Hello everyone,
I’ve been working on this game since october 2015 now, and I’d like to present it here and get some feedback.
It’s called “Rusted Intelligence”, as suggested by @jakebriggs.
Here is my website with dev blog and images: http://robbi-blechdose.weebly.com/
I’ve decided to go for a retro art style, as that’s what I’m best at.
The features to-date include (in completely random order):
day/night cycle (I think ~15 minutes per cycle)
entity system with enemies and other robots
inventory system (no stacking atm)
multiplayer (I know, you shouldn’t do MP in your first game, but I thought only singleplayer would be a bit boring)
quests
skill system
The story is basically that there is a planet inhabited by robots. They have built some big machine to control everything important, but because it’s too old now (rust and stuff) it gets crazy and takes over.
Oh, and before I forget: What would be a good publishing platform?
Might be MUUUCH too early, but I just wanted to hear your thoughts. Is GOG a good idea?
Personally, I would stay away from any name that would return a million hits in Google ahead of your game. This means at least one of your words should be relatively unique. “Steaming” or “World” are neither unique and I suspect you will see tons of stuff on a google search.
(As it turns out… a bunch of stuff for “World of Steam” comes back for me when I search for “Steaming World”. Also another name to avoid. heheh)
So start thinking of word combinations or bits that matter to your game. I don’t know enough about it to comment but think of fake words like Mechasteam or Robosteam or something. What’s the object of the game? Maybe that comes into it.
MechaSteam Overlord… who knows…
Rereading your first post it’s a very ambitious project. In the minimum two years it will take you to develop this game, I suspect you will want to change the name a few times anyway. (Multiplayer easily adds a year… probably 1.5 if you’ve never done it before… for a dozen reasons.) So pick something simple and be prepared to change it. (ie: use more generic package names and stuff.)
Either it’s a turn-based game or it seems really unlikely since the game isn’t done yet, it probably hasn’t had much outside testing, etc…
For example, let’s say you are relying on something like Zay-ES for your entity system and using it’s built in networking. That gets you 90% of the way there for the common stuff and it’s easy to think it’s “done enough” for the other stuff.
…then you actually start play testing and your players complain about the huge lag because all of your real time stuff is going out as entity updates instead of something faster and more efficient. Then you spend months gutting your design to retrofit some real-time networking solution in for the real-time stuff (position, whatever)… leaving the ES to handle everything else. There are few things more painful than that process.
That being said, I don’t know enough about your game architecture. If it’s turn based or nearly so then yeah, I’ll believe it’s fine. It will only add 6 months to the project to track down the thread synchronization issues.
You are right, I haven’t done much testing yet.
I do’t know Zay-ES as entity system, I’ve written my own one as it’s always easier for me to read and understand my own code.
My networking design works as follows: I send a message that contains the whole entity list, but in form of small packages: only position, rotation and some entity-specific components, e.g. damage for the enemies.
The type of the data determines what entity it is. The entity is then reconstructed from that data on the client.
If that entity already exists, it just updates the values and doesn’t, for example reload the model.
The very first thing you should do is to rent a cheap server and test the network in a real environment. Better get a super cheap one since it will show you the limits quicker
I got my game into the alpha phase!
The only core feature still missing is a levelling system, everything else is done.
Now I have to get on with the map.
There’ll be a blog post about this soon-ish.
Since there are some unwanted associations with the game name, does anyone have an idea for another one (should be original though )?
So some of the major themes as far as I can see from your very brief OP is:
A Monolithic Machine or AI
Rusting
Retrogression
Decay
Deterioration
Dementia (dementia doesn’t have to manifest in a malicious way), derangement, disarray
Taking over
Malfunctioning
Old
Something that’s taken on a purpose for what its not originally intended, scope creep
Combat or struggle
Broken
Cobbled together or patched up
I would perhaps stay away from referencing the genre directly in your games title - so using “steam” or “world” or something may not help. Also, when I think of steampunk I don’t think of decay and rust - I think brass and rayguns and mechanical computers. That said, I don’t think having the word “steam” or “rust” in your title is necessarily bad but “steaming world” is one step away from “cool steampunk fighting game” as a name…
I would perhaps think about some of the things you want to evoke in the game, and plug those into a thesaurus to see what synonyms and antonyms pop up.
You could also cheat, and perhaps look up myths from cultures - Greek, Maori/Pacific Islands, European - grab a name from that of a character who had to fight or journey or endure some challenge. Lets pick Perseus since he was thrust into a challenge or journey without his consent as he was a baby at the time. Perseus could be Perserust or Persebot or something. Then you could call your game “Perserust and the broken machines” or something. Electryon is Perseus’ son, and he had challenges in his life, so Electryon could be the characters name and you could use that in the title.
I have decided, a while ago (as I already said), to put the game into alpha as most of the core mechanics are finished. It still need content, of course.
Also, “Rusted Intelligence” @jakebriggs is a good name for the game, I think. I’ll probably change it tomorrow.
And I’ll probably do a networking performance test ASAP, with clumsy (thanks @zzuegg!).
Right now, I’m working on implementing proper classes as well as a way (put into the storyline of course, at least a bit) to choose it.
