Delay - Off to croatia!

Hi!

I'm heading to croatia in a few minutes, so the next post will be in 5 days.
I hope I'll find the time down there to work a bit, but I'm not sure if I will.

Thanks for reading, Bok!

Map-Setup

Yay! Milestone number 1: The map design and Setup is finished!
What happens is basically this:

Player enters level, the StartScript chooses a position for him, creates a startbuilding (the townhall) there, the townhall then produces a worker, and leaves the rest to the player. This is basically where the game takes off. The whole thing looks like this:

Or like this:

depending wether you play Orc or Human. Not bad eh? The menu you see down there is from the townhall, which is selected in the images.

So, to summarize what I did today:

• Set the player/camera to one of 4 positions at gamestart
• Automaticly build the start-building/townhall there.
• Set the inventory to start values
• Give that building a menu to build something (in that case a worker)
• Give that building some variables, like "health", even though that term is probably wrong in that case

Well, thats  it already for today! Tomorrow I'll probably try to let the workers be "movable", meaning that the player can send them around (Which means they have to me selectable/multiselectable first). And, if I find the time they should start mining, even though I think thats some work for wednesday.

Thanks for reading, arrivederci!

The map

Hi there!

I spent most of the day working on the (first) map for the game. I had several ideas like snowy cliffs, a volcanic area, something steampunky, but in the end decided that the first map, should  be a basic forest area.

Since I already made a (rudimentary) version of this map before, which got lost due to the corrupted project, I was faster than I expected.

Since my models are all "hand-painted", I went for the same style with the map - everything else would look weird, at best!

Here some screenshots:

Todo-List till tomorrow:

• Map design 
• Minimap
• Fog Of War
• Navigation Layer
• StartScripts (Inventory, Start-Buildings)

These scripts should only take an hour or so, so tomorrow will be a relaxing day!

As always, Thanks for reading!

Phase 1 - The idea

Hi again!

Sorry for the delay, but I got injured playing Volleyball, and after being at the hospital, I had to organize a few things, which kept me busy from writing here. That was the first downer of the week, the second one was, at least for me, even worse. While I was working on this project my working environment crashed and left me with a corrupted project, which ment I had to start all over. Well, bad for me, good for you, as I'm able to show you now everything from scratch. So let's start, shall we?

Basics

I will use Unity3D as my game engine. Even though not exactly cheap, it's perfect if you want to publish for different environments, in my case: Android and IOS. Another thing that I absolutly love about Unity is its AssetStore. Let me be clear, I'm a programmer! I know how to use Photoshop, but I'm not creative enough to make my own textures, GUI and so on. I know Maya a bit, but I'm not even close to making professional Models. That is why a lot of things I'm using in my games are bought, at a reasonable price. Even if you are a "Programmer-Designer-Modeler", doing everything alone would take forever, and I want to finish this game in my lifetime. 

The Idea

As you might imagine, every project starts with an idea. Coming up with an idea is easy, but finding out if it's possible to make it, if it's a good idea that people will like, and, and that is the most important thing, if you like it yourself enough that you will actually finish it.

Since my last project was a strategy game, I figured, I should do something in this direction again, since I already have most of the Know-How to create such a game. This time I want to make something like WarCraft. It won't be a clone, but it will have certain aspects of the game. Since I want to build the game for mobile devices, it has to be short, by which I mean one game shouldn't take longer than maybe 10 to 20 minutes. In addition, this game will be a lot less complex than WarCraft, making it easier to develop, but also easier to understand, which is critical for mobile games. It should have a both singleplayer and multiplayer to keep the game interesting, so that people will buy some InApp products.

Look and Feel

Well, long story short, here's a screenshot of my GUI so far:

Top right: The inventory - there will be onlygold and food to keep things simple.

Bottom left: The map

Top middle: This will be a dragable component to multi-select, send and cast spells. (More on this coming soon)

Bottom middle: This will be components that show up when something is selected to let you build or attack things. Example: You selected a worker, now these show the different kind of buildings you can build. Drag them onto the world to build them.

Bottom right: Here you will have the informations about the thing you currently selected, in this case a townhall.

The Plan

I want to have a running prototype (Menu,one map, single player and multiplayer) before march, so I'll try to stick to this:

27.01. InGame-Setup (Starting the level/map - setting of players, buildings, mines, etc.)

29.01. BASIC Interaction (sending them around) with RTSUnits (Workers, Warriors etc.) 

19.02. Complex interaction with Workers - Building things

22.02. Running Inventory-System

26.02. Menu

14.03. Complex interaction with Warriors - Attacking
20.03. Complex interaction with Heros - Casting spells
23.03. GameOver/Won - conditions

28.03. Multiplayer Setup

Thats it for today!

Thanks for reading!

PS: Almost forgot: Here's some artwork so that you can imagine what this game is going to be/feel/look like.

Let's get this started

First off, a few things about me:

I'm Alexander, 23, from Graz - Austria. I'm currently working as a Programmer for a local company, besides being a student, and did start my own company back in November last year. But, let me start a bit earlier!

When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I first got interested in creating my own games. Back then I made my first steps like everyone else, with the the RPGMaker2k. This tool was great for learning, but soon enough I wanted more, at least one more dimension. So I (or lets say my mother) bought an edition of the GameStudio3D. In hindsight this was probably one of the most important things in my life, since it made me learn programming, which I do for a living today. From age 15 on, I stopped trying to create games, I had other things - like everyone this age - in mind. This was the case till about 16 months ago, where I had an idea, and said to myself "Fuck it, let's do this". It took me till December of the last year - about 2500 hours o f work, and way to much money for licenses, the server, etc... - to finish it. But I did, even though I have to admit it's a bit buggy - I'm still trying to improve it. Here's the trailer:

As you see, I decided to develop for mobile platforms. Why? Because- with a lot of work - you can compete with big companies in terms of graphics, which is not unimportant. At least that was my reason.

Now, after a month of relaxing, I'm starting something new, a fast strategy game with the name "Pocket Crusades".And this is going to be the development blog for this.

Tomorrow I will tell you what it will be about, show you parts of my development plan, and give you some insights into how to make a decent looking game - alone!

Thanks for reading!