F: Wazoo Tanks

Boysano

So I did this in 1/2 a day, and not sure I will have time to complete this in time. (yeah my wife is like 39-40 weeks pregnant, so anything can happen right now)

I thought I'd just post it in any case, to see if you can help me with ideas on how to make an actual game out of this?

I'm thinking some kinda local 2 player where you have to throw each other with building blocks, or build together (may grappling hooks also).. kinda arena puzzle tank game. Either completely block each other, or work together on some common goal.

Oh here are the files:
DEMO
and
SOURCE
for
Platform:
Game Maker Studio

I'm kinda hoping I can make a small html5 game with this, otherwise I cannot justify working further on it.

Boysano

EvanGreenwood

Reverse scorched earth might be an interesting idea (that seems to be what you're describing). Something like a dirt gun in Scorched Earth being turned into a game in itself.

At the moment the red and green blocks don't really interact with the tanks much. I like that the ground is wobbly, and the tanks have those purple circles on suspension that allow them to drive over rough surfaces... but even when shooting out a ton of red blocks it didn't build the terrain much. The green blocks especially don't stick around.

Maybe experiment with the blocks becoming more of a permanent terrain feature, and see if strategic building strategies arrise?

Boysano

@BlackShipsFilltheSky thanks, yeah something like that.

I cannot believe I never played or knew of Scorched Earth as a kid in the 80ties, we we played the cr*p out of the Qbasic Gorillas game

EvanGreenwood

@Boysano Isn't that the same game in which Rami Ismail (of Vlambeer) first experimented programming (as a kid) and was influential in him becoming a game developer?

dislekcia

BlackShipsFilltheSky said:

@Boysano Isn't that the same game in which Rami Ismail (of Vlambeer) first experimented programming (as a kid) and was influential in him becoming a game developer?

Yup.

Boysano

Indeed it is. We also use to edit some of that code a bit, just the numbers etc. Me and my brother.

But even today still I do not yet know how to do destructible terrain, like here and in worms 2d...
If anyone has an example in GMS of destructible terrain I'd like to see it.

Gazza_N

The slightly wonky physics could make for a lot of hilarity here. I like the tower-building idea, especially if the wibbly physics of the tanks and bricks themselves are what you're fighting against to keep the thing intact. Extra fun if you add earthquake bombs or something to the mix.

Also, it may not be the best implementation, but I wrote an experimental Worms-style destructible terrain system in GM7 a few years ago. I'm not promising it's GOOD, and I never turned it into a full game, but you can get the old GMK file here to see how I went about it. It seems to import fine: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59235601/DeformTerrainPlatformer.gmk

Boysano

Yeah apparently I made a grave mistake to use joints (fixed) instead of wheels for uhm wheels. noob.
Will share updates on the code, if we make it.

Ooh thank you for the example, downloading now.

Gazza_N

You're welcome. :) I don't know what changes have been made in GMS since I wrote that example, so it may be hellishly slow and leaky. What it *will* do is show you how I used surfaces and stuff to mod the terrain in runtime. Adjust as needed. :P

Boysano

Yeah just had to edit one script, where you copy or create the terrain sprite from the surface.
I thought this would be the way to approach it, unfortunately as you mention it is quite slow when it processes the new collision terrain sprite from the temp surface. Still it is a good example, and it works as a starting point. Thank you.