infamous space turtle

[Dev Log] Pegasus Launch

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Alright, hi and hello. 
This time round I'm aiming to get a prototype done for an idea iv had floating around for a while. 

 

Brief:
Pegasus Launch is a 2D top down survival-roguelike-builder where the player helps a cast of characters journey by train across a post-apocalyptic wasteland to find safe haven.

Help a small cast of characters journey by train across a sunless post-apocalyptic wasteland to a coastal port, their escape to a rumoured safe haven beyond the sea. Using an abandoned locomotive engine your task will be to keep the train fuelled and your characters alive by searching for resources.

 

Cheesy lore follows:

Spoiler

Torn by a great cataclysm the land has been left a desolate waste in total darkness. No plants grow and shapeless horrors wander in the dark. Some humans still persist and aided by the tools of a lost society they wander looking for a foothold upon the barren terrain, points of light adrift in a sea of darkness.   


The game's meets meets meets is something like Rimworld meets Faster than Light meets This War of Mine

 

 

Key Features

(though some may not be completed in the jam):

 

True Darkness will be your number one enemy and is kept at bay by burning resources(this includes most things on the train, chairs,walls etc). The closest you can get to safety is a well fuelled engine travelling at a quick pace. When you inevitably run out of resources or stop to clear the tracks you will have to leave the warm light of the train, be sure to take a lantern and rifle with your scavenging crew or they’ll be lost in the night. One does not live long if left in total darkness. 

Quote

During a scavenging mission in a city one of your crew loses their cool and rushes into the darkness without a lantern. You search for them but have to retreat to the train, you wait for a little longer but its most likely they are dead. Khan, the missing characters lover, breaks from your command and rushes into the darkness with a lantern in a desperate attempt to save them. Khan finds the characters corpse almost immediately, its unsettlingly close to the train with strange wounds on it. Khan carries the corpse onto the train and you continue onward.

 

Real-time Infinitely Generating Terrain will be the to create the world. 

Quote

While traveling full speed Jen notices a blockade on the track, luckily you have someone controlling the engine or you would have ran right into it. You stop and clear the track. (optional ambush by bandits here).

 

Character personality and skill will be randomly rolled on character generation much like rimworld. Along the way opportunities to pick up new wanderers will arise.  

Quote

Snow falls. The lead light of the train reveals a cloaked figure waiting by the tracks up ahead. Jen pulls the break and you slow to a stop besides them. The wanderer is an old man named Marlo and he asks to join, he says he has skills as a doctor. You decide he can be trusted and let him on.

 

 

Goals

As usual im being too ambitious so in an attempt to set realistic goals here are my primary objectives for a quick prototype.

 

  • Randomly generating map with at least one natural resource and one man made resource. (a resource being anything that can be burnt). 

 

  •  A train engine which can receive fuel and move based on a set speed. 

 

  •  Characters that can carry resources on command.

 

  •  Some sort of 2D lighting system. Simple for now, no shadows, but simulated enough. 

 

  • (if i'm really lucky) basic enemies/hazards, gun use. 

 

  •  (if i'm really really lucky) basic on train building, a carriage base connected to the engine on which simple walls can be constructed. 


Beyond that there's a world of things to add but if I can just get the core loop of travel-stop scavenge- repeat ill be happy. 

 

Happy jamming humans. 

 

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This sounds amazing, turtle! Can't wait to see what it shapes up to be!

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Your game sounds like it shares quite a few similar elements to mine! Looking forward to how this turns out :)

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Thanks, :eyebrow:

Update 1

Map Generation

Alright iv got a basic terrain generator thing going on. I spent last month looking at how rimworld code works so Iv based my stuff on that. Though i'm deviating heavily its useful to see how to save, generate terrain and so on.

TzJOOIV.gif?1

 

Currently it will generate infinitely though its not yet saving to a file so its not going to work over a long period of time. I do have a save system that might work but iits good enough for now. There's also little hitches as related to the garbage collection each time a bunch of chunks load but whatever, its going to be rough for the prototype version. 

 

I also found a great free 2D shadow tool on the asset store which integrates reasonably well.

e4uFh61.gif?2

Lol imgur has eaten the image when I resized it, but you get the idea. 

Edit fixed the shadow issue. Its still not lined up correctly and the textures that came with it are rendering which I don't want. 

