Concept: Will code for food

I'm beginning to see why people build tower defence games. Setting up 1 side to move towards another is relatively easy. Implimenting code OOP so that it can be reused for the opposing side tricker.

Basing the mechanics of real life weapons stats the weapons range is too far. Currenly I'm thinking of cutting drones (infantry) out, or cutting units off above destroyer.

Droners - Maybe Unit (infantry)
5.62- 7.62mm (1.8K range), grenades, rpg
Corvette - Smallest unit (akin to humvee)
12mm (2.5K range), Grenades, RPG
Frigate - Medium unit (akin to APC)
25mm (3-7K range), 12mm, TOW
Destroyer - Heavy unit (akin to Tank)
120mm (4-8K range), 2x 12mm,
Cruiser - Capital ship (akin to Frigate)
Long Range Missiles (120K range), 155mm (30k range), 12mm
Battleship - Capital ship (akin to destroyer)
Cruise Missiles (2.5 M range), 300mm, 120mm

In the set up of having each ship have a distinct feel, anything above Destroyer is massively over powered. Its difficult to see how I can rescale to include Drones, without making destroyers seem like mobile artillery. I would have to include some level of stealth sneekiness to smaller units to account for thier size so they stand a chance. Saying that in games like flashpoint anything beyond 1K range is Artillery style combat.

Cover wise, I can't be bothered adding another level of code for environmentals. Units will have shields where they can effectively build thier own cover. Under fire thier shields will degrade and can be mitigated by artillery weapons.

With the keyboard setup, the idea at least is that the game can be more point and click. You can maybe blind fire artillery, focus fire on units.

I kind of want units to have good AI, but that the they are restricted by terms of cost. IE, a unit unless ordered to, will fire the most economical weapon. Although my agressive/defensive setup idea may ease the micro.

That said the timer intercept idea, looks good. Obivious issues, like, if a good and bad unit are spawned at the same time, the game may miss it, if I code the AI too well it may get intercepts up the wazzu. Have to set up a system which tracks if something changes, who immediately is effected it should be doable. Depending how wide I make the map, there could be multiple front lines, so I will keep to 3 lanes.

Trash can - lol I started this idea in 2008
Time based, Isometric game structure - I may return to this but it feels less fluid.
Large Scale map - I'm going to limit to one campaign map.
Save states - I may have to do this or may influence me toning the scope down so I don't have to.
Scoreboard - funny how some say this has to be done, can't remember many that have
Drones - I think corvettes can replace them easily and remove 1 layer of weapons. I can just make a light corvette unit which is akin to infantry feel.
Captial Ships - I'll probably use these more as plot devices than playable units.

Concept: Fleet Commander I (V0.1.3)

After making progress I took some down time to play around with a splash / campaign map. Players will navigate this Map (and a simular Galaxy Map maybe) to move around. The scrolling isometric combat zones are the real time fun part. But all the while maintaining a fluid feel, ie you can zipp around the campaign in your ship and choose which battles you take, with maybe critical ones and extra bonus ones like Mass Effect.


I've jury rigged the combat environment into Isometric, improved coding elements. I got a bunch of hot keys working and a make shift timer. I think I may have to scrap the onEnterFrame idea shifting back to tweens. I aint looked into zoom control and restricting the Isomap movement. I suspect I may need another container MC.

I'll start soon rebuilding the combat engine. This version is a whole bunch of different elements I've had in different files I'm shoving all into one.

Some "working" artwork from itchystudios. He's a professional artist who has like 2 heavily active art blogs one where he keeps saying he's going to make a 'bazzilion' games.

I'm taking inspiration from him and ben olding.

Game Concept

So this may become the twitter account for my game design. Although I'm interested in making a xcom inspired game, animating and structuring ground environs is a nightmare. So the idea is to convert it into a space ship game. With blank space as a background I maybe able to go upto 50x50 tiles without melting the average processor. (fully zoomed out would dramatically loose detail though)

Current Version: 0.0.1.4

Interface. Striped down concept to make the game feel simpler.
Enabled OOP character movement. Detects edge/character is in the way.
World Zoom Control. (Maybe a fully adjustable zoom)
Keyboard Movement controls. ( convert to plane up down movement)
Overview Map. Tracks characters, will show factions possibly weapons range
Combat Engine: Some sort of established RPG engine, I think I can then fluff it with extra detail which has no real mechanic.
Movement: May enable more complex movement, but thinking fast speeds should be straight line affairs.
Points: I'm thinking there will be combat points, then logistic points. IE you could win a battle but loose a war. Basic kill ratio.

Glitches to look out for: I intend to have fog of war so will have to enable a extra bit of code so if you move to an occupied square you didn't know an enemy was in, you would stop before it and suffer a suprise attack.

Known Bugs: zdepth sorting isn't enabled. When a character is clicked to move other characters go translucant to hide the glitch. Give zdepth sorting still has glitches and needs on enterframe I think its reasonable standby.