GUNS - Reloaded

**jasonf** · 13-10-2006, 09:37 AM

I made some more progress.. Still on the GUI side of things and nothing to show as yet.

I mapped out how the Menu will flow and have begun putting it in place, along with the new GUI Controls, I should be able to make quite a powerful and friendly system.

I'm building a Team configuration/personalisation screen.

A Team member can have 3 states. Alive and Ready, Injured and hospitalised, Dead & Buried.

An Alive team memeber can be selected to go on the next mission. Alive team memebers gain experience from each mission completed (in a similar way to UFO - Enemy unknown and XCom.)

A hospitalised team member has to recover before they can go back into action. They have to sit out for up to 5 missions (depending on the severity of the injuries). As each mission passes, a counter goes down until it reaches zero, when the team member is Alive and Well again. If you need a team member to fight, you can choose to terminate the team member which immediately hires a new one at a slightly lower rank.

Dead team members have to be replaced. The new team member wil be of a slightly lower rank to the deceased team member. Time will need to be spent to get the new member up to same level as his predecessor.

At the end of each mission, if a team member has performed really well, they can be awarded with a promotion. The higher the level of the team members in your team, the higher the end of mission bonuses affecting your teams' money.

meaning that a player with little cash who has 3 experienced team members in hospital has to choose between doing the next mission alone with a single team member or sacrificing one of his experienced yet incapacitated team members in order to get someone to fight.. should make things more interesting.

I'm thinking about adding medals too... This should add to the personalisation of the team members. Things like really accurate shooting, protecting civilians etc..

You'll be able to name them too, but I'll build in a simple random name generator for those who don't like such things.

Once your tank is destroyed, depending on the experience of the team member, they have a chance of survival. The higher the rank, the higher the chance of survival. A private will almost always die, whereas a captain would almost always survive. (albeit in a hospitalised state)

A destroyed tank will have to be replaced at a cost. It is always replaced by the default tank. Then the tank can be changed and an upgrade cost is incurred. The new tank will come complete with the default gun. This will also need to be changed if the player desires a different weapon.

I figure that this stuff, while seeming quite complex is simple enough for me to build into the game. It will add a level of customizability to the game to help the player develop a personal link to the team members.

Comments/Suggestions?

**jasonf** · 16-10-2006, 02:06 PM

Still working on the Team config screen, it's taking a fair amount longer than I first thought.. I write GUI's all day at work and although this screen is quite complicated, I didn't think it would be this involved... I spent Saturday night and All day Sunday on it... (drawing graphics as well as coding)

Oh well.. Inches closer is better than nothing.

It's coming together nicely though, I can pretty much do anything I want to the team members, Rename them, Kill them, Replace them.. I can Deactivate them too.. I'm thinking that you can save money by not using all of the team, a Gung-Ho bonus for the Show's ratings. Each team member has stats which work.. They have Aggressiveness, Reactions and Intelligence.

But It seems that there's quite a large memory footprint at the moment which I need to fix. But not to worry, I'll get it all sorted out.

More screenies as soon as There's more to see.

**jasonf** · 17-10-2006, 10:00 AM

Feels like I've made a fair amount of progress last night..

I completed my state system so now I have a main menu and in-game screens.. (OK, so there's not going to be cheering in the streets) This means that I've now got the framework for a REAL Game.. in fact, the game plays properly now..

After choosing your difficulty level you go to :-
MissionInfo: Here you see details about the mission, your money and have options to Save, Quit, Configure team and Launch Mission.
Configure Team: here you have options to go back to the MissionInfo or Launch mission (after configuring your team of course)
Launch mission takes you into the game proper, you win or you lose.

VictoryInfo: Here you see the stats for your game, how much money you earned and how much you spent. The mission number is increased. You can only go back to MissionInfo.

DefeatInfo: Here you are humilliated in the cruelest possible way. The damage to your teamis assessed and any money you spent is deducted from your team total. You can only go back to MissionInfo.

When the mission counter reaches a certain point, you go to the AbsoluteVictory screen, then you can only go back to the Main Menu.

If you have no money left and you cannot go on.. you go to the GameOverScreen.. from there you can only go back to the Main Menu.

It doesn't seem like much, but this is the core of the game as far as the user is concerned. Without this, the game is nothing more than a tech demo and some pretty pictures. Now, there's a game to play and a predictable flow of screens to guide the user.

