Surolace - Survival role playing space game

I've been having a lot of fun with Construct 2, I've read a few of the other Works in Progress topics and decided to create a new one, properly.

Introducing Surolace, by Roast Beast Games (me)

This is a continuation of the thread here: my-first-go-at-a-touch-friendly-game-having-fun_t115891 with the major change being the thread title, please allow the other to drift off into history.

Description

The Survival Role Playing Space Game

Upgrade your ship, balance power between systems, deploy your crew, and use an assortment of weaponry to blast through your enemies. The Galaxies resources have been depleted and its inhabitants living in economic turmoil. Space pirates, rebels, and warring nations have populated much of what inhabitable areas are left.

There is talk of a long lost warp gate on the other side of the galaxy. A goldilocks cluster of earth like planets for light years. Will you find this lost beacon and save all of life in the known galaxy, and what will you find on the other side?

Planned Features

Cross platform play. Touch and mouse friendly controls on any platform with a modern web browser.

Randomly generated map of space sectors full of friends, foes, and environmental hazards

High stakes survival. No continues or retries.

Outfit your ship with different systems that effect game play, such as cloak, UAVs, and Med Bays

Moral choices and optional quests that have both good and bad outcomes

Unlock new ships by completing the game or completing quests

Beams, Lasers, Missles, Shields, Ion Storms, Meteor belts and more in glorious 720p!

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Current Status: Early development

Current Build: 1.0.0.3a (Refresh your browser if an old version is stuck in your cache)

Link to play online:

http://surolace.com/play

Link to android apk

http://surolace.com/play/surolace.apk

I plan on keeping access to the game open during the early development stages. Onces it gets to a point where I'm focused primarily on content I hope to begin an early access program via kickstarter. The goal is to write hundreds of random scripted events in a dynamic galaxy that provides 4-5 hours per play through. The system and game play will draw heavily from other space tactical and strategy games like Star Force Gemini, Sins of a solar Empire, and Faster Than Light

Posts that follow will contain updates on the games progress for those interested in following along in this journey of game development.

The end of the weekend is here, and I have to remember I have a job that actually pays I need to program for too. This is a pretty big push. I spent the better part of last week futzing around with the graphics for the general dialog system, and spent almost the entire weekend implementing a new envisioning of how it works underneath. I plan on writing literally hundreds of dynamic scripted events, so it's important that I get this right.

The major fruits of my labor can be summed up in the following snippet of code. This dictionary based snippet allows me to script complex dialog trees with branching outcomes and ingame reactions. Not shown is the code that makes it work that I almost lost my hair writing.

http://i.imgur.com/060DZwk.jpg

Which I'll mention, I bought the excellent C2 Data editor. This thing is so flexible and powerful you should probably just buy a copy the same time you download construct if you are going to need any type of complex data structures of text. Here is a screenshot of that. I would not have been able to build this dialog system if not for the data editor:

http://i.imgur.com/TQtVNK5.jpg

All this talk of dialogs, here is a screenshot of what the new Dialogs look like. I struggle with graphic design. I am capable and can recreate things, but I'm not a very good artist. It is possible that I may have a graphic designer have a touch through before the project is over. Notice the commlink static. Projections icons and info will soon go there.

http://i.imgur.com/vYlD5uA.png

And of course, the actual dialog system features!!! As usual, I used the moon as the test subject, as a nice close starting area.

• Version 1.0.0.3a

• Completely Reworked Dialog system

• Intro Dialog gives game over view, shows multi step dialog capability

• Moon:

-- Plunder moon spawns enemies and makes planet vulnerable to plunder

-- Plunder moon is no longer commlinkable after being plundered

-- Scout the planet for example of dialog branching

-- Plunder the scouted planet for an example of redirecting the dialog tree

Phew! Lots of work, might not seem like much, but I'm happy with the progress the game is making.

Your feedback is appreciated!!

Looks very good! Topic is very nicely put together. I will definitely follow your progress.

Thanks Neverk!

I'm hoping by blogging the development I can:

Get people to do preliminary testing on a variety of devices

Catch bugs or poorly crafted features early

and most important, stay the course. It's crazy to think that's already 4 weeks worth of work, and sometimes its hard to stay dedicated to it. If not for construct making programming easier I wouldn't have the patience to spend so much time doing graphics (my weak area). I've got a good feeling about this one. Everything planned is original but based on successful game formulas. *fingers crossed*

I'd love to be able to take a month off work and just crank this thing out. One can dream.

So, pretty big push tonight, even though I can't seem to get the old version out of my browser cache (!!!)

New in 1.0.0.4a (version is in lower left on title screen)

• Updated graphic for laser
• First enemy ai type- enemies from plundering the moon now follow you
• Demo enemies can be killed with 8 laser shots
• Aiming reticules tweaked
• Explosions and sounds!
• Music reverts to whatever was playing before after enemy encounters
• commlink unavailable with enemies present
• super sweet space debris that gets kicked out when baddies explode
• Fixed a bug where reticules weren't pinning to enemies properly

Overall I'm really happy with all of this progress in roughly one evening+night. I've been buying a lot of sound and graphic sources to make sure I'm keeping the quality up. I actually spent a good deal of time in audacity shaping the explosion and laser hit sounds to fit better with my vision. I ended up using the bullet behavior on enemies so I could take advantage of solid objects (preventing them from over lapping).

I'm very happy with the framework I've been building myself, and really look forward to when I'll be able to focus on content.

Weapons system is maybe 5-10% done

enemies 5-10% done

Rooms/Crew/Energy system 0% done

menus/UI/stores 0% done

So what is done? I'd say the dialog system is like 80% done. If I keep at this pace I'll be done in a few months time and will have grown a significantly longer beard!

