SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

One thing to always have in mind is 'the fun factor'. Is the game 'fun' to play and how can I improve the 'fun' factor?

Technique and fun are very different things. a game could be technically superb (brilliant AI, looks amazing, etc) but is completely flat to play.

Always try to step back and see things objectively. Would the game make you excited, want to shout at the screen (not throw away the controller or keyboard), etc. Is there a sense of achievement and reward? Would you want to go to your friends and say "you must play this... it's great"

If the answer to any of these is 'Meh' - not interested. then you may need to either tighten things up, or try to add the 'fun' into things...

Thanks Adam.

Yes - I enjoy playing it myself (and I have to test it over and over so if anyone is going to get sick of it is going to be me!)

That's why I removed the dungeon crawl element from the main strategy map - it wasn't fun and I couldn't work out a way of making that element fun.

I've now added Chaos Boats to the map which catch fire and are burned down as each chaos army is destroyed. They act as a marker showing how close you are to driving off the invading force - ie when there are no more boats left then you know you've defeated the enemy (same as how when you have no more food left it is game over for you.)

Different deployment arrangements - it is possible to be outflanked strategically which plays into the type of deployment the player faces against the enemy (attacked on two sides at once)

I am thinking of building in a few other options too like river fights across bridges too.

I've been working on alternate 'mission' types.....

As well as an 'outflanked' scenario there's also a 'wagon escort' mission as well - if you choose to protect the supply wagon and succeed you gain bonus food (half the difference between 'full' and 'current'.)

The wagon deploys forward of the army (to make things difficult! and to represent an ambush of sorts) and doesn't move or fight.  The enemy will prefer to attack actual combatants but if the player leaves the wagon undefended they will attack it. If it is eliminated the battle is lost, and the food is not gained...if the battle is won the bonus food is gained.

Currently building in a third mode.

There's single player campaign.
A two player hot seat mode.

And soon there may be a multiplayer campaign for twenty players per map online.

Good Afternoon peoples,

After a fairly productive weekend - made another poster and put it on my wall, went to some cafes, looked at books, saw a friend and a family member I managed to get some coding done as well.

The game allowed for single player in a campaign against the forces of Chaos, two players in hotseat/same PC mode and now has the starting elements of an online campaign between up to 20 players ( a new game spawns for users to play whenever there are no more neutral cities)

It's not fully tested, but I've tested it a little so far between two players (my phone and my desktop) but it's getting there.....

It's a very basic system - still to be fleshed out but you can get a bit of an idea of the main strategy map here:

Combat takes place against an AI controlled army - so the other player doesn't need to do the fighting, and the AI controlled army is tough - and always full strength, whereas as the attacker you take damage on each attack making it hard to follow up lots of battles in a row unless you do well.  Each castle provides a different rate of 'build' of units and allows you to rebuild your army faster/slower depending on which castles you own. 

The map is always the same layout - using a random seed.  I might change that later.

There's a lot of changes that will come to this multiplayer mode.

I've added events already however - if the player is losing they'll get some positive events that help them out, if they're winning they'll get some negative events to frustrate them and make things more difficult - and to prevent runaway successes.

Here are some more screenshots;

The player chooses their shield from a range of different designs - still to be toyed with and tidied up - at the beginning of the multiplayer game.

Note - a multiplayer game could go on for as long as the players want it to - until someone wins or you lose the game (and are therefore out of it)





Balance...lots of things to be addressed still.....

@ colored shields
Next to colors you might have different forms of shields too (to ease variation).


@ 1-2 players + online screen
It does not look nice if you cover the face of the background-dude. Maybe do a


1 player | 2 players
       online

layout to expose more of the background



bye
Ron

done some more...shield designs and changed layout of player selection screens (as Derron suggested)

To add still:

Hit and miss bubbles to make combat more obvious.

In online mode give castles bonuses that apply offensively and defensively to the owner.  Some of these are global wherever the army goes while some of these are specific to individual sites.

