Week 30 – Alpha Release!

It’s here! And goddamn, getting CCS: Alpha online ranks extremely high in my list of challenges faced while making CCSO. I’ve never known something to be so complicated and have so many different things to it.

And then when I had it up it all crashed and I’ve spent the past 5-6 hours trying to fix it. I believe the site is back up online now and I’ll send everyone a private invite instead of just posting the link here. Please don’t share the link as I will ban any account I do not recognise. We need to understand how the site holds up to traffic and make sure it doesn’t crash again. Easiest to do this with minimal users 😛

This blog entry is empty and small this week as I’ve been so busy with the server. I’ll post a bigger one maybe mid-week if all goes well. In the meanwhile, here are the hundreds fixes from this week – I really worked hard to iron out all the smaller bugs in time 😛

FIXED BUGS:
* In the unit creator, chassis and weapon names now display correctly after being selected.
* Unit creator: Empty ability slots no longer display ‘Duration: 0’ but now declare they are empty.
* Unit creator: Errors are output better and when your unit isn’t made, it won’t tell you the wrong errors.
* Fixed a colour bug with the plus/minus buttons on the enhacements screens.
* Some chassis and weapons still referred to Specials instead of Abilities – now fixed.
* A bunch of minor things broke when I put CCS online. I think they are all fixed now, but we’ll have to see if anything weird happens. EDIT: The last server crash seems to have messed some stuff up again. The site generally works though. Will fix tomorrow.

ADDED/CHANGED FEATURES:
* Grounds units renamed to Land. (Mostly, anyway)
* Unit creator: nicer ability names display.
* The range enhancement, armor enhancement, Wall, and Blink changes in the forum CCS have been added to CCSO.
* Added a little surprise. I call him Godbot, and I’ll let you figure him out 😛
* Coded the old components statistics page! This is a nice addition, especially now that it will auto update itself when a component is edited or added.
* Chassis and weapons now have space for art.
* Powers and status effects are now output in the game.
* Can now purchase UP while creating a unit. Yeah, it’s a cheap addition. I’ll make it better in the future 😛
* (SHOULD be working) Rounds end after every player has hit the end round button. This is a temporary workaround while I figure out how to use a countdown clock to automatically end rounds and say how much time is left.

NEW BUGS:
* None? But the server is playing up a bit.

I’ll clear all the old game data tomorrow so all my old tests aren’t there.

Keep an eye out for spelling mistakes!

Fingers crossed this site is still up in the morning!

UPDATE 2014/12/29: Server is back online after crashing last night. Database issues fixed too.

Week 29.5 – CCS Quiz!

How many of these do you know without looking up the answers? 😛 Go on, give it a try!

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Correct Answers

1. 80%.
2. 4 gold.
3. 2 range.
4. Ballista Impact. (Ballista Impact = 60, Tempest = 48, Magma Missiles = 40, Drill = 36)
5. Far Sight. (Sight however is passive)
6. 6 elements. (fire, water, ice, electric, construction, technology)
7. Nemesis.
8. Each ability can only be used once.
9. Boost All – UP.
10. 12 enhancements. (one damage enhancement, two upgrade damage enhancements, one starting HP, one upgrade HP, two heals, one armor, speed, UP, range, and death message.)

If you got 8 or more right, congrats, you need to get out more 😛

Week 29 – Fast Month!

Whoosh! Over a month of free time right now. Progress will be much more rapid. This week should bring about the game’s release. It is basic, but it allows all of you to follow along with the progress as a live site instead of just reading these blog posts all the time.

If I told myself 30 weeks ago that I would have a functioning game by now… back when I knew nothing of web development and I couldn’t even tell my echoes from my alerts… I would have never believed myself and I would be questioning my sanity after being visited by my future self.

But seriously, I would have never thought this would happen. Although I am one of those people who is acutely aware of all their strengths and weaknesses, I was still doubtful over whether or not I would succeed in this. When you have a game this huge and complicated laid out in front of you and you have no skills to deal with it, you know, it’s a little daunting.

Yet I am disciplined enough to know not to celebrate early. The game isn’t fully done yet and the sheer amount of work left is enough to make anyone run for the hills! But if everyone gave up when times got tough we would still be living in caves.

