[Comp G] roboBiome
So I'm gonna try to make a thing for this!
LATEST BUILD (web): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5607201/Shapes build/index.html
Hold A, S, or D, then click to place plants, herbivores, or carnivores.
My idea is in the fetal stage, and I'm not even sure if I'll have something that could be considered a "game" by the end of the month, but I'm gonna give it a go.
The idea: You are a godlike galactic superbeing who, in your spare millennia, dabbles in spawning lifeforms on barren planets and in playing/experimenting with the ecosystems that arise from their interactions. While cruising through the cosmos, you come across a very strange system - it appears to be the ruins of a once-great civilization. What's even stranger is that the various machines that remain have somehow managed to survive and replicate themselves, resulting in a complex ecosystem of robotic "lifeforms" (that all look suspiciously like brightly coloured Unity primitives).
This will be a puzzle game something like a cross between Conway's game of life and SpaceChem. In each level the player will be presented with a board filled with various pieces, each of which interacts with it's neighbours in some way. By rearranging these pieces and adding more to the board, some sort of goal will have to be achieved (wipe out one species? move all creatures to one side of the board? tunnel into the side of a mountain?).
I've never tried to make a puzzler before so wish me luck!
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POSTMORTEM:
What worked well?
Well I'm pretty happy with what I have so far, I guess. I have the basic plant/herbivore/carnivore behaviour going like I wanted it to.
What didn't work?
Well for one thing, massively underestimating the time i'd have for this. A month seems like a long time but I think I may actually have spent more time on my last ludum dare entry. One jamming session of a few hours is worth more than a bunch of short 1-to-2-hour sessions, maybe.
I also didn't have a concrete idea for how the game would work at the outset, in fact I still don't. So what I got was what I had planned for, a vague sandbox thingy.
What would you do different or change?
1. Have a clear goal or idea for how the game will play at the outset
2. Set aside decent chunks of time to focus on devving, instead of hoping that an hour or 2 every now and then after work will be enough.
LATEST BUILD (web): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5607201/Shapes build/index.html
Hold A, S, or D, then click to place plants, herbivores, or carnivores.
My idea is in the fetal stage, and I'm not even sure if I'll have something that could be considered a "game" by the end of the month, but I'm gonna give it a go.
The idea: You are a godlike galactic superbeing who, in your spare millennia, dabbles in spawning lifeforms on barren planets and in playing/experimenting with the ecosystems that arise from their interactions. While cruising through the cosmos, you come across a very strange system - it appears to be the ruins of a once-great civilization. What's even stranger is that the various machines that remain have somehow managed to survive and replicate themselves, resulting in a complex ecosystem of robotic "lifeforms" (that all look suspiciously like brightly coloured Unity primitives).
This will be a puzzle game something like a cross between Conway's game of life and SpaceChem. In each level the player will be presented with a board filled with various pieces, each of which interacts with it's neighbours in some way. By rearranging these pieces and adding more to the board, some sort of goal will have to be achieved (wipe out one species? move all creatures to one side of the board? tunnel into the side of a mountain?).
I've never tried to make a puzzler before so wish me luck!
----------------------
POSTMORTEM:
What worked well?
Well I'm pretty happy with what I have so far, I guess. I have the basic plant/herbivore/carnivore behaviour going like I wanted it to.
What didn't work?
Well for one thing, massively underestimating the time i'd have for this. A month seems like a long time but I think I may actually have spent more time on my last ludum dare entry. One jamming session of a few hours is worth more than a bunch of short 1-to-2-hour sessions, maybe.
I also didn't have a concrete idea for how the game would work at the outset, in fact I still don't. So what I got was what I had planned for, a vague sandbox thingy.
What would you do different or change?
1. Have a clear goal or idea for how the game will play at the outset
2. Set aside decent chunks of time to focus on devving, instead of hoping that an hour or 2 every now and then after work will be enough.
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Comments
But I have been working on this, so I thought I'd share what I have before putting in a few more hours today.
My idea has changed from a puzzler to more of a city builder, where you have to look after your ecosystem and help it flourish in terms of efficiency and biodiversity. The ecosystem consists of a bunch of different organisms that have different behaviours and different energy input/outputs.
So by placing/moving/killing off organisms, your goal will be to create a balanced ecosystem with lots of different organisms living in it.
The only resource is energy, plants create energy and store it, this energy transfers to herbivores, then to carnivores, etc.
So what I have is the moment is 1 plant type (green spheres), 1 herbivore type (blue cubes) and 1 carnivore type (red cubes). You can place more of them on the map by holding down A, S, or D and clicking. There are no goals or lose conditions, it's just a sandbox so far. The energy stored in each organism is shown by their size (radius for spheres and thickness for cubes) and they behave differently depending on their surroundings and energy levels.
Give it a go and let me know what you think!
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5607201/Shapes build/index.html
Next steps:
- make the "idle" behaviours more interesting than simply standing still
- adding more organism types (I'm thinking a grass type plant that doesn't hinder movement, and a horrible apex predator that feeds on anything, herbivores, carnivores, even its own kind)
- adding a UI showing resources and available organisms
Future ideas:
- symbiosis between species, mutualism, parasitism, all that stuff we learned about in biology class
- carcasses and decomposition, so that energy is fed back to plants and that scavengers can be introduced.
Next up, terrain types. Grass, which will be another plant type eaten by a different herbivore, and water, which will affect plant growth.
So unfortunately what's up is going to be my final build.
It's not close to finished, in fact it's not even a game. It's just an interesting sandbox/simulator that models environments consisting of plants, herbivores, and carnivores.
It might be the seeds of a future game :) it's a web build so check it out! I'd welcome any comments.
You'd have to code that in still...