22: Starcraft as a brawler

[DukeOFprunes]

EDIT:
Loads left to do, massive tweaks to apply and things to fix, but for now it is functional.
Grab it here.
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This is what would happen if Starcraft tried to be Golden Axe.

Can Gilius Thunderhead chop a zealot in half? Can Tyris Flare flying-kick a dragoon? Can a troop of zerglings survive a full-magic-bottle attack?

This game will answer none of these questions, but you will be able to build units who happen to have a vague resemblance to those found in Starcraft (depending on my MSPaint skillz on the day), and control them brawler-style to try and break your opponent's base to bits.

I plan on using features from each genre as follows:

Brawler features:
-Double Dragon game perspective, the game is seen from the side and "up" a bit.
-A desperation move which injures everyone around you at the cost of some health.
-Special moves (QCF + Punch!)
-Automatic combos that combo only if you hit someone. Missing with the first attack will leave you vulnerable for a moment.
-Slightly different playstyle for each unit type. Dragoons are ranged (but will be able to, uh, kick or something), zealots are plain ol' infighters.

RTS features:
-Simple resource harvesting - punch a crystal deposit to gain a few credits. Kill your opponent's harvesters to annoy him! Hooray!
-Simple unit building interface. New units can be played when your current one dies or by switching between active units on the field.
-Base victory requirement - protect your base, destroy your opponent's.
-You can place turrets to help tie an area down.

With the time requirement, only Protoss vs Zerg will be an option.

Just exactly how much of this makes it into the game within the month time limit depends on the caffeine content of my bloodstream, and on how many pancakes my housemates decide to provide me with.

[dislekcia]

Oh **** yes!

Would you have branching paths? Either choosing to be sneaky (build/climb into a dropship and destroy a peon line) or go gung-ho through the front door to a base (and all the defenses?) I'd love to see something like 3 different characters: Marine, Zealot, Hydra and various supporting units you'd build... Like a zealot riding a reaver...

I think I just climaxed imagining this game.

[Fengol]

sounds promising. There are a couple of side-scrolling RTS games out there, just look at Swords and Soldiers for the Wii (campaign trailer). What I don't get from your synopsis is if you're controlling a single character (with QCF Punch and play styles) or if it's RTS style can you direct the units and build?

[dislekcia]

Both Aeq and I reckon it should just be a brawler with resources = magic and epic support powers. Like Zerg Rush or Reaver Drop for epic win.

I demand a Summon Duke ability that make a siege tank follow you around and if it stays still it goes into siege mode, so you have to be in the same area of the screen for it to be super awesome ;)

[DukeOFprunes]

Originally Posted by Fengol

sounds promising. There are a couple of side-scrolling RTS games out there, just look at Swords and Soldiers for the Wii (campaign trailer). What I don't get from your synopsis is if you're controlling a single character (with QCF Punch and play styles) or if it's RTS style can you direct the units and build?

Gameplay is brawler-style with you controlling a single unit at a time, but you can switch to other units when needed. At all times I want this to look & feel like a brawler, with some RTS flavouring on top.

I'm planning for both the switching and unit-building to be a seamless and non-intrusive affair - as with any good brawler, focus must squarely be focused on you beating five shades of snot out of every fool wot dares get close enough to take a swing at.

Also, I'm considering doing away with distinct race selection and instead offering you a number of the tastiest units from all races to toy with because reavers, hydras, siege tanks are all epic do want in my brains.

Originally Posted by dislekcia

I demand a Summon Duke ability that make a siege tank follow you around and if it stays still it goes into siege mode, so you have to be in the same area of the screen for it to be super awesome ;)

Oh my gawd you kinda gave me a vision of what this could potentially become if I've enough elbow grease. Realistically it might not all make it with the comp deadline but gosh darnit, it'll keep rolling.

[Kensei]

OMFG... I am drooling at the idea...

Frak yes please, DukeofPrunes!

[Annihilatorza]

Sounds awesome Good luck with it!!!!

[dislekcia]

In my head the units play the Starcraft unit acknowledgment sounds when you hit them... OMG.

