Viridian Games

It’s weird, because I’ve frankly been working quite hard on the game for the last month…but if you were to start it up and play it, it would look and play almost exactly like the combat demo I released. And yet I’ve done so much…everything is event-driven now instead of being procedural, the input code is greatly cleaned up, and I’ve even started adding an interface for activating god powers (though there’s only one power right now – click the button, damage a unit). And I am integrating ODE into the game, which I’m hoping will give it all kinds of nifty properties.

So soon, very soon, probably by the end of March, the game should look and play much better.

But right this second I got nothin’.

So I’m on vacation until the 11th.

I like to take my vacations in March. For one thing, it lets me be off work for my birthday. For another, not many people tend to take time off in March (unless there’s an E3 push happening, but that’s not the case this year). And the weather is usually very nice.

Now, I don’t go anywhere on my vacations. I just stay home. I haven’t been on a trip in years. I’d like to fix that, but travel costs money I don’t have.

But this year I’m taking a Joss Whedon vacation. Joss Whedon tends to take vacations only when he’s starting up a new project. So A Joss Whedon vacation is when you stop working hard on what you’re currently working on so you can work hard on something else.

And of course, for me the “something else” is Planitia. I am really hoping to get monumental amounts of work done on it in these next nine days.

And one of those monumental things is multiplayer. The engine for Planitia has to be done by the end of March. No exceptions. I’m going to need all of April to make and tweak content – I will not allow Planitia to suffer the same fate as Inaria. It’s just got too much potential.

Therefore, if multiplayer isn’t working by the end of March, it’s cut. Indeed, anything that isn’t working by the end of March gets cut.

You can view my current task list on Planitia to see how I’m doing. And I’m hoping to release another alpha by the end of this week.

EDIT: I have put my “Planitia Tasks” document online and it can now be viewed by anyone at this link. So you guys can actually check on my progress yourselves now!

First off, I’ve done a comparison of the god powers of various games which you can look at here.

Now I’m going to subject you to a bit of stream-of-consciousness about god powers.

God powers fall into two broad groups: those that help your followers and those that hurt the enemy followers.

Another reason I don’t like Black & White – the god powers are anemic. This is because your goal isn’t to destroy the enemy god’s followers, but to convert them to your side. You must convert, because doing so increases the range in which you can use your god powers. I’m not going this route with Planitia…on levels when you are opposed by another god, your job will be to wipe out his followers, not convert them.

Making it so that you can only operate in your own sphere of influence is terrible. It makes the game almost completely defensive. Another thing I hate about Black & White. On the other hand, by default you could only raise/lower land in Populous 1 and 2 near your own settlements, but you could use any other god power anywhere. This is good, I like it.

One thing a lot of people don’t know is that some of the god powers in Populous 2 that “grew” effects across the land did so according to the rules of Conway’s Game of Life, so if you understood how the Game of Life worked (and you should), you could actually set up glider guns that would “shoot” carnivorous fungus into your enemy’s base. That is just too freakin’ awesome.

So here’s what I’m thinking. These are effects, not spells. They will be combined to create spells.

Help:
Land flattener/raiser/lowerer
Land restorer
Temporary unit growth
Create Hero
Don’t want walls; makes games too defensive (walls don’t protect against god powers anyway)
Roads?
Shield?
Inspiration (advances village tech level)

Harm:
Direct damage
AOE direct damage,
Damage over time
Land ruiner
Walker flinger

I’m thinking that I want a fairly low mana cap, but a healthy civilization will give you a fairly fast recharge rate. The big effects will take practically all your mana, thus you won’t be able to cast them more than once every few minutes or so, no matter how much mana you have.

I’m also sort of leaning towards the idea of different types or schools of magic, kind of like Populous 2 with its six different types. I think six is too many, though. Five would be interesting but it would feel too much like Magic: The Gathering. Three, maybe?