Golem

[Butterman]

Golem (Working Title)

[media]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=tyILrT6cVpE[/media]

So, I'm back again. Ready to not make the same mistakes I made in my last project. For the last few months I've been working on this gem. I've always been a great fan of the Dungeon Keeper games and Evil Genius and I wanted to create something similar to both games, but special in its own way.

I'm trying to create, what is almost a RTSRPG. I want a solid strategy/management game that has as much if not more depth than EG or DK gave you, while at the same time giving the player a solid and exciting story, for which the player decides what happens, makes moral choices which seriously effect the story. (We're not talking, bad karma, good karma, other "factions" treating you differently, I'm talking entirely different stories). Simply from the open end way I'm designing the game I hope to give the game huge replay value, where you can spend hours just exploring and learning new things.

Story

After awakening on a sleeper ship, that has supposedly crash landed on an unknown world, you're greeted by an artificial intelligence than informs you that the long distance transport you were on board crashed and the AI only had enough power to awake you, the least damaged of its passengers. You're given control of a small army of robotic "drones" that were maintaining the ship during the passengers sleep.

Don't worry about the programmer art:
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Halp

Obviously the art needs work and I'm looking for somebody to give me a hand on that, just send me a pm if you're interested.
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[fade]

Love the story!

 

[Caine]

Looks interesting. I would play this even with the current art style.
On the other hand, the game seems tile based, supporting multiple tilesets should be easy.

A strongly branching story arc sounds like either a LOT of work or very bland choices. How do you plan to tackle this?
All too often, people start out overly ambitious which ultimately prevents them from ever finishing what they start on.

Good luck with your project, I'm looking forward to your updates.

 

[hisaki]

This sounds like it's gonna be a pretty awesome game. Can't wait to be able to play it

 

[PokeParadox]

Love Dungeon Keeper and I like the sci-fi spin you seem to be going for. I wish you the best for this project!

 

[fusion_power]

I've also played alot Dungeon Keeper in the past. I hope this game here will also have this nice 2D/3D switch so you can play as a unit in ego-perspective. - Quite useless in Dungeon Keeper but VERY funny.

 

[Tempel]

A strongly branching story arc sounds like either a LOT of work or very bland choices. How do you plan to tackle this?
All too often, people start out overly ambitious which ultimately prevents them from ever finishing what they start on.

Make note of this! It can be very discouraging to create swaths of content that you know aren't going to be seen by half of your players. Procedural generation can help, but does tend to be bland (not to mention, it's a completely different challenge to implement). Just don't get in over your head, because I'd like to play this!

 

[Butterman]

Thanks for the positive support, anything negative out there?

Yeah, the story branching is going to be one of my big hurdles. I'm going to try and do the best job I can, if it doesn't work out, I'll simplify and fix it. I won't release something that sucks.

 

[Mr.Confuzed]

Thanks for the positive support, anything negative out there?

Well, I'm not a fan of RTS games. RTSRPG? Ha! You're not fooling me. That's an evil plan if I've ever seen one.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Sound like a fun game

This made me think: Multiplayer, one player building the base, another controlling the aliens trying to attack (replay value ; ). Think i have seen or played a game once that could do something like that, but can't remember.

Anyway, probably won't happen, but i thought i'd share it anyway.

Cheers!!

 

[Butterman]

Sound like a fun game

This made me think: Multiplayer, one player building the base, another controlling the aliens trying to attack (replay value ; ). Think i have seen or played a game once that could do something like that, but can't remember.

Anyway, probably won't happen, but i thought i'd share it anyway.

Cheers!!

Who said anything about aliens

But seriously, I'm going to reveal as little as possible about what's going to happen story wise.

 

[Butterman]

Added a video to show I'm business.

 

[kuru]

I can see myself wanting to hold down control and use controls/mouse/screen to select multiple lines/columns/oblongs for digging

 

[bzar]

Looking very nice . Another project added to my watchlist

 

[Mithrildor]

Really nice gameplay. I still hope you will continue on TINCS oneday

 

[Butterman]

So, I'm kind of stuck at the moment.

I implemented "soldier bots" as well as a "marker tool" that you can use to direct how you want your army to be split up, rather than controlling individual units. Right now they head towards markers and all sit together on them, so you can't see how many are actually in a "squad". Now that they're all sat together, when they move they move looking like just a single bot.

What do you think is the best way to visualize more than one bot?

Here's a couple of ways I've been thinking of doing it:

1: Implement more "randomness" in moment so you can see sides of bots poking out when they move and when they're stationary.
2: Have a little number in the corner of tiles with soldiers displaying how many are present
3: Have soldiers split up into adjacent squares around the marker.

I think implementation of all three could work really well, what do you guys think?

 

[kuru]

Just curious, you plan on admitting multiple units in one place?

I can see 10 of them stacked to defend a narrow spot. Spartaaans!

Would that be only possible if they "camp" near a marker waiting for action, or also when fighting?
If it's only camping you could stack them and display the count.If it's also when they fight, it would make for
weird gameplay I guess (see above), except you set a max count for a stack or limit it otherwise.

Edit: are there AoE things that affect multiplre tiles/units?
Edit2: Also, how big are soldiers compared to tiles? will there be larger untis? small units could go on one tile like s squad in C&C forms up

 

[Tempel]

To somewhat echo kuru's thoughts, it seems odd that you allow any number of units to occupy the same space; in real life, crowding is a real issue, so I assumed you'd include it. But removing restrictions can lead to more exciting gameplay, so feel free to do it that way, just make sure you know that that's what you want to do.

So if you're sure you want to ignore crowding, I would go with option 2 (number indicating stacked units) as this actually ignores crowding. Also, it provides the most information, which I like.

If you want to take a different approach to crowding, there are other options: you could have no units occupy the same space (which could become really irritating when ordering around units) or you could have units move slower when sharing the same space as other units. Either way, having your soldiers make a simple formation would be good.

 

[Butterman]

Hum, maybe it is a bad idea to have stacking like that.

I can't imagine it being very fun without stacking, absolutely irritating to move your army around.

I don't see how this makes any difference to how effectively they defend, your opponent could quite easily do the exact same thing to you. Stack up units and attack the narrow tile.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

:unsure:

 

[Caine]

Maybe you could group units into squads. Graphics artist can then find interesting ways to visualize the size and composition of a squad.
Each square could then be occupied by at most 1 squad.

In the simple case you would have homogeneous squads and each unit has several images e.g. 1 unit, 2 units, 3 units and many units.
Going with heterogeneous squads gives more flexibility, but takes a bit more work to visualize.