JUSTICE : hungry forest [done]

[Digitalistic]

This is incredibly fun.

One thing though: when you go to plant a tree, there are 3 options, only one of which (top left) seems to work. Is it safe to assume the other two aren't implemented? I had something like 500 mp, so I figured it would be enough for... whatever.

[moonmagic]

Thank you, everyone!

... Like others, I found the lack of feedback a bit hard, I wish I knew all the spell costs and benefits, but I imagine that is something that you could add if you end up doing more of a level / goal based approach.

The code is all in place to display descriptions of spells and units, but I took it out (when I was considering an always-visible HUD at the top of the screen) and forgot to put it back in while I worked on the tree spirits and overgrowth mechanics. I plan descriptions like: "OVERGRO / 5 MP / MP UP", as well as visual feedback when a tile is producing mp.

This is lovely to play. Surely you can just up the speed of MP a little until the game balances and you win 30-40% of the time if you play well?

After all the forest and human units are in, I will start to tweak this kind of stuff, but in the absence of animals / fungi and the torches and hunters, I am mainly focusing on balancing each human unit to the tile type it is strongest against. So the lumberjacks are supposed to be slightly stronger than trees, but weak to fungi. Hunters will be strong to animals, but weak to trees, and firemen will be strong to fungi, but weak to animals. But yes, the game is pretty slow right now.

One thing though: when you go to plant a tree, there are 3 options, only one of which (top left) seems to work. Is it safe to assume the other two aren't implemented? I had something like 500 mp, so I figured it would be enough for... whatever.

That is correct: the other two are not implemented. The other two tiles are CAVE tiles and MARSH tiles (animal claw and mushroom). The leaf tech tree is almost complete (FOREST); the only thing that remains to be done is to implement the elder forest spirit, which will be done by enshrining mature trees in a pattern of five for a heavy mp cost and sacrifice of existing forest spirits.

Here is what I have planned:

CAVE tech tree:

- basic cave tile. Once ready, the player chooses between:
- herbivores, or
- carnivores

Both animals types start producing young animals at a certain rate, to a maximum of three per cave, which later mature into bigger animals of their type. Herbivores stick close to home, stop looking for human targets periodically to retreat and "graze", and have more hitpoints than carnivores, who actively look for humans within a certain range, and, should they not find them, attack herbivores or each other. Carnivores do more damage to humans, obviously.

MARSH tech tree:

- basic marsh tile. Once ready, the player chooses between:
- attract mushroom
- creep mushroom
- infest mushroom

The attract mushroom draws humans near if they are inside a minimum range. The creep mushroom sets a new marsh tile after a certain interval for a mp cost; only sets tiles adjacent to itself, and can't expand beyond a certain distance from its source forest. The infest mushroom attaches to humans, drives them back to their town, and turns into a marsh tile once inside minimum range.

The economy of the game will need the most work; I don't want any tile to become useless at any point of the game, so the tricky thing to figure out right now is a way to use all the mp that will be produced in the end game, and keep things tense. The enshrine mechanism should work to do this for the player (summoning huge one-off forest gods for high mp cost and elimination of tiles in the center of the forest), but I need an endgame for the humans, too.

SO MUCH TEXT! Sorry, y'all! More pictures in the next update.

[Ed K]

On my most successful attempt I made two spirit turret things which held the lumberjacks off for a while, whilst I ineffectually tried to spread the forest a bit.

descriptions like: "OVERGRO / 5 MP / MP UP", as well as visual feedback when a tile is producing mp.

Without these I'm struggling, but it's great to see this coming along. Your design & to-do list seems really solid.

Seeing the graves of the guys that had been taken out by my spirits, and thinking of Miyazaki-ish images of overgrown shrines in the forest, it made me think that it would be cool to have some sort of haunted effect.. either cosmetic or with some effect. Little will-o-wisps floating around the graves after a while..?

[Brocklehurst]

Or the forests forming around the graves if you've took over that tile?

[elegwa]

Well, I "Won" the game first try. It was enjoyable, I did run into a small bug though (Not sure if this has been reported, sorry -.-) When I started killing off the humans, they ended up with an unfinished house with three logs. I surrounded the base but it would not let me grow anything.

The only thing that nagged me was that fact that once you turned the tree into a magic generate or a guard, you couldn't change them into something else, so I had giant rows of guards that did nothing. Not to much of a concern to be fair though, I had more then enough mana almost all of the time.

Pro Tip: row of threes seem to work, have the furthers back row to generate magic and the next two with guards or what you'd like to call them. Takes a few minutes to get in place, but it works like a charm.

Amazing game, I really enjoyed it!

[Abel Toy]

I won the game! It's easy once you realise you can upgrade trees! :P When you have 10 magic trees or something similar you'll never run out of mana (actually, I had like 800 when the game ended) and you only need to create some tree spirits to eventually defeat those humans!

