Well, even working up to the final minutes, I wasn’t able to get enough game into my…uh…game.  The control mechanics and getting the scene put together with all of the UI elements ended up being more complicated than I expected.  I’m happy with the way the game feels at this point, though, so I’m looking forward to adding in the combat to see how the full arc of the game feels.  Here’s a screenshot of the final state as of the jam ending:

You can play what I ended up with by the jam deadline here.  Since there wasn’t any time for any real tutorial or documentation, some instructions:

- Drag the mothership to move around.  The mothership is the online thing under your direct control.
- Clicking on the buttons on the lefthand side of the screen produces a new computer-controlled minion.
- Minions will stay near the green waypoint (the little green icon that starts on your mothership).
- The waypoint (and thus, your minions) will stay with your mothership unless you place it somewhere by clicking within the green circle representing your area of control.
- If you move too far from your waypoint and it leaves your area of control, it will return to your mothership.

Things That Didn’t Make It

- There’s no AI.  That big purple mothership?  It’s just sitting up there.  It should be chasing you, pumping out it’s own minions to hunt you down.
- Speaking of that, there’s not combat.  All those health bars and nothing to do with them.
- There’s no cost to making a new minion – the intension was to have a cooldown cost for each ship type, as well as a materials cost.
- With combat working, I was hoping to have each destroyed minion leave behind wreckage that could be reclaimed by a non-combat gatherer minion.
- Sound effects, menus, and any other polish stuff.  I never get to these, though, so I almost forgot to add them here.  I really need to learn to pump out a couple of basic sounds and a simple background loop right at the beginning so these don’t get left behind.

The Future

Without a game to actually play in here, I don’t know if the thing is any real fun if you actually had human or computer enemies.  My immediate plans are to hit the points above that would turn it into an actual game.  After that, I think I’d like to give the whole thing a less-abstract coat of paint and play with some different art styles.  I’d also like to see the thing running on an iPad or iPhone, since all the interaction maps well to touch.  From there, I’m not sure – should it be some sort of arena-based competitive thing?  Should it grow into a more open, exploration-based single-player experience?  Assuming interacting with the game proves enjoyable, I’d like to explore some of these possibilities.

It’s been slow going today, although I’ve made some basic progress.  I swear every time that I’m a.) not going to make a 2D game or b.) not using Unity, but I inevitably end up back in bed with both and just as ornery about it as the last time.

I picked up a copy of SpriteManager 2 and EzGUI a little while ago, which (at the time) were the only capable 2D system for the Unity.  The workflows to get anything put together with them are…not straightforward, and don’t map to any other 2D framework or tool set I’m used to (either for GUI design or game stuff).  Anyways, I probably need to take a look at what people are using these days, as there are a couple of options now.

All this to say that I’ve been fighting with my tools as usual, so rather than putting up a build that doesn’t do anything really, I’ll put up a screenshot with all of my abstract placeholder art.  I’ve currently got basic movement working for the mothership (the big circle) based on applying force with mouse dragging.  The button’s don’t do anything quite yet, but they’ll be used to queue up production of another minion.  Tomorrow morning, I’m hoping to get the minions sitting next to the mothership to orbit and swarm, at which point thing’s will start to look like the game in my head.  I’m worried I won’t get to having an actual enemy by tomorrow evening, but we’ll see how long things take in the morning.

Exciting, huh?  More tomorrow

Ok – after spending an hour or two last night mulling over my various ideas, I had settled on my strongest idea.  The problem is that it was (in my head) set in space, which feels the complete opposite of the “Tiny World” theme.  I decided to switch up the scale and use the same core game mechanics except with viruses and bacteria, but after working up some mockups and then sleeping on it, I think I’m going to take it back out to a space game.  To fit the theme, I’m going to emphasize the self-contained nature of the giant motherships the player controls – now, they’re carrying the last chunk of their dead home planet in a self-contained eco-bubble as a spaceship.  Talk about raising the stakes for survival (hey, there’s another theme runner up that would have fit my original idea *cough*).

The basic outline for the game, with a mockup:

• The player controls a single large spacecraft through the environment
• The player has direct control over the mothership, being able to maneuver (slowly) through space
• The player can produce small computer-controlled minions (fighters, bombers, etc.). These minions swarm and automatically attack enemy minions and motherships, and by default gather around the mothership.  The player can direct the “drone cloud” to go somewhere within a certain radius of the mothership, sort of a waypoint system.  If the mothership moves too far away, all minions will return to the mothership.
• (Maybe?) Destroyed minions and motherships leave behind salvageable wreckage, which can be gathered by gatherer drones.  This limited resource would make the game a closed system (rather than an infinitely-growing collection of minions).
• (Maybe?) Mothership special powers to provide a more direct combat activity for the player.  I still want to stay away from “giant laser blast” and do more with control skills that can disable parts of an enemy minion cloud, other mothership skills, etc.
• (Maybe?) Mothership upgrade system that can upgrade minion control radius, special powers, hull strength, reduce resource costs, etc.

I’m going for a light strategy game that mixes a little bit Defense of the Ancients with Pikmin style direct/indirect hybrid minion control.  Also, I’ve never played and DotA game so I’m just making that up based on by perception of the genre from the outside  Ok – off to work, now.

I’ll be participating in the Ludum Dare game jam this weekend, and I’m going to try and be better at updates throughout the event.  It’s hard not to get distracted by that, though, and I’m easily distracted enough as it is.  I’m going to be posting updates at my site and cross-posting over to the competition blog at www.ludumdare.com/compo (this post is also testing a cross-posting plugin to see if I can get away with doing it automatically).

The final theme selections run the range of “looking forward to them” to “please no!”.  I’ve got a couple of ideas that cover most of my favorite themes, but I still have a handful that have be a bit stumped for inspiration.  I’ll be doing some more brainstorming during the next half-hour or so while I wait for the theme to be announced.  Good luck to everyone participating – I can’t wait to play through some of the awesome stuff made this weekend.