We come a long way since the start. Let’s not forget this isn’t just me here. Harmless and Laura have been amazingly hard working and we are very fortunate to have them on the team 🙂 Harmless has been a bit quiet recently with his music but says he can make much more soon. Laura, on the other hand, has crafted another four masterpieces:

From top left, Sight, Grenade, Bugcatcher, and Radar.

In preparation for the coming alpha release, every art piece has been added to the game!

I’m getting pretty good at this web design stuff now.

Anyway, talking about alpha, yes it is supposed to be out next week, and it should be. I’ve made a list of everyone who will have alpha access. It includes everyone who has expressed interest in CCSO for an extended period of time. If you think someone is missing, do send a message.

• ATimeParadox
• boomerg
• bowserjr
• cheesecoffee0
• ElDromedario
• glimmer
• Halpo
• harmless
• josephvl
• Laurasnake
• NeroZero
• retry
• sirboomalot
• Supersausagedog
• smittywjj
• THEFANG

That’s 16 people, plus myself. I ask you to refrain from inviting others at the moment – I wish to keep CCSO:Alpha restricted for the immediate future.

Further to the inclusion of art, I have added a basic navigation system around the site to make it possible to navigate – before I would just type in address names to navigate pages lol.

I’ll setup a second blog post when the alpha goes up so there is somewhere public to track and post bugs.

Like I said last week, this update would be small. I have been very busy this week. The dissertation is done, and I had to make presentation too that will be assessed at the university late in January. I’m back home now. But this does mean I’ll be able to work on CCSO full-time for the next few weeks ^_^

I want to touch up a few parts of the game and perhaps add a few more components before I try to get the alpha game online. I still aim for it to be done by this time next week 😛

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As I look back on how far the game has come, I wonder if in two years from now I’ll look back on this blog, possibly abandoned as things move on, and remember how CCSO all started?

In two years the current CCS setup may be completely dead as everyone would have moved over to the new version. The game there will stop being updated as CCSO comes into existence. It will be frozen in time. I wonder what all of us will feel as we rediscover the game long into the future.

Sigh, is reminiscence a positive or negative feeling? It’s like a mix of both.

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See you next week with the alpha!

Week 28 – A Great Week!

You could probably tell from the jolly tone of the secret mid-week post (Week 27.5 – CCS Trivia!) that I am really happy! Today I bring you all good news: a bunch of bugs have been fixed, loads more art is included, and new components have been added!

In the componet list (view) the following statuses have upgraded to Green or above: Hydro, Pave Low, Bunkerbuster, Puncture, Stinger, Icicle Launcher, and the Stun Gun. Shocking, isn’t it? Well there are almost 200 components to add, but this is a start. And yeah, I’m adding them in difficulty order xD Some of them are going to be real bugbears to make work, so I’m leaving them ’till last.

Art

Talking about starting at the easiest and working up, Laura has been busy this week with the art; totally not because I’ve been pestering her continuously 😛 Six new abilities have now been graphic’d! Thanks to NeroZero for some of the suggestions too!

From top left across: Blink, Blur, Bomb, Heli-Propeller, Reboot, and Reload. Awesome.

A Colourful Health Bar

On the topic of graphics, check out this funky health bar – I’ve got it changing colour as it depletes.

Are all the colours clearly differentiated on your screens? Every screen treats colours differently and everone interprets them differently, so if two are too similar or one can’t be differentiated from the red depleted area let me know!

Upgrade Names

“Upgrade 3 on ability X is awesome”…

Nothing like talking in numbers. One idea I have had for a very long time now is adding names to every upgrade. It would add more atmosphere, but I’ve never done it because of the limited space in the current CCS forum system – it would make many upgrades span two lines and therefore make the pages of abilities even longer and more threatening to new players.

Have a look below. Click to view full size. Pro tip: middle mouse click to open the image in a new tab. I’ve been browsing the web for years using the middle mouse button 🙂 Works wonders! What do you think? Only a handful have these names at the moment. If you don’t like them I’ll just take them out, no problem.

