[Sokurah]

I've been splatting a few droplets details about my game on Twitter and around in other peoples posts, but now it's time to stop freeloading and make my own thread.

I'll be remaking the Spectrum game ALIEN (from Argus Press) as a PBeM multiplayer game.

The original looks like this in case you don't know;



It's described as a 'Tactical Strategy Game' on World of Spectrum, so that's a good place to start. However, in the original game you control 7 humans and play against 1 computer-controlled alien.

It took me a while to figure out how to make it work as a multiplayer game. The most obvious thing is to give 8 human players control over a character each, but I'd be bored if I only had 1 unit to control, so changes have to be made to make it a better game.

This version will allow up to 5 players > 3 humans and 2 aliens and each player will have 4 units. That'll bring the total amount of units at one time up to 20, so fully populated the game will have 12 humans and 8 aliens trying to kill each other, but for a more challenging game you could have 8/8 or even 4 humans against 8 aliens.

The game will take place on the Nostromo and gameplay will be spread over 6 levels > the upper, middle & lower decks, as well as a set of air ducks on each deck. Naturally you will be able to move between all levels when playing.


The map is close to the one in the original game. This is a picture of one of the decks as I designed it in Excel (at work ) before writing an editor (which is done). I had to widen a lot of corridors to accommodate more units, but the original layout is there and I'm showing you this so you can get an approximate idea of how large the entire map is (of which this is one sixth).

It looks very blocky right now, but graphically it'll have the same perspective as Laser Squad when it's finished.



...and hopefully it'll also play like Laser Squad/X-Com lite'ish when it's done. Time will tell.


I haven't been thinking too much about weapons yet, but there will be some traps and firearms in addition to only cattleprods and flamethrower as in the original movie.

I've been working on the fog-of-war the last couple of days and it works great (except that most of the rooms are so small it's completely overkill to do it that way). The "cone of visibility" will even flow through open doors but not through closed doors. I'll only use this for the humans though. For the aliens I'll do a circular fog-of-war that is not stopped by walls...just to give them an edge.

I also hope to have the aliens move twice as fast as the humans (probably just double AP), or on the ceiling but at normal speed...but harder to hit. They will hopefully also have ranged attacks using acid-spit. Lots of plans...I hope there's time enough.


No fancy graphics yet, but I'll post something more interresting when there is more to show...but right now it still doesn't look much different from the Excel picture.

[Tam Toucan]

That's a brilliant game to turn into PBeM. Nice one!

[deps]

This sounds very interesting, and I hope the new deadline gives you enough time to finish this!

[Happymonster]

Sounds great!

[Sokurah]

Random question;

In this game - humans are playing agains aliens (or the other way around), which means the game is partly co-op-play-partly kill'all-play.

If a unit of the opposing race is visible, how many stats should should be visible if the not-your-own-race-unit is selected?

...hitpoints visible if it's the same race as yourself, or....??

What do you think?

[betpet]

*excites greatly* 

[deps]

If a unit of the opposing race is visible, how many stats should should be visible if the not-your-own-race-unit is selected?

...hitpoints visible if it's the same race as yourself, or....??

What do you think?

Why are they selectable? Get your filthy mittens off my alien!
No stats should be visible. The unit could look damaged or something to reflect that it is hurt. Maybe even yet another visible clue to show that the unit is so close to be dead it's a wonder it's still standing.

It would make the game a bit more challenging if you ask me.

[betpet]

Why are they selectable? Get your filthy mittens off my alien!
No stats should be visible. The unit could look damaged or something to reflect that it is hurt. Maybe even yet another visible clue to show that the unit is so close to be dead it's a wonder it's still standing.

It would make the game a bit more challenging if you ask me.

Well, that could be the difference between easy, normal nad hard maybe?

[Sokurah]

Dilemma at Chez Sokurah.

I really should begin on the gameplay soon, but I can't decide on how/what/and in what order I want to send data to the players.

Until now the plan has been for the player to end his turn and then send a file with the results to the next player, but I really don't want to give the player the option to see the results of a battle so he can import it and try again if he doesn't like the outcome. Y'know - if you die by meeting someone when you go left, you try again but go right instead, and repeat until you survive.