[Kensei]

Now that I have watched the video that Fengol linked I understand this 'side-scrolling RTS' affair - will your game be similar to this, DoP?

If so, it looks awesome....
I would equally be happy with a Double Dragon inspired Starcraft brawler - where I can choose between say Kerrigan, Tassadar and Jim Raynor :)

[DukeOFprunes]

It'll be different to that clip. Just wait and see.
*rubs hands together in ev0l manner*

[DukeOFprunes]

I'm totally using this thread as a dev diary after accidentally deleting progress and to help me coordinate my next move. Will keep editing this post so there won't be much thread bumping after in case anyone is interested.

1 June 09
Afternoon: The comp is about mixing two genres. Chewed on it for a bit and saw myself playing a RTS and old school brawler hybrid. Units can be based on Starcraft. Sprite-wise, I'd need to redraw everything since Starcraft's sprites are too top-downy, will worry about that later and use fugly placeholders most of the way or until I can't avoid them anymore (i.e. size-dependant calculations etc)
Got a dev environment installed and sorted after gym & some healthy microwaveable garbage, then spent a little time re-acquainting myself to BlitzMax basic.


2 June 09
Afternoon: poked a few things at work on the sly. I'll need to learn to do some things from scratch, like using a very large scrolling map and focusing the "camera" on different things. New challenge for the day, shouldn't be too hard though. Steve is taking us out tonight so I might not get much done today at all.

Evening: success! Scrolly map is working. I have an x-offset and a y-offset I subtract from every drawable object's coordinates but I still use their absolute coords for calculating everything else. After looking around online it seems that's the easiest way to do this kind of thing. I'm noob. If only I could get that trajectory math problem sorted I'd have a really good way of making the siege tanks shoot people, but that may have to wait until later.


3 June 09


4 June 09


5 June 09


6 June 09
Morning: work pressure's been high so not done much in the meantime. I have this weekend and plan on making good use of it.
So far today I've set a fundamental system in place to switch between friendlies. You hold the spacebar which creates a selector, move this near a friendly unit and release the spacebar to control it. Annoyingly, holding down the spacebar means keys can lock out, in my case I can't move the selector diagonally up-left. I've decided to not have mouse support at all to keep in spirit with the brawler-ness I want to achieve. The keyboard interface for building things should nontheless be real intuitive.
I mistakenly deleted the source for the scrolly map, will need to re-do. Started redoing it betterer, more object-orientatedishlike. Constants are now in a class so I can be lazy and use the IDE to look them up for me with "constants." and code completion picks up the rest.
I have a function in the unit class's superclass that calculates the offsets based on if you're the player or not which I thought it's lazy but I guess in awesome-programming-land they call this "elegant" not that I want to pay very much attention to that sort of thing with less than a month to go. That is a long sentence.

Evening: I got stuck redoing the scrolling thing I had working perfectly earlier and it is now kicking my ass. Brain's low on battery.


7 June 09
Finally fixed my head around the offset thing again a few annoying bugs and feeling like a moron. Redid it under a small tester application, now busy integrating it into the main program in a generic way which is again proving tricky. Had a lovely sandwich.

Evening: Finally managed to integrate scrolling in a reasonable enough way. Spent many hours cleaning up, OOPing things out and making my future work simpler and there can be bigger progress jumps as I go once the framework's done. Also had to perform many domestic duties. Living with two women is a lot of work but I did get pancakes. I think next comes the heart of all brawler mechanics: fighting. I'll start with punching. Going to need more sprites.

8 June 09
Evening: Spent the evening drawing fugly sprites for the zealot. I have it standing idle, throwing a jab, a slash and a double slash. These'll be its basic combo attacks. I've also started adding more constants I'll use as states, the driving engine behind the rudimentary AI I used in Comp 19's GraveRob (which has a sequel of sorts planned) but also very useful for tons of other stuff. Tomorrow I can get into timing its attacks between punches and moving into combo punches if an enemy is struck. If there's time, I should add a list/array used to draw things onscreen after sorting them by their "footprint", also a useful trick from GraveRob to fake a Double Dragon perspective by making objects lower down the screen draw on top of objects higher up.