Full List of Changes

(since last week)

FIXED BUGS:
* You can no longer vote for dead players.
* Dead players do not get a vote and cannot activate abilities.
* Fixed a really odd bug that stopped some players using abilities because the system was mididentifying the user.
* The second player to join a game can no longer be hit with a single vote. Strange, I know. You seriously can’t make these bugs up haha.

ADDED FEATURES:
* Health bar now changes colour as damage is taken, transitioning from green through yellow and orange to deep red.
* End of round votes are now stored.
* Past round votes and level up screens are now visible.
* All players can see their own level up screens.
* Seven new components added.

NEW BUGS 😦
* Votes do not display instantly to all other players when you make them…
* If you customise a unit and then customise it again before submission, it charges you extra gold. o.O

Busy This Week

And while we’re on a negative topic…

This coming week I’m going to be extremely busy. As some of you may know, I’m on my placement year at university right now. Next week is my final week (HORRAY!). But this does also mean the disseration I’m writing as part of my time here needs to be finished by close of play Friday. This might mean staying a couple extra hours at work each day to finish it. There isn’t that much left to do, but I don’t want to underestimate it.

Then, next Sunday I’ll be moving out of this house and going back to my family for a month before university starts again. This means on Saturday I’ll be running around like crazy packing all my stuff and saying goodbye to the wonderful friends I have made down here. This is the last time I’ll be in this area. Sunday will be spent almost entirely on travel, unpacking, and catching up on everything back home.

So probably nothing major is going to be posted next week, but I’ll try my best. After this however, I’ll be fully free for a month, so there will be very rapid development. Oh, and the Alpha release in about two weeks from now 😛 Should be golden times for CCSO.

In February I’ll be starting my studies again, for the final time. I graduate from this four year course in summer. During the semester things will go kinda quiet here for CCSO, but I’ll see if I can get our musician and artist creating plenty of work to keep this active 🙂

Breaking the 200 Hit Limit!

But let’s not end this post on a low now haha.

Yesterday we smashed 200 blog views! How do we keep picking up so many? I’ve been trying to work out how many weekly visitors we get and it seems to be about 25. That’s over three per day 😮 Lovely!

Anyway, tally-ho! Onwards to 1000!

Alpha?

Yeah, it’s going to be on time. The game is almost good enough to release right now 😛 There’s just a few more things I want to change and a small number of bugs. This will be the last week of work, for after this week I’ll be focused on getting CCSO online and public.

I really don’t know how hard putting it online will be… Like I would optimistically imagine all I have to do is press a button and it’ll be up; but I know this probably won’t be the case and a  lot of technical playing around, googling stuff, and throwing things at walls will likely be the route to success.

Well, we’ll see what happens when that time comes. See you all next week!

Week 27.5 – Suprise! CCS Trivia and Fun!

Did you Know?

• It is impossible to create a unit with 1% armour.
  Also impossible are 2%, 3%, 4%, 6%, 7%, 8% and 11% armour levels!
• In the earliest CCS versions, custom death messages cost gold to have.
• Phantom was originally a land unit and for Speedy there has been a lot of debate whether it be land or air. Yarrrrrr
• Players originally had 1500 gold to spend on unit creation and components cost proportionally more. This amount was globally reduced after complaints on how difficult it was to count and keep track of gold spent.
• The Potato Shooter is one of the most feared weapons in CCS, for if a player has it you know they may have a super-buffed chassis and highly upgraded abilities. Not to mention that fact that the Potato Shooter’s damage doubles in the very first round, making its damage the fastest growing in the game. Only the mighty Ballista Impact can rival the potato shooter for infamy and fear.

Did you also know?

Keyholefixed’s personal favourite abilities are Blink, Missile, Stun Bolt, and Toxin. He also likes the Power Hull, Caster, and Capsule chassis. He has no preference when it comes to weapons.

The ability he hates the most is Self-Destruct. This opinion is echoed by many CCS players after a self-destruction wiped out half the players in a game in a single round in the early CCS days… ah, those memories… painful memories for many x.x

Fun Fact: New players often interpret Self-Destruct’s description “You may only use this skill once per game.” as a joke. They have yet to understand that in the right combination Self-Destruct will not always destroy you.

