Invader: arcade strategy game

[Trappingnoobs]

Don't know if you added it, I'll download now, but if not, different size planets are a must.

And, as tentus suggested, selecting units, like, if you click on blank space, let you stretch out a square and when you release, get any inside the bounding box and select them. Not sure how difficult it'd be for you to implement that; I guess it depends on what way you implemented the planets in the first place.

[Robin]

Have you thought about adding "select several planets" so that you can swarm a single target?

I haven't. That might be a good idea, although it would require a rather large change in selection code, and changes in the AI to give them access to it as well.

Also, what about size variety in the planets, so that there is a little more value tactics involved?

Maybe, probably not. If you look at the code, you can see some leftover traces from the time I had something similar to that: each system has multiple planets, of which by default all but one are inhabitable, and by micromanaging you would be able to terraform the rest, allowing both a greater growth in population, and higher maximum population for a certain system as well. I took it out, because I suspected it would make the game less fun.

Loving the Eufloria vibe though.

Thanks! Invader has been compared to Eufloria by others as well.

EDIT: by the way, I might not provide new Mac distributions for Invader in the future, because they are eating my GitHub disk space.

[kraftman]

It's also similar to Aurora:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F41T2CpVdC8

[T-Bone]

Nice!

Btw, I know several left handed people but nobody I know uses their mouse with their left hand. Wierd. Same with touch pads.

[tentus]

Have you thought about adding "select several planets" so that you can swarm a single target?

I haven't. That might be a good idea, although it would require a rather large change in selection code, and changes in the AI to give them access to it as well.

Also, what about size variety in the planets, so that there is a little more value tactics involved?

Maybe, probably not. If you look at the code, you can see some leftover traces from the time I had something similar to that: each system has multiple planets, of which by default all but one are inhabitable, and by micromanaging you would be able to terraform the rest, allowing both a greater growth in population, and higher maximum population for a certain system as well. I took it out, because I suspected it would make the game less fun.

Loving the Eufloria vibe though.

Thanks! Invader has been compared to Eufloria by others as well.

EDIT: by the way, I might not provide new Mac distributions for Invader in the future, because they are eating my GitHub disk space.

One of the things I found myself doing constantly in Eufloria was creating a "hub world" where I would routinely send all my unused troops to. That way I didn't have bunches of worlds far behind the frontline that were overflowing with troops. Send them all to the hub world every few minutes, and then empty the wrath of the hub world onto the front line.

To do that though, you have to have worlds which can support high numbers of troops, and a good way to select multiple worlds (middleclick?). I can understand not wanting to implement potentially derailing mechanics, but I think in this case it's worth the work.

[Robin]

I've been thinking about this. Perhaps I could use Shift+click to select multiple systems, and then display instead of a circle the intersection of circles of their action radii. But then I'll have to find a way to calculate a polygon from the intersection of circles. Not to mention the potential problem of concave polygons.

[tentus]

I believe that Eufloria's solution was to make troops follow a connect-the-dots path, only allowing players to add-select worlds that were within the reach of the previously selected world. That way the player needed to consider distance, but wasn't hamstrung by it. As long as you could factor travel-time into your plan, your troops would eventually end up where you wanted.

Shift-click sounds like a good plan. Be sure to plan for deselecting worlds, even if it's confined to reverse order. If you make the order of the selections tied to the "path" that troops follow, you won't have to implement any pathfinding either.

[Jasoco]

I notice the new "fullscreen" mode just makes the window take up the fullscreen, but the content stays the same. Maybe you could implement a way to just scale the graphics and drawing coordinate system or something when doing that?

For instance, the height of the content is maybe 600 pixels. The height of the screen is 800 pixels. So the scale is screen height / content height = 1.3333333333. Where 800 / 600 = 1.33333333. It's how I do my game engines now. Though I use Framebuffers and just draw the main framebuffer onto the screen at the scale that was calculated. Also I figure out the offset of the image by subtracting the screen width from the content width times the scale and dividing it by 2. Then it centers it in the middle no matter how wide my screen is and narrow my content is. Use the same calculations for the opposite dimensions to make sure the content stays proportionate but centered and scaled. I also add an option to not actually scale the content, rather just center it on the screen. For instance, and pardon me for using a project I haven't shown off yet...

Here's a game with a 640x400 resoltion. (Technically it's 320x200, but all that matters is the ratio which is 16:10.)

MZHZX.png (19.27 KiB) Viewed 228 times

And here's that same game fullscreen. The display is the same ratio and is a whole number scale. 800 high with a 200 high game is 4x scale. Notice anything? No border because it's a whole number fraction or whatever. i.e. the game's screen size is 1/16th the size of the screen.

q4lc4.png (11.1 KiB) Viewed 228 times

Here is a game with a 640x480 resolution. (Technically it's 320x240, the ratio is 4:3.)

kTIaC.png (21.32 KiB) Viewed 228 times

Here's that same game Fullscreen with Löve using the screen resolution and "Floor Scaling" on. In that it scales down to the closest whole number instead of using a decimal value. i.e. 3 instead of 3.333333333.

6sasj.png (17.89 KiB) Viewed 228 times

Here's that same game with scaling normal. Notice the uneven fat pixel size that comes with scaling at non solid numbers? It simply makes the game screen take up the whole height instead of scaling to whole numbers.

GVbJ7.png (19.76 KiB) Viewed 228 times

So all the game has to do is take the framebuffer and place it at the calculated centering X and Y (Which in the first example would be 0, 0 since it's whole and 160, 30 for the second. Where 160 is the padding on the left and right and 30 is the padding on the top and bottom.)

My game also decides this padding based on whether whether the horizontal resolution is more than the vertical, or the vertical is more than the horizontal. So if you have a game that's actually taller, it'll still fit the screen fine. Hell, I could set my display to be 90º rotated and make a game that is 480x640 or 400x640 or whatever (A tall resolution like those old arcade games in the 80's where the monitor was rotated, like Donkey Kong and the numerous space shooter games) and it'll scale fine.

BTW, don't pay any attention to my secret 2d platformer engine. It doesn't exist. You didn't see anything. *FLASH* It was just the sun reflecting off Venus.

[Robin]

Yeah, except the whole reason I put in the full screen (at the last moment) was to show moar systems on the screen at once.

[hryx]

I can tell I got sucked into this game because when I beat it I realized my mouse hand was cramped.

Really nicely done, Robin. Probably the best thing I've played on Love yet. (I thought the No demo was great but this is a deeper game.) The graphic layout of the menu is prime.

I agree with the ideas here, multiplayer and difficulty settings would be rad. All these suggestions show that the game is solid and can be built on. My random idea: wandering invaders!