Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Outcasts Update

For those not following closely I am working on a new expansion pack for Gratuitous Space Battles. I was working on something else…but then i got seduced by the idea of more spaceships. I’ll return to the ‘other thing’ soon, I promise!

The new race is called the outcasts, and they are cybernetic types with a chip on their shoulder about biology. Think ‘the founders’ from DS9 but with a hatred of biologicals rather than solids.  In terms of visual design, they like their ships to be saucer shaped, with some exposed pipework and no shortage of engines or big glowy regions:

In terms of race design, I’m giving them a slight tendency towards faster ships (speed bonuses a plenty!) and concentrating on making better frigates for them. Currently my special ‘race-specific’ modules are as follows:

  1. Cruiser Decoy projector (see video here): This is a way that cruisers can project a fake cruiser hologram in front of them to lure enemy weapons away from the real fleet. bwahahahaha.
  2. Frigate 2-stage missiles (see video here): These start off slow, then accelerate (like a javelin missile) to make them hard to shoot down.
  3. Frigate multi-point tractor beam: These puppies can grab up to three different targets (probably fighters) at once. Oh yes.
  4. Frigate Pulse Gun: A new fast-firing laser-salvo gun that acts like a souped up ion cannon.
  5. Frigate Sniper Laser: Super-long-range frigate beam laser that allows them to snipe at the enemy from the safety of the main battle line for the first time.
  6. Solar Power Collector: A special frigate power generator module that beats all the others. Possibly frees up an extra slot for crew./shields/armor.

I may add other stuff, or make a few more radical changes during testing. I’ve also commissioned some awesome new music for the expansion from sean vella. This will make the outcasts the first new race to get their own special music recorded. Plus there are some stunning new nebula backdrops I got an artist to render for the new missions. For some reason, I’m really getting into this expansion pack :D There is no release date yet. I need to test and test and then release a patch to the main game to support them before I even consider releasing them. I can’t tell yet if it will be pre or post-christmas. Join in the discussion on the forums.

In other news, I just spent another fortune (well…£200) on insulation*. It’s COOOOOLLLLDDDDD here, and I’m determined to finish insulating that attic one day. I’ve shivered enough. Actually it’s not a problem if you are a normal person without an obsession with not using the oil-fired radiators like me. I’m a log-fire kind of guy.

*we have to use ‘breathable’ insulation in this old house, which makes the stuff much more expensive than normal.

 

Two-stage rockets for GSB

Here is a video of a little experiment:

The idea is to have missiles that go slowly at first, then suddenly boost towards their target. They deliberately start off at a slight angle too. The benefit is that enemy last-minute defense don’t have much time to shoot them down, but if you have a defensive screen of point-defense frigates, then can pick them off before they start their boost stage. The plan is to have this as a frigate-only outcasts-only weapon for the next expansion. Let me know what you think.

Tower defense game design

I recently spent some time looking at a bunch of tower defense games, and it saddened me to see how little innovation most people attempt in that genre, although I guess that is something pretty generally applicable to all genres, and most peoples first game. I might be lucky, in that I always have an urge to put some sort of ‘spin’ on any game I make, i am never happy to just do ‘a game in this genre’ and leave it at that. It’s worth remembering, as a game designers, that the player will always be asking themselves ‘why do I need to play this, when I can just go play the classic tower defense game X’.  You really need to have an answer to that question.

With regards to Gratuitous Tank Battles, which is my first ever tower defense game, I probably overdid it a bit in terms of trying to innovate. They say you should only innovate in one direction at a time, but I think life is too short for that. What I tried to do was question all of the ‘design assumptions’ of the genre.

The first assumption is that the player is the defender. Obviously the clue is in the title, but why wouldn’t a ‘tower attack game’ work? I think GTB shows that it can work. There was already a game released that did this, although it was essentially just escort missions, thankfully, because it was released just as I was half way through making GTB.

The second assumption is that the towers are invulnerable. I think this is arbitrary and crazy. It adds an extra level of excitement and gameplay to Gratuitous Tank Battles to know that you can’t just place a big gun somewhere and know you have that site covered. This seemed like a major change, and a change for the better to me.

The third assumption was that the towers are of fixed designer-decreed configuration, and can receive a linear upgrade path mid-battle. People really expect that in a TD game, and not including it does un-nerve people, but it adds a whole new layer to the game in terms of unit customization. Also, that ties in nicely with the design of Gratuitous Space Battles, where it was the major focus.

Another assumption was that the attackers come in a pre-set path, linked to a radar which gives you advance warning, also that they come in waves. All of this is totally arbitrary. There are not stone tablets decreeing the rules of tower defense design, you can do whatever you like. I broke all three of those assumptions about attacking waves, and personally I think that adaptive AI for the attackers (and defenders) totally changes the nature o the game and vastly expands the play-time available. This is one of the assumptions I was most proud to break.

There are other changes to GTB that make it a non conventional TD, such as the setting, the level editor and map/unit sharing online, but I think the key to making the game work and be interesting was that I looked at the ‘set-in-stone’ assumptions and basically kicked them all out. I find that this works amazingly well in game design. Some assumptions are there for a reason, but many are not, and when they are broken, once we get used it, we love it. The Sims can be turn based (see Kudos) A game can have no ‘game world’ at all (see Democracy) A space battle RTS can have no player control (see GSB) and there are much bigger examples too:

The object of an FPS can be not to kill (See Thief), health packs can be made redundant, with auto-regenerating health (wasn’t that Call of Duty 4?). Base building doesn’t have to be in every RTS game (again, not sure who started that).

The ‘classic’ design of a genre is a mere starting point. When you design a game, you need to question every aspect of it, and make sure you have a rock-solid defense of why it ‘has to be that way’.