[Slick2d] Retro-Pixel Castles > Now on Steam! <

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#301

After the feedback from some of the RPC fans here and around the web about how they were disappointed that the new hard shadows were no longer dynamic, I decided to rearrange my coding priorities and put dynamic hard shadows on the top of the list!

…so, by popular demand, I bring you; dynamic soft shadows!

Thanks for the input! I’m really happy with the results. :slight_smile:

Go shadows go!

Shadow angles at various times of day.

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/34/33713/thumb_300x150/InDev-2014-08-16-2.png

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/34/33713/thumb_300x150/InDev-2014-08-16-1.png


http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/34/33713/thumb_300x150/InDev-2014-08-16-4.png

#302

I demand firespread, it would be fun to terrorize the villagers :stuck_out_tongue:

#303

Already on the list. (and a major part of the game too, I might add) :wink:

#304

congratulations on becoming featured! I think a medal is in order (again :D)

#305

heh, thanks!

Oddly enough I got really confused when my thread mysteriously vanished out of the WIP forum. Took me a minute to realize what happened! But I’m glad to be floating over in this section now. :smiley:

#306

I try to keep you guys posted every few days about the work in RPC, usually giving you a nice news bit at every landmark. But this landmark is a biggie, so you’re getting a mid-landmark update of what I have been working on!

Over the past few days I’ve been working on the building mechanics and making the AI smarter. I’ve added quite a lot since the shadow update, mostly on the content side of the house trying to flesh out building mechanics to get this glorified map editor turned into a game. Here’s a bullet breakdown! (because who doesn’t like bullet breakdowns?)

  • The Village Center
    The Village Center is now operational, in the future you will only be able to build one. A close approximation to the village center’s function is like the “Construction Yards” in classic RTS games like Command and Conquer. When you first start a new game, you’ll have somewhere around a dozen villagers, and no buildings. Then you will find somewhere on the map to place your Village Center and your little guys will start putting it together. Once built, you’ll be able to start building other things in-range of your center. The villagers working at the village center will automatically start building objects on the map you drop down, so make sure you always have some workers at your village center or nothing will get built! :slight_smile:

  • Global range.
    Now, all the buildings contribute to your maximum building/harvesting range. Your village center is the only building allowed to be placed anywhere on the map (to get you started). But, after that you have to build within the constraints of your build range. But, every time you place a building, that range grows. In the future you’ll also be able to build cheap “range extender” buildings, like Guard Towers and your global range will “level up” as your population grows.

  • Abandoned Buildings.
    I’ve added abandoned buildings that can be placed in the map editor, these buildings are pre-placed on maps and the player has the option to rebuild these for a fraction of the original build costs and start using them. The current plan is every single building in the game will have a “abandoned” counterpart. So map makers could make little “abandoned villages” other players could use on their map.

- Smarter AI.
I’ve done a lot of tweaks to the AI over the past few days. One example is I had originally I had planned that the gathering workers at the Stone Masonry, Lumber Mill, and other gathering or storage buildings would deliver their resources to the Village Center itself and then the builders would fetch the resources from the Village Center and take it to build sites to start working. But instead, the Village Center now no longer carries any resources what so ever, and the gatherers just take goods directly to new building locations automatically, making the process a lot more fluid and natural! You can see some of this action in the screenshots below, where the villagers in red (Lumberjacks/Stone Masons) are taking materials to the build sites being worked on by the villagers in brown/green (Builders).

Screenshots of various building and AI mechanics, featuring many of the new buildings. :slight_smile:


http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/34/33713/thumb_300x150/InDev-2014-08-20-1.png

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/34/33713/thumb_300x150/InDev-2014-08-21-3.png


http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/34/33713/thumb_300x150/InDev-2014-08-21-4.png

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/34/33713/thumb_300x150/InDev-2014-08-20-6.png

#307

So 2 questions :
1:When will I be able to play this awesome game ?
2:Have you tried implementing something like diamond square to generate maps.

