This Blog Needs More Pictures, Anyway

Sorry for the delay, but it is time for a Super Game Bakedown Retrospective post!
In general, I'm quite happy with the Bakedown. Out of the nineteen total participants (myself included), three games were released! I've already linked to my own, so here are the other two, with download links and the official choice of the Bake of the Down:
















bd7007
Created by SelectButton forum member "!="
This is, in its creator's own words, barely a game. You walk around, explore, collect some things, then have a bizarre final confrontation. The atmosphere and graphical style are both great, though - the game world feels charmingly surreal and alien, especially for such a simple project.





















Space
Created by SelectButton forum member 'Takashi'
Bake of the Down
A gorgeous, simplistic space sim. It may not be fully realized, but the gorgeously austere polygon graphics that are reminiscent of the 3D games of the early 90's are fantastic, as is the prospect of constructing an entire planet. There's not alot to do, but simply designing and building your planet is rewarding enough, thanks to the wonderful visuals. Great job!



Anyways, in regards to the Bakedown in general -
WHAT WENT RIGHT:
-The basic concept. Turns out a month is just the right amount of time to make a simple game.
-Some actual games came out of it!
-People approached it with the right attitude - saying to HELL with procrastination or uncertainty, just make SOMETHING. Several of the people who participated had never tried to make a game before!

WHAT NEEDS WORK:
-Publicity. There was going to be a website, but due to reasons that I'm not going to go into here, there isn't, and I no longer have access to the domain supergamebakedown.com. As a result, the overall scope of the Bakedown was much smaller than I had hoped. If anyone is interested in making a website for it next year, I am very interested in talking to you about it. Contact me.
-The rules still need ironing out. I can't decide what policies to use regarding code reuse - it's turning out to be a much more confusing issue than I had anticipated.

So anyways!
Now that the Bakedown is over, it's time to get back to work on Zombie City Survivors.
Right?
Wrong. Well, sort of.
What I need to admit to myself right now is that ZCS will require a number of skills that I do not currently have. However, I know that if I just shelve the project, then I will never get back to it, and it will rot into obscurity. So, I've figured out a middle ground.
I am going to start work on a series of smaller projects, each one involving one skill that I need to acquire before cracking down on ZCS. I don't know how many projects there will be, but I'll need one each for AI in a Tactical RPG Environment, Sprite Billboarding, and Scripting.
The first of these projects will be SSSSRPG, a sort of sequel to RRRRRPG that will take place on a grid-based battlefield, in which enemies will move intelligently in response to the player's movement and actions. This will help when I get to designing the combat engine of ZCS, and need a lot of zombies to be able to fight effectively and without taking too long to calculate their paths.
I'll talk about this more soon.
STAY TUNED!

Super Game Aftermathdown

Well, the Super Game Bakedown is over now. You've seen my contribution to it already - but what of the others? After all, there were nineteen people racing for the finish line this year. Well, as it turns out, I wasn't the only one to get there! Let's look at the other finalists:

Selectbutton Forum member Takashi created the wonderful Space, in which you mine asteroids to build a planet piece by piece. The mechanics are not all in place, but the graphics are fantastically charming, and it's still fun to muck around with.

Honorary mention goes to !=, who created the demigame bd7007, which seems to be about exploring and picking up objects, then having an incoherent button mashing duel with a triangle. Surreal!

Thanks to all who participated, and I look forwards to whatever works will be spawned from next year's Bakedown.

Whoops

Overlords v0.5
Fixes a glitch that makes the final boss impossible to beat.
Adds a pause button.
Some other nonsense.
That is all.

The Overlords have taken over

Overlords v0.4

And with this version, I declare Overlords to be a complete game.
New features for this release are four more cities, a proper final boss, interface and AI tweaks, and the last Overlord spell. This is a fairly solid, if simple, game I have got here. I have more I could add, but it would be icing on the cake - this is Overlords, fully formed and fully playable.

If anyone has any ideas for things to add, I will try to squeeze them in the last couple days if I like them.

HOME STRETCH

Overlords v0.3
There are now three different cities, each with a different level of Overlord power. Interface is improved (Hero hollows out as it takes damage and flashes when it can DASH, and enemy name is listed instead of just TARGET HP). On the last city, the Overlord has a new attack.

Due to time constraints, I'm not going to tidy up the Overlord's AI - instead, I've just made it compulsively teleport if it's stuck against a wall. Hack solution, but I'm on a deadline here.

NEXT: Seven more cities! Two more Overlord abilities for the final battle! Woo!

