P4ndemiK

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2011
#1

Play here, missing just a couple things (like being able to win or lose):
Shrunk From Riven’s Site
It’s 8k. I’m going to see if I can get it on the Java4K site just because it was made in the spirit of 4K, but I don’t think there’s any way in hell to get it down that small.

Hey all,

I’ve been working on a 4k video game adaptation of the board game Pandemic for Java 4k. So far I’ve got the world laid out and the connections between areas, as well as some other logic. One major difference you can see is that I’m using territories rather than cities to represent everything. This is mainly so that areas are easier to click on and so that I don’t need to store city location data as well as continent data. The downside I’ve found is that if I’m emulating Pandemic directly some of the connections really don’t make sense (you can’t go from one bordering country to another sometimes, whereas you can go from non-bordering ones sometimes, etc.). I’m going to do a faithful port of the board game and see how many bytes I’ve got left and how the game plays. If I’ve got a boat load of bytes, I’ll probably try making a live action version of the game as well, and you can choose the mode.

The real question will be to see how I can make this game work without the fun cooperative multiplayer aspects that really make Pandemic great. If I didn’t have a 4k limit I’d make it online multiplayer, but as it stands I think I’ll just try hotseat play. I really doubt I’ll have the bytes to fit in AI players, especially considering the huge amount of text I’m going to need.

A screenshot of the map, obviously I need to sort out how I’m going to draw all the names and connections and whatnot.

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4783/screenshot20101226at257.png

Note this is NOT the video game Pandemic. It’s this board game:


And here is a good video that shows what it’s about:

#2

I recall Pandemic being single-player. Maybe I’ll have to play it again to check.

#3

I looked it up. It has multiplayer cooperative gameplay. Each player takes a different role in trying to to the spread and find a cure for 4 diseases which are rampaging. Very topical what with the various Bird Flu and Swine Flu panics we’ve had recently. I had a bad dose of something myself this autumn.

Off now to my parents for a family get together. I think I’ll bring a board game or two, now you’ve got me thinking about them.

#4

Ah, I missed “board game” and thought it was a 4k version of http://www.kongregate.com/games/DarkRealmStudios/pandemic , http://www.kongregate.com/games/DarkRealmStudios/pandemic-2 , or another from the series.

#5

Yeah, it’s based off the board game.

Progress is going well, I’ve got most of the UI / graphics done to a rudimentary level. Also disease placement happens, so aside from the huge plethora of bonus cards there isn’t too much left to do. Polish comes too, of course, and figuring out what needs to be tweaked to make this fun as a computer game.

I’d upload a screenshot, but my Internet is broken (posting this from my phone).

#6

You’re missing Iceland. As I’m from Iceland, this game won’t pass inspection ;D

Looks pretty cool. I always wanted to create a Risk game in a similar style.

#7

Yeah depending on extra byte count I might add “dummy” areas to represent missing countries and continents, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. I’m guessing I will be short on bytes.

#8

You’re missing Antarctica. As I live north of Antarctica, this game won’t pass inspection.

#9

:o

Another progress report screenshot attached.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/1083/screenshot20101229at110.png

I decided not to show country connections unless your mouse is hovering over that country, and it seems to work pretty well. It’s already too busy in the case of city names all over the place to have connections too. The names are still too busy though… I’ll figure out what to do with them later. Also you can see the cards at the bottom - each player currently has 3. One problem is that the second player’s cards can overlap South America if they have a full hand (7 cards), so I’ll have to do something about that as well. Maybe I’ll just show the top card and if you mouse over it the hand rises from the bottom. I’m going to put in pretty iPhone-y animations wherever possible, as I’ll need to do things like that to make these sort of graphics at all impressive.

Oh yeah, and the stacked cubes represent how much disease is in each country. This screenshot represents an initial game state with 5 players. I might do something prettier and more disease-like to represent each cube, but likely not. I think that the cubes are very visible and their quantity is clear - doing anything else will sacrifice clarity at its most important place for the gameplay.

#10

Speaking on behalf of many residents of the Iberian peninsula, I’d like to applaud the decision to include South Galicia in Spain, and encourage you to stand by it no matter what Lisboans say. ;D

#11

Well I for one think the geography is entirely plausible. Clearly the game is set in the year 4000, in which:

  • The arctic has melted
  • Iceland has sunk
  • The land bridge to Ireland was built
  • Scotland finally gave up and became part of England
  • Australia took over New Zealand and mined it all away
  • Thailand attained a Diplomatic Victory over ASEAN
  • …and more!!
#12

Damn it. 7,700 bytes and it’s not even done. I’m going to need to shorten a lot of strings and maybe even remove some logic.

Hm. I have some repeated code in order to keep rendering and logic separate, perhaps I will need to undo that.

#13

[quote]Australia took over New Zealand and mined it all away
[/quote]
Never! Its because we used stealth technology to hide from Australia.

#14

Play it above!