SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

That's the plan. You might have misunderstood me.

Maybe I have but Derron was also voicing concerns, as you always seem to race to put out a great proof of concept game...But not want to be bothered with polishing it.

Anyway, I really like this project and think you could do well with it - if you pursue it, rather than showing us another game in 5 minutes. 

Thanks Steve....I'm trying with this one.....so hopefully a better result than my other projects in terms of polish.

Quote from: Matty on February 13, 2025, 12:46:09

That screenshot exposes something ... that the selected-indocator is not always clearly visible. I have no idea for now, how to properly tackle it.
I thought of having it a bit "transluencing-through" (except for the unit itself) but this might remove the immersion of having the selected-indicator "on the ground".
So maybe others have a good idea for it.

What I also see is: the "medics" icon and the "rank" ... you put them awkwardly  on the "10'o clock" position. In my opinion the icons can become "smaller" (of course you would need different icons) and still be something "medic" or "rank identifier"-esque (pay attention to not use the red cross -- it is a trademark). You could also try, as you now have this healthbar always visible, to have that medic/rank/ information on top of the bar (maybe slightly covered by it -- just some pixels because you can still recognize it, but save some pixels then)  
Yet this can be "finally" (it is never final ) changed if a smaller icon"set" is done.

For this you might have to list what "icons" you have/want to show there ... how many ranks, unit types ... maybe we could create something together or collect ideas via some AI image creator etc (recreation and sparse simplification of symbols is often not too hard)


bye
Ron

Thanks Derron.

I've fixed some more things. Some of them are things you pointed out, others not.
Two of the the things are: the drop ship now lands, drops off troops who scatter from underneath it, then ascends again before flying off, also the minimap 'white box' inside it now fits the bounds of the minimap properly, and the minimap now scales with game resolution properly.
There are also 'pings' on the minimap when something appears (friend or enemy).

Some of the other things are: selected units now show an icon when click on the ground, and when click on an enemy, and when mouse over a unit that can be selected.

There's other changes too - but here's a short video showing some of the changes. It is in 'sandbox' mode which is accessible from the menu.

Green Circle: well done well done!

But of course you can improve this even further:
- do the animation only for a second (or even a bit less...500-750ms) because it is a "confirmation" of your click (so you see "ah ok I right clicked which resulted in a movement command") (this will also mitigate this "overlay" effect which is to see when the units reach that point)
- consider having a similar indicator (or maybe a "waypoint flag") which you display for the selected units, if they have a manually set "move to" target) (this could be useful if you plan to integrate something like a "patrolling mode" - saw the corresponding button already)

The blue circle - is it there to indicate where your interaction "would happen" (so eg marking the place on the ground where a right click would emit/create a "move to" command?)


Minimap: Yeah, good job - especially as it did not require external input, you begin to identify missing things on your own


Spaceship: yeah, I would like to see some engine flame trails when lifting off (but the ship model does not allow for it...) but despite this: you have outdone yourself there with coming up with that idea .. this is exactly the stuff which adds "immersion" for me ... adding that little bit of "love for details" which things just require!



@ alien elephant
I think the movement is just... too exaggerated (it swaggers around his back way too much - looks unnatural, even for an alien



@ medic, sergeant etc 
The buttons - we might think about giving a "color id"-thingy to the buttons ... so instead of having a big icon one would later eg have a small icon and a "color-gradient-from-color-just-below-icon to transparent at bottom of icon"-bar on the side there a small icon resides, just as an second indicator. Colours are sometimes easier to grasp - and if only 3-4 are used, then yeah.


@ "Qty"
I know ... "quantity" ... but if there would be an artificial limit it could also be "2/12" or "xxxoooo" (only useful if only a handful are allowed at all).
Anyways... what is the quantity value useful for? for Stats? Then some explicit "army information frame" might be useful and a proper replacement. Exception can be if the "HUD" is cleaned up and things can be printed with rather small numbers.

Yet for this you must decide whether you want hundreds of units - or if it is just 20-30 or so, because then micro strategy like in the RTS can be useful (so clicking on buildings to get access to the "build unit" button). If you need to be able to do it from everywhere you must know in advance how many different unit types will exist and what information is always to display. This is required for a proper "HUD" and "UX" design (I would prefer the UX to fit to the HUD ... for now it is your blue button-skin-style). 


bye
Ron

Thanks again....

Another video....

I've just added 'selectable buildings' and given them functionality....

I've also fixed some bugs in the space combat area...I'd been neglecting to look at that for so long that I didn't realise I'd broken some things by fixing something else...so had to fix that.

I've been meaning to add this for a while..started doing so:

In Game Feedback:
1. Mouse over cover displays "Cover: Protection from Direct fire"
2. Mouse over wildlife displays "Wildlife" and if clicked makes an animal noise.
3. Mouse over an idle soldier - soldier waves to the camera, if mouse clicks a single idle soldier, as well as being selected they give a wave too.

(The units have a bunch of 'emotes' animations that I haven't used yet....)

And there's a few other bits and pieces added....

New download, same place...

