Messages

So, I'm trying to flesh out a bit of my placeholder art for Forklift, and in doing so give the tank more directions than "left" and "right".




Ok, so far so good. Now, I've been trying to make a version of it rotated 90 degrees to face downwards...



...and I keep coming up with abominations like this. These things just don't look right, no matter how I do them, and I feel that in a sense clinging to normal ideas of perspective is unhelpful. On the other hand, I'm not an artist, so I'm probably verbalising from my posterior.

So, any advice on how to improve the up-down kinds of view? How wide do you think the tank/turret ought to be from the front?

Barring major disasters, I should have a working demo on the go by the middle of this weekend (just replacing a few of the placeholder sprites for it), featuring the map editor and the skirmish mode (AI and hotseat). Because I can't keep playing the AI over and over again (otherwise it'll learn too much about me and try to take over my place), I'm obviously looking for foolhardy brave testers for the demo. Mostly bug-checking, but also stylistic issues are something I'm looking to address before the finale.

Once I can be sure that players aren't going to get errors complaining that a loop ran 15001 times, then I can finish up the singleplayer campaign.

I keep having all kinds of great ideas to put my catgirl in,  but it always falls flat when I run out of steam. Because I've got several computers on the go in different parts of the world, this means I end up redrawing her a couple of times a year, usually with a slightly different flavour. So, here's the progression so far:



(the last one courtesy of Victor6)

I'm getting vibes of 1960's cinema, artistic cinema, and rampant surrealism. I assume at least one of the three is what you were going for?

I should have just made it a game about the army versus nature in general, shouldn't I?

Indeed, the first RTS (like Warcraft II for example) were relying on AI behaviors: agressive, passive, defensive; having an AI smart enough to find the balance between all that is difficult to achieve, so they cheated by setting it in advance, behind the scenes.

At least with turn-based AI, I can break its activity down into "Movement", "Attacks", "Special Attacks/Capturing" and "Buying Reinforcements" in nice, clearly demarcated chunks of script. After so many complaints of my games being hard, I've decided to handicap it a little, so it won't take certain things (like terrain) into account as much as the player would, but I might have to cheat here and there in the campaign game to make it challenging.

Well, since the AI can now attack of its own volition, I may well need some enterprising souls to test things like balancing and making sure it doesn't crap out under certain circumstances.

Though first, I need to make it buy things sensibly. Then maybe make the ingame editor able to tweak combat strengths etc. *Then* it's ready for skirmsh-testing.

"Six bears (...) were harmed"

Aren't pandas VERY close to bears? ;-)

With the added weapon of opposable thumbs - even more deadly...


Also, playtesting a game becomes a lot harder now that the AI is actively fighting against me as I test it. With tanks.

I'm going to have to put in a vote for the Timecube website, because that place just gives me a headache for so many reasons...


...argh, the colours...

Bear attack, eh?
So why is your squad labelled "attacker" and the bears band labelled "defender" ?
It's pure bears mistreatment. It has to stop.

I propose the label "no animals were harmed during the making of this point n' shoot the bear".

But that would be inaccurate, and I'd be lying to players! I should instead say "many, many bears were harmed in the making of this bear-tastic slaughter-fest."

So, as I was busy chugging away at Operation: Forklift, I've already been accumulating new ideas for what my next crazy project ought to be. Using elements of what I've been experimenting with, I was thinking a management game would be where I'm going, but after adding various elements on manually, I figured a better summary of the gameplay style would be thus:

"Tropico meets Sim City meets X-Com" - it's the tale of an eccentric billionaire who wants to build the ulimate holiday resort (management sim), but happens to have done so in a terrorist-ridden island chain, which requires flushing them out (turn-based tactical).

So, I figured it might be fun to consider mashups of different games to create new concepts, using the "X meets Y" or "the bastard child of X and Y" framework. What thoughts do you have, then?

I must admit: I am shocked.

You promise something one week, and the next week you actually do it. This...this is outrageous! And the game now has actual bears, wow.

Also, I quite enjoy your graphics on the screenshots you have posted up to now, they look not only very functional but really nice.

