Units can now fight each other (some of the units in the upper-left corner are dead, that’s why they’re upside-down).

We now have fog of war in.

I made graphics for the other two unit types, but I haven’t started using them yet.

All in all, I’m disappointed in how little I got done this weekend. Three kids and all, yes, but I also fired up Dishonored for the first time “just to see what it was all about”. That was a mistake.

Soooo…I won’t have something to submit for #7DRTS. But that’s okay – by Wednesday I knew that Chitin wouldn’t be ready in time for that anyway; my wife was right when she said that Ludum Dares are for “single guys with no kids”.

I will be continuing the Chitin project as a 40-hour game, and I fully intend to finish.

Ten hours in and we can now select and direct our units. We’ve also got a (really ugly) minimap.

I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done in ten hours. I want the game basically functional at 20-25 hours so I can then polish it up and add content after that. The next two things I need are unit combat and resource collection; if I can get those in before hour 20 I’ll be pretty sure I can finish the game in my 40 hours. But I know I won’t get all the time I need to work on this over the weekend, even if I crunch (which is almost impossible with three kids). So what I submit to #7DRTS isn’t going to be the “final” version of the game. That’s a little sad, but not unexpected. Still happy with where the project is heading.

We’ve got a map, units, and scrolling. The units even have two frames of animation!

Which you can’t see, of course, because it’s a static image.

Now I need a map and the GUI that will allow you to make units based on your ichor.

I’m really starting to like that word “ichor”. It’s fun to say.

Got a little stuff done last night. Discovered the art I’m going to use; I mentioned it a long time ago on this blog but it’s worth a repeat: Oryx’s Lo-Fi Fantasy Sprites. Here’s a taste.

Aren’t they precious? They were originally made for a game competition called Assemblee about four years ago; since then they’ve become mainstays of the indie scene. Oryx sells an expanded commercial set so I contacted him and asked him if it were okay to use these for a non-commercial project; fortunately he was fine with that.

But I didn’t have time to get them integrated, so what you’re getting today is Colored Squaresville:

To come – um…everything. I’ve got the design nailed and it’s simple enough to do in the time allotted. I have the graphics I want. I’ve got the skillz from writing my bigger game, Planitia. Let’s get it done.

And by let’s, I mean me. I have to get it done.

That’s right, I got nothing done from a coding perspective yesterday. Turns out my engine was having problems that needed fixing and that sucked up all my coding time.

But, I did some design work, so I’ll present that. First, my requirements:

MUST HAVE

* Map
* Buildings that either produce units or resources
* The ability to gather resources with units.
* The ability for units to fight each other.
* The ability to control units with band-selection and target specification.
* The ability to win the game by destroying all enemy structures
* Graphics for each unit, building and map
* A basic AI.

WOULD LIKE TO HAVE

* Map with different terrain types: blocking, slowing and normal squares
* Better graphics
* Sound effects
* Improved GUI
* Improved AI

WOULD BE AWESOME IF I COULD HAVE

* Multiplayer. Possible in seven days?
* Artist-done art (find one on IRC?)

Second, the design notes (I present these as-is, they are kind of free-associating):

Chitin is about two colonies of bugs fighting over resources. There will be buildings, workers and combat units.

Workers: Mite swarm. This is a swarm of very small units (basically dots) that will harvest any resources near their nest. Mites can’t be killed, so there’s no way to stop someone from harvesting. Mite nests can be built near resources and they’ll strip the resources bare in no time; think army ants. There’s no “owning” a resource; if two colonies build a mite nest near a resource then both colonies will harvest it (depleting it twice as fast).

Combat units: Three of various sizes. Dead combat units can be harvested by mites so it’s best to fight away from mite nests you don’t own. Classic rock-paper-scissors setup. We’ll have spitters, armored melee and fast melee. Spitters beat armored melee because they’ll wear them down before they get into range. Fast melee beat spitters because they get into range quickly and spitters are relatively weak. Armored melee beats fast melee because fast melee has no armor.

Plus, how about a big gargantuan unit, like a beetle? Slow, hard to destroy, but spits powerful acid a long way and can kill a colony all by itself if left unattended. Worth a lot resources if it can be killed and harvested, so it’s a risk/reward thing for the player that tries it.

Direct control of combat units?

Hmmm…how about a slow but steady drain on – YES. You win the game not by destroying the enemy whatever, but by making your enemy run out of ichor. Ichor is the resource of Chitin and will be used for everything. Ichor will have a +- marker next to it just like a resource in Total Annihilation, so you can see if your ichor income is rising or falling. You start with a slow ichor drain and every unit and building you make increases this drain, so you need to get out there and use your units to explore (which means there must be fog of war).

Creeps. That’s it, I think. There will be other insects on the map, you use your combat units to kill them for food then plant mites next to them to gather their resources. As you do, your ichor goes up meaning you can make new units (and maybe upgrade them?) But if you have no bugs to harvest, your ichor level will drop based on how many units you have in the field; when it gets to zero, you lose the game (your colony is untenable).

Creeps are also of the three different types; use the right bug on the right kind of creep – but be aware that you could get ganked by an enemy bug army that can counter yours.

The player can directly control all units except the mites. There won’t be any pathfinding on the units – after all, they’re drones. It’s your job to get them where you want them to go.

The player will end up with mite nests all over the place but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. A smart player might lure a creep towards a mite nest before killing it.

So far I’ve got two buildings (colony and mite nest) and four units (spitters, speeders, brutes and the big bug) and one resource (ichor). That seems doable in seven days.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Feedback welcome!

Again, like with the 40-Hour RPG, time spent just thinking about the game does not count, nor does time spent adding new features to my framework. Only coding time specific to the game counts.

So, here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about two things, an old game and an old computer.

First, the old game. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a designer named Howard Thompson came up with a novel wargame idea – a game set on an alien planet, inhabited by huge, semi-sentient hive-minded insects. He called this game Hymenoptera, and unfortunately a complete version never saw the light of day.

It also had the word “hymen” in its name, which caused everyone who heard it to snicker.

As Hymenoptera languished in development hell, Thompson’s company, Metagaming, decided to focus on small, simpler, easily portable and playable games that they called microgames. This strategy proved successful, and Thompson decided to create a microgame set in the Hymenpotera universe. He called it Chitin: I – The Harvest Wars.

I know that killer bugs have kind of been done to death in the RTS space, what with the Zerg and the Tyranids, but I think I’m going to do it anyway.

Now, on to the old computer. I’ve talked about Daniel Remar rather a lot on this blog, and I’ve mentioned his game Hero Core many times, too. Now, the interesting thing about Hero Core is that its native resolution is 200×180, which means that it could easily be replicated on the ZX Spectrum, which had a native resolution of 256×192. In fact, I always thought that Hero Core felt like a ZX Spectrum game – austere but imminently playable.

And then there was the Easter egg in Startopia that presented the game almost as if it were on a ZX Spectrum – and the game was still playable! The only real problem was that the text became unreadable, but you could still build and manage your aliens due to the use of very clear icons.

So for a while I’ve been wondering what an RTS on the Spectrum might have looked like. And I’ve already mentioned that by limiting himself to a small resolution and monochrome palette, Daniel was able to get effective graphics for Hero Core in a short amount of time.

So I’m following suit. my 40-hour RTS will use a low native resolution to make it easier to do the graphics (I’ll scale the final graphics so the window will be larger on the screen, I promise) and it will be about bugs fighting over various resources they need.

And I’m going to call it Chitin, after the original microgame.