along with you! I enjoyed it again, although it started to get a little samey towards the end and I totally agree about the end. Shooting ghosts in a very washed out level wasn't particularly easy or fun and the showdowns really grated by the end, they're very much designed for an analogue stick. All said though it's a fun shooter for a few hours.


  14. I played for about an hour last night, looking forward to sinking my Sunday into it. I might restart because I did some of the usually building game mistakes like thinking I need 5 solar panels and 5 wind turbines and 2 concrete mines and now I can't afford to bring in any colonists. :/

     

    I really like the aesthetic and the near futurism vibe of it all. One thing I can see myself wanting that I know isn't there is a better ability to set up the drones. I want to set paths so that there's one filling up a concrete store and moving it to a specific space etc. but it seems like you kind of have to leave them to do their own thing.


  15. The only thing keeping me playing Pit People is the style of it. The combat is tedious and has pretty much no evolution throughout the game. I'd love if they'd just half the health of everything in the game at least so battles don't drag on. It might even make the game more tactical since when a zone is marked as an area a unit will take damage in it might actually be a problem! Very disappointing.