When I say my game is going to have bears, it'd damn well better have bears in it! More than a veritable picnic-full of them.

My drawing skills are limited to "technical" and "knock-off", that's why there's been very little in the way of people in what I've done. After I've finished this game, I'm tempted to have a spell of learning to draw properly (can anyone recommend a good resource for that?). Can't spend too long learning though, I've got the next big idea in my brain already - a kind of "Tropico meets X-Com"...


...must finish this one first...*grumble*

I'm going to have to be unoriginal and say how much I'm looking forward to this one! Can't just give us an unresolved cliffhangar in the last game, after all!

Here, I finished it. =)

I like that! It's got sort of a risque feel to it.

Wow, I'm impressed! I think what I'm trying to go for is kind of a mixture of Anian's and Captain Lexington's, so naturally I've mixed the two together - more curvy body, with the use of a gap showing the neck to emphasise that the mask isn't connected to the suit.

And interesting idea, there, catsuit chick with a respirator and...a big wrench!

She's playing with her tool 

Ah, brilliant - it's working perfectly now!

Merci muchly!

Trying to kill several birds in one go, I've been trying to practice my anatomy, and my pixel-shading in order to make a new logo. So, here's my latest effort.





The part I'm least happy about is the respirator on her face - the detail seems a bit fiddly to do with pixel-art for me at the moment, but anybody who's seen that photo of me will know what I'm trying to base this on...

Danke sehr!

"Sarge?" The young corporal asked his superior. The sergeant tried to ignore him.

"Sarge? Why are we patrolling this forest?"
"Orders, that's why. We're flanking SPUDD's main advance up the highway. Weren't you paying attention?"
"Yes, but...why this forest?" The sergeant was unsure to what his junior was referring. He conveyed this with a expression that mixed equal parts confusion with contempt. "It's just...the bears, Sarge." This didn't answer the sergeant's unvoiced question, so he screwed him face up slightly more. "This is where they found 115th last week, isn't it? Torn to pieces..." the corporal explained. Sarge rolled his eyes - it was correct, there had been some bodies found, and it had looked like the wildlife had helped themselves.

"Look here, boyo," he tried his best to be reassuring. "115th were sloppy, and they were engineers. We have something," he continued, unshouldered his rifle, "that they did not." He stroked his armament, in case the corporal did not quite grasp his subtle hint, but this did not seem to reassure him. Instead, the young man seemed to be shaking visibly.

"I've had enough of this. What the hell is your..."



As you can guess, I've finally implemented functional bears into the game. Operation: Forklift promises at least 130% more bears than the next leading AGS turn-based strategy game. As one of several randomly occuring events, bears serve as one of the greates hazards to poorly-armoured infantry. So much so, that they have to go into battle mode to handle them!



The GUI and all the mechanics for it have been worked out, now I'm working on more detailed scenery depending on where the units are fighting, and combat animations for unts.

Ok, I think I grasp the theory behind it, but as soon as I put in anything about it using sprForeground as the background graphic for "gRadar", I don't get the white rectangle I expect. Instead, it runs a very fast looping animation through all of the sprites in the game. Here is a portion of exactly what I'm using, in the room script. What is it I'm missing/doing wrong?

Code: ags

// Stuff for RadarMap Nonsense

  DynamicSprite* sprForeground = DynamicSprite.Create(42, 42, true);
  DrawingSurface *surface = sprForeground.GetDrawingSurface();

surface.DrawingColor=65535;
surface.DrawRectangle(0, 0, 42, 42);

  surface.Release();

  gRadar.BackgroundGraphic = sprForeground.Graphic;

Thanks to a mixture of cargo-cult programming and fluke, I've been able to use the drawingsurface to create the backdrop of my rooms out of tiles. Ok, so far so good, but I'm also looking to make a radarmap for Operation: Forklift. I've figured out what's needed to draw it, but the problem is that when it's drawn, it appears underneath units as the screen moves around.

In another thread, I've seen people saying it's possible to use drawingsurface to make dynamicsprites appear on the GUI. What do I need to do to make the sprite appear here, rather than on the background?