[Radiatoryang]

Since this is an RTS, I'd analyze this in terms of Starcraft... the endgame drags on, whether it's too many lumberjacks or I have 800 MP and can't spend it fast enough. Maybe have a mega spell that's 100 MP that just spawns a chunk of instant forest, and if the player has above 50 MP the lumberjacks flock / swarm more in mobs, and are more aggressive. Also I'd add some kind of "obstacle" tile, like mountains or rivers that trees can't grow on, so you can have chokepoints to focus conflict.\

Really great base you have so far, polish it up some more!

[moonmagic]

It is quite lovely that some of you are playing it to the point of bitter defeat / glorious victory. I have a few plans to address the pacing issues the game presents in its current form.

: yes mountains! 1x scale.

: a king, who collects all resources (tree, animal, fungus), and is responsible for advancing the human tech (provides blanket upgrades and king-specific upgrades, depending on what he is collecting / stage of game. e.g., "THE KING HAS INVENTED SHOPPING!" (humans carry more and take more)). Shown 2x scale.

Also, the player will be able to cause parts of the forest to decay for a diminished return of MP, and will create very expensive shrines to summon huge avatars (basically, comparable to kings) to speed up the end of the game.

Levels! I plan to divide the game into three levels: a tiny island, a medium island, and the huge island that is currently playable. Since the king's advancement will depend on available resources and time, this will also divide the human tech into three "ages".

[Jasper]

Finally played this today, all this time I thought it was PC only!

It's absolutely wonderful seeing this dense and brightly coloured forest emerge, it's something I find really appealing.

Interface-wise it felt odd doing most of my action in the top left 1/9 of the screen... It made me think that it could work both gameplay and theme-wise to have your forest surrounding the town, and being eaten up from the inside (in a Ghibli Ponpoko way.)

Beautiful though, the attention to detail and life in the animation really makes it.

I felt the pace could be quicker overall, or there could be more foliage + houses from the start.

Great work man!

[moonmagic]

Finally played this today, all this time I thought it was PC only!

It's absolutely wonderful seeing this dense and brightly coloured forest emerge, it's something I find really appealing.

Interface-wise it felt odd doing most of my action in the top left 1/9 of the screen... It made me think that it could work both gameplay and theme-wise to have your forest surrounding the town, and being eaten up from the inside (in a Ghibli Ponpoko way.)

Beautiful though, the attention to detail and life in the animation really makes it.

I felt the pace could be quicker overall, or there could be more foliage + houses from the start.

Great work man!

Thanks for playing! I really like the idea of the forest surrounding a burgeoning town; I'm going to try and implement it as a "panic" mode, with more aggressive humans.

Since my last post, I've mainly been working on cleaning up the map generation to allow for different size levels, and mountain ranges to help the pacing. I'm almost done with that, and the animal and king AI, but my rate of progress is slowing down to allow division of attention between two things:

1. Setting up my classroom for the beginning of school, and
2. My newborn daughter.

Still, I'll keep posting progress updates as progress gets made. Thanks for playing, everyone!

[Jasper]

2. My newborn daughter.

I know exactly how that feels. Unfortunately that particular time sink never goes away!

[agentsr]

I love this game. Very good idea and implementation. I'm just having a bit hard time keeping the humans at bay but i am sure that's my lack of skill.

One of the defects of the genre is that at first the game is harder that in the end. This of course is counterbalanced usually with several levels, but if we could somehow make it so that the "humans" would scale accordingly to the player forest development it would be great. (i mean if the forest is small it would be expected that some humans would not attack the forest or even defend it, but if the forest is big the humans would be endangered and more hostile, making it harder to loose and harder to win)...

[TheDude]

Im preatty impressed! Keep up the work.
It would be cool if there were tiny farms, that increase growth rate or something. If anything it would look preatty.

[moonmagic]

Thanks for the interest, y'all! One thing I've been thinking about a lot is the pacing of the game; I'm going to have the endgame of the humans controlled largely by the development of the king. As the king collects resources, he'll trigger certain upgrades depending on what he's doing (chopping trees, eating mushrooms, killing animals, getting lost). Humans will pour out at a constant rate, but go down easier. The idea being that the player has to fight hard to achieve a stalemate, and manifest as a god (often) to win.

The feeling I want is the rock paper scissors feeling of an RTS with the oh-shit-smartbomb! feeling of a Cave shmup.

[Stephen L (inactive)]

Tried this just now. Found it really quite cool - I wanted to save my forests from the mean men and to punishhh them, though I can't figure out how to keep my forests alive for any length of time. You're definitely on to something good with this :)

edit : ooh, never mind, didn't followed some directions from indiegames.com, built lots of big trees early on, prospered :)