SubJeff on 25/1/2013 at 23:36
Is it a set of conditional algorithms? I'm planning on creating a bunch for semi-random enemy generation in something I'm working on in Unity.
Fafhrd on 26/1/2013 at 00:05
A couple months after getting laid off I decided to really buckle down and learn Android development (and Java, since you can't do one without the other), and the other day decided that the game I've been making is close enough to beta to just go ahead and call it beta. It's playable end to end; but I don't have the majority of the artwork because I'm not good at drawing, so that part is hard and not fun for me.
Video:
[video=youtube;81UdSTtS68A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UdSTtS68A[/video]
SubJeff on 26/1/2013 at 01:00
Thats pretty cool as it is though. I'm sure you'll be able to find an artist to flesh out the graphics for you. If you could get it playing on multiple devices it'd be really cool to all have your own table. Will it work on a phone or are the screens too small? And how hard (possible?) would it be to get this type of thing networked on Android devices in close proximity but not through the net? In other words by bluetooth or by wifi to wifi?
Yakoob on 26/1/2013 at 03:36
Quote Posted by Ulukai
Have been working on procedural dungeon generation for my top-down roguelike which I first posted shots of over a year ago :p
This is just the visualisation for the mapping algorithm, it's not part of the game. Needs a few tweaks yet - i.e. door (blue square) placement, redundant corridor removal, room density etc. The corridors are at least now flowing correctly.
Neato. I wrote some of my own way way back when I was in the pre-graphics, ascii-only programming stage. I think every game-programmer does a roguelike-random-dungeon-generator at some point; it's like a pre-requisite before you can move into proper graphics haha :p
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Thats pretty cool as it is though. I'm sure you'll be able to find an artist to flesh out the graphics for you.
If my Postmortem game is any indication, graphic artists are actually the hardest to come by from scouring random game forums. Altho I have not yet posted my announcement in every forum/website I considered so...
That being said, congrats Fafhrd for getting to the Beta phase :D
Fafhrd on 26/1/2013 at 03:58
There's an API for direct Wi-fi connection between devices, but I'm not really sure how it works, and I know absolutely nothing about even basic network programming, so I was going to save that for version 2 (which would also maybe have a phone compatible layout that would only be usable for network play). The API is also only in Ice Cream Sandwich or higher (which admittedly most tablets should be on by now), so I'd be cutting out everything running Honeycomb. I can think how networking it would work logically with my current code, but coding it is currently beyond me.
I've also had some slightly goofy ideas like using the tablet as the game board and networking a bunch of phones to it and dealing the cards to the phones, since the biggest drawback (imo) about the 'pass it around' method is that the population change animations usually won't be visible to everyone, so there's a risk that on someone's first turn they'll be almost dead and not know why, but again: network coding.
The super-tentative plan is: Version 1.0 - This version + art. Version 2.0 - Network play + phone compatibility. Version 3.0 (Maybe) - Replace the map window with an OpenGL window so it'll at the very least animate more smoothly and maybe be able to do some other things like have the active improvements show up as 3D pop-ups (in my head I really want the map to look kind of like a pop-up book, but there's a lot of stuff I need to learn to get there from here).
I really wish I had enough money to commission Molly Crabapple or Zoetica Ebb to do the art, but I'm unemployed and they're (presumably) not cheap.
demagogue on 26/1/2013 at 04:58
Pretty cool looking card game.
For art, I'm basically pilfering public domain art and modifying it to my needs... It's worked for me & I'd recommend it, but my game is set in 18th-19th Century Paris so that's not so hard. The map itself was already drawn, and I can use 19th & early 20th Century French posters for this and that. Occasionally I'll do something by hand, but even that is usually looking at some reference. Only issue is my game has ballooned in size, I seriously doubt it'll be small enough for an Android or browser game. That's ok for me -- I'd rather make the game I want just for a PC -- but it could be a drawback for your case.
SubJeff on 26/1/2013 at 10:44
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
I really wish I had enough money to commission Molly Crabapple or Zoetica Ebb to do the art, but I'm unemployed and they're (presumably) not cheap.
Man, your idea is really good, especially the tablet to phone one which is frakking awesome, that there must be some artists somewhere that will say "hell yes, I could do the art for that awesome idea!"
Have you tried asking on art forums, or gone to Deviant Art to ask?
Volitions Advocate on 26/1/2013 at 21:18
Artists can be incredibly hostile when it comes to people asking them for help. It's unreal the animosity they fling at you in Forums and IRC if you don't have every aspect of your project documented and a middle class salary offering.
Fafhrd on 27/1/2013 at 03:43
'Fuck you, Pay me' is a thing for reason, and I totally respect it, which is why I haven't even tried to ask any of my artist friends (or even my artist sister) to contribute. 'I need twenty small pieces, and two large ones, in black and white line art that can be easily converted to SVGs, also they need to be identifiable when scaled to the size of a postage stamp. But at most I can maybe pay you a hundred bucks up front, OR you can take what's in The Box! (what's in the box being, like, 33% of the gross, of which there is likely to not be much).' Not something that goes over well with professional or even semi-professional artists, and not something I could in good conscience try on aspiring ones because of the professionals that I know.
I'm tempted to just use the actual Hans Holbein Danse Macabre engravings for a few of the cards (since the cards from the original game were heavily based on them), but they're really busy visually, and the vectors I get when I convert them have so many nodes that the load time for processing the SVGs would get absurdly long.
demagogue on 27/1/2013 at 03:59
Since it's B&W line art, you might could get away with tracing outlines from stock photos in a new layer, so you're just left with the outlines you want.