Tactical Minor Update Action

Overlords v0.21
Summary of changes:
-Main menu!
-New font.
-Difficulty settings!
-Speed settings?

With that out of the way, I think I have my path set for the rest of the month. It goes something like this:
-Clean up enemy AI a bit. Right now soldiers and the Overlord can get mucked up in corners alot.
-Interface improvements (again, some of xenofur's suggestions).
-Support for multiple maps, unlocked in sequential order (scoring?).
-Multiple levels of Overlord power.
-Finishing touches.

I have nine days left. CAN I DO IT‽

An Injection of Fun!

Overlords v0.2
Okay, some changes have been made (including xenofur's suggestion - thanks!), making the endgame much more engaging.
Total changelist:
-The Hero's health has been upped by over 50%, and his speed by 25%. He wasn't quite enoug of a badass in the previous version. Also, he heals 50% faster at allied generators now.
-The Overlord now has three forms - one that only the soldiers (not the Hero) can damage, one that anyone can damage, and one that only the Hero can damage. The last form forces the player to get involved in the battle at least a little, as does the Overlord's new abilities to teleport to the Hero's location, instantly capture adjacent generators, and summon minions around himself.
-There are two new soldier types - Scouts, which have very low HP but are incredibly fast, and Giants, which are very slow but have massive HP and attack power.
-New city again.

I think my next step is going to be to put some actual game structure around it, like a main menu and a GAME OVER screen and all that jazz. Also, difficulty levels.

I think I'm a big behind schedule, but I'll survive!

The Overlord Cometh

Overlords v0.11
Now with our very first Overlord! With a whopping 128 HP and the ability to plow through most soldiers without slowing down, it should raise the tension for the endgame a bit. Also, a new type of soldier (Bravos - normal soldiers with more HP and attack power), and a special Dash attack for the hero (hold Z and press a direction - consumes 10 MP).

I'm currently pondering how to balance the endgame, starting when the Overlord emerges. As it is, the best strategy for the endgame seems to be to run away from him until your minions take him out, which isn't exactly exciting. I'll see how it is once I give him the ability to summon bravos or teleport near the Hero.

Progress continues!

Holy Gameplay, Batman!

Overlords v0.1
The game is FAR from complete, but here is a general idea of what the gameplay will be like!
Left to do:
-Add the Overlord to the endgame
-Add multiple soldier types
-Touch up the interface
-Add some way to see the HP of things other than what you're attacking
-Add special attacks for the player
-Pretty up the HUD
-A zillion other things

But! There it is.

Demo 3 - Chase!

Progress progresses progressively!
Overlords Tech Demo #3: Enemies
Now containing three enemies, loaded from map.dat, who will chase the player around the city semi-intelligently. So far, it looks like the AI is not going to be as hard as I imagined, mostly because I'm not doing any real pathfinding. I'll just have to keep the maps fairly simple.
NEXT STEP - Combat!

DEMO 2 - Alone in the City

Three minor updates today:
1: I have uploaded demo #2 of Overlords, which contains a single Being which can be controlled using the arrow keys.
Overlords Tech Demo #2: Being
2: Zombie City Tactics did NOT make the top ten in the Independent Games Festival Student Showcase Competition. Oh well.
3: There are, to my knowledge, seventeen people currently participating in the '07 Super Game Bakedown. We're growing!

A little late

Okay, so maybe it wasn't later that day, but at least I'm delivering!

Overlords is a game heavily influenced by both Dynasty Warriors and my previous major project, Zombie City Tactics. Each game takes place in a city about 30-60 tiles across, constructed out of walls and Generators. Each generator can either belong to the Player or the Enemy. Generators periodically churn out soldiers, which will automatically move towards and attempt to capture enemy Generators. Different generators can produce different types of soldiers, so controlling the most powerful and well-placed generators can be key to victory.
The player controls one soldier, the Hero, who is exceptionally powerful. His job is to rush into combat and mow down enemy soldiers, pushing them back enough for his allied soldiers to gain victory in battle and move on to capture generators. He will be able to execute some number of special attacks, and recover lost health by resting near allied generators (enemy generators will also restore health to nearby enemy soldiers).
Now, the objective of the game is not necessarily to capture all generators and claim the entire city - that is only a means by which to force the beginning of the endgame. Once the player controls a certain number of generators, one of the remaining enemy generators will produce an Overlord. The Overlord is extremely sturdy and dangerous, with abilities to teleport, summon powerful soldiers around itself, and so on. The Overlord will crash through the allied army on a direct warpath towards the Hero, and attempt to kill him. If the Overlord for a city is defeated, then the game is won. If the Hero is killed first, the game is lost.
Game movement is realtime, but tile-based. Remember Chip's Challenge? Sort of like that, only more action packed. I'm mostly doing it that way because I'm on a time budget, and it'll be much easier to program than letting beings move freely. The player will also possess the ability to command nearby allies in some limited form, but I haven't worked out the details on how that will work yet.

