Sleight

[PTSnoop]

Hi, it's me, PTSnoop. You may remember me from a few years back, when I put together the Complete Guide To Making A Spring Game.

This year I'm taking part in OneGameAMonth, and for this month's Game Prototype Challenge I decided to brush off my old meagre skills and make a Spring game in a week.



The given themes were "Homelessness" and "Magic", so I made a game with no fixed base, just lots of mobile factories, and lots of illusion and sleight-of-hand.

Details at http://alteredtree.co.uk/portfolios/sleight/.

Or if you're impatient, you can download the SDZ from http://sasha.sector-alpha.net/~ptsnoop/Sleight.sdz.

Maybe this'll persuade me to get properly back into Spring gamedev, and actually finish off Static Friction. Or maybe it won't. We'll see.

Let me know what you think.

EDIT - oh, and apparently I was too sleep deprived last night to put things in the right forum. Can someone please move this to Game Development?

[Neddie]

Have you put together any other games in previous months? Call me curious, and yes, I remember you.

[Beherith]

Like the style.

More edge highlighting and the most important bit: after doing the AO bake, use the 'equalize' option in photoshop, then use screen or multiply blend with the solid colors underlying it. This seems to be all the rage nowadays.

[knorke]

oho, a spring game that is not stuck for years in development hell?

The given themes were "Homelessness" and "Magic", so I made a game with no fixed base, just lots of mobile factories, and lots of illusion and sleight-of-hand.

Interessting interpretation of the the themes but for me it seems a bit far-stretched. A "mobile" life does not nessecarily mean "homelessness", think of normadic people for example. The units look more abstract technical stuff and not so "magic" but then at some level high tech basically becomes magic

-Put version into filename and modinfo. (like sleight_v1.sdz)
-If you upload to http://springrts.com/wiki/Rapid then lobbies will be able to automatically download the game
-needs a http://springrts.com/wiki/Messages.lua to make that one warning go away

[Google_Frog]

Interesting game, I like the concept. I haven't played a multiplayer game yet but I have some feedback.

On the technical side of things I like your implementation of mobile factories. UI and selection could be a bit better for them by they mostly work quite well.

I think the decoy units are too real, that or they are produced far too fast compared to actual units. A massive swarm of decoy spikes is probably a real threat. They could be a lot weaker. They could they explode when an enemy is near, explode after they fire a shot or massively chain with death explosions which only damages allied decoy units.

Edit:
I ran out of metal and then could not build any more units? Is this intended? It is impossible to make something cost no metal in spring.

[PTSnoop]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Neddie - No Spring games, but plenty of other games. I've got all my finished ones at http://alteredtree.co.uk/games/.

Beherith - thanks for the tips. I think I've found equivalent Gimp commands...

knorke - yes, I was definitely playing very fast and loose with the themes. Maybe "magic" = "illusionist" = "cloaks and decoys" is pushing it a bit far, but then in this sort of game jam playing around with the theme is generally encouraged. I think I got away with it. :)

Google_Frog - ran out of metal? Erk. No, that's definitely not meant to happen. Why is it impossible to have units that cost nothing, or weapons that deal zero damage? And is there a nice easy lua way around it (beyond the obvious, +1000-metal-each-second fix for the unit cost)?

I'm right in the middle of another game now, for the Midsummer Jam Week - and already seriously running out of time, since I'm busy this weekend - but once all that's out of the way, I'll throw together a new build with messages.lua and so on.

[FLOZi]

Easy to lua no damage using unitpredamaged, i'd think no cost should be doable

[knorke]

no metal cost:
units can not cost less than 1.0 metal, maybe it is to prevent a div-by-zero or something.
So I think contruction of a unit will always consume 1 metal and that must be available in storage.

And is there a nice easy lua way around it (beyond the obvious, +1000-metal-each-second fix for the unit cost)?

Why so much, only need to replace the consumed 1 metal.
Even if player gets back 1m instantly it is still required to have it in storage.
Untested idea: I think even without resources, the nanoframe will still be created 0% built, so might work to replace the nanoframe with a finished unit like this:

Code: Select all

gadget:UnitCreated (unitID,unidefID,teamid, blabla, factoryID)
if (factoryID) then
x,y,z=getUnitPosition (unitID)
--create new, completly build unit:
local newUnit = CreateUnit (unidefID, x,y,z,teamid,...)
--destroy nanoframe unit:
DestroyUnit (unitID, false, true) --2nd true should make player get back spent resources
--copy over any waypoints, commands etc from nanoframe to new unit:
giveOrderToUnit (newUnit, ....)
end
end

Another easier way is gadgets\game_spawn.lua there is
-- set start resources, either from mod options or custom team keys
just modify why that to give each player 999999999 metal at start. (or whatever is the largest number it will allow)
Players might still run out of metal but not in this life.

[FLOZi]

You can't call CreateUnit in UnitCreated, would have to use the delay api or such.

[knorke]

i know, was just to show the idea.
idea was stupid though, as it would cause instant buildtimes..