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fierydrake

[Release*] Bogost in the Shell

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I'm not sure if I'll actually be able to create a game, but all the good talk here made me want to jam something even if it's just an idea.

 

The basic idea is to hack your way from your safehouse, through people's cyberbrains and The Grid (internet) to your target. You can locate your target by sneaking a connection in to government servers via the Grid, their surveilance data is not that well protected, but there is limited time before your search will be detected. The safest route to the target is via wireless point to point infultration of passing cyberbrains.

 

Once you penetrate a cyberbrain you can halt their concious thoughts and take over their body. From there you can hop on to another passing cyberbrain within range. You can only directly control one body in your chain of hacked brains at a time, the others will be controlled by your hacking software. Without further programming your hacking software will only prevent the owner gaining conciousness and keep your connections alive (provided they stay in range), the body will appear as if unconcious.

 

Police will patrol the streets and if they notice anything amiss their suspicions will be alerted and they will investigate. If they conclude that there is something untoward going on, they will trigger increased Grid security in the area and your chance of detection will increase.

 

Core gameplay will be dragging connections between your safehouse and passing people, controlling/programming them in such a way that they won't draw attention and making your way to the target cyberbrain. You may need to switch between nodes to allay the suspicions of the police and corporate guardians.

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Gosh that's cool. I'm really glad you were able to transfer the info-graphic look over into the game.

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Your art style is off the charts! The general presentation, and specifically the little people walking around remind me of Rymdkapsel.

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Gosh that's cool. I'm really glad you were able to transfer the info-graphic look over into the game.

Thanks clyde, it's really good to see some feedback even if the game isn't playable yet. I do like me some infographics and maybe it's a subliminal thing because I wasn't going for that specifically, just trying to keep it simple and fairly clean (and within my limited , but improving, artistic abilities.) And now you mention it, I'm going to browse around and see if I can add some other infographicy elements.

 

I might have to upgrade this to an actual Dev Log. I'm not sure how much gameplay I can get done this week, but I'm going to try and get basic cyberbrain hacking in tonight.

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Your art style is off the charts! The general presentation, and specifically the little people walking around remind me of Rymdkapsel.

Thanks! I really like the look of Rymdkapsel and the developer (grapefrukt/Martin Jonasson) seems like a real nice chap.

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Well tonight was a bit of a bust on gameplay. I spent far too long on a few minor visual changes, but I did get an indicator to click on for hackable brains in range. It don't really like how it looks, but the animation is kinda cool.

 

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I managed to get some of the hacking gameplay in, just the start. You can hover over and click on people in range of your signal and they will stop and a little progress indicator shows above their head until they are hacked.

Need to implement:

* Extend signal range once hack is complete

* Click to select which node in your network is controlled

* Click to move controlled node

* Lots of indicators/animations/effects

* Police patrols

* Hacking Nick Breckons Brain!

 

No gif today, I need to go to bed now. I'll do one tomorrow.

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A super long day at work today, so I only managed to get a basic hacking nodes in so you can extend the range of the network to all the brains you hack.

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Progress made:

* :tup: Extend signal range once hack is complete

* :tup: Click to select which node in your network is controlled

* :tup: Click to move controlled node

* :tdown: Lots of indicators/animations/effects

* :tmeh: Police patrols

* :tdown: Hacking Nick Breckons Brain!

 

New items:

* Camera zoom and pan

* Don't destory Nick Breckon when he goes into a highrise (or at least recreate him immediately if he's destroyed.)

* Police patrol suspicion/alertness

* Mechanics to deal with police suspicion

* Level design/mechanics to make placement of hacked citizens more interesting

 

post-33515-0-47322700-1429878149_thumb.gif

 

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* Don't destroy Nick Breckon when he goes into a highrise (or at least recreate him immediately if he's destroyed.)

 

This is good advice in general, really.

 

Still looking good!

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Progress made:

* :tup: Camera zoom and pan

* :tup: Don't destory Nick Breckon when he goes into a highrise (or at least recreate him immediately if he's destroyed.)

* :tup: Spent a good 30 minutes making the text spin around The Satirical Man

* :tmeh: Police patrols

* :tmeh: Hacking Nick Breckons Brain!

* :tdown: Lots of indicators/animations/effects

* :tdown: Police patrol suspicion/alertness

* :tdown: Mechanics to deal with police suspicion

* :tdown: Level design/mechanics to make placement of hacked citizens more interesting

 

Pan and zoom the camera (some minor issues remain, but I'm not going to fix them now, there's more pressing things to do!):

post-33515-0-83118500-1429922233_thumb.gif

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This thread was getting pretty heavy with all those GIFs, so I've hidden them behind spoiler buttons.

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How did you go about finding Creative-Commons licensed music and sound-effects?

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I just searched on soundcloud for music and freesound for sound effects and chose a bunch I liked. Then I checked the licenses and picked out the ones I could use and/or modify.

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Progress made:

* :tup: Police patrols

* :tup: Hacking Nick Breckons Brain!

* :tup: Active unit icon

* :tup: Nick death animation

* :tup: Win/lose screens

* :tup: Police patrol suspicion/alertness

* :tmeh:  Mechanics to deal with police suspicion

* :tmeh:  Level design/mechanics to make placement of hacked citizens more interesting

* :tdown: Quit button ( :()

* :tdown: Arrg forgot a bunch of explanatory text, mostly added it to the itchio page

 

Now submitted more playable build to itchio, still a bit clunky but actually kinda almost a game.

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I really liked the style of this. I'm not reading threads before I play, so I didn't actually realise I could control Nick. I was just hacking pedestrians and trying to line them up. Didn't really know what was going on!

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