Fhnuzoag

[RELEASE][Devlog] WIZARD SPORTS (Updated to v1.1!)

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Day 8.

 

Implemented the pickup system for spells. Also added a snazzy terrain deformation effect system to make spells look more impressive. The idea is to mix this with colour blending the pitch, and some effects sprites.lUOmBwd.gif

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Great stuff! It would be really cool if you could break down the AI behaviors for us, to know what goes in the mind of a sporty wizard.

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Terrain deformation looks really nice. Can't wait to see what other effects you cook up for other spells

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Day 9. Been busy finalising AI and implementing a lot of spells, so no Gif.

The AI basically works like this:

There are two movement modes, walk and run. Walk just moves directly towards a target position. Run keeps track of the current direction of the unit, turning towards to the target, and tries to dodge other players in its way.

There is then three basic states to each AI player, a defensive state, a neutral, and an offensive state. A commander function assigns the frontmost and nearest to the ball players as offensive, and the players nearest the goal as defensive. Everyone else is neutral. Every few clicks, this function re-assigns everyone a role.

Neutral players just guard their home points, maybe shuffling around a bit from time to time. When the ball gets close they try to tackle the player by running at them.

Defensive players interpose themselves between the ball and the goal, again only tackling if close.

Offensive players have the most complex task. If the player is in possession they just keep trying to tackle. If they have the ball though, then they try and attack: players without the ball pick a random relative position from the ball and go there, repositioning once they arrive. The ball holder meanwhile attempts to select a random waypoint that brings it closer to the player's goal, and is still clear of players units. If the path becomes blocked, however, it finds a new waypoint. From time to time, it will consider passing the ball based on how likely the player is to intercept, and whether it brings the ball closer to the goal. If it is close to the goal and it sees a possible shot then it will shoot.

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Day... 12?

Can't get on to the internet, but was working on some balance and interface stuff.

So, does anyone want to playtest? Game might be a bit hard right now. Drop me a pm and I'll send you a drop box link.

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That post describing the AI was really interesting. I'm looking forward to playing this.

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I've uploaded a video to Youtube, if you need convincing the exciting world of Wizard Sports is for you!

 

 

And another one here:

 

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Of the games I've played so far, this is definitely the one that I can't believe got completed within the jam time, it's very complex, and very polished for a jam game.

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This was great, are you planning to work on it any more?

I might... in the short term, I'd probably just add a credit page so I can credit the people I got the music from (http://incompetech.com/) and the sound effects from (https://www.freesound.org/).

 

The game itself was sort of intended as a test-bed for some ideas I had for making a semi-XCOM style tactical strategy game. I'll probably experiment on that when I have time for the time being. Unless people think the Wizard Sports could be polished up further and expanded into a fuller game? (I didn't end up implementing everything I wanted. In particular there was a Boss Fight sequence I was interested in doing, but I didn't have time.)

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Well I definitely enjoyed it a lot. I guess take that with a bit of a grain of salt since I don't know how much of that was unsustainable novelty. I'd be interested in a new game with this style of mechanical balance. I did like the Thumbs theme (and I thought you did it quite well) but the mechanics really were a lot of it.

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Oh man, this was way too difficult for me (or I am bad at understanding the strategy) but I love how full-featured it is. I think it's good for what it is, and the XCOM idea is a great direction to take this, but it'd be cool to see with maybe some other mini-sports jammed in like Mario Sports Mix but using the same spells for different effects in each

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Well, it looks brilliant, sounds brilliant - perfectly captures the voices of the Thumbs crew and, uh, uh, um, I can't play it because... I'm terrible at these sorts of games. I'll go back to it again shortly, but... as soon as I start to see a football pitch, my eyes glaze over. But the sheer amount of work and well-executed ideas is impressive as all hell - would love to see this taken further!

 

 --Rev

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Hi. To the people who found it too difficult, can you say what you found hard to do?

Some hints: Are you

- using WASD active controls to dodge past opponent tacklers?

- grasping what all the different cards do (specifically, that some of them attack, some of them impede the opponents, some of them give you a buff over time, and some of you manipulate the cards?)

- are you planning around the 'black' negative effect cards? Of the three, What Is Game can sometimes be triggered intentionally early to get it out of the way, Bird Noise makes the game harder so you should avoid casting it at all costs, and Shitty Wizard can be used to dispel the other negative effect cards.

- are you trying not to pause the game too much? The first new spell pickup after you unpause happens after 5 seconds, and then new pickups appear every 3 seconds thereafter. So if you pause more often than every 5 seconds you don't get any spells...

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Primarily, anything that features a pitch and multiple units chasing a ball causes my eyes to glaze over, no matter what the execution. But! I shall give the game another go tomorrow and try to give useful feedback.

 

 --Rev

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Hi Fhnuzoag! Started playing the game again, impressions as I play:

 

* Menu intro is amazing. Selected tutorial.

* Not immediately clear that I should click on the dialogue bar to advance - clicking on the main screen causes arrows to emerge from a character(Jake, I think).

* Narration and character dialogue is characterful and entertaining.

* On the line, "First things first: select the members of the thumbs [capitalise Thumbs?] by LEFT CLICKING on them with the mouse", I immediately try clicking on the characters, only for arrows to emerge from Jake again.

* Now I'm being told I can push E to select nearest to the mouse, or Q to select the nearest to the ball. On this screen, E seems to do nothing, but Q causes spikes to emerge from Nick Breckon (and in the game).

* Chris tells me to try it now: "Left click, E, Q". I'm wondering if I really CAN try it now, or if this'll do nothing like before. Well, left-clicking causes arrows to emerge from Nick (who still has his spikes). Meanwhile Jake still has arrows extending from him to Chris.

* Okay, the music's louder and all the controls seem to be working. That was frustrating, but now I'm feeling more optimistic! Woo, this seems like a decent control system!

* Sean requests the ball, there it is... OHH, so the blue spike is to help me identify the player that was selected as being closest to the ball. That's not especially clear, to be honest - might be worth trying to make that indicator a little more obvious. Just give the selected player a particle system, maybe?

* The control switch to the character closest to the ball is splendid!

* Again, it's unclear when I should be trying to use spacebar to pause during the tutorial - it's three dialogue boxes encouraging me to do something that isn't available to try yet. Perhaps the dialogue boxes need a different style for instructions, plus slightly rewrites to the introductory boxes to make it clear to the player that the option isn't quite available yet. Pausing the game (with a big pause icon) during the tutorial sections would also help...

* Got the bomb card and the game crashed.


___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object CardObj:

Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [0,1] out of range [1,1] - -5.drawpile(100105,1)
at gml_Script_DrawCard
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_DrawCard (line 0)
gml_Object_CardObj_Create_0

Got back into the game, got the card, bombed the babies, getting excited, this looks like fun, I might have fun with a sports game-- crashed again.

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object CardObj:

Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [0,1] out of range [1,1] - -5.drawpile(100105,1)
at gml_Script_DrawCard
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_DrawCard (line 0)
gml_Object_CardObj_Create_0

Gahh. I'll try to use this again tonight, Fhnuzoag - but in the interim, my further compliments. I really like the control scheme and I'm definitely interested in playing this properly!

 

 --Rev

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Argh, stupid last minute tutorial code.

The idea is that you should click to close the dialogue box, THEN do what the instruction says. Somehow this seemed like a good idea at the time.

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