9 June 09
Evening: Slowly picking up momentum. Spam the Z key and your little zealot will jab and combo into a slash followed by a double slash - fwip pow BAM! No collisions yet so it's all just for show.
List sorting is in. Objects "closer" to the screen now appear on top of objects "further into" the screen.
Switching between your units works a treat, just need to tweak the speed at which the selector moves around.
Work for tomorrow should be to add some collision checking. Once that's in place I can do a little tuning on the melee attack system and once that's reasonable I'll work on the second fundamental unit type: shooty. Dragoon go peew peeew!
Longer-term plans are to make the third & fourth fundemental unit types (siege & harvest), unit building interface and finally AI.

10 June 09
Got done what I needed today. Melee timing is in, and when I punch someone they know about it. I can start doing shooty Dragoons next. I'm on meds that are knocking me the hell out. Early bedtime.


11 June 09
Evening: I now have a fuglily drawn dragoon that shoots fuglily drawn antimatter bolts. Peeew peeeeeew and collisions are in. Now that there's something to play with, before adding any other fun units, I should get to work making an actual functional game from it. I'll prioritise some game mechanics next. Two HQs, the building interface, resources and the ever ominously looming good and evil AIs.
I knew before the comp that the scope of this extends beyond the comp and I'm totally going to keep working on it. Quite enjoying tinkering with it now and the nerd quarter of my brains keeps daydreaming about playing this one day and actually seeing what it could be like especially if I can rope an artist in. Exciting stuff, need to go lie down now.

12 June 09
Started building the interface. Busy weekend life-outside-computer-wise, but chances are I might have something almost partially prototypable by the end of it. Keywords: partially, almost.

13 June 09
Busy day but I managed to get a system up so I can now build zealots from the HQ. I'll soon add a sprinkle of AI so they rally to your current unit after getting ejected from base but it'd be most sensible to get to work on the resource system first.
Oh, the framework for special moves is in too. Units can now run (double-tap left or right) as well as walk and for fun there's floaty text above their heads proudly proclaiming "Hadouken" when you down + forward + attack, purely for test purposes.
Don't have a walking animation yet so they're kinda ice-skating about the place, it looks totally retardumalated.

14 June 09
Supported the girls I know who did Race For Life & splitscreened Resident Evil 5 with friends. Progress made to my comp entry includes (but is not limited to): nada.

15 June 09
Evening: Only had 1.2hrs, but I did start getting some of the interface in. There's a message handler and a HUD bar at the top to show what the base is doing. Presently, it either shows you buildable units or it says BUILDING... in giant letters.

16 June 09
Evening: Made the probe, crystal deposits and tiny crystal pickups. A probe's attack is a special harvest attack which does nothing unless it hits a crystal deposit. Doing so produces a small crystal pickup.
Tomorrow I'll make it so any unit can grab a crystal pickup to credit your resource count and that will get the resource system rolling.

17 June 09
You can now grab those little crystal shards that probes knock out of crystal deposits by walking over them. Once they're on the ground anyone can grab em so be greedy.
Made the tiniest scratch at the beginnings of the AI.

18 June 09
Had people over. No geeking out today ;_;

19 June 09
Midnight: Gave the probe brains. It seeks out the nearest crystal deposit and dutifully harvests the crap out of it. Need to make it have a breather and actually collect some of the shards it cuts loose every so often. I might consider making it non-playable, it's not much fun sitting there cutting away at crystals.

20 June 09
Midnight: The player has the ability to give general orders. Units will be able to rally to the player's position, fallback to base or advance towards the enemy base. These three orders will apply to all allied units in play bar the unit currently controlled. Rallying and falling back works, just need to add the meat for advancing.
AI is slowly coming together but there's still mountainous work to do.

21 June 09
Unit cap is in. Drew two extra zealot "animations", one for getting stunned after being hit/shot and one for being dead. Everything now has health and everything does damage to each other but there is friendly fire - it's kinda fun running around beating my own men to death. Must do the same anims for the dragoon and probe too.

