[WIP] Sector I.C.E.

quintond

You are I.C.E. (Intrusion Counter-measure Entity) and your only job is to keep your sector of the NET clear of Hacker Entities. Your sector is under attack and you will need to use all your skills to keep them away. You have limited storage and if it gets completely corrupted, that area of your sector will become corrupted, once your entire sector is corrupted you will cease to exist and you would have failed at your only reason for existing.

Sector I.C.E. is a Twin Stick Shooter that has one goal, keep your sector clear for as long as you can and rack up as many bytes in Hacker Entities as you can ... fail and your I.C.E. will be replaced by someone else's.

Please Note: A video and playable version will be posted shortly.

Edit: Changed logo. Added screenshot of the main menu.

quintond

So the first play test of the mechanics are up ... there are some tweaks that need to be made ... but I am getting there.



Things to change:

• The sounds are terrible and definitely need to be changed.
  
• The red enemy blocks have some collision issues and tend to bunch up.
  

Things to add:

• Pause game menu.
  
• End game key.
  
• When dying change to the sector colour to red..
  
• Death game menu.
  
• Change colour of enemies as they get shot.
  
• Add some type of particle effect when the enemies are destroyed.
  
• Add a power-up that clears the sector immediately.
  
• Add a special enemy that moves faster and destroys your ICE instantly.
  

Not sure where I am heading with the game yet and not sure whether it will make the final cut for submitting, but I will play it by ear.

I am also still debating the particles, if there is time I will probably change these ... but for now I am keeping them there as a reminder of what I still need to do.

The influx of hacker entities currently increases as the game progresses, so eventually you will be overwhelmed ... it is all up to how many you can take down with you before you are.

karl182

This looks cool! :)
I love games like this.
I know it's very early in development but here are some thoughts.
-You should maybe try having the camera a little bit further away, to allow you to plan your movement more. This may add some more strategy to the movement.
-I would love some more guns and different powerups.
-Could try different stages, some with some obstacles to help/hinder the player.
-I like the Corruption/Bytes titles for health and score.

Well done so far!

Karl

quintond

Thanks @karl182

Some of the ideas I have had with regards to different levels was to split your sector in to 9 areas. When you die the first time ... that sector becomes corrupted and can't be entered in to. I will either make the sector red and add a blocking volume or just put a huge corrupt sector block in its place. Not sure yet ... busy toying with ideas when I get time. Basically you can reboot 8 times, but each time you will have less of a sector to protect and the number of hacker entities does not decline.

I will move the camera a bit further back, see how that works. Thanks for the tip.

As for different weapons, I was thinking of adding an alternate weapon that you can use to push the Hacker Entities away from you, just trying to tie the different weapons in to the game. Maybe call them offensive and defensive program upgrades or something. I will see what I can come up with.

I didn't have much more time this weekend due to other commitments, but I will make some of these changes and post an updated video of them in place.

BTW @karl182 ... feel free to throw some sounds my way ... heheheheeh ... thanks for the feedback, I will action them and see how they pan out.

karl182

I like the idea!
I like that you are making all the aspects fit into your concept, this puts a nice spin on the standard idea of lives etc.
Cool man keep it up!

haha I will see what I can do when I have some time for sounds! :)
Have a good day!

Karl

roguecode

I kind of like the idea of your weapon pushing you back a bit each shot.

quintond

roguecode said:

I kind of like the idea of your weapon pushing you back a bit each shot.

Now that adds an interesting strategy aspect ... cos it means you would have to be careful how you use the weapon so as not to get pushed in to other Hacker Entities or a corner.

Dammit ... now I wish I worked for myself full time. 8-{

roguecode

Exactly.

Another idea: what if the floor was a circuit board, something along the lines of http://www.psdgraphics.com/file/circuit-board-background.jpg but simpler (less lines). And then glowing blobs flow along the lines. Maybe they could be powerups, and you need to try catch them while avoiding enemies, or they could be a "voltage spike" and if it hits you then you get damaged.

quintond

roguecode said:

Another idea: what if the floor was a circuit board, something along the lines of http://www.psdgraphics.com/file/circuit-board-background.jpg but simpler (less lines). And then glowing blobs flow along the lines. Maybe they could be powerups, and you need to try catch them while avoiding enemies, or they could be a "voltage spike" and if it hits you then you get damaged.