Don't you just hate it when you upload some changes in the morning, don't touch your PC all day, think of doing some work later in the evening only to discover you pushed a version to the web that had a massive glitch (units wouldn't build unless you had the building selected the whole time they were being built)....and you had no idea there was a problem with the code....there's no playerbase so no one to tell you anything was wrong until you log on yourself to try it...grr.....fixed and reuploaded......problem of being a solo developer with very few users.....sigh.

An odd request:

Greetings, can someone whose computer's cultural settings means the decimal point is represented by a ',' instead of an '.' please run the game, and test whether or not they can left click on a building or a soldier without any problems?

This feature requires that I parse the .obj files, which are text files, and I use the c# cultural settings to force it to treat "." as the decimal separator, but if it gets it wrong....if it gets it wrong then that won't work and the reading in of the .obj files won't be correct.

It should work fine, but I'd like to know if it is set correctly in my program.

Thanks.
Matt.

I can click on the buildings, and my locale is normally using a "," as decimal point but I do not know if that is true for the execution via Wine.


Despite that:
- yes, buildings are clickable ... but only indicator is a slight difference in the text color and the click sound (and ... if the buildings offer: buttons on the side) ... maybe give it similar circles as an selected unit?

And yes ... it might look repetitive, but having the building name (or unit name) on top of the "interaction buttons" is the next step to a "unit frame" .. things you normally will have at the "bottom" of your game (I assume because on 16:9 the way for your mouse is shorter ... just check in your video how much you have to "move").


PS: My last TVTower "main" release contained a bug which could corrupt savegames (UTF8 chars serialized by the AI for persistence successfully wrote to XML but fails on loading - mxml does not like it). Yeah, did not play test enough... happens all the time to plenty of developers.
 
bye
Ron

Thanks Derron.  

Voice over added for notifications in game......

Game download link: https://matty77.itch.io/conflict-3049

Hello again.....

Thought I'd list the units in game so far....a few more to be added, but not too many more:

Ground Units:
Friendly:

• Walker Vehicles
• Hover Tanks
• Heavy Infantry with Power Shields
• Assault Infantry with Swords and Pistols
• Standard Infantry with Rifles
• "Spiky" Infantry - basically a few standard infantry come as this, a slightly more elite version.
• All Infantry can be converted into their version of a Medic, Engineer, Anti Tank and Sergeant

Enemy:

• Hover Tanks
• Heavy Tracked Tanks
• Heavy Infantry with Power Shields
• Assault Infantry with Swords and Pistols
• Standard Infantry with Rifles
• "Spiky" Infantry (slightly better than Standard Infantry)

Space Units:

• Fighters
• Bombers
• Cruisers

Space units are the same on both sides.

Buildings/Structures The Player has

• Engineering Bay - builds Walkers
• Heavy Vehicle factory - builds Tanks
• Barracks - builds Infantry
• Science Facility - researches various tech
• Power Generators (2)
• Space Comms and Factory - builds ships for the space battle.
• Radar - no function yet, need to work out what to do with it.
• Air Traffic Control - requests reinforcements to be dropped off

The various units and buildings will have more functionality added as I go, and I'm planning on putting some more units into the game.

Both factions are very similar currently. The enemy faction does not have walkers, yet, but does have an extra battle tank.

It's a last stand scenario, the player is supposed to defend their base for as long as they possibly can. Creating units does not take resources but does take time for units to build. The enemy spawns effectively unlimited enemies in waves from the edge of the map.

If the player loses the space battle above the planet, or is losing the space battle - the enemies that attack on ground are more numerous, and at times an orbital bombardment will launch if there is no defending fleet to protect the planet.

I'm planning on adding the following features when I am home later today:

1. Burst fire - some units will fire in bursts (add 3 new properties, bursttime, burstdelay and burstcount, most will be zero but some will have non zero values) (walker vehicles, tanks using machine gun mode, and heavy infantry 'defender infantry')
2. Enemy infantry to try to advance to their target position seeking cover along the way (check random positions 70% of way to target and if in cover, move there instead)
3. Enemy tanks try to avoid tank traps (check random position 20% to target if a tank trap exists...if so...alter target position aiming for by some amount as long as the new position is not also a tank trap)
4. Power Generators needed to power factories...0/1/2 power generators in game at any time....subtract 20% from build rate for each lost power generator.
5. Radar - if radar gets damaged put static over the minimap...more and more the more damaged the radar gets...when static there, can't interact with minimap, if radar completely destroyed, minimap is completely static.
6. Enemy melee units prioritise player heavy infantry since those are vulnerable to their attacks.
7. Separate orbital bombardment ship shadows to prevent visual glitches from overlapping transparent stuff.
8. Give the player a tracked tank of some sort. Alternative to hover tank, main difference is slower, more powerful, tougher, but gets immobilised (tread broken) a bit more often.
9.Alter the enemy waves.....occasionally have the enemy spawn all along a single board edge...massive assault on one side...from time to time.
Fairly simple to add, not sure if the 3rd item above will work as I expect it to, it might give rise to weird behaviours of enemy tanks.

(Strictly speaking I could add all these except the new tank and the static over the minimap at the library since I have access to my code via my itch.io download....and could write it....look over it...and then reupload it to my website for later download at home when I'm home...means I don't have to code at home, I can do it here instead).