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Archimidias

[Dev log] Dishonored Thanksgiving!

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They thought they could skip from Halloween to Christmas...

They thought they could play holiday music in the mall on November 1st...

 

They were wrong.

========================

 

Hello Everyone!

 

Dishonored Thanksgiving is all about reclaiming your rightful place in the calendar. You'll do this by fending off bombardment from Halloween on your left and Christmas on your right.

 

I think of it as something similar to Missile Command, but with some tweaks to make it more complex, and more festive!

 

I've attached a screenshot of the basic game board that I sketched out.

 

This is my first game ever, beyond some minimal exposure to Construct 2 at a Hacker Lab event.

 

I began by going to http://www.sortingh.at/, which also suggested Construct 2! Things are coming together already!

 

From there I happened upon http://yourgameideaistoobig.com/ , which is great, and made a great point! I don't want to aim too big. I have lots of ideas for multiple weapon types, levels, even asymmetrical multiplayer combat a la Starcraft, but that is probably waaaay ahead of me at this point. Maybe I'll have that ready by next Thanksgiving.

 

Anyway! Clint Bellanger, from that second site there, says:

"I always encourage people to implement the smallest vertical slice of gameplay possible. E.g. one level, one enemy, no menus"

 

 

So that's my goal for today. Just get some placeholder art on a screen, and have two cannons which can fire at each other.

 

Here I go!

post-27948-0-92780800-1448753865_thumb.png

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Day 2!

 

Made some progress with Construct. Got through the tutorial for Ghost Shooter, which fortunately is not too far from what I want to end up doing. I also got in touch with a lot of great people from this forum, looks like a collaboration might be forming!

 

Good thing too, because as you'll see in the screenshots below..... my artistic skills leave something to be desired.

 

The only other innovation I've made on the Ghost Shooter base game is that in order to have the arcing projectiles I'm looking for, you need to give your bullet-objects "gravity". Easy enough! Turns out zero was too low, and 5000 was too high.

600 gravity seems about right,

 

Now behold the glory of Xmas tank firing at Thxgiving tank! As well as a picture that illustrates how far I have yet to go!

 

Tomorrow, back to work, but my goal is to get some basic familarity with construct, and set up the board in its 'final' state. That is, first draft.

 

 

 

 

post-27948-0-89540600-1448844941_thumb.png

post-27948-0-88999000-1448844968_thumb.png

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Day 3 

 

Not much to report today. Picked a total size for my battlefield.

 

Tomorrow, I hope to finalize the actual physics, and have a infinitesimal test build.

 

Then I can start adding some features!

 

One cool thing that I've noticed is, as I think about the game more and more, and put work into it, it seems less and less appropriate for it to just pop into my browser when I press "run script". I find myself wanting a title screen. Feature creep? Or the feeling that it's actually becoming a game?

 

ramblings over. Tomorrow, a new screen shot!

-Arch 

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Errrr... "playable" is a word that could mean a lot of things...

 

But yeah!  So far it boots up, and you can shoot, and enemies explode when you hit them! It's largely based on the Ghost Shooter Construct 2 tutorial.

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My current challenge is getting the enemies to fight back. Also camera work is kinda finicky.

 

Plus there's a lot of features I want to add before I'll feel like it's done. Currently it's closer to, say, Asteroids.

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Day 6 

Well! 

 

Things are coming together. Unfortunately, I had to work again today, but tomorrow I have a couple free hours, and then it's the weekend, where I'll have more time to actually get things DONE.

 

My collaborators are pulling through in a big way! Just heard the music, and it's sounding pretty excellent. The art is coming together as well.

 

I thought I'ld take this time to lay out the broader context of the game, that I might focus my efforts for tomorrow.

 

Broadly speaking, you, Thanksgiving, are fighting off Halloween, and Christmas.

 

You're doing this using a cannon, as are they.

 

These cannons fire one of three projecties.

 

One is a sort of baseline bullet (dinner rolls for thanksgiving, chocolate bars for halloween, candy canes for christmas).

 

The second is a more high-value bullet, that takes more to destroy, but does double damage if it lands on your base undestroyed.

 

The third is a modifier, which I would really like to be unique per faction, but suffice it to say, if it hits, it will impede your ability to respond effectively.

 

The ammo will arrive in different proportions. Baseline bullets will be basically unlimited, 2X will be half as common, and modifiers will be even less common, maybe a quarter as common as baseline bullets.

 

The player will aim the cannon using the mouse, press 1,2, or 3 to select ammo, and click to fire. I don't want it to be TOO frantic, so there may be a cooldown period upon firing a bullet.