Includes:

Offensive attack reroll. (Whole army every roll)
Defense reroll.(whole army every roll)
Additional attack action once per battle. (Can stack bonuses )
Bonus att and def scores (max +2 each)
Choke point (location specific attacker has max 16pts to spend on battle)
Magical aura (location specific -> defender ignores first hit on each unit)
Tricky terrain (location specific -> defender can outflank)
Magic bonus : magic users in the army do more damage
Troop boost - higher rate of reinforcement

Those are what I can think of right now.

To make obvious I'll change the castle visuals somehow to reflect it.

Troops can receive bonus if they have certain units in the group (leadership bonus, motivation-drums ...)


@ shields
The newly added drawings on the shield have a different color than the borders of the shield - black vs dark gray - maybe reduce contrast of these signs/drawings to match the outline color of the shields.


@ highlighting/selecting
as suggested somewhere somedays before in these forums: why not draw the selected item twice: once normal, and the second time with some kind of "lightblend"-blend-mode (so it brightens up the underlaying gfx). Use a lower alpha value then to avoid "nearly white". Use a simple time-based sinus curve to make it flash (alpha 0.75 + 0.25 * sin(millisecs()*0.1) ).
Might look better than this glowing rectangle (of which you btw have 2 at the same time in the second screenshot).


bye
Ron

Hi Derron...re Shields - will do....re Highlighting - yes I've implemented that elsewhere in the game but for certain things such as selecting units on the map I like to make it more obvious and use a box...re the two boxes....I'll have to look at that (simple enough fix)...


Things like the gameplay - bonuses etc..I believe I have a good idea from all my wargaming days with these, but I defer to you when it comes to the gui stuff - I keep getting it wrong (black instead of grey for the motifs on the shields...) - it's something I will always need advice and feedback on to get right....very hard to do it in a vacuum....thanks for all your criticisms.

To Adam and Derron - if I eventually get to putting some kind of 'credits' page or 'about' page on the game then I'll include the two of you as 'consultants' or something like that - I've had a lot of useful feedback from the two of you....and it's ongoing.

I'm glad I get this feedback....I'm also glad you recognise it is a work in progress (not due for another month)....

wargaming experience is good - as AI and balancing (rock scissor paper) is the most important aspect there.

Assets could get replaced later on, so no trouble there.

BTW: Savegames would be nice - so the ability to continue later on.


bye
Ron

Spend an hour briefly putting this in before work:

Hit / Miss text floating when a unit loses hitpoints or is attacked (and either hit or missed)

Also added screenshake when a unit dies - it's reasonably subtle....



There are currently 4 game modes in the game:

Mode 0 - demo mode - the game plays itself if you leave it at the main title for too long (about 20 seconds)

Mode 1 - hotseat - 2 player on the same Pc in a single battle, currently only one scenario - might include the other scenarios from the campaign.

Mode 2 - campaign - 1 player vs the forces of chaos in a series of battles with events - need to add more events, more positive events for the player to help them out

Mode 3 - online mode - 20 players vs each other - need to add more events and tidy up and polish this one some more.

Last night's additions included the following.

Adding a credits page that shows alternately with the demo mode.

Adding more events in the campaign to help the player out such as chaos ships sinking etc.

Adding more text commentary indicating the state of the world.

Adding two special characters who sometimes join you in your battle (10% chance each in the campaign)

Fixing the colour of the castles and shields in online mode.

Improving the stats of the elemental and the dragon.

Improving the text that displays when connecting to the online mode.

Here are the special characters.

Good Evening folks,

Tonight - given I'm going to release the source code for this game and I also had another idea about promotion after the competition -

I've put together a code tutorial for people getting into coding as part of the game documentation on the server. The link is shown on the credits scroller and I've included it here:

http://www.mattiesgames.com/retrostrategy/codetutorial.js

Because internet javascript is basically 'on display' on any web page - my source code (apart from the php and sql) will be readily available through the browser (view source on index - read the .js files attached inside it in the script tags)

What I'm planning on doing - because my library runs coding sessions for young people to learn how to code, and because I was once a teacher, and also because I feel it will be kind of one way of promoting my game - advertise it locally as produced in my own home town (not really known for its IT stuff) and provide detailed comments and instructions on the basics of coding...I'm hoping it might be able to be used as a learning tool.

I have a number of ideas relating to this which I'm going to put into practice.