Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Little bit late, but here is the first screenshot - Junkcraft Armada - Summer Challenge

It took me more time than I was expecting to finish the basic collision detection system and get the proper modules damaged, instead of spending one day on it spent twice, so I have one day less for other things, but still looks promising.

Here is the first screenshot of  "Junkcraft Armada" game, my 2 weeks summer challenge project in which you design and equip your ship, get junk parts from the enemies you destroy on the way and upgrade/equip your ship with those parts, upgrade your parts with scrap materials or buy/sell parts at the space station. This screenshot has all the major modules for testing but when you start the game you will only have a very small module and limited weapons.


Physics play a great role in this game, so any part you add to your ship will affect how it fly in space, gravity of stars will make it difficult to maneuver around those areas and nebulas and other things may speed down your movement due to space dust and other things. There are still many ideas I want to implement, but first is to make the framework work together.

The graphics of the game at this moment are just simple placeholders, if I find more time I will improve them after the challenge is finished. Last night I implemented a very simple skin system, so I could have more than one skin for the same module, this will allow a nice looking spaceship, players will be able to select different skins to make it look better but functionality will be the same.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Another day , another challenge resolved

One more day has passed, and another challenge resolved, I spent a day programming the virtual cameras and weapons systems, the rudimentary UI and weapon selection is also working, ammo, missiles and torpedo additional storage modules are working now and firing is working finally. Still need time to implement the use of the energy distribution system which I may not be able to implement due to lack of time, but I will try my best.

Since only one week is left, I am wondering if I will have enough time to develop the ship editor, since at this moment I am creating ships in notepad the editor will be crucial to the final game to add different modules and create different shapes, most probably I will need about 2 days from the next week to implement it. Today's task is to write and finish the collision detection algoritm so finally weapons can do some serious damage!, not sure if I can make a very robust collision detection algorithm between ship to ship.

One idea that I am looking to implement is the ability to just crash your ship against the enemy, let's say is your last enemy and you run out of ammo and your laser guns are destroyed, what else can you do? just crash your ship and self destruct it to kill your last enemy, pretty neat idea, but for that I need to have the ship to ship collision detection working and one more module, the escape pod module, so you and your crew can escape your final destiny and save the day. And of course, you only have one life, you die and is over, I want the player to be very serious while playing this game, have fun and feel the pressure that while playing the game it is like real life, you only have one life so don't do stupid things, at least at the beginning, I may decide to implement a legacy option, so you can store some of the stuff you have in the bank or depot  or something like that for your next play, but I may not too, it all depends on the time left!, but if the game ends up being very fun, I may do a second version later. And I also have the name of the game now, I will post some screens and the name of the game in my next post.

Friday, August 9, 2013

5 days so far and great progress

I've been working on my summer challenge for just around 5 days and made great progress and is so refreshing to switch to a new project for a short period of time. So far the game is going to be a space ship design and management with random battles in space, not sure how much I will be able to put inside the game given that I only have a little bit more than a week to finish the playable version, have the idea to add space stations to explore, gravity areas, nebulas with storms that will affect your systems, all in a random universe. The basic idea to work on your ship is to destroy enemies and capture parts to upgrade/expand your ship, or go to the shop and sell some of useless modules.

So far, I have added 19 different modules including weapons, energy reactor, tractor beams, shields and many others, the graphics are pretty basic at the moment just to be able to test my ideas and if the game works nicely I may spend more time later for a graphic revamp. The most difficult part in the first few days was to actually made the physics engine to work properly, it is made as accurate as possible so when building or upgrading your ship you will have to think about the mass you are adding to it and how it will affect your navigation, trusters are very important to maneuver your ship properly and getting some damage in battle will really affect your propulsion system. Getting enough ammo in your ship's storage will be challenging, so you can't just fire everything you have all the time, energy weapons are the cheapest to use since those will depend on your energy generator. Not quite sure if I will have the time to add the fuel module yet plus many others that I have in mind, at least this version will have the basic 19 or 20 modules at the beginning.

I will post some prototype pictures by the end of the week, hopefully I will be able to make the weapons systems to work by then.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

The 2 weeks challenge...

I haven't updated the blog and the game that much lately, I've been very busy with other things and I took a small break after many years, now I feel refreshed, so I decided to take a small refreshing challenge to warm up and started a new game, but there is a catch, I will only spend 2 weeks on it and see how it goes.

I will publish by the end of the week the game progress, so far I had many ideas for my next game after finished Elem3ntz! , and I have already decided the game mechanics, but since it may take very long to finish the whole thing I decided a new strategy. The next 2 weeks will be used to build the foundation of the game and release a playable game with it, it will be very simple but it will allow me to test the basic ideas and physics. So far in the last 2 days I've been able to finish the basic physics engine and have it moving! I am pretty excited since I couldn't imagine how to do it until I started coding it and works pretty nice. Stay tuned for some small micro updates by the end of the week.

In the next two weeks I will have to finish a small spaceship game based on physics.