The game is finished and will be published the 20th of March if everything goes according to plan!
Cheers! The game is now "finished" and playable. It looks like a bunch of white squares on a black background, but the system is 100% complete. It's a massive game compared to the previous two. In two weeks, I won't have any more time to work on this game. Therefore, I'll try to finish it as soon as possible. I now have to integrate the graphic interface. Hopefully everything will Cheers!
The picture above will be the background of one of the ten shops.
I almost finished programming the boring parts. 4000 lines later, the fun starts! Tonight, I'll try to finish everything related to the functionality of the buttons and menus and costs, etc. The fun part is balancing the functions with the production, to make sure everything fits smoothly. Hopefully, i'll be done by the end of the week. After that, I'll have to integrate the music, the graphical interface, etc. I previously promised that a thousand purchases will be able to be bought with a single click. That's not entirely true. Resources aren't 'bought' anymore. They are 'traded'. The player won't be trading an 'amount' of resources, but instead will be trading their entire resources at a ratio. Example: You have 100$, and oranges are sold at a 2:1 ratio. You click the oranges button, you'll have 0$ and 200 oranges. This may seem excessive, but people usually just click until they can't buy anymore. The ratio will vary +/-20% every 3 seconds. This way, the player has to be on his toes when buying/selling. Huge profit can be made in a few seconds by constantly buying and selling the right things. Huge losses can be made as well if you're not paying attention. Well I better get to work. Cheers! It seems I overestimated the time I had during my march break. I spent most of the time studying for exams. I managed to do about 50% of the workload (related to the game) that I wanted. The longest part was dealing with the logic related to the story. You would think it's easy to make a choice based RPG, but can get pretty confusing which choice leads to what consequence, etc. That's dealth with, and about half of the equations and cost/production is done. This next week (and possibly the one after) will be used to finish balancing out equations. This means that my projected release date will have to be pushed back by at least two weeks.
-Riva Midterms are finally over! I can finally work on this in peace!
I managed to design the 50(or so) buttons, their hover animations and the descriptions associated with them. Next week is march break for me. Aside from a job interview and a ski trip, I will be spending most of my time on this game. This week will be focused on assigning prices, defining and balancing equations and defining return on investment. My first game had the problem of advancing too slowly and too monotonously. The second game had the problem that it was advancing too fast. The algorithm used was the same in both games, but there were many more ways of gaining resources in the second game, which made it too easy. The third game has roughly five times as many ways to gain resources as the second game, so using the same algorithm is not an option anymore. This is probably the hardest task, but thanks to a Reddit user's suggestion, balancing will be a smoother experience.I won't go into details, but his suggestion can be found here. After the game's variables are created and balanced, hopefully at the end of this week, I can begin integrating the system into actual graphics. As it stands, the game looks like white squares on a black background and a whole lot of text(except for the beautiful buttons I just made). The assets are made but not integrated into the system. Once the assets are integrated, value testing will be significantly harder. I mentioned previously that the game's interface will be more dynamic, and not simply a set of folders. Well this 'dynamism' will make testing a pain, if I have to run through the same hoops a thousand times; therefore, testing has to be done before the graphical implementation. This process should take a week. After the interface is integrated into the system; the music, menu interface and story logic (choices, etc.) need to be integrated. This will take one to two weeks. After that, I will be ready to launch. I'm estimating launch to be around the 17th of March, 2014. Cheers! I finally finished the story of Idle God 3! It took me an entire month to write. It was a little weird, writing parallel stories instead of one direct story. However, I'm satisfied with the result. I showed it to some people and they also liked it. A Reddit user wrote about Idle God 2, that I sound like a 12 year old on LSD. Looking forward to his review of my third game.
I decided against posting assets(pictures) every week because I would rather it all be a surprise. The game looks and feels beautiful though. :) I can't work much on it this week because of midterm week. However, the week after, I will have the entire week off. It will be a week full of coding. This week, I'll hammer out the 50 or so buttons that have to be programmed, integrate the visual aspect of the buttons and the hover animations. Next week will be focused on implementing the cost of all 50 upgrades and the progressive functions of the cost and benefits of each upgrade. As I stated previously, the upgrades won't all be related to stat incrementation. There will also be a stock exchange, where the cost and benefits scale to your current resources. This keeps the player from getting a carpal tunnel disease, by allowing him to transfer his entire stock into the resource he desires. I also mentioned enemies previously. Basically, resource production will be in reversely proportional influence of an invasion presence. You will have weapons you need to buy to defend yourself to keep resource production over time constantly high. I think that clicking a single motionless button gets kinda boring, so a new dynamic system is also being hammered out. I hope to be able to publish by mid-march! Cheers! I am working with a great artist for the last Idle God game. We are hoping to be able to release in March, 2014, but I would not be surprised if we needed to push the date back to April, 2014.
Work done so far on my part: -The design is finished. The system will not work with a system of folders and a clickable icon anymore. The new system is more interactive and tries to keep the player focused on the fun. -The story is 80% complete. The second game featured 23 chapters. The third game features almost 300 chapters. This may sound discouraging, but you get to choose what happens to you. A full story is 30-40 chapters, depending on the choices you make along the way. There are both meaningful and trivial choices to make. -Five resources: Scrap, Gold, Mineral, Garnet and a fifth one. - A ton of silly names for weapons, armors and accessories. -An actual stock exchange system. The values fluctuate around the resources you have on hand. This makes buying and selling easier, since the player does not have to click a thousand times to buy the same resource. A single click will often be sufficient. -A war system that requires you to stay on top of the enemy to keep resources flowing. -A leveling system that offers perks and unlockables on level-up. -A GREAT soundtrack! |
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