Ooooooooooooo ... could be a bit of both ... the circles (blobs) could spawn points for power-ups. Once they spawn, a voltage spike is sent down the connected line and if it gets to the power-up before you do, it is erased and the spawn timer kicks in. You can also take damage if you are caught by them.

I might simplify it a little and not have too many circles (blobs) and connected lines ... maybe one in each area (the nine seperate areas I mentioned earlier) and see how that works.

Thanks @roguecode ... these are some cool ideas. 8-}

skinklizzard

while we're talking circuit boards, how do you feel about shaders, red enemies rendered with a glitch like shader could be cool. also could have them turn blue and 'beam' or dissolve into the circuit board on death to show the threat has been cleared.
this is all visual because everything I wanted to say regarding gameplay has been covered

quintond

@skinklizzard: I was going to start toying with shaders of the enemies eventually. Currently I just have them going a darker shade of red after each hit and then just disappearing when they are erased from your sector.

I have found that this is not visually stimulating and I definitely need to play with some shaders. I am thinking of adding like a ripple effect to the red cubes when they are hit and also making the blocks kind of more Tron like along the edges ... Tron (the original) was kind of my inspiration here.

Thanks for the ideas ... I will definitely look in to that and see what I can do. 8-}

quintond

So I have made a few changes and this is the latest video where I am testing some of these changes.

Firstly as @karl182 suggested, I have moved the camera further back and you can see more of the Hacker Entities now.

I have now added the 9 different areas in the sector and all elements now have a Tron style material applied to them. Pay attention as to when the Hacker Entities or you take damage ... watch what happens to the materials.

The player has now also been changed to a block as it worked much better with the new materials.



Some items that have changed but are not in the video:

• The damage indicator for the player is now also a circuit board design.
  
• The font used throughout the game has changed.
  
• Because the font is changing, I have changed the main logo and this will be revealed in the next video.
  
• The floor beneath your sector is now a circuit board design and if there is time I will tie some visual cue to incoming data (see below) to this element in the game.
  

Some ideas that I am going to add:

Each area of your sector will now have a logic gate installed at the periphery of your sector. The logic gate will let data (in the form of a energy pulse) enter your sector. If the energy pulse hits a hacker entity, it will do triple damage and dissipate.

If two energy pulses collide, they will generate a data buffer overrun and destroy any entities (excluding you) in the area. This will be randomised and if you lose an area of your sector, you will lose the ability to leverage this benefit.

This kind of gives reason to your existence and why your sector is important and you need to survive.

I might also use these logic gates to allow the creation of power-ups that you can pick up and use to clear your sector and give you a breather. I am still toying with this and will see what progress I can make.


My next steps are to finalise the GUI and get that logic working 100%. I then want to create the reboot (lives) logic and also the logic that makes you lose sectors. Finally I will tie in the logic gates functionality and see where that takes me.


If there is time, I want to create a high score tracker and allow players to enter their names like Old School Arcade machines. 8-}


Thanks to @karl182, @roguecode, and @skinklizzard ... your ideas have pushed me in some new directions and I have kept a list of all your ideas. I am going to add as many as I can as long as they fit in with the game concept and story ... if they don't fit in, I will tweak them to make them fit in.

roguecode

quintond said:

If two energy pulses collide, they will generate a data buffer overrun and destroy any entities (excluding you) in the area.

Science!

Looking good, nice changes. The player works much better as a cube. The sphere looked a bit awkward.

konman

Look at you, Hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

I love the tron look and feel. Shaping up nicely!

quintond

@konman: Thanks.

I love the quote ... where is it from?

roguecode

It is from System Shock.

Tangent:
When that game came out, PCF magazine had the demo on the cover disk. Back then I was young and so I used the shared family computer. I was allowed to put all my stuff into exactly one "Matt" folder. I selected that folder in the System Shock install and it prompted along the lines of "this folder isn't empty, would you like to clear it before installing", which I blindly hit yes to. Seconds later I realized and restarted the PC, but not before it wiped out most of my stuff.
For ages after that I thought it wasn't really a game, and that it was a dodgy program. It was even called System Shock!

quintond

I have decided to withdraw my entry from the Game Jam.

dammit

quintond said:

I have decided to withdraw my entry from the Game Jam.

I really don't understand why?