 

 

Style

The games been kicking around in my head for a while and when I originally envisioned it to be kinda steampunk lite.. closer to a 19th century stylistically but still 

unrealistic when it needs to be. Given the world is in darkness there would be a lot of ice and snow too. 

 

Visually im not going to do any work at all until the prototypes done. I'm not getting sucked into art morasses this time and just focusing on the game system. So expect a very ugly future or these dev logs. 

 

@badatstuff both music and sound are low on the implementation list so I don't know when i'm going to get around to thinking about them in detail but I do have a few ideas. If your too busy no worries but ill toss a couple of ideas out and if you want to do them have at it.

 

Music:
One of the core things I want to achieve is a sense of warmth and safety(though not happy or positive) when the train is in motion. It'd be cool if when the train is up to speed very subtle music fades in, almost blurred with the rhythms of the wheels on the tracks. When you have to stop to scavenge or whatever the music stops and your left with almost nothing, maybe a bit of wind sound, but no music leaving sense of emptiness. Given the steampunkish setting of the game organic, dirty, non digital instrument sounds would be ideal. 

 

Could probably do something for when all the lights go out and your in total darkness. Something that rises in intensity and becomes more manic as the panic grows. At this point all the lights going out is basically game over. 

 

Sound

Some basic stuff like an ambient environment loop and probably some track sounds though I don't know how the speed up slow down will affect the sound there. 

 

Otherwise I am not too sure, I'm still pretty flakey about it all sorry. 

 

Next up is figuring out how the train will work within the current system. 

 

 

 

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This sounds awesome! It reminds me a bit of the premise of The Final Station, but with cool darkness mechanics.

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Update 2

Seperate Train Stuff

 

Today I got the train grid working. Here's a crude version of the train nudging its way through the map. Notice the awful loading hitches, they concern me. 

PBpQ5KC.gif\

 

The train has its own separate grid and I can move objects back and forth between the map and the train as needed. Also theres an issue with the shadows being juddery, I think its to do with how often they redraw but i'm not sure yet. The artifact ridden orange square represents the fuel hole where characters will chuck things to burn. 

 

Next up is characters and the dreaded pathing, something I have no idea how to deal with. 

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Update 3

All right , I have returned 

Since my last update this game has pretty much morphed into an actual rimworld mod, albeit a super striped down one. I ended up just using a bunch of code from rimworld for pathfinding and the structure of everything is really similar. Since this contains stuff I don't own I won't be putting this up publicly, a bit in violation of jam spirit but ah well. This was kinda a personal project iv been wanting to try for ages and I shoehorned it into the jam. 

 

Ill keep posting dev logs and treating it as a personal prototype for now, maybe it could be put up as an actual mod somehow in the future.. or not I don't know.


As I said at the start, this is an idea iv had for a while and i'm really enjoying getting pieces of it onscreen.

So far iv hit all the main goals:
The terrain loading is now smooth and surprisingly effective. Currently there's not much terrain types to  load so it may change but chunk loading is unnoticeable. 

 

The map scales based on the train speed which improves performance when things need to load quick. You go fast and it slims down, you stop and the map loads fully. The darkness covers the map edges so its quite convincing. 


6NDjHEs.gif

Different speeds and map sizes. (fast forwarded)

 

I also have a character that will take commands and do various things. Its individually controlled sort of like age of empires. You select your character then right click where you want them to go/interact.

 

Note its all temp art from the internet and nothing represents the style I actually plan on using. 

6jSkqdW.gif
Chopping down a tree and putting its wood in the engine burner. 

 

 

The train is its own grid and will move across the map smoothly. Its also going to be easy to implement train building as it already auto build walls,lights and burner when it initializes. Here you can see the engine traveling with only slight amount of shadow jitter on the sides. Ignore the front light that is very obviously jittering, I haven't dealt with that yet. Also the temp blue ui things on the bottom right are the speed settings. 

ygjNprH.gif
A spooky journey, perhaps?

 

Coming soon...

  • Fixes for the many bugged systems. 
  • Mechanics planning.
  • More mechanics planning.
  • Character info and UI. 
  • Train building. 
  • Equipment use(ie using an axe to chop the tree rather than magicly doing it). 
  • Horrors !?

 

 

Overall i'm pleased where things are at. I'm going to just plug away and try flesh it out before deciding whether I want to go further with the idea and build from the ground up or what. 

This next week im going to be on holiday will be an excellent opportunity to play yall sweet jams, cant wait. 

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