I made a lot of Tiny Tyranny progress this weekend. The faction management code is almost complete, meaning that the game can actually provide a challenge now, as well as presenting some interesting choices for when and who you choose to pillage. One design problem came up during this: what’s to stop the player from just sitting around and doing nothing?
The solution to this is to add factions like the bandits shown above. These guys represent groups that think you’re the weak link. Their hostility counter grows each turn whether you attack them or not, causing them to attack every so often.
I also fixed up the resource code, so now it’s possible to gather wood, stone, gold, gems, food, and corpses. I also added wooden walls and fixed the costs of the structures that I have so far.
In short you can build your kingdom, but you still have no chance of survival.
So that’s the next step. I think the main thing is adding the weapons and inventories. Once ranged weapons are added to the game it will be a lot easier to defend yourself. I want to do weapons in a really solid, data-driven way, so it can handle melee weapons, ranged weapons, and spells. Also it needs to be moddable so people can add in new stuff.
One more thing I did this week was change the way the water tile looks, which makes me incredibly happy for reasons unknown.
In Tiny Tyranny, one of my goals is to cultivate attachment between players and their characters. One way to do this is to individualize the characters by providing names for them. This helps elevate them from throwaway troops to something memorable. (Letting players name characters themselves can help generate this effect too – see XCOM).
Another goal for Tiny Tyranny is to let players mod all aspects of it. This includes letting modders add new characters, monsters, places, and factions. Therefore, the name generators need to be moddable too.
I just finished coding the way data driven name generators work in Tiny Tyranny.
After the jump, my code and sample name generator file for human male fighter characters, like the lovely human captain (shown above) . Read the rest of this entry »
This game is not enjoyable at this stage. If you decide to try it out, please let me know if it crashes or you get any bugs along those lines. To run it, all you have to do is extract the zip and then run tinyTyranny.exe located in the src folder.
Soon I’ll decide what the goals are for the next version, which I’ll release on September 19th.
Wow. It’s been a long time since I last posted here. I’ve been working on a couple of games lately, but most recently I’ve been working on a concept called Tiny Tyranny. Tiny Tyranny is a strategy game that combines city building, tower defense, and RPG elements. Basically you create a tyrant and then build up your Tyranny: pillaging factions for supplies, managing your followers, and defending yourself.
So far I’ve completed the basic game loop. Starting a game, scouting, attack factions, defending yourself, but nothing else though. Also, the map editor is done. I plan on releasing this basic 0.1 version tomorrow. I’ve created a list of goals that I want to address before version 1.0. I plan on releasing a new version every month until all of the goals are complete.
Check in tomorrow for version 0.1 of Tiny Tyranny.
You can now get the lite version of Run Forever! Jumpfinity! for the great price of free. Check it out!
Also, if you don’t have an iPhone, no worries:
Play Run! Jump! Forever! on your Windows PC. Just extract the zip and double click on runJumpForever.exe! Playing is easy. Start a game with enter, arrow keys move, x runs, and z jumps!
Woody Allen: My level of confidence is always high, but it’s unmerited confidence. It’s unearned confidence. I never do any homework whatsoever. I don’t even know in the morning sometimes what scene I’m going to be shooting later that day. I’ve given it no attention, no thought. I just go to the set, and they give me the stuff that I’m going to shoot, and then I start to look around and figure out what to do and how to do it. So I feel complete confidence, but that doesn’t mean that I should. I really do kind of flounder around. I’m not exactly sure what I want-I know more what I don’t want. I know if somebody performs badly or if something is going to be too heavy-handed or stupid. But what I really want out of the thing, I find out as we go. Sometimes the actor does something and I think, “Hey, that’s great. That’s much different than I envisioned-and much better. This is a good way to go.”
Sometimes I think game design is like this – especially when its a one-person project. Make something and let yourself be surprised at what you get. And this quote rules:
Woody Allen: There is an inexplicable delight in the act of creating. In the sense that if a guy paints a canvas… You know, I’ve done this sometimes where I’ve gone and bought a lot of paints and just for the fun of it had an orgy of painting. I mean, I can’t paint at all.
The solution to this is to add factions like the bandits shown above. These guys represent groups that think you’re the weak link. Their hostility counter grows each turn whether you attack them or not, causing them to attack every so often.
