Game Update (Video and Screenshots)

For those who haven’t been following It’s a City building simulation game with a unique RTS twist. This is a very very very early form of the game. This simply consists of the foundation on which I’m going to develop my game. I have a few (poorly made) models but the real magic happens behind the scenes in the programming that simulates this world. Check out the Simulated City Game page (link above) to view about these stats and how the simulation works. I have created a video of the game (below) and took quite a few screen shots.

Simulated City Game video

If you view the video, make sure you pay attention to the stats, and how they change as I build the city. This video shows quite a few things.

Achievements: This video shows two achievements, Barter System, which is an economic achievement, and Community, which is a social achievement. Achievements are what define your civilization, and certain achievements make other achievements possible to get, and bar you from achieving others. The third achievement (not shown in the video) is Tribalism, which is unattainable when you get community. In the future, I may make this barring more flexible, as civilizations do change with time. Achievements also open up new buildings, techonology, and even new game mechanics. At a certain point, a civilization will be rewarded with an economic achievement (probably called currency) that will allow the player to enact taxes. Different tech trees will allow different forms of government, and there are further implementations that I haven’t even thought of yet! The achievement system really makes the possibilities almost endless!

Simulations: This is the bread and butter of my game. This is what makes the world change with time and what will (in the future, once I develop this game further) make the world interactive. Eventually I will have actual moving parts! I plan on adding civilians who will walk around (probably spawn at certain buildings, and un-spawn at others, perhaps going to work, going out to have fun, etc.) and a combat system. Right now, you can see this simulation unfold by watching the stats change as the player (me) builds different buildings. You can see how certain buildings depend on others (IE trade carts need goods to trade! so farms have to be built for people to start working at trade carts). I also simulate the global averages for other civilizations near yours. This will give a point of reference when calculating various stats about your city (like desirability, which uses the global averages), and in the future, determining things like trade agreements, war, etc.

Misc: The video also shows various other features of the game. I have a few sound effects in the game (some for buildings, general ambiance music, and error sounds (like when you try to build, but can’t). It also shows the GUI, which has menus for building, achievements, global stats, city stats, and a message system that hasn’t been utilized yet. It also has text alerts at the bottom of the page (for things like not having enough money, being blocked from building, etc.) The game also features 6 spiffy (read terrible) models!

 

The Future: For the future, there are several things I want to implement. As I stated above, in the long term future, I want to get a combat system, and a robust implementation of the achievements. The achievements will be one of the main game play mechanics that the player will interact with. In the near future, in addition to adding more content (buildings, achievements, etc.) I want to add some new mechanics. This includes:

• Simulate Wealth gain/loss
• Supply and demand
• static, low frequency population increase (due to births and stuff)
• Upkeep and revenue generation from buildings

And this game still needs a name! If you have an idea for a name, leave it on the Simulation Game page (link above!). Any other comments or questions, leave them below! Suggestions, and feedback is welcome!

View the screenshots below (which I started taking after I stopped recording the video)

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New Unity Project on the Horizons

The Lerpz 2 project is great fun, but I’ve been wanting to branch out into a different genre of games I find more interesting. I plan on making a medieval/fantasy themed RTS-like building game. It will be much like the games you can play on social networking sites (like Facebook or Google plus) and I plan to draw a lot of inspiration from the game I have been playing on Google plus lately, City of Wonder.

Now, I plan on making this a fairly ambitious project that I will develop in small iterations. I am starting with a bundle of Assets made available by Digital Roar, an indie game creation studio (read about their games here: http://www.digitalroar.net/games/) who are very active in the Unity community.

The Asset pack is called Maelstrom (named from the game they were going to use these assets to make, but scrapped in favor of their latest project, Ascension War). You can download it here if you are interested in it: http://www.digitalroar.net/2010/10/maelstrom-litany-of-tides-assets-open-sourced/. Note, that link takes you to a torrent download. If you would rather use a direct download, try : http://sagefans.net/download/MaelstromAssets.zip. As of right now, this link still works.