22 June 09
These protoss are so dedicated that if you give the order to advance, fallback or back you up they follow your orders EVEN IF THEY ARE DEAD. Fking awesome! Changed it so dead people don't listen to you anymore. Same thing with probes, they now keep harvesting regardless of standing orders. The probe now animates to better indicate that he's busy and doesn't want to be disturbed.
Units following standing orders no longer move at snail's pace. They run first and only slow to a walk if they get near enough to their destination.

23 & 24 June 09
Zealots fight pretty well now. They close the distance quickly and their third attack combo knocks you to the ground. There's a tiny sliver of breathing space after you get up before they beat you up some more. Pretty happy with how this is going, need to get the dragoons sorted next.

25 - 29 June 09
Loads of cleaning up classes and there's loads more to do. Plenty of AI changes and it's possible to win/lose now so an actual bare-bones functional game now exists, I just need to make the AI build units and give orders, shouldn't be too hard now that each unit pretty much does its own thing for the most part.
Good guys have red underpants and bad guys have red. Added some animations to more clearly indicate what's happening. Dragoon animations may be unclear, just take careful note of its facial expressions (yes) to discover when it's out or stunned. Weeded out loads of null pointer errors that popped up mostly because I was in too big a rush to code this thing properly.
Tuned AI behaviour for all units so they suck less, it's still too easy for a player to kill everything but that's future work.
Might not have time to make the AI harvest creds properly so I might consider having it cheat... or perhaps making dropable creds a -bonus- on top of an income trickle as long as a probe is harvesting. Bloody good idea, I shall stick it in there immediately (after work & before going out tonight bleh).

[Kensei]

You have additional pressure DukeOfPrunes, during my waiting for my photo to be developed at Collectormania, I ended up chatting to the Tshirt guys at Retro GT and I told them about your game idea. They said it sounded incredibly cool :P

[DukeOFprunes]

Originally Posted by Kensei

You have additional pressure DukeOfPrunes, during my waiting for my photo to be developed at Collectormania, I ended up chatting to the Tshirt guys at Retro GT and I told them about your game idea. They said it sounded incredibly cool :P

Pressure's good, can't cook a proper game without it!
BTW I -covet- your FB photo with Nathan Fillion.

[dislekcia]

Originally Posted by DukeOFprunes

8 June 09 Evening: Spent the evening drawing fugly sprites for the zealot. I have it standing idle, throwing a jab, a slash and a double slash. These'll be its basic combo attacks. I've also started adding more constants I'll use as states, the driving engine behind the rudimentary AI I used in Comp 19's GraveRob (which has a sequel of sorts planned) but also very useful for tons of other stuff. Tomorrow I can get into timing its attacks between punches and moving into combo punches if an enemy is struck. If there's time, I should add a list/array used to draw things onscreen after sorting them by their "footprint", also a useful trick from GraveRob to fake a Double Dragon perspective by making objects lower down the screen draw on top of objects higher up.

I am ****ing drooling.

[Kensei]

Originally Posted by DukeOFprunes

Pressure's good, can't cook a proper game without it! BTW I -covet- your FB photo with Nathan Fillion.

Thanks ;) I er, opted not to gloat to the NAG community... despite being over the moon that I got to meet Nathan, Avery Brooks (Sisko from DS9) and a little known actor called Leonard Nimoy (I think he played Spock or something)

Anyways, back on topic, I am glad you are putting a dev diary, makes it easier to see what you are doing and when we can expect a prototype :)

[DukeOFprunes]

Ugly arsed title screen courtesy of some quick filter-fu. Been playing too much Streets of Rage lately.



Need an artist yo.

[DukeOFprunes]

*Bump*

First post updated. This time limit's a real killer & motivator.

[dislekcia]

Originally Posted by DukeOFprunes

*Bump* First post updated. This time limit's a real killer & motivator.

That's why it's there ;) Looking forward to giving this a whirl!

[DukeOFprunes]

Sweet. Had no time to pretty it up so it looks like Starcraft: Fisher Price Edition.

I really wanted at least two races too. It's now at about 1/3rd of where I really want a first release to be but it works OK enough. Didn't even have time to get any coolio spesh moves in there apart from running.

Most pressingly I need to make big changes to how the AI does melee, surrounding you rather than getting all crammed into the same spot.