So that's the basics of Overlords. I don't know if it'll be fun or not, but I intend to make it!

A demo appears?!

Man, usually it takes longer than this for me to churn out the first tech demo. But hey, this one isn't very impressive!
Overlords Tech Demo #1: Map (462kb)
Features:
-Map data loaded from file
-Camera control (smooth!)
That's it so far, in terms of what the user can see. Next step is to start populating this wacky world.

Incidentally, the final game will not have maps anywhere NEAR this claustrophobic - doing so would force me to give the AI soldiers A* pathfinding, which means boatloads of work for me. I just threw something together in Notepad for the purposes of this demo. Also yes, the title has changed; you'll find out more about that in my next post.

COMING LATER TODAY: Extended post about what the game will be like!

SUPER GAME BAKEDOWN 2007 GO

Urghh. I was going to post earlier, but, well. I was going to post as soon as the website for this project was up and running. However, the beginning of the month has come and gone, and the website is still not up yet. I hope for it to be up as soon as possible, but this year is gonna be a fairly minor one because we didn't get the website up in time, so the news hasn't had anywhere to propagate to.

Anyways. We have a new name for our month.
Good bye, NaViGaWriMo.
Hello, SUPER GAME BAKEDOWN.
I'm not going to go into the justifications behind the name, or the definition of the word "bakedown," as those will be explained well enough on the website when it goes up. In the meantime, stop worrying about the name and get to work making your games!

As for me, I have been somewhat lacking in inspiration for my project for the Bakedown, but I think I've got it at last. I'm abandoning both of my themes that I came up with earlier for now, and saving them for another year.
My project for this month is currently running under the working title of "Conquer." It will be a tile-based strategy/action game revolving around two armies being constantly generated and fighting each other over a sprawling city-type area, with the player taking control of a commander whose job is to turn the tides of the battle and convert being generators over to his army's side. Sort of partway between Zombie City Tactics and Dynasty Warriors. I don't know how most of the details of the game system will fold out, but it will involve large numbers of auto-generated, computer-controlled beings fighting each other for control of the city, while the player moves among them to fight enemies and take control of generators to make them stop creating enemy soldiers and instead start making friendly soldiers, until he gains enough momentum to conquer the rest of the battlefield.
I'll talk more about it later after I think about it a bunch!

What's in a name

Well, I've decided two things regarding NaViGaWriMo this year:

1: I've abandoning my theme, and instead am aiming to make a game that is fun to play with two players. Details hammered out so far: zero.

2: The name "NaViGaWriMo" has got to go.
Why? Because it's too long, too clunky, too blatantly derivative of NaNoWriMo, and "Writing" isn't even really the right verb. I'm intending to go public with this thing, and the first thing I need is a name that is a LOT less crappy. Unfortunately, I suck at naming things. Hence, I turn to you!
To all those reading: Please, suggest new names for this month. I will listen to them, and hopefully find one that is good, and use it! Your help is appreciated.

NaViGaWriMo Ressurection

Okay, first: The little updates:

UPDATE #1: I am still alive! Things have just been going slowly, what with school and midterms and life and all. I will try to pick up the pace again.
UPDATE #2: There is a new version of Vertical out. There are a bunch of changes, so rather than go over all of them here I'll just let you find out for yourself or read the readme.
UPDATE #3: I have now officially submitted Zombie City Tactics to the Independent Games Festival Student Showcase Competition. We'll see how it fares!

Anyways!

NaNoWriMo is upon the writers among us once again. What this makes me think is that NaViGaWriMo is more or less around the corner. I've got 2 months to plan out my new game, and possibly start a NVGWM website this time around, and spread the word so that we get more than 3 participants this year. In short, while work on ZCS will still be going on behind the scenes, but this blog will now be functioning as a NaViGaWriMo blog for the next 3 months.

I don't know what my game will be yet, but I do know that I'm going to continue with last year's theme of Action without Violence. This isn't an official rule of the month or anything, just my own personal challenge.

Stay tuned!

Position OPEN

Quick update, change in situation: I am currently looking for one additional artist. The search is once again open.

This artist will have two main obligations: Creating terrain textures, and creating images for a GUI. Don't look at the word 'textures' there and think of 3D modeling, because there are no 3D models. Just the city itself.