The more you know…

The number of updates in response to overpowered unit combinations and to exploits have reduced to pretty much 0 these days, but when CCS first came out they were one of the most common updates players would see. At its peak, exploits were being reported on a daily basis.

Things get difficult when…

Half of players think a component is too weak and the other half think it is too strong. No one ends up happy.

Favourite Idea Suggestions

Polisher – The only weapon deemed more useless than the infamous potato shooter!
Damage: -5 (-2)

Why kill each other when you can give each other a nice polish and have a super shiny unit? 😛

Orb – Is invisible, almost immortal, blocks stuff… can’t damage, nor do anything else.
Health: 100 (+0)
Armor: 500% (or 0%?)
Speed: 3
Effect: Cannot be detected on the field. Units trying to pass through it will have their movement blocked. This chassis causes the user to deal 0 damage regardless of weapon or special. Automatically has a fully upgraded Blink as Special. (does not count towards victory conditions?)
Cost: 20

This suggestion somehow got 4 pages of responses to it. Orb’s only purpose is to block other units and just be a nuisance to its team. Totally a serious idea.

Splash (Aqua)
It’s not very effective…
Cooldown: 1
Cost: FREE

And yet some people missed the reference entirely… I fainted.

Onion Shooter – The sheer fact this exists is not the only thing about it that makes me cry.
Air only
Damage: 0 (+1) [x0.5]
Range: 6
Note: Can only fire in even-numbered rounds. Can vote in all rounds, but will
not attack in odd rounds.
Cost: FREE

If you have a potato shooter, why not have an onion shooter? pewpew.

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Had fun? Hehe, see you all in a few days!

Week 27 – Everything is Awesome!

Everything is cool when you’re part of a team… [not too late, am I?]

Massive Strides in Game Progress

FIXED BUGS:
* Dead units coming back to life with ridiculous health quantities.
* Only being able to select your latest design to play with.
* List of signed up players to a game now works as it should.
* If two players had a unit with the same name, the game broke when the second player selected this unit.
* Movement now defaults to 0 at the start of every round. So if you moved up 3 last round, you won’t unknowingly move up 3 in the current round by not submitting movement. Same for votes and abilities.
* Certain usernames could completely cock-up the game. Added a layer of protection against this.

ADDED FEATURES:
* Game dynamically generates a list of players within your min/max range for you to vote for. There is an optional abstain choice.
* Attacking works! Players with more than two votes will be attacked.
* Your unit on the battlefield is now bolded.
* Made the layout more spacey and added section titles, moved a few parts around, and created guidance text (see below pic) to offer a reminder to new players on how to play. All part of the scheme to make CCS more welcoming. At some point I’ll offer an option of disabling this text so veterans don’t have to see it.
* Actions are now displayed. (your movement, vote and abilities).
* Level up display added.
* Can now cancel votes and abilities. Abilities can only be cancelled on the round they are activated on.
* Health bar! Woo!

KNOWN BUGS/MISSING FEATURES:
* Votes are not listed or kept past a round.
* The level up screen only displays to the user who ends the round
* Rounds do not end automatically.
* Unit powers and status effects are not shown.
* You can play games without them being full. (but this is a great feature to test games with so it will be the last thing I fix :P)

No video this week as the game basically hasn’t changed. It just works a lot better now. But here is a barrel load of pics (click for bigger images).

1. Full game screen as current.

2. Level up display. All numbers are fully functional.

3. Working signed-up list for games.

4. Fully working health bar, close up. The full bar can be seen in the first pic.

Pictures are amazing aren’t they? 😛 No new components have been added to the game yet… and those last few bugs need to be fixed. Other than that the game is ready for Alpha pretty much. I still want to make the site just a tad easier to navigate before the Alpha release but that won’t take long.

Following from this, does anyone know of a good php web server host that is fairly cheap and can support the game? Something that doesn’t have too huge of a restriction on computer time or database size would be good. I’ve been reading reviews and http://www.siteground.com/ comes out on top by far. Has anyone ever hosted with them before? What are your thoughts? Are there better hosts out there? Siteground does offer a money back guarantee… tempting. I read through their entire ToS earlier today and they don’t seem that bad. (yeah, I’m one of the few people in the world who actually reads ToS’s… but only when I am risking my own captial haha.)

