Drone Legion

Hello all!

For the past month or so, I’ve been working on a game, which I have no idea what to call it.
This is a world where innkeepers try to re-sell you the room you already bought, weapon shops sell chewed chewing gum, floor tiles launch you sky high, and true to tradition, AIs aren’t much help.

Gameplay:

This is a third person view game -which is new to me, I usually do first person games- mainly about a small war between a small medieval town and a drone army.

You are a nobody in the town you live in (Figure 1), and you start the game inside of the town hall building. By talking to a blacksmith by the name of Kent, you find that the town’s main town gates open up the next “day”. The gates had been closed for the winter season to keep out sickness, raiders, etc. Everyone in the town is looking forward to this event, as food and supplies can finally come into the town. The first day ends as you find a hotel and go to sleep.
Unfortunately, that very night, drone raiders blow open the gates-and you get woken out of bed due to the roar of fighting. You exit your hotel room, find it’s raining, (It’s raining for the rest of the game) and fight your way to the safety town hall (which has a strong door and is made out of mostly stone).


                                                 (Figure 1)

In the town hall, you find Kent has crafted himself an axe twice as tall as he is, and just as heavy. (He is a blacksmith, after all…)and due to a series of unfortunate events, you and Kent accidentally tick off a high ranking town official by ruining his toupee, so the two of you get kicked out of town and sent off to discover who the attackers are. But, because the town is under attack, you can’t just exit through the main gates. This poses a problem, so the probably still steaming town official has to send you through some secret catacombs, where lava pits flow, and floor tiles misbehave. Kent walks off to the exit, leaving you to have fun. You get thrown around by floating and spinning floor tiles, and the player has to figure out how to use the tiles to his/her advantage to get across the two lava pits.
Once they make it to the exit, they arrive at a bandit drone filled forest.


(Forest)

It is then up to you to figure out just how your supposed to find out who is responsible for the towns attack. But, Kent isn’t much help this time either-he just walks off to who knows where and tells you not to follow. So, it’s up to you to explore, and fend of bandits drones. Or you can follow Kent if you want… and you find later that “day” (In other words, you bump into him again) you find Kent is one of the officials of the drone army that attacked, and he happens to be a drone spy himself. He attacks you, and you have a “Boss fight”. (I had fun animating all the whirls, flips, and special attacks you use here) and after button mashing the attack buttons, and you deactivate the drone previously known as Kent, and now you have to find out what to do. Fortunately, there is a house nearby.


(House)

The owner of the house is a fellow named Sleepy Jones, the log sawing man. (He’s a lumberjack (OK, OK, bad joke))
The owner of the house can get you to a nearby fortress, in which the townspeople are cold to you, and warn you to basically mind your own business, but since your the player, and their the AI, you don’t have to take the advice. After all, their only a computer, they wont mind (For what it’s worth, the villagers that walk around the town have a greater mass setting, so when they walk right into you, you get moved).
There are several places to go in the fort, like a tavern, or a weapons shop with the keeper named Char L. Ton - and this shop keeper has extraordinarily high prices. (51 gold for chewed chewing gum?)

In the tavern, you accidentally stumble upon the once was secret entrance to a drone factory. It is there you discover the main drone control panel with an off switch. You flip the switch, and after possibly more exploration, you come back up to discover the villagers in the fort are frozen, in an off position. You make it to the back to the town original town to report your finding, but you find it leveled to rubble. (This is endgame)
(Underlined text is a WIP)

Features:

  1. An actually working combat system-you can fight baddies, and they can fight you back. There is also a secret (I guess not so secret anymore) key to press, the “R” key, which will reset the main UI, which includes your health. Also, if you ever run out of health, the game fades to black. (But this is easily fixed by pressing “R”)

  2. In some places, (I’m hoping to make this all places by the time the game is finished) the camera actually zooms in and out, in accordance with the mouse scroll wheel.

  3. You have money to spend! Unfortunately, you can’t spend it-the game promptly tells you that your player is a miser; after all, who would want to buy something from a merchant name Char L. Ton… But on a more serious note, the money is set up as a text integer, so sometime later I could implement buying and selling.

  4. Some key people talk to you. By key I mean those important to the story. I hope by the end of the game everybody will has at least something to say.

  5. First game I’ve made to have sound besides music in it. I’m hoping to add more sound effects in it, like metal clashing, but for now I have sound for the drone attack on the town, (I.E, crashes, metal screeches, rumbles, and so on) water, and rain.

  6. AI villagers that walk around and look busy! They don’t walk into TOO many walls, but the sometimes get stuck on a fence, but eventually change direction. I haven’t watched them for that long at a time, though, so they might fall into the river after five minutes have elapsed, but, so far so good.

  7. I don’t know if you call this a feature, but it actually does have animated rain.

  8. A cutscreen that actually shows the town gates get blown opened. I have several other text cutscreens, which I hope to replace with animated ones by the end of the game.

Game development progress:

This game is being done in five “Passes”:

Pass 1: Scenery/Zone modeling. (Complete)
Pass 2: Story (Almost complete)
Pass 3: Eye candy/filler. (Incomplete) {This “Pass” will give the player things to be distracted by. I.E, more people talk to you, and say more things, maybe mini events will go on, like maybe the town official makes a long winded speech, tax day cometh, etc.}
Pass 4: Small tweaks/fixes
Pass 5: Bug fixes!

If you’ve made it all the way to the bottom of this long document, thanks for reading, and comments and honest critiques are welcome!

Here are a few more gameplay pictures:


(Labyrinth- this is the player floating on a moving floor tile, over a lava pit. I hope to fix the rock texture stretching soon.)


(Fort-this is the player in front of the tavern. The AI villager is walking by, on its way to crash into the edge of a house…)


(Endgame, this is the starting town in rubble. (This is still a WIP.) The excessive use of motion blur is on purpose-the goal is to have everything be a bit of a blur, and some beautiful but haunting music playing in the background. I want to have a slightly darker ground, and slightly better looking rubble. Right now it looks like a tornado came through, not an attacking army. )

Texture maps need some work, but otherwise a solid start! I would probably add a player-controlled zoom feature, too, just because the player looks a little small to me.