I commissioned an artist to do some artwork for alien profiles, should be cool! Eventually I'll need to redo a logo as well.

Updates/play links at the normal place, feedback always appreciated!

I seriously can not get it unstuck from my cache in chrome OR IE even though the correct files are on the server.... >_<

C2 caches too hard, how do I get it to refresh to the latest version? I am using the version system in C2

Edit, tried from a remote PC, the files must not have uploaded correctly. the Android apk works though!

The first piece of commissioned artwork! yay! This is the first of 4-5 races, the bust will show in the commlink dialog when interacting with that race.

(attachment removed it was ridiculously large)

HAVE I EVER MENTIONED I LOVE CONSTRUCT?

Just implemented the piece of art, and since I'm having upload troubles took some screenshots!

skelooth

Had a go on my android tablet and am looking forward to seeing this game develop

Good work so far

Thank you for the feedback — !

I *finally* got build 1.0.0.5a live on the web at http://surolace.com/play

You might have to do a few voodoo chants to get chrome to clear the cache, but it should feature the new artwork in the commlink when plundering the planet, debris, etc. I added a sweet distortion effect to the new art!

If anyone runs this on a phone, is the text large enough?

Rant time, again, I hope it's acceptable that I'm blogging on this forum.

Keeping excitement and focus on game projects is difficult for me. So far C2 has been mitigating that but not entirely.

I'm still waiting on artwork for the profiles of each race, there will be lizard, cat, insect, and human races (lizard/centauri is what's in build 1.0.0.5a)

I need to rework my debris code to be UID and family based instead of location based. You WILL be able to blow up that moon, and I WILL make it look awesome. That is a very large goal, and brings me much closer to one of my milestones.

Theoretical milestones:

"The moon" - The moon will represent a full "turn" or event and serve as template to other events that will be randomly generated across maps. The milestone is follows (and is almost complete)

• Branching dialog 90% done
• Event system (spawning enemies, giving/taking resources and items, setting quest variables) 70% done
• Dialog art (races, icons etc) 70% done
• Random dialog/event assignment to interactable objects on map load if ungenerated. 0% but easy
• modal dialogs, and yes no dialogs 30% done
• make sure "persistent layout" works as I'm hoping.

Radar is another milestone that I may tackle soon, it's 0% done (I haven't even started)

• ability to turn it off
• as power in radar room grows, so does range
• sensors submodule to see info of enemy ships
• as power in radar room grows, so does range on over view star map
• in sector radar is represented by little nubbies on the edge of the screen with a descriptive icon. They fade as you are further away.

Weapons system:

• needs to be able to set each turret to a specific target and/or room, will need lots of rework 10% done
• All of the stats need to be decided on permanently 50% done
• Build production quality turrent images and ammo etc 10% done

Dialog system:

• Write my ass off

oi vey, I'm sure there are many other things. I had this great idea that after the credits roll it will begin an endless waves mode of increasingly challenging enemies until you die. I don't want to spoil what I have in store for the ending, but this will tie in to the fact that all factions want control of what you've discovered and has its roots in the creation of the universe.

I'm hoping and wishing I'll be able to lock myself in my basement this weekend and do nothing but this.

Eventually I'd like to get interns to do my community management and web dev, but we'll see. I have the money put aside, but I don't think I'm at all far enough along.

It is amazing how much time game development can suck away <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

I rewrote parts of the dialog system *again*, now buttons attached to a blurb of text can call an infinite number of functions, and all of the function names and paramaters can be set right in the c2 data editor in an easy to do way. I've basically set my self up to create a "choose your own adventure" book easily.

I added toasters! Originally I was going to display information like this in the commlink, but that is not flexible enough. By using toasters can display important information at anytime (when an enemy dies for example or an item is received).

The moon now blows up! I reworked a lot of the debris code as well so that I can blow up a variety of objects, as well as cleaned up a lot of previous code that I had written before understanding how picking worked.

I've learned a LOT about C2 in these past few weeks. As long as you work the way C2 wants you too it is extremely flexible. I can't wait to see what I accomplish tomorrow.

No push tonight, I thought it would be fun to just do a video

As always, feedback is appreciated!

Gave it a try on my Sony Z 1 this morning. Performance is great. Absolutely no lags.

The texts are pretty tiny, but okay for a hawkeye like me:-D

Thanks Beaverlicious !

I've read 16px seems to be the minimum font size, but It's a little curious to me because I believe Bootstrap (web framework) defaults to 14px and is perfectly legible on mobile.

I'm still waiting on artwork before I redo my title screens and use the space interface assets. I'm envisioning a cool paralax effect between the textures as the view slides to different menu screens. My fiverr artist has one more day to produce! But since he's a fiverr artist and I have no idea what he's going to hand me, I can't start till I know

The three day weekend comes to a close and I've done about as much as I'll be able to do for now.

I've done a lot of behind the scenes type work figuring out how to best leverage arrays and dictionaries as datastructures. I've got a comfortable flow of hanging on to UIDs now. Clearly, UIDs are absolutely vital when doing anything in construct2.

I've added hull and shield bars (shield bar not yet visible, shields not implemented yet)

I've added "fountain text" that pops up on weapon impacts

I've added the beginnings of the sensors subsystem that allows you to choose enemies, target rooms, etc. so far all that you can see are two buttons that pop up in the top right. Eventually these will be used to go to submenus of each ships room list and full stats.

It took a good bit of thought to figure out how to move forward concerning storing data but I eventually decided to just sticking a dictionary of dictionaries onto every NPC. I'm going to use some tricks with tokens choose() lists to make sure I can flesh all the data out that I need right in C2.

So, here's a video [:47]

My little project is up to 390 events broken up into 18 event sheets!