Anyway…

We Have Passed 100 Views!

Since the week 24 post, we have reached over 100 blog views. In fact, we reached 100 last Sunday, and right now we have 141 views. They are increasing really fast now we have established a presence.

Oh and there was a massive spike in visits on Thursday. Were you guys expecting me to release another mid-week update? 😮 Unfortunately, they will be quite rare…

More Art!

So many pics this week, wow. This is a pretty major update.

Missile and Far Sight 😛 Thank our awesome Laura!

The blog background has been updated, as I promised last week, with all this art. It looks so awesome 😛 I’m sure you have already noticed it.

Progress Sheet updated saying with these two new pieces. Although no component statuses have changed colour this week 😦

This Week

The previously mentioned bugs will be fixed and a bunch of components should be in the game.

But with everything programming… you never can tell what is going to happen.

I always try my best for your guys though 🙂

Three weeks until the alpha, will it be ready?

Certainly seems so. If all that is left are a few bug fixes and adding a reasonable set of components, then there isn’t that much work remaining. The alpha release is definitely in sight!

An early alpha release is even possible if things go swimmingly, but I wouldn’t hold on to my boat for that one. Might just get shipwrecked yet…

Week 26 – Anyone Have Any Bug Spray?

BUGS EVERYWHERREEEEEEE!!!!!

And these ones do not make a satisfying crunch when you squish them. They are more the gooey type. ;(

Game [mostly] [kinda] Works!

Well. Yeah. CCSO does work, but it doesn’t work work.

This task of creating a playable game is much more complicated than anything I have done before. As I reach new skill levels, the bugs level up too. My ability to code in these languages has increased sharply over the past 26 weeks and still continues to rise, and this has meant I have been able to code more in less time. What took me an afternoon 6 months ago now takes me 5 minutes. But that was because I wasn’t expanding my horizons…

Now I am heading towards what will turn out to be the most complex part of CCSO, there are many new bugs. Ones that I have never seen before and have no idea how to fix. I’m gradually getting there, but I have fallen a tad behind schedule. However, I have managed to get a system working at a base level. In fact, this system has a lot of the final features already in it – there are only a handful missing.

Video!

The damage I select is damage to deal to myself. I have been using it to test the damage mechanics. The abilities do not work right now, but the cooldowns do. I know the video looks like it was a bit rushed. It was. I wanted to get this out on time. A higher quality and more final version of the alpha game will be shown next week.

What this video shows:
* Creating a game.
* Joining a game.
* Viewing the game.
* Selecting movement.
* A dynamically generated battlefield.
* Taking damage correctly – both normal and AP (armour-piercing) damage.
* Round Updates. E.g. health and damage upgrading, 5% heal, UP increasing, cooldowns decreasing, etc., etc.
* Unit death and removal from field.

What is missing:
* Interaction with other players (e.g. attacking, using abilities.)
* Abilities. No active abilities work currently and they cannot be upgraded.

So overall, it isn’t actually that far off a full system. And even though the work fell short of the target, I am happy that I have managed to conquer most bugs and have learnt from them. These skills will help in the future.

Besides, if everything worked first time, where would the fun be? 😛 The satisfaction you get when you squish a bug… haha, it is almost as satisfying as when you do it IRL.

Progress Sheet

So my original plans for the Alpha release when we first discussed it was to have a very basic prototype game with a few of the simpler components in it. It actually looks like this target will be superseded should these bugs leave. There are likely to be many components available.

Rather than filling up this blog with a list of components that are in the game, I have instead created a PDF that displays the progress of all components in a visual form.

Find It Here

Each component is coloured according to:
RED = not in the game or very faulty. Can’t use this component.
YELLOW = partially added. Has bugs, is non-functional, or lacks full features.
GREEN = Is in the game. Usable.
BLUE = Is in the game AND has been tested to a basic level.
(the red is very dark and the green is fairly light, to help [I hope] anyone who has red-green colour blindness.)

