Spring RTS Engine

http://maackey.us/scorched.html -- Try it out here!

This is a project for my undergraduate thesis (the process of game development -- or something like that), next semester is the second half of the course when it needs to be "done" done. I started working on it seriously late October (Oct. 19 I got my first circle drawn on a canvas ever! yay!) I've still got a lot to do ahead of me, and figured I'd let y'all see it in its current state (and give feedback!) before I press on with trying to publish it & perhaps get some money off it.

List of known bugs:
- lasers pass through everything (will eventually be a feature when I get more weapons)
- "Disabled" player/ai option doesn't work yet
- planet trails don't fade out on death (had to refactor some code and it broke)

planned features: (no telling how long it'll take to implement them though)
- gravity
- more weapons! (I have a few ideas already, but feel encouraged to leave your own ideas)
- hazardous environment (meteors, ion storms, alien spaceships)
- active & passive utility items (shields, detectors, ballistic predictors)
- super awesome AI
- better support for tablets/phones

If you don't mind, please take a little time and answer some helpful questions:

Q1. On a scale of 1-10 how awesome is this game?

Q2. What would you most like to see implemented?

Q3. What is the most glaring flaw?

Q4. How long did you play?

Q5. Is this something you'd tell your friends/family about?

Q6. Have you ever played turn based artillery games before? How does this compare?

Q7. How well does the game run? and on what system?

Q8. (to you Mr. Code Specialist) What horrible nub mistakes have I made hacking away in javascript?

Q9. Any other questions/comments?

Q1. On a scale of 1-10 how awesome is this game?
Unfinished/10

Q2. What would you most like to see implemented?
Gravity/stupider AI aiming.

Q3. What is the most glaring flaw?
Campaign just lets me cycle planets.

Q4. How long did you play?
A couple of minutes.

Q5. Is this something you'd tell your friends/family about?
No.

Q6. Have you ever played turn based artillery games before? How does this compare?
Unfinished/poorly.

Q7. How well does the game run? and on what system?
Well. i5,8gig,560GTX

Q8. (to you Mr. Code Specialist) What horrible nub mistakes have I made hacking away in javascript?
Didn't read lol.

Q9. Any other questions/comments?[/quote]
Get back to work.

Q1. On a scale of 1-10 how awesome is this game?
too unfinished

Q2. What would you most like to see implemented?
-multiplayer
-projectiles affected by planets gravity
-planets changing orbit
-moons orbiting the planets

Q3. What is the most glaring flaw?
-could not switch weapon, textsearch opend instead
-it crashed firefox. some report error dialog, never seen that one before. this was in details field: http://pastebin.com/yzYPFQxS
-took 3 tries to figure out wtf was going on and which planet is mine
-i saw there are some more keys but only thing i did was click with mouse and shot at everything with that rocket thing
-if you win or not depends too much on what targets the AI choses

Q4. How long did you play?
-some minutes

Q5. Is this something you'd tell your friends/family about?
-if it has multiplayer, maybe

Q6. Have you ever played turn based artillery games before? Worms series, Hedgewars, Pocket Tanks, some others

How does this compare?
vs

Q7. How well does the game run? and on what system?
-except for one crash runs ok.
-does not hit the fps 30 cap though, seems to bounce between 15-25
-win vista, 4 gb ram, 2x 1,8 GHZ
-on endgame screen it has 19/20 fps, that is low for such little graphics?

Q8. (to you Mr. Code Specialist) What horrible nub mistakes have I made hacking away in javascript?
-seperate graphics, game, AI etc into seperate files

Q9. Any other questions/comments?
-

Played a couple rounds. Interesting concept at least. Not much to add but I'll fill out this part:

Q7. How well does the game run? and on what system?
Around 20-25 fps average on a Core i3 3217U (1.8 ghz), 4 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000 under Win8

Q7. How well does the game run? and on what system?

I can't play it on my MacBook Air because the loading screen completely freezes my system. I had to sit here for 5 minutes waiting for the loading to end so that my laptop would be usable again.

I'll try it again on my windows compy though, eventually!

I don't understand anything. I don't know which planet I am or how I fire.

I deeply apologize when I announced this I didn't realize Firefox had broken the entire campaign screen which has all the options for selecting your team, planet, player/ai, etc. It is fixed now, and to boot I just added gravity!

I also upped the fps cap -- I originally had this since on my old (now dead) laptop the fps would be terribly jittery when left unchecked. But that might have just been my laptop so...

@knorke: by multiplayer do you mean hotseat (which is pretty much in already) or lan/internet (which I have no idea how to code) ?
gravity is in.
changing orbits is on my list of cool features already, but there are a couple things preventing me from putting it in: first of all I obviously need to finish up the user interface, add in a tutorial and get the game functionally complete before adding in cool toys. Second: How to deal with planet interactions when you are on a collision course with another planet? I kind of want to avoid suiciding into other planets.
Moons orbiting planets is a cool idea, I'll add it to my list.
I fixed the textsearch opening while the game is in play.
I don't know what that error says, but the game wasn't working for me in FF either, but as I said before I fixed some serious bugs.

So yeah, thanks for the feedback, I will definitely be working on a tutorial...

You should have made this in Gamemaker.