#308

1: Hopefully I’ll have an experimental AI/Construction build out in a month~ or so.
2: No random maps yet, although I have a system planned for the future. :smiley:

#309

Good continuing work, I’m impressed by how you keep things going. Do you have any ideas on how combat will work yet? Will there be special combat buildings, will there be archer, footman etc. villagers, or do you have other ideas?

#310

The second this comes out im buying it , its one of those unique games that nobody thinks of and when someone does everyone is just like “ooh layered textures uggggghhhhhhhhh” and just sort of stare in awe at it for a bit imagining the epic battles on it. The way you have presented it is the way that makes me go I want this , very very few games do this. Maybe you could do a futureristic version of it later.

#311

The very early steps for combat will only be foot soldiers, the plan for them is;

  • A barracks will be built, this allows you to train villagers. Training is ONE-WAY. Once they become soldiers they can never be put back to workers, so you have to be very careful not to train too many and have little or no production, or on the flip side, not train enough and get overrun.
  • The soldiers will get a much higher attack/defense rating than they villager counterparts, and possibly be given the ability to sprint in an emergency.
  • You can build Guard/Lookout Towers that have 2 main functions, function one is to provide range extensions for your build and gathering range, the second is so you can assign soldiers to the towers, and they’ll naturally wander around in those areas on the map.
  • The AI, when out of combat will randomly “target” villagers and follow them around (Guarding them). When a villager has a guard around, it reduces the rate his happiness decreases while he works (because he feels safe/protected).
  • When anything in the village is attacked, all the guards will rush to that point to defend the building or villager being attacked.

After that’s done, I’ll probably eventually add archers, spearmen, mages and other more enhanced troop types. They’ll have the same basic AI/training system, but possibly a different training building and a tweaked AI.

Here’s hoping about 3,000 more people feel the way you do so I can hit top 50 on greenlight someday! :smiley:

#312
  1. I’m sure all your workers are VERY happy! Especially when they have an axeman standing behind them :slight_smile:
#313

Well, you’re assuming that these guards are law enforcement… When they’re really more like personal bodyguards protecting innocent defenseless villagers. :smiley:

(Well, that’s the excuse I’m using anyway) :wink:

#314

Hey man, this game looks incredible^^

If you don’t mind me asking, how did you do the tiles? More specifically, get them to almost but not quite join up together, rather than just being squares? Look really sweet:P

Downloaded the game, will be playing it tonight:P

#315

Thanks! :smiley:

I’m not quite following what you mean? They are all squares? :slight_smile:

#316

In the map editor, when you place a tile, although that tile it stored in a square grid, it smoothly joins to adjacent tiles, it doesn’t look like a box:P

I’m just wondering how you did it. It looks like each tile has a procedurally generated texture, because when I’m drawing it seems to switch between them, but i’m not sure. Looks awesome anyway:P

#317

I drew a bunch of transition tiles for the terrains, when you draw on the map it runs some edge detection code to determine what tile should be placed there. Each terrain is made up of 100 tiles (200 if you count the secondary accent layers), 25 random center tiles, and 5 random edge tiles per edge. :slight_smile:

Here’s a kinda-old-now copy of the terrain tileset file, the latest is inside the /res/ folder in the game download though if you want to look at it. But this one will still give you an idea what’s going on in the art side of the house.

http://sixtygig.com/junk/terrain.png

#318

Wow
‘A bunch’ being the understatement of the century;)

That’s amazing! How long did it take?? Have you considered procedurally generating them?

#319

Here’s one way to doing the dynamic tiling: http://www.angryfishstudios.com/2011/04/adventures-in-bitmasking/

EDIT: got sort-of ninja’d

#320

Been my experience that hand drawn tiles look better. :smiley:
(EDIT: Also, not sure how long… I’ve been drawing them off and on throughout development. But one terrain usually takes a few hours)

That’s a nice tutorial, hadn’t seen that one. The one I usually give people is this:
http://www.saltgames.com/2010/a-bitwise-method-for-applying-tilemaps/

Oddly enough, I don’t actually use the bitwise method. Mainly just because my way is a bit easier on the brain when dealing with all the tile variations as well. I may change it later though, I just hadn’t been concerned with it right now.