99 Bottles Of Swag On The Wall ...

Last blog post "Wednesday, 8 July 2015" --- bad indiedev, bad!

Devblog Harder, The Devbloggening

Having been back to sorting things out for Steam and Airship Dragoon (such as Trading Cards) apparently it was February when I last mentioned the concept of my new indie game project "The Swag 'Em Up". Back then I was testing a basic isometric control system which I went on to use in the "7 day Rogue-Like Game Jam" back in March. Since then, we've made a bit of progress, though it might not really look that way as everything is still displayed as a placeholder object. Here come the cubes ...

I created the ability to unlock objects with cash picked up from deceased enemies. These objects then dispense power-ups and swag. Can't have a Swag 'Em-Up without swag! ;) 

Having found memories of Ye Olde Arcade game Gradius (also known as Nemesis in the UK back in Ye Olde 1980s) I thought it might be fun to have a Gradius style "Option" which follows the player around, adding additional firepower to all attacks. Like the Gradius Option, these "Followers" link up in a chain, trailing behind the player's movement and inherit the player's rotation to fire in the same direction. A bit of tweaking code meant that the player and Follower would happily not shoot each other.

Of course a Swag 'Em-Up needs swag, so I spent quite a lot of time thinking up 108 unique pick-ups - which is a lot by any stretch of the imagination. These are split into 30 common power-ups, 25 uncommon power-ups, 20 rare power-ups, 25 single use special items and finally 8 upgrades for Followers. Making all of these pick-ups unique took quite a lot mental gymnastics, especially after I had gone through the many of the more obvious ones such as speed-up, health faster, more, health, dodge, shielding, teleport, fire attack,armour piercing, and the normal sort of stuff you see in video games. So here's a quick selection in action:

Magic Bullet - attack ricochets through enemies causing 4 wounds (a free internet for anyone who spots the politcal assassination reference).

Homing Missile - For those times when you want to cast magicMissile ... at the darkness! Here demonstrated by the enemy AI attacking the player.

Laser Beam - ImaCharjinMaLayZor! Big old energy beam which slices through ranks of enemies for damage. I've since dropped the explosive blast from the end and let the beam continue further off screen.

And there's plenty more where they came from ... 104 more including Follower upgrades. Minus the 8 Follower ranks and 25 special use items, the remaining 75 player upgrades divide into 8 attribute power-ups, 9 general bonuses, 30 attack upgrades and 28 defensive power-ups.

For enemies, I'm planning on using an updated version of my "7 Day Rogue-Like" AI code. So the current job is to code up the remainder of power-ups to placeholder art status, and then start testing to find the best way to create the levels as I currently imagine them to be.

Airship Dragoon Steam Trading Cards

Airship Dragoon, the niche, uber-hardcore, turn-based strategy, attrition simulator where 90% of your individually named troops are slaughtered in the first contact with the enemy, now comes with Steam™ Trading Cards.

A free internet to anyone who spots the references in some of the names, 

but you'll probably have to be British and over 40 ...

Static menu backgrounds have also had a bit of an overhaul to make them more visually interesting.

Over 9000 hours in MS Paint

In update news, there's been a few minor tweaks and bugfixes. The main one is a bugfix for airship movement which get stuck amongst a crowd of friendly dirigibles when attempting complicated pathfinding around them, and control would not be returned to the player (thanks to Vincent for sending me his saved game so I could verify and fix the issue). Airship Dragoon has also been updated to the latest version of Steam SDK but none of the code changes specifically impact the game.

And thanks to everyone who has left a nice review on this niche agraphobia simulator. ;)

If the phrase "niche, uber-hardcore, turn-based strategy, attrition simulator" appeals to you, please try the free demo.

Airship Dragoon is available on Steam and direct from the developer both at a 75% discount for a limited period only.

Random Action Arena 7DRL

I finished up my entry for the "7 Day RogueLike" game jam somewhat early as I've come down with the dreaded lurgy and feel like pants. It's a single or twin stick shooter which does what it says on the tin: Randomized Action in a procedurally generated arena.

I had entered the game jam as it allowed me the opportunity to test some very basic ideas with AI and gameplay which I had been considering for my next project, the Swag 'Em Up. Namely random spawning and dynamic hunting of the player, as well testing my ideas on input systems.

I had devised both single and twin-stick style input systems. Immediately the single stick option had an obvisouly problem, the player had to move in the same direction to shoot, which meant that melee based AI could close to attack range much more quickly. Twin-stick input on the other hand allowed the player to evade whilst shooting at enemies.

The Ai come in two flavours - both salty.  :P
Blue are melee, slightly slower than the player and must close to attack.
Red are ranged based and shoot at the player.

The player has regenerating health, a repeatable single attack, a heavy attack which regenerates and a regerneratable speed boost.

What it does not have which I have already sorted is experience, leveling, and personal boosts to abilities, both permenant and temporary, but I have coded and tested this. Another, and rather major thing missing is SWAG, this is the 7dayRogueLikeChallenge, not the 7daySwagEmUpChallenge, so just the facts ma'am.



If you fancy a play around, and feedback is welcome, just remember it is bare bones stuff done in one week, here's the linkage:
http://www.yorkshirerifles.com/downloads/RandomActionAreana7DRL.zip (a mere 15mb)