One way of doing it would be to have the player send a file, with the results of a turn, back to the previous player, but that just doubles the amount of mails you have to send back and forth. ...and the client would need some sort of turn-player function too.

At this point I'm veering toward having player1 be the host, so he sends out the files. People play their turn and then return the resulting file to player1, who then runs the calculations for the whole turn and sends the updated files to the players. Just like VGA Planets work. That would also fix the problem with players dropping out of the game.

...there would still be a need for a way to view the battles though. I don't really know how to integrate that with the rest yet.


What solution have the rest of you settled on?

[Lobo]

Y'know - if you die by meeting someone when you go left, you try again but go right instead, and repeat until you survive.

Maybe set it up so when the player gets the data file, he/she can see it all but once the game starts there's no turning back or undo or playing for the second time. Basically you would not write any data but temporary store it in memory only until all the turns are done, then write it to file and quit the game after that. Then you can recheck the data if player attempts to play again (with his player, before other players have played in the cycle) and warn or quit the game. Unfortunately, unless you protect the file, everyone will see the contents and play it again and cheat or avoid this. I'm sorta hoping for a little of gentlemensky approaches from players, you know.

[Sokurah]

I'm sorta hoping for a little of gentlemensky approaches from players, you know.

Around here?...are you sure you're in the right place?...I've never seen a bigger bunch of cunts anywhere.

[betpet]

Around here?...are you sure you're in the right place?...I've never seen a bigger bunch of cunts anywhere.

That's us

[Sokurah]

That's us

Yay!

[Sokurah]

Okay, I've decided to use the VGA Planets model, where player1 is the host and players must send their file back to him after having made their moves.

I'm currently working the interface for loading gamefiles, so this way it'll also be possible to participate in several games at once. Something I hadn't planned, but...things change.

[d3v14n7]

Good luck with this.
I should check my RSS feeds more often.

[Sokurah]

Thanks...I need it.

To be quite honest not a day goes by that I don't think about abandoning this project before it eats more of my time than it has to. My heart's just not in it right now.

Still, I hope to work a bit on movement today, so let's see how that goes.

[betpet]

Keep up the good work.  I'm generally the same with projects.  I hit a point where I feel like saying 'fuck it!' and giving up.  then I do something and suddenly everything else starts to become easier because whatever I did was the main hurdle.

Anyway, if you did abandon, we'll know how big a undercarraige you are.  Well, we know anyway, but you will have confirmed it

[Ian]

Don't make me come round there!

I've never played a PBEM before and yours was going to be the first. THE FIRST.

Come on. You can do it

[RobF]

Do it, man! Wantses.

[betpet]

Hurry up about it too.  I want to be able to email death and defeat to all my foes.

Double time!

[Sokurah]

Well, thank god I don't have to deal with peer pressure. 

[Lobo]

No pressure man, take your time. *
Never played any of these email stuff games before neither, gonna see what the fuss is all about.







































*you have until monday

[SmileyMan]

On the "don't want to let people see the outcomes of their moves" issue, in the main compo thread I think the judges have agreed to be gentlemanly and honourable to save people from having to encrypt/obfuscate/check the save files.

So you don't need to worry about it, unless your game goes global and you want to release it properly.  But do that after the compo, m'kay?

[betpet]

I have no objections to a compo version and a 'final release' with the bells and whistles.  I'll be judging on functionality and how much fun it is rtaher than how easy it is to cheat.  I may make a note of it in my review but it won't affect the score.

[Sokurah]

Well....

I've made the decision to abandon this remake before I sink too much time into it.

Several reasons:

Lots of things work really well already, but the structure of the whole thing, and me not planning things out too well in the beginning and just charging ahead with it, has made the source quite messy already, and I'm not looking forward to keep adding to it.

I've already spent a lot of time on it, but I'm just not feelin' the love for this project and I'd rather work on something I really want to do, than to keep working on something I find it hard to believe I'll be satisfied with. I'm dreading having to work on this for another 6 weeks.

So for now it's abandoned. It pains me, but perhaps I'll resurrect it later. Who knows.

So this screenshot, which is how it looks right now, is the last image you're going to see.
(lots of temp graphics - the men are "borrowed" from X-Com and the heads are from Doom).

Sowwy.