 

If the bullets land, they will sap the Cheer from your holiday. Exact HP will be derived via balancing, but I don't imagine it will take TOO many hits to lose. Similarly, if you can penetrate your opponents bullets and reach their base, you will be able to eliminate them. I'm not sure how complex an AI I can implement, so I think they might have a bit more health than the player. Player's Cheer will be displayed on the bottom left of the screen, while ammo quantities are  displayed to the right, with a highlight indicating which ammo is currently selected.

 

The current structure consists of a tiny intro cinematic (just white text on black background), a title screen/main menu, including "begin campaign" and perhaps "options" as well as "sound test" because I really like the music. If I have time, I'll implement a plants-versus-zombies style glossary which gives players more details about each ammo, as well as perhaps some flavor.

 

Beginning campaign takes you into the first level, versus Halloween, which might have some tutorialization. Perhaps not though. Maybe just an "instructions" page off of the title screen, a la Space Chem.

 

Upon beating that, you move on to fighting Christmas, which I intend to be slightly more difficult.

 

After that, a 3-way battle between the three factions, 

 

and then finally a 2 vs 1 between thanksgiving and the other two holidays.

 

I have a small idea for a closing cinematic, and then the credits roll!

 

Stretch goals: I don't know how hard this would be, but I would really like to have people be able to play as the other two holidays as well, and develop their ammo types to be more asymmetrical, even to give them a style (e.g. Halloween more about a slow creeping to victory and Christmas being a bit more brash and aggressive).

 

Stretchiest goal: multiplayer?

 

So then. I've blocked off some time to actually get some things done tomorrow, and here those things are, in order:

 

-get the camera framed correctly

-get the firing programmed for basic bullets

-get enemy 1 to spew out bullets at an appropriate interval, targeting the player

-get the bullets to interact correctly

-give enemy 1 hp

-give enemy 1 an HP display

-give the player hp

-give the player an HP display

=== milestone=== 1 v 1 battle, unlimited ammo.

-implement the ammo types

-implement the ammo supply system.

-add the background

-add the music

-add SFX?

=== milestone === complete first draft of level one

-complete the above for enemy 2

-complete first draft of level 2

-complete first draft of level 3

-complete first draft of level 4

-title screen/menu

-opening cinematic

-closing cinematic

-glossary page

-play as Xmas/Halloween

-multiplayer.

 

 

So that's not all for tomorrow, but some of them are!

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Day NINE?!

And with no posts for the last three days. Shame! Got too busy. But! It's Sunday, and that means I've got lots of time to get this thing done!

Well. Where were we?

-get the camera framed correctly SOLVED

-get the firing programmed for basic bullets SOLVED

-get enemy 1 to spew out bullets at an appropriate interval, targeting the player SOLVED

-get the bullets to interact correctly

-give enemy 1 hp

-give enemy 1 an HP display

-give the player hp

-give the player an HP display

=== milestone=== 1 v 1 battle, unlimited ammo.

So, not too shabby! The background and music are in there, and it's starting to look pretty awesome!

The actual strategic core of the game is my next target, and that means bullets interacting, with both the player and each other.

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Alright! I've got the bullets worked out, 

and a sort of interesting AI now,

 

but mostly, I'm super excited to share with you all the background!

post-27948-0-82674200-1449452254_thumb.png

 

Huge huge thanks to forum member Valorian Endymion for making this!

 

 

It's back to the grindstone tomorrow, the work grindstone I'm afraid, but I'm getting really close!

 

Also I drew this projectile myself: A free picture of a turkey to anyone who can correctly identify it.

(over on the right, near the christmas tree)

 

post-27948-0-83579700-1449452259_thumb.png

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Day 21

 

Well a lot of time has passed but I've done a TON and I'm super proud to present!

 

http://archimidias.itch.io/dishonored-thanksgiving

 

!!

 

It's working pretty great. There's a lot of things I'ld still like to work on, and the balance is a little off right now.

 

Lots of things to change, that I will hopefully get to in the new year.

 

I would very much like to thank Valorian Endymion for making a really gorgeous background, and Badatstuff for making the awesome pair of tracks that accompany the levels. This would not NEARLY be the game it is without you!

 

I would also like to thank the organizers for putting this on, and the Idle Thumbs crew for bringing us all together.

 

I'll definitely be partcipating in another game jam next year, this was awesome.

 

Thanks!

-Arch

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Love the art. Definitely the kind of experience I hope to have when playing a jam game.

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