.. in unlikely places.

Like in the car. When all you have next to you is a pile of mail. (Thanks ASPCA)

More details soon as I translate this into an actual game design doc and finish up the 'pre-alpha' version of the google app engine site, but here is the gist...

The game still uses the general "one vs. many" grid-based, turn-based model, but you-go-I-go seems a bit slow and I couldn't find a way to make it super-exciting. Instead, gameplay will be synchronous! Turns will resolve once both (more?) players have committed to their moves

Events are generated by the resulting placement of units on the grid. To keep things simple for now, the hero will automatically get an attack on any enemy that ends up in one of the 4 squares cardinally adjacent to him.

When units collide (hero vs horde on the same square) the enemy unit always* loses. Wiped off the board. However, this is now the only attack that the hero makes that turn. (Think of dealing with gollum jumping on your face as opposed to having a wide-open space to cut up two or three orcs)

In addition, in the above scenario the surrounding enemy units get an attack in on the hero. This should lead both players into a complex dance of guessing and second-guessing where each is going to end up, while each is trying to force the other into a disadvantaged situation.

Then you can add in all sorts of fun stuff like:

• different attack patterns (8 surrounding tiles, 2-depth surrounding tiles, etc)
• movement abilities (shove, pull, entangle, etc)
• interesting terrain (this 1 square provides bonus X but that means that I know you are going to move there which means I am going to move there so I can kill you but that means that you know that I'm going to move there so then you're NOT going to move there...)
• different enemy attack types/movement speeds (chess-based moves?)

On the right side of the ASPCA envelope I scribbled "that's the hook!" over a dog's head. So, that's the game. I think that's enough for a fun prototype. Now I just have to finish it.

Thanks for reading!

So this game is shaping up not in the way I intended (neptune's pride + nethack + wordfeud) but I am really enjoying the new concept. More on that later.

For now, here is google app engine in action:

 'carlosthedwarf' has created a new game
(playing as the evil horde*)

Other players can see available games and join them

'joeyblogs' is going up against our friend carlos.
Don't ask me what a Mangler is.

So... there you go. Progress! Just in case someone has this blog set up in a dusty corner of their RSS reader. If I had a nickle for every game development blog that stops updating less than half-way through the project I would be a THOUSANDAIRE!

Moral of the story: if you are lurking, say hi! 

* I'm thinking more these guys than these guys.

I ported my A* pathfinding code from my 7DRL 2011 entry, GnomeSquad into "get ye axe".

Now that I have the channel code down, passing stuff back and forth between javascript and python is (relatively) simple.

My current game is a great example of why I love nethack. I am playing a healer and I have had really horrible luck with pets dying. What I needed was something... more powerful. Something that could eat those pesky shopkeepers and cross-aligned priests so that I can convert their stupid altars. 

Luckily, I found a polymorph trap. Since I don't yet have magic resistance this was a lucky find (last time I literally stumbled into it and turned into a queen bee for about 600 turns). As I have yet to find a magic whistle, leash, or any way of controlling my pet, I constructed a rather useful fort of boulders...

Before

After

The greatest part? This was after only my first try.

Thanks to liberal debugging via Firefox and the firebug plug-in, I have working two-way communication from the browser to the app engine via the channel functionality. I have almost no idea how it works... but it does!

Mostly just for test purposes, I made the same map (in HTML5) click-able and it now dynamically updates (ajax style I guess?) the terrain type at the bottom of the page. Seems a bit slow but at this point I have not done any kind of optimization or testing so no surprises there.

Onwards!

Google app engine is fun.
JavaScript... not so much.

Here's what 'get ye axe' looks like so far. I'm trying to use the HTML5 canvas element for the front-end since I have no desire to learn flash.

Keep looking...

Not much to look at yet but actually further than I thought I would be at this point. The idea is that a lot of the path-finding and dungeon generation and field of view code that I made for AarrrRL and GnomeSquad will carry over quite easily to the new game. It's all in python!

Experimenting with google app engine, and using it to make a game.

The idea is to use this space as a devblog, and track the game through it's life-cycle. Judging from my previous gaming attempts, this life-cycle will be extremely short.

Here's the idea:

scribbly ye axe

It's sort of like the slow-form simple strategy (and backstabbing) of  Neptune's Pride...

Neptune's Pride

plus the dungeons and random potions and scrolls of nethack...

Nethack

plus multi-player tactical gameplay ala shining force, or x-com, or GnomeSquad?? (just throwing it out there!)

Shining Force 2

GnomeSquad

plus the asynchronous nature of mobile games like wordfeud...

Wordfeud

Plus... oh hey did I mention the backstabbing? Anyways, that's it for now. Hopefully this spot will show the game as it progresses from "back of a letter scribble" to "hey this is a cool game you can actually play". Wish me luck.