If you are interested in the position, either leave a comment on this entry, or send an email to kobuscrispi[AT]gmail.com. Thank you!

Source Code Extravaganza (+Extra)

Today is the day for a very special exclusive event: I'm going to provide the full source code to every game that I've talked about on this blog. That's Extinguish, Zi, Vertical, RRRRRPG, Zombie City 2, Zombie City 3, and Zombie City Tactics.

For those who wish to skip all my incoherent ranting and get to the files, you can download all seven of them in one dandy package right here:

7 Games Source Code

All games but one are coded in C++ (Zi is in Python), using OpenGL and SDL for graphics. If you're not the type to be interested in programming, skip to the end and there's a picture.

Okay, now to talk about each one in a little more (self-depreciating) detail (in roughly chronological order):

Zombie City II
This is the oldest program in the lot, and it shows. Biggest uncool thing here is the lack of a dedicated Display object. If you want to change the visual scheme of the game, then you have to go shuffling around in half a dozen different files. What a pain!
I'm rather fond of the AI code here, even if it is VERY closely tied to the original Zombie Infection Simulator's AI code. Also note: some of the map-drawing functions used here will also be used in all future Zombie City games!

RRRRRPG
Another old one, still no Display object. Pretty crude code overall - all special techniques (and virtually everything else) are hard-coded. Not much to talk about here.

Zombie City III
Same problems as the previous entries, but now with a ludicrously complex lighting algorithm! Hit detection is also handled horribly, too - every being checks its distance from every other being every frame. If (when) I make the next non-grid-based Zombie City, I'll definitely improve on this.

Extinguish
Ahh, the ill-fated NaViGaWriMo project. This only got to version 0.1, and it is very heavily based on the ZC3 code, and it crashes pretty frequently, but I am including it in here for posterity's sake.

Vertical
This one is a little bit more elegantly coded than most of the above projects. Included is my very own hand-coded Sprite class, simple but it works. Also look within for alarmingly complex collision detection code!

Zi
This project is particularly unique in being the only one not coded in C++. It is, in fact, coded in Python, and coded pretty awkwardly at that. I was trying to cram Python into my C++-shaped programming mind, and this is the result. Works... mostly!

Zombie City Tactics
And this brings us to my latest creation. Coded decently well all around, no huge complaints. Zombie Lord code a tad buggy, and my implementation of the A* Algorithm is wince-worthy. Also packaged is ZCTEDIT, a simple program I used to create the 100 maps packaged with the game.

And that's that. All .zip files come with all .DLLs and data files required to compile and run the program. Recently, I've been listening to my CompSci professor rave about how great Scheme is, and it sounds pretty interesting. After this is all over, I may try to make a game in it.

Feel free to use this code to make your own games/mods/whatever, under two conditions: Credit me for my work, and send me a link to it so I can check it out.


On an almost-but-not-quite-entirely unrelated note, I recently recieved the first ever piece of Zombie City Survivors fanart, from artist Mike Yi! Check it out:

Ajax Turtledove: The Fanart

Lookin' good, Ajax!

Numbers and Jumping

I wasn't planning on talking about these, but they've been causing a bit of a stir, so here I go. This post is about two of my older projects, which I just recently touched up a bit and released: Vertical and RRRRRPG.


Vertical is incomplete. It is an engine that lacks a game. As it is, the only goal is to go upwards, using jumping, walljumping, and a grappling hook. The tower is randomly generated and infinitely tall. Consider it a work of zen if you'd like. Once you get used to the controls, it really is a very relaxing and engaging experience.

RRRRRPG, on the other hand, is an actual complete game! It is, in some superficial sense, an RPG (as the title would suggest). However, one crucial change has been made: There is no content in the game. Every plot event, pre-rendered background, elaborate dungeon, and block puzzle has been cut out to streamline the experience. All PCs and NPCs are simple polygons, and the world is shaped like a series of concentric circles. All that remains is a set of numbers that go up. Frankly, I have no idea how this manages to be fun, but it does!

For those who like to see before they play:
Vertical screenshot
RRRRRPG screenshot

Okay, it's really time for me to get back to ZCS. To hell with college, social life, food, and sleep!

iZombie

Brief news update: Zombie City Tactics has been ported to mac!
Zombie City Tactics v1.0 (mac)

Should work on OS X versions 10.2 and later on PPCs and any version on Intels. Exact same game as the PC version, only with an HTML help file and a snazzy icon.
There is one other implication of this announcement: Zombie City Survivors will also be available to mac users. Apple geeks rejoice!