saluk

Week 2 of voting is now upon us. I have almost completed voting all the games so far, there are quite a few good ones. It's a very impressive showing! There are still a couple that I haven't tried, and a few that I have tried that I don't feel confident voting for yet. Good work everyone!

I suppose since everyone else is doing comment response, why don't I do one too? Might be cathartic. A few of the comments were - interesting.

• Interesting concept and pretty fun, if somewhat repetitive. Only glaring issue might be the art. The little characters in the tutorial are so much better than the rest.
  • True, the art is a bit of a problem. You should have seen the early art though :) I don't see what you mean about the tutorial graphics, since the graphics are pretty much the same throughout, but if you are referring to the dialogue portraits, those have been downloaded from amature rpg forums. Also, about it being repetitive, yeah, it is a bit, mostly because the balance is off and there aren't enough units to play with. Ah, the limitations of time.
• Didn't run. pygame.error: Mix_LoadWAV_RW with NULL src
  • You didn't download the final version, there wasn't room to upload it so the source release will not work. Check the links at the bottom of this post
• ... what... was... that?
  • Yeah, very helpful comment here... You don't say if you liked it or not, and you don't say what you did or didn't like about it. So in response, "...what...kind...of...comment...was..that???"
• Pretty complex!
  • Yeah, there is a lot of depth. We spent quite a bit of time balancing, and after we got the main thrust of the graphics and code, the rest of the time was spent balancing our complex system. But, we still didn't even have enough time to balance it. Writing and scripting the story took a little more time than I had planned.
• Coool. Some of the dialog was funny too, though it would've been good to have more dialog visible at a time rather than the continual clicking. Nicer graphics would make this a great game :)
  • Thanks for the advice. I hijacked the menu system I wrote the first day for every text-based thing including the dialogue. I could have easily done several lines, but for some reason it didn't cross my mind. Doh! I'm happy with most of the graphics myself, they are way better than we thought they would be. There are a few glaring things that stand out, like the hastily drawn combat mechs, and a few of the bland tiles. But we never had time to do a detil pass to make stuff look nice. Oh well, gameplay is more important; especially in these sorts of games
• I never did quite understand those advance wars kind of games. Anyway, I finished the grandale level, and it was quite good fun. You obviously intend for this to go further, which seems like a good idea to me. Any hints about combat? Sorry about the incoherence. It's midnight and I've already reviewed about 15 other entries.
  • Heh, no worries. You're not THAT incoherent. I posted some combat hints in an earlier post. I actually changed the combat on thursday of the contest, so it was a little rushed. Strong attacks usually do a lot of damage, but there is still a chance for any attack to do like, 1 damage. It can be off putting to see a wave of missiles go down and do 0 damage hehe. About going further, probably will, but we have other games we have already been working on, so we'll see how much effort we put into it now that the deadline is gone.

If you still have not played my game, you can download the python version, or the windows exe version.
Python version, 8 megs md5=983ba79b8c3c1e4c39e0bd4d8d6e5b4a
Windows version, 11 megs md5=7eaef4e0d0364308e6c81ea4d80f44c6

I had trouble uploading the whole file here, so the source.zip is JUST the source - no data. You MUST download the file http://www.spinheaddev.com/downloads/mechrev.zip in order to play. It comes with the source and the data.

Been getting some good comments so far, thanks all! I guess richard turned on comments? Anyway, this is planned to be a first act in probably a 3 act story. There will be quite a twist in the second act, pay attention to the heros attitude during the tutorial for a clue :) I wish we could have done the 10 levels we planned in the begining but about halfway through, we realized that it would be impossible to balance 10 levels. I'm not even sure the 5 levels we included are very balanced.

One of the major problems currently is that the footman unit is a total wuss. The only useful thing about footmen is that you don't have to worry about power, so they can be useful. But they die pretty quick against mechs! It's probably easiest to win if you mostly purchase robots, with maybe a few health upgrades in there as well.

At the last minute when I knew we wouldn't have time to play through the entire set I ended up just increasing how much money you get. The first level is likely the most challenging level in the game because you will have more units later on :) But I still haven't played all the way through it.