Components should drift towards all being Blue over time. However, if a Green or Blue listed one is tested and a bug is found, it will revert to Yellow, so there is a chance that some components could go backwards.

In addition to colours, an A is added to components that have art.

Next Steps

1. Fix the bugs.
2. Make the game fully functional.
3. Add more components.

Perhaps there will be a better video next week 😛

Background of the Blog

You may have noticed the new blog background. I was only trying it out – it isn’t staying. When more art comes out I will replace it with a collage of component art.

Is Alpha Going to be On Time?

Probably. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Week 25.5 – We Have an Artist! (but no game yet…)

First thing first. Do I have a working game to show you?
Unfortunately no. But I do have something just as amazing.

But first, the story of the game… You see, I had an amazing idea on Monday to rework all the database storage to make it really efficient. I lost two days due to that. Then I decided to create a whole system where players can sign-up and create games. I lost another two days to this. So yeah… I spent too much time making the site better and adding core parts that are crucial for the alpha release instead of focusing on the gameplay.

But on the plus side, this does mean when the game video does come out (and it will be out for the Week 26 update on Sunday) there will be a lot more to show you. It will be so much more awesome and well worth the few day’s wait.

Create A Game!

This screenshot says it all.

A lot of work went into making this functional. I’m learning new skills at a remarkable rate and even in the past month alone I have improved massively. Where will my skills be by the time the Alpha is released? One month ago I wouldn’t have been able to code something as advanced as a game creation screen. Now it’s like child’s play to me. The code flows freely from my hands as if I’ve always known it.

So it all works, albeit it is basic. But basic is what we want right now. The whole idea at the moment is to prove that CCSO can be made and provide a base for building the Beta release on. It is not to make it look really pretty lol. The look of the site is always at the forefront of my mind though. One day the site won’t look so bad. But when you compare it to your typical first ever website, it actually looks pretty good 😛

Artist Found

And now for the most amazing news ever. We have our first artist! ^^ Everyone welcome Laura – a gifted young artist who has joined us in our mission for survival. Welcome! 🙂
Four abilities now have artwork which will feature in the game. Check them out!

From top left: Caltrops ability, Repair ability, Repair All ability, Shield ability.

This is awesome and the cartoon-esque style is really cool. I know 200 components is a lot for one person and I wouldn’t expect Laura to manage that many alone, but for now this is a great start. I am forever grateful.

Everything is looking really good right now. Our team is taking shape and I am optimistic we can grow further and together our skills will form a great final product. I’ll certainly do my best to pay you all back somehow. Trust me, you don’t know how happy I am to be working alongside such highly talented people. I’m sure you must feel the same way about me sometimes too.

The Team

Programming and Coordination: Keyholefixed
Music: Harmless
Artwork: Laura

Code, graphics, sound. Isn’t that all a game needs? The foundation is in place for a wonderful future 😀

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Now for a shameless advert to end this highlight 😛

Are you good at art or have another skill that may be useful? Want to be part of a truly epic and growing community? Do get in touch 🙂 We would love to hear from you!

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See you all in a few days! 🙂

Week 25 – Almost Got It…

Christmas is in the air! All over the internet, TV, and in shops there are christmas-y things. It all makes me rather anxious but at the same time excited, for I know Christmas roughly marks the deadline for the CCSO alpha release.

Anyway, guess what?
This is really difficult work haha. I’ve been struggling this week to understand and create the various contraptions that will form the functioning game. Eugh. But I knew this was never going to be easy; as I’ve been saying all along, you can’t grow from nothing into a full web/game developer with 25 weeks of part-time commitment. Many people work hard for years just to get up to the required level. 😮 But then again, those people may be learning programming for the first time, whereas I have an edge here with a decent amount of past programming experience under my belt.

CC Survival is a complex game with all its unique components, and I have the difficult task of creating a general structure that can handle absolutely any situation that exists while also being flexible enough to work with any future components that are added. Even for a veteran developer this is not simple.

A lot of my time has actually been spent on ensuring the code is as flexible as possible, so I can add new features without pain.