Right now, I have yet to plan the core mechanics in full detail, but for the first simple iteration I plan on having

• A resource system, to be announced.
• Ability to build buildings and such.

I plan on this game being more if a civilization sim rather than a strategy game.

Since I am basically starting from scratch, I hope to learn a lot about Unity and scripting with it in the process.

Also, I do plan to keep working on Lerpz, but updates will be slower as I work on the other game also.

Lerpz 2 Update! All new Power Ups

The newest version of Lerpz two has some great features. In addition to the Bottle power up I added last version, there are also two other power ups. One is a shield that prevents the knock back you get from enemies, and the other is a coin which grants you 25 points! I created both of the models for these two power ups, like the last one. They aren’t amazing quality (I am very new to 3D modeling) but they do work and look more or less how I want them. I also added an ambient spin to all the power-ups, so they all spin in place.

Of course, as mentioned last post, I also created a Boss, and you can complete the Boss fight in the second Level. he is still able to basically fly through walls and stuff, as his AI simply tells him to move towards the player, but I hope to fix that soon.

In addition to the power ups, I also added all new sounds to go with them, and updated the sound for the Bottle power up. I also updated the scoring system, so now every point you get is a multiple of 5. For example, each fuel cell collected yields 10 points, and each normal enemy defeated yields 25. The boss yields 250, and completing each of the levels yields 500! Now the end score is much bigger than before, and who doesn’t like nice large scores!

I took a bunch of screen shots, which can be seen below.

You can download the latest version of Lerpz 2 through the following link: http://www.mediafire.com/?ikf31ryu78chtot 

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Lerpz 2 Boss Fight

After quite a bit of coding, I was finally able to create my first Boss in Lerpz 2. I haven’t yet pushed the changes yet to media fire, but I took a video of me beating the boss in the Unity player. I still have a few modifications to make to the game before I release the next version. I want to add maybe one more power up, and add fix the movement of the boss. Perhaps I will make the regular enemies move. There is also a lot of unused space in the second level, which I want to fill with something besides level geometry.

I am well aware of the fact that the Boss can fly :P. Right now, its working as intended more or less (though I intend to fix this like I mentioned above). I may make the boss a little easier too, as it took my literally like 5-10 tries to actual get the video you see. But now that I have gotten both a rudimentary version of a boss, and autonomous movement to work, I have gotten over a hurdle that was stopping me from doing a few things before. I may also add a wander script to the normal enemies like I intended to originally do. Hope you enjoy the video, and if you have any questions/comments/suggestions, let me know about them!

Video below:

Lerpz 2: Screenshots and Video

I couldn’t get to this last night, but I finally fully played through the finished game, and took a bunch of screen shots and some video clips. Creating the second level was extremely fun, and I even added a sort of secret part to the level (its pretty obvious, but its seeccrreetttt)

I took quite a few screen shots of both levels. Some show the hero fighting, and jumping, or flying, at different parts of the level. My favorite parts of the levels have to be the arena area in level one (reached by going up to the garden area, and jumping across the floating platforms) and the large platform with the big tree in the second level. It has the two robot gaurds, but the best part is the view of the rest of the level. The secret level also has a very nice view. Its the highest point in the map, so you can see everything.

One thing I want to improve is the control system. It makes going certain directions difficult and annoying. However, I really can’t wait to start on level 3. I have a bit more things I want to add before I start on it, but I plan on attempting to try some modeling of my own, and create some interesting game geometry. If all else fails, I will try to use some free assets. Either way, I hope to give a different feel to the next level.

The video clip shows some combat, and movement through the level. I took video of the ending cut scenes for each level, and the beginning and end of the game.

The link for the download is in the previous post (reachable here: http://blackscorner.me/2011/10/09/lerpz-2-complete/)

The youtube link for the Video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6keXFSwyIMo

Let me know what you think! I detailed my future plans in the previous post, so If you want to know what I have planned next read that one.