December 21st, 2009
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
Tags: Encounter
Posted in Games | 1 Comment »
December 20th, 2009
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
Tags: Encounter
Posted in Games | 3 Comments »
December 16th, 2009
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.
Tags: Encounter
Posted in Games | No Comments »
December 15th, 2009
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.
Tags: Encounter
Posted in Games | No Comments »
October 25th, 2009
I finally decided to crack open FlashDevelop and work a bit more on Encounter. I fear that this project is very rapidly turning into a prototype rather than an engine… mostly due to my own laziness, but I need quick results to get over the hump in the middle of a self-maintained development project. It is definitely my objective to make this an engine where I can quickly turn out new encounters or tweak settings for existing ones though. But I’ve found (even in the real world), that it’s very hard to create abstract engines when you don’t have solid, concrete examples to work with.
For example:
What kind of abstract object would I use for a Circle and a Square? Well… a Shape! Great, I know what a shape is, that makes sense.
What kind of abstract object would I use for a Widget and a Foo? Uhh… who knows. Until I implement a Widget or a Foo and have some idea of what they are, I can’t really abstract concepts!
So anyway, the update. I added a few small things in this demo:
- Objectives: On the left side you can see your objectives. Their status changes when you meet or fail them.
- Ability Logic: As you can see, I’ve given the player insight (for debug purposes right now) to the states of the AI on the enemy. You can see when they change state and what he’s doing. This is the foundation for adding new abilities and AI to the enemies in Encounter.
- Cages: What are there cages here for? I guess you’ll have to wait until the first encounter is finished…
On with the show!
Abilities & Objectives
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October 15th, 2009
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
Tags: Encounter
Posted in Games | 1 Comment »
September 28th, 2009
This post is here to show you that my heart is still beating.
And to give you a little playground of bats and block warriors to play with while I code up the ability framework.
Randomness
Tags: Encounter, Random
Posted in Games | No Comments »
September 18th, 2009
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:
Bats are now directional instead of always facing southwest
Priests are playable. They heal any nearby friendly unit.
You can give warriors a command to attack a specific enemy by moving him directly onto an enemy.
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.
Priests: Single Target power heal.
Ranger: Bind/Snare shot.
Warrior: Shell or Taunt.
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!
Tags: Encounter
Posted in Games | 3 Comments »
September 16th, 2009
I’m renaming “Dungeon Crawler”. The new codename going forward will be “Encounter”. The focus of the game design are the mechanics of each encounter that you have to deal with, not crawling through a dungeon like in Diablo.
Also added a new page “Encounter Demo” to my blog for quick access to the latest demo. I still have to fix a minor issue with my current theme that cuts about 100 pixels off the right, but I’ll do that after work.
Tags: Encounter
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
September 14th, 2009
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!
Tags: Encounter
Posted in Games | 2 Comments »