My main work this week has been designing a sign-up system for games, where players can select a unit they have made and then join a game. It is basically working. Like as much as how a human is basically an animal.

It has been a lot of backend work again, so there isn’t much in the way of content to show 😦 The game content is more or less all ready to go though and all I have to do now is code the components.  Expect a mid-week update this week 😛 A video showing a functioning game. Or so I hope.

Now in other news…

Flash?

A completely random discovery I came across literally a few hours ago was that PHP can communicate with AS3 (known as ‘flash’ to all you non-programmers). This could mean I would be able to embed a flash game on the site and have the game server communicate with PHP and then PHP communicate with the flash to display everything.

This would allow a massive amount more functionality than a text and image based website ever could. Before this CCSO project came up, I was considering learning a bit of AS3 anyway.

The idea here would be to have PHP calculate everything like it is at the moment, but then have the display and intake (output/input) being within the flash media to make it look awesome and be super interactive.

It’s a nice dream anyway, but a task this big? pssh! Never gonna happen. (oh wait.. deja vu anyone?)

Right now it is not going to happen though. Learning and coding in 5 languages is quite enough, thank you. I will simply not be able to handle this task if it was much harder. But…

What about in the far future?

How about I make the full game now, and then once it is stable I can devote time into learning AS3 and perhaps start working towards converting parts of the game to it? Seems good to me. At least worth a shot.

Maybe even after the CCSO Beta release there will be a CCSO Gamma version before it enters public release. Who knows. Although I kind of know myself well enough to know that I will end up giving this a go lol.

Just don’t expect it anytime soon.

Will the Alpha be Ready for Week 30?

Gasp that is like …soon. It is all slotting into place nicely, but the amount of work left to do should not be underestimated. Wait and see the mid-week video to see what has been done. Sorry for the wait! See you in a few days 🙂

Week 24 – Welcome to CC Survival Online!

New to CC Survival? Click here to learn more.

Welcome everyone to the new CC Survival blog! Yeah, it’s WordPress, I know; but hey, it’s free 😛

Up until now the project, codenamed CCSO, has been kept a secret only known to the most experienced CC Survival players. Today, this all changes. This week is the 24th week since the very first blog post where I outlined what I wanted CC Survival Online to be and, although the idea was around in the few weeks running up to this, I am declaring that original post to be our true starting point.

Anyway, I shan’t dwell on the past 23 weeks for those new here for this blog would be massive if I did, but do ask questions if you want to know anything. Let’s get straight to business.

New Music

Harmless has updated his One Shot at Victory track to make many of the notes clearer. Furthermore, an extended version has been released!

Find all the music here:
Track 2 – One Shot at Victory (v1.2). Extended (v1.2).
Track 1 – Light Urgency.
These songs are owned by harmless and cannot be used without his permission.

YouTube

We do have a YouTube channel: CC Survival. And our main videos are:
* Unit Creator: Proof of Concept. In the future this will be improved massively and offer search features, easier navigation, and clearer looks. Right now it works fully and even displays errors if you create an invalid design.
* Just How Many Abilities Are There? Just for show. But let’s not forget that each individual ability needs to be coded in the final game. There is a lot of work to do.
There will certainly be more videos out in the future, so subscribe to the channel if you want the videos as soon as they go up, instead of waiting for me to post about them.

Core Game Development

My latest work is designing the core gameplay. That is, some sort of mechanism where you can launch an attack against another unit and the game works everything out. Now, this may sound very simple to do, but I have found out that quite the opposite is in fact true.

What I have managed to create so far is a large database that stores all unit information during the game. So for example when a player is damaged, their database health value drops, and then next round these values will be collected and output to every player. Ability upgrades have been the hardest part as when an upgrade is purchased the system needs to scan through the ability’s text, locate what needs changing, change it and nothing else, and then add to an upgrade counter to prevent upgrades being purchased more times than is allowed. It was a tricky system to get working, and in fact it isn’t working fully yet, but is almost there and looks like it will be fine. Next week maybe.

In addition to this, I have made a quick test dummy that will eventually be able to fight back and use its own abilities automatically.

Of course, the first two abilities are made up