Red Clover Blog

Well, I didn’t get all of the features I would like to have in the first game in the Encounter series, but it’s live in time for Kongregate’s Stride Long Lasting Game Challenge. If nothing else, this will give me some feedback to churn on for the next game.

Everyone check out the game here: Encounter: Endurance Trials on Kongregate
Make a Kongregate account, log in and give it an honest review!

A huge thanks out to Alex at NoDiceRequired for play-testing and providing great usability feedback.

Cheers to everyone following this blog… this is just the beginning!

- Josh

Check it out.  The contest end is approaching quickly.  I don’t have much time for bells and whistles, but I needed to add some things that make a flash game a flash game, like menus and things.

2 more nights of coding left!  (~8 hours).

If anyone that visits this, plays the demo and sees something obviously missing or horrible, please comment.  I’m going to wrap this one up with a few more encounters and ship it Monday night.

Enjoy!

Encounter: Endurance Trials Beta

So after day 1 and 4 hours of coding/designing, we have a small update.

New features:

• Ability: Priest Heal works.  Select the priest, click Heal, and select a Unit.
• Ability: Ranger Provoke psuedo-works.  Don’t expect it to do much, but you can throw some meat around!
• 2 new encounters: 3 bats & Super Bat. (horribly scaled)

Goals for tomorrow:

• Aggro/Target management logic for the enemy units.
• Finish Ranger’s Provoke ability.
• Give the Warrior an ability.
• Add a new Enemy with new AI.
• Add 2-3 new encounters.
• Fix the Ranger’s “East” walking animation.

Enjoy the demo!  Feedback is appreciated.

A contest has been posted on Kongregate to make a game that features the theme of “Endurance” in some way. I’ve been contemplating whether I should try to make something worth while for several weeks now and it’s down to the last 5 days. Like the procrastinator I am, I think I’m going to give it a shot… 5 days before the contest. If I fail to make the deadline, Red Clover will have gotten a swift kick in the rear to bust out some new development anyway, so it’s a win-win situation.

In any case. The “Endurance” theme will come from having to endure wave after wave of enemies, requiring the player to learn the unique mechanics of each enemy, or perish. I’m thinking somewhere on the order of 30-50 waves, but it depends how many assets and abilities and unique scenarios I can crank out in 5 days. It’s going to require a lot of tuning, but I might be able to crank something out.

So here’s a quick update with some visuals and a bit of an idea about the way the “Endurance Trial” will work. This prototype features 3 waves. Abilities are not fully implemented (even though the priest has a heal ability).

Give it a shot, let me know what you think. More to come in the next 5 days, so stay tuned.

Note: This time the flash widget is embedded right into the post, give it a minute or 2 to load.

Edit: Removed Flash object.  See the latest post for updates.

Here’s an update for the first time in 2 weeks! I know, crazy. I’ve been busy researching some AI techniques and planning out the first encounter for “project Encounter”, so here’s a quick WIP update showing a rough render of one of the first Bosses you’ll face.

Let’s just call him Forest Troll for now. He needs colored, scaled, a better body build, and a few more charms to be complete. Stay tuned! I am still here.

Forest Troll Boss

Finally! An update! I’ve been working on my asset creation pipeline, which I have in a pretty good shape. I can render entire sprite sheets with animation data to import into the engine in a matter of minutes now instead of hours, so I can create content faster.

A few new things in this update:

Playable Priests

Up next, I think I’m going to work on the ability framework, so you can do more than just move units around.

Aggro management is something I have to work on too… right now the first unit the bats see is the one they’ll continue to attack unless that unit goes out of range.

Oh, and I have some new encounters planned, and a way to teach new players about each of the classes and their abilities.

Stay tuned!

New unit in development… Priests!

Blessed by the gods, priests use their innate healing powers to revitalize nearby friendly units and smite enemy units with their holy fury.

Check back soon for some healing love…

Holy, holy, holy!

Tonight I played a bit more in my asset creation sandbox and added some eye candy to the first encounter.

Nothing new from a gameplay perspective, but I enjoy the flames, so I thought I’d share.

The game engine is coming along very nicely for Project:Dungeon Crawler (P:DC abbreviated from here on out). I am able to add AI Controllers to any unit and give them customized actions.

For now though… auto-attacking is working and the block-men along with the bats will attack if enemies approach them. So the encounter I am posting here is highly undertuned, but it’s merely a test of the engine and some fun for my followers.

Try to kill both bats. =)