One last tip: Try and limit the number of enemy units you fight - on most levels they only come after you if you come within a certain distance. You can use this to your advantage. When only fighting one or two units, you can often set it up to where you are firing and then running away and they can't get a hit in, at least with your main hero who is faster.

I am pretty proud of what we acomplished in just a week. Probably the most solid hours I've ever worked on a project ever. I am glad I didn't have a job or school or any other things to get in my way :) Hmm, but now that it's over I get to feel bad about my unemployment again. Yay!

Ack all this last minute work has been killing me. I am so tired from working on this for a whole week almost non-stop. I'm sure everyone else is wiped too!

This is the final version of our strategy rpg game Mech Revolution. Enjoy
Download here: 8 meg zip file
md5: 983ba79b8c3c1e4c39e0bd4d8d6e5b4a

Well, just hit a major milestone in that the skeleton at least for the whole game is there. We are missing an end boss, and because we just recently modified the power system, your mechs run out of power before you can complete any of the levels. But, with cheating, you can watch the entire story play out in the game! We are really proud of all that we have been able to accomplish. Just balancing from here on out and adding some trim such as title screens and the like. Maybe a save ability as well, as the game is a little long... Can't wait to finish this up and see what you all think!

Last night the game finally got to a state where it was fun to play. Me and Don Blake had a blast testing level 1 for a few hours trying out different strategies. You get a choice before the mission of which units to buy which is pretty cool. There are basically two paths to choose. You can buy two mechs and walk over the mountains working your way around killing the enemy units, but you have a tougher time making it to the power stations before running out of power; because the mountains slow you down a lot. The other option is to buy a bunch of footmen and go across the bridge. Footmen don't have to worry about power, and you can use them as bait to lure the enemy units in range for your hero to do a mighty missile attack. We were able to complete the level either way without too much trouble.

This was a major milestone in development, as we got to the point where instead of adding major new systems and drawing a bunch of graphics, we are adding little tiny things that have a large effect on gameplay. It is a little more boring and slower pace. Also, since most of the graphics are done except for detail passes and touch-ups; and the story is completely written, Don has very little to do. So it's basically at somewhat of a plateu. You could call it writers block, except that there are a whole lot of things that we want to do, but we've lost a lot of motivation and momentum to do them.

Well, we still have tomorrow and saturday to work, so hopefully we can add all of the boring things that must be added without getting too burned out! If we don't then we'll end up with an awesome set of 3 tutorials and one well-balanced mission; which is still a valiant effort, just far short of the 10 epic story-filled levels we planned!

Oh and I didn't post any new screenshots because everything looks the same. graphics are done, gameplay is king.

Wow, I mean, wow. I can't believe we went from ugly tech demo to awesome game with decent graphics in one day. It's an actual game already! And now we have 3 days to make the levels really good and get the balance right. Check out these pics:

Here we have the beginings of the EPIC - and very cliche - story.

Here is what happens when people attack...

And here is what happens when they get attacked.

And here is the ultimate attack in the game lol

Now comes the fun part - playing our game over and over again tweaking it forever until the deadline. See you all at the finish line and good luck with your entries...

After much work yesterday and today I decided to take a break and show off a screenshot. The game is actually a lot cooler than the shot would suggest. So far, pathfinding works perfectly, you can move your robots (the block squares) around on the map on each turn, with a decent menu system. Turns alternate between the ai and the player. At the begining of the match you can put all of your units out on the map. There is a level editor so my team can organize the terrain and place enemy units and power generators. Since the ai doesn't do anything at the moment, his robots just sit around running out of power :)

All I need is some ai and some graphics. And a story. I'm about half done with the coding, which is good because I need to be finished by friday (weekend trip).

Take care all

We are planning on making a strategy/rpg. Spending the rest of today brainstorming ideas, then finalize our plan by tomorrow. I'll probably work on base systems today too, since no matter what ruleset, setting, or story we decide, we will still need to animate guys hurtin each other, and have lots of menus.

We're thinking about having robots. Front mission anyone? Difficulties I can forsee are AI issues and balancing. I will lean towards too easy rather than too hard, because balance will be off no matter what, because in the 48 hour I went for too hard and no one could play my game :)