SpriteGears: Day 7

Ships can turn around now, and a basic computer AI is almost complete (<– takes a lot of time :P)

This is day 7, if this was a 7DRL challenge, I’d be screwed up already, which is a good metric for the upcoming challenge on February 2010 (I managed to get more time up to this point than I thought I would, situation may be similar on february). (I must not let the scope grow again)

This is a description of the combat system, which foundations were proposed by Mr. Jeff Lait (of POWDER fame), feel free to discuss!

Combat System Description

• One army agains another army of starships
• Player controls one Army, Computer controls the enemy army. (Maybe hotseat mode in the future)
• Each ship has a movement range and a firing range.
• Player can move only one of their ships each turn, then goes the other player.
• All ships fire automagically each turn as long as their enemies are in their firing range. (So the player only moves them and turns them)
• Each ship has a shield which is damaged everytime they are hit, if shield goes below zero the ship explodes in thousands of flixels.
• If the player loses all his ships, he loses

Following are the pending tasks, from the base planning:

• Add Sample Ship Data
• Finish Fire Action
• Simple Enemy AI
• Sample SpriteGear Data
• Mock combat scenario generator (with SpriteGear)
• Capture SpriteGear
• Mock assault group generator (2 Ships alone + 1 SpriteGear)
• Starmap generator
• Create Expedition
• Expedition generator
• Sector Generator
• Setup Assault Group
• Ship Data
• SpriteGear Data

I also managed to grow the to-do list with some cool things (courtesy of having left my home keys at the office). Here goes, unordered and crazy

• Ship rotation
• Missile and laser fire animation
• SpriteGearAI, can summon slave ships
• Add alien factions
• Fighting over planets and asteroid fields
• Add recovery to ships
• SpriteGear capture
• Tie battlescenario generator to section type and zone difficulty
• Movement animations
• Add flavour messages with portraits
• Add expedition status screen
• Add energy cost to ship warps
• Add fancy ship warp animation
• Add fancy starfield simulation parametrized by zone
• Add mothership section tile to zone
• Add friendly space station section tile to zone
• Buy and sell ships and supplies at friendly space stations
• Add quest sections, can do quests for energy to warp to other zones
• Add a tutorial
• Add pre battle setup (show what’s the enemy, then select a formation) [Stand Fast, Balanced Wedge, Line, Outflank, Inverse Edge] Each formation has an energy cost
• SpriteGears have special moves which van be triggered via command, or used automatically while on crisis
• SpriteGear are commonly weak at short range and need to be escorted
• Show detailed ship data in a square on hover, including faction, model, direction, energy and an image.
• SpriteGears are cau… [end of notes]

An alien from the Orice sector also pointed out some things to note:

you’ll definitely want some more dynamics later to make it more fun (like positional bonuses, shield ships, different types of ammo/shields, repairing, cloaking, etc

its just hard to tell what is your ship vs an enemy ship

[the cursor] should change or flash or let you know you are in firing range somehow

i would expect you would hit ‘lock target’ and then I would mouse over the enemy – just need to make sure the visual feedback reinforces that

Aprox. Work Time: 18:45 (15:15+3:30)

Over the original plan:
Expected: 14:00
Invested: 14:10
Advanced: 19:00