**jasonf** · 23-10-2006, 12:56 AM

I've made quite a bit of progress now.

Team management is really coming along. Team members can die, be replaced, be promoted, be injured, heal, selected and de-selected.

I've still not put in extra weapons or tank bodies, that will come soon.

Here's the current Team management screen.

I've done a lot of work to the internals of the game now and it's looking a lot better for it.

Also, I've done some graphics for the South Pole level.. lots of penguins to blow up.

I feel it's really coming together now

**Traveler** · 23-10-2006, 08:00 AM

Great images!
The only thing I'm not too fond of is the font and orange color of the buttontexts.

Looking forward to playing your game.

**jasonf** · 23-10-2006, 09:12 AM

Cheers Traveler,

I don't like that font either

I'll be changing it soon for an easier to read, clearer and more aesthetically appealing font.

I showed the game to a couple of people over the weekend, mostly family & friends, to get some feedback.. overrall, it's been positive.. some very positive. But I'm taking all feedback with a level of reality.. friends and family will always see the best in something. That aside, they did help me to spot some things I could improve.

Number 1.. the control system needs an overhaul. After all the time I've spent on the game, I'm used to the controls.. but they're not really intuitive.. So I'm going to add an alternative control method using the Mouse and Keys. The selected gun will aim towards the mouse cursor, meaning that the player can control the tank with the arrow keys. I'll probably have to build in a Define your own Keys option too.

**savage** · 23-10-2006, 10:32 AM

One other thing you should think about is maybe have the ships dropped consecutively rather than all in one go. With 4 on the screen at the same time there is not much time to strategies and it is just a little too much to pay attention to.

**jasonf** · 23-10-2006, 11:10 AM

That's a good point.

On the team configuration screen there's the option to de-select team members, so it's quite possible to play a mission with 1 tank. It's much harder 1 tank vs 4.. and for that I'm going to build in bonuses to make it more profitable to use a single tank.

I could do it so that when you start the game, you only have one guy.. and you have to hire guys as you get more money.

I'm not sure if a timed release of tanks on the mission would be the right thing though.. but you do have a point.. it is hard to form a stratergy if all of the tanks are falling at the same place at the same time.. and it's easy to blow up your guys.

**WILL** · 23-10-2006, 02:35 PM

Awesome character graphics man!

They look human, but also quite alien... very nice!

Well who says that either side has to arrive all at once?

Just have a few seconds at least between arrival times for both teams.

have it completely random too so that there really isn't any advantage to either side. Maybe have 1 or two enemy tanks already there and the player(s) have to start one at a time... but they arrive in 10s of seconds so it's not that much od a difference... just a bit of an opertunity to organize one at a time.

Though an extra reinforcement call option would be neat.

Special purchased attacks like artillery, etc would also be helpful... then again the enemy will have something similar too, no?

**jasonf** · 23-10-2006, 03:22 PM

Cheers Will, that's exactly the look I was going for.. human looking aliens. Hopefully to allow the player to relate to the characters but being different enough for the player to realise they're playing an Alien. I didn't want to go down the dripping green slime alien route though, I don't think people would relate as much.

I've had an idea that may solve the strategic placement problem.

On the team management screen, i put a tactics tab. These are the team orders.
So a team member could be told to be
Defensive
Aggressive

and there could be up to 4 waves of tanks and you choose which wave you want the team member to be part of.. and how long between the waves.

So you tell TM1 and TM2 to be part of the 1st wave, they are flying light tanks, their job is to scout and soften up the enemy ready for the 2nd Wave which is TM3 in a heavy tank with a missile launcher. His job is to distract the remaining tanks for the 3rd wave which is TM4 in a super heavy tank with a beam gun.

Or the player could choose to put all TMs in the 1st wave.

or any combination.

Also each wave would have an entry protocol.
Smooth entry (current, gradual entry where descent is controlled by brief thrusts of the jets)
Violent entry (tanks freefall until just above the ground and then hard burn the jets to slow down)
Shielded entry (tank freefall and crash into the ground, protected by shields)

They could also choose where the tanks arrive..
Left, Middle

So it would be possible to have all tanks arriving at once, but using different entry protocols in different positions on the map.

The AI would have the same options. so you wouldn't know immediately when or where the next AI tank was coming from... this would add to the unpredictability of each mission and extend the mission time.

What do you think?