What's everyone working on? (tigsource inspired)

[Stifu]

One thing I really love about games like Don't Starve is the gang of pigs or spiders you could recruit to follow you organically. I think it'd be cool to recruit other fighters as you play, building up a bigger and bigger team that do their own thing and assist you in fights. Like tomagotchi, but way more violent.

Don had such ideas. It reminds me a bit of Metal Slug, where prisoners and other animals or things could follow you around and help you for a short while. Little Fighter 2, again, was all about this, and helpers stick around until they die, and you can grow quite a big army. I'm not sure we'll do something like that (it'd need to fit with the story, too), but we'll keep it in mind. We also want to add support for CPU-controlled partners, so that would go in a similar direction.

Anyway, we have a loads of ideas but we definitely won't implement them all. Not only because we naturally have limited time and resources, but because we want the game to be remain simple enough and be somewhat clear and consistent, rather than trying to cram in too many (possibly conflicting) features and go in all kinds of directions. Our plan is to first finish the arcade mode (which would be pretty classic, à la Final Fight or Streets of Rage), then add side modes as bonuses (like a battle mode).

[Nelvin]

Nelvin, looks like 1849 a bit. If you're not familiar it's a resource manager, where you ferry resources between buildings producing more and more complex resources.

If you're not familiar look it up. It's a little hard to find on google (owing to how common the number '1849' is), so you'll have to search "1849 game" to get the correct results but I think it will be worth it looking at it.

Also I'm really enamored by how well your UI is done. Lots of builders have crowded ugly UIs that prioritize all the wrong things. You've balanced simplicity, information richness, and contrast, among other things. UI is incredibly painful and difficult to get correct. Really good job.

Thanks a lot - we recently did a complete redesign of the UI as we had a initial version that was way to overloaded with regards to wasted space for the UI.

I of course know and own 1849 and yeah, it's a very similar style. We're aiming a bit for bigger cities as, as far as I played 1849 the maps are really tiny. Lethis is another game in a similar style and pretty good as well.

[yintercept]

> of course know and own 1849 and yeah, it's a very similar style. We're aiming a bit for bigger cities as, as far as I played 1849 the maps are really tiny. Lethis is another game in a similar style and pretty good as well.

You played it, I KNEW IT.

Anno 1602 too?

Also yeah, was kind of annoyed how small the maps for 1849 were. I understand why. Would have became insane the amount of stuff to manage, but dunno, just left me wanting more.

[Nelvin]

> of course know and own 1849 and yeah, it's a very similar style. We're aiming a bit for bigger cities as, as far as I played 1849 the maps are really tiny. Lethis is another game in a similar style and pretty good as well.

You played it, I KNEW IT.

Anno 1602 too?

Also yeah, was kind of annoyed how small the maps for 1849 were. I understand why. Would have became insane the amount of stuff to manage, but dunno, just left me wanting more.

Of course, as a dev IMO I have to play similar games, but I actually played it before I thought about doing a builder in the similar style anyway (I also played and really enjoyed Project Highrise from the same devs).

I'm sure there was a pretty good reason for the small 1849 maps, probably not even technical limits but just a result of limited time and a try to force the whole game/design into their limits.
That said, I simply love big cities and I really try hard to keep our game very scalable in both, the performance of the code but also the way the simulation works. I just love to see maps with hundreds and thousands of active characters and worked on those kinds of games even almost 2 decades ago.

1602 - for sure, I even played Burntime, a way older game of the same devs.
I kind of never played the newer Anno games even though I own most - biggest problem these days is there's just not enough time to play all the great games

If you enjoy these kinds of games but haven't done so, please just check out the classics from Impressions Games, i.e. Caesar 3, Pharaoh/Cleopatra, Zeus/Poseidon, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

[yintercept]

The new anno games didn't have the same charm as 1602 for some reason. They lost 'something' in translation to higher-res graphics.

I remember reading a blog post (I think) by the devs of 1849, talking about performance and pathing on mobile (?), dunno, was something along those lines.

> That said, I simply love big cities and I really try hard to keep our game very scalable in both, the performance of the code but also the way the simulation works. I just love to see maps with hundreds and thousands of active characters

LOVE it Nelvin, love the technical challenge, and watching things 'evolve and change', which is a big part of my own game. Played too much RimWorld, struggled with Dwarf Fortress, wasted days worth of play on 1602, Warrior Of Rome, Ages of Empires and numerous others.
You've given me some good to check out, it's too bad they've come when I have no time to play, damn you!

[unixfreak]

Here's a top-down/side scrolling space shooter, with infinite gameplay. (will eventually have a story mode too). All the background scenery is procedurally generated. I abandoned this for a while, but got motivated to fix some of the broken enemies, and recently reworked many visuals; hopefully i'll be working on this more often in the future.

[yintercept]

Red screen flashing is annoying as hell. Could replace with cracked screen or something else. It's just the flashing thats overdone.

But my god, the UI is absolutely f*cking *lovely*.

It'd be cool if those little ship icons in the bottom were like 'wingmen' you could call in to reinforce you, like a space battle, and they leave after a while due to 'low ammo / fuel.'
You can choose to call them in with a single button press, or queue them up and then release the lot of of em all at once depending on how intense the battle is.

Really like the dialog box, the backgrounds, everything.

Get some screen shake in there and you're golden.

Of course I'm no side-scroller fan, so if you get some big fans of Galaga in, definitely listen to their feedback.

You have the makings of something excellent.

[unixfreak]

Red screen flashing is annoying as hell. Could replace with cracked screen or something else. It's just the flashing thats overdone.

Agreed with you on that. Really was just an idea i had at the time. Cracks are a good idea... although i will probably make the flashing more subtle (hardly noticable, but still giving awareness of low health).

But my god, the UI is absolutely f*cking *lovely*.

Thanks!

It'd be cool if those little ship icons in the bottom were like 'wingmen' you could call in to reinforce you, like a space battle, and they leave after a while due to 'low ammo / fuel.'
You can choose to call them in with a single button press, or queue them up and then release the lot of of em all at once depending on how intense the battle is.

Yes yes yes. I was thinking of adding a "drone" powerup of sorts that calls in some small fighters. The icons you mention are currently placeholders for lives, which will most likely change. That's a good idea, to let them stack up so you can release them all at once.

Really like the dialog box, the backgrounds, everything.

Get some screen shake in there and you're golden.

Of course I'm no side-scroller fan, so if you get some big fans of Galaga in, definitely listen to their feedback.

You have the makings of something excellent.

Cheers man. That feedback is greatly appreciated

[LuaIsLife]

Very very cool...... I feel inspired!

I'm tinkering around something like this myself (2D sidescroller shooter), but most likely there will never be some actual gameplay...which is perfectly okay, I've just fun playing around with love2d.

[D0NM]

One thing I really love about games like Don't Starve is the gang of pigs or spiders you could recruit to follow you organically. I think it'd be cool to recruit other fighters as you play, building up a bigger and bigger team that do their own thing and assist you in fights. Like tomagotchi, but way more violent.

Ahaha!! I love it.