Yep, fuck expertise, knowledge gained from pro-Gramar-Nazi-Activity- just do it with the brix shat by others. Who needs devs, if he can postpone the accumulation of knowledge in-dev-i-Neatly by using what they produced.

If i can run fast enough through the text, i may escape the logic collapsing behind me.

This Game needs defense lazzor for the one fired upon, so the panic is bothsided.. also populationcounter

Q1. On a scale of 1-10 how awesome is this game?
3

Q2. What would you most like to see implemented?
Towers/defense/upgrades

Q3. What is the most glaring flaw?
Unpolished

Q4. How long did you play?
3 minutes

Q5. Is this something you'd tell your friends/family about?
No

Q6. Have you ever played turn based artillery games before? How does this compare?
Yes. As above, 3/10, unpolished.

Q7. How well does the game run? and on what system?
Too fast. 8GB RAM, i5 2.7GHz, Ge Force GTS 250

Q8. (to you Mr. Code Specialist) What horrible nub mistakes have I made hacking away in javascript?
Not minifying your JS. No OOP/Prototypes. No global wrapper function (everything is global).

Q9. Any other questions/comments?
Do you plan to (does your UNI/Tec allow) you to open source this?

Compared to people I have studied with, this game is far better than 80% of them could make.

Very unfinished and rough, but it has definite potential. Keep at it!

Q1 - Too raw to rate

Q2 - How I think it could be improved (does this go here)

- Have each planet define their shot during the turn, and then once everyone has made a move, play all of the shots at once (to allow for surprise attacks)

- If you made it like this, allow a player instead of shooting to play a "shield" so that they would be protected from damage that turn (maybe)

- Impassible obstacles (asteroids?) that move through the playing field blocking shots in different ways each turns

anyways it looks like you're onto something with possibilities here, keep whacking away at it!

PicassoCT wrote:Yep, fuck expertise, knowledge gained from pro-Gramar-Nazi-Activity- just do it with the brix shat by others. Who needs devs, if he can postpone the accumulation of knowledge in-dev-i-Neatly by using what they produced.

If this is about programing then why are most of the questions about design?
Something more productive;a game like maakey's

dimm wrote:If this is about programing then why are most of the questions about design?

Cause I couldn't come up with any better questions :/ (I made the post in like 3 in the morning just after I had implemented personalized planets -- which turned out didn't work for anyone not using chrome because of null parameters passed into some funciton)
I wanted to get some preliminary feedback because my director wanted me to "get this in the Windows 8 app store by Jan. 20" and I really didn't feel like it was finished, and wanted to know what really needed to be done before it was in a "playable" state by actual gamers/strangers and not just nontechnical family/friends who think everything you do is so amazing and fantastic. (or at least say that to avoid hurting your delicate feelings)

KaiserJ wrote: - Have each planet define their shot during the turn, and then once everyone has made a move, play all of the shots at once (to allow for surprise attacks)

Yeah, I'm thinking about adding a few game modes -
1.) fully real-time, with weapons having a cooldown timer (ala Liero)
2.) Strategic turn-based where weapons persist through multiple turns, and is pretty much what you suggested.
I still have to implement multiple shots per weapon in order to do either of those properly but I should be able to have both I think.

- If you made it like this, allow a player instead of shooting to play a "shield" so that they would be protected from damage that turn (maybe)

Definitely. There will be anti-gravity shields, atmospheric shielding, optical displacement (through some advanced Gravity Lensing or somesuch), planet thrusters to "dodge" bullets, etc. That is if I have time for them to be put in.

- Impassible obstacles (asteroids?) that move through the playing field blocking shots in different ways each turns

for a second I thought this was the hostile environment random asteroids hitting planets again. But this would be more like a bunch of "inactive planets" in the same orbital ring blocking shots. Interesting idea, I'll add it to the list. It is already pretty difficult to hit planets because of gravity, and other planets blocking, and the sun blocking, so I don't know if the level of difficulty will be overkill or not.

Petah wrote: Q7. How well does the game run? and on what system?
Too fast. 8GB RAM, i5 2.7GHz, Ge Force GTS 250

Yeah I noticed that too -- I got rid of the fps limit so now the game tries to update with requestanimationframe unhindered.
My next goal is to add in game options (with game speed being one of the primary ones)

Q8. (to you Mr. Code Specialist) What horrible nub mistakes have I made hacking away in javascript?
Not minifying your JS. No OOP/Prototypes. No global wrapper function (everything is global).

I will minify JS when it is more or less done. I just recently started another game from the ground up to help me with learning JS quicker/better and think I figured out how the global wrapper function works.

Could you explain exactly how I'm missing OOP/Prototypes? (and how they're helpful?) I've got a few functions like button and planet which from my understanding are OOP. I have no idea about prototypes though, besides the fact that they exist in the JavaScript language.

Q9. Any other questions/comments?
Do you plan to (does your UNI/Tec allow) you to open source this?

Probably. I'll have to double check with my director. My initial plan for this course was to do some website work for ZK but it got shot down since it was heavily collaborative and I wasn't doing *all* the work or something like that, I'm not sure if it had to do with open source or not. I got the planet images from Project Orion, and some sounds from freesound.org. I may end up scrapping some or all of them in the future, depending on if I get some nice 3D rendering working.

Compared to people I have studied with, this game is far better than 80% of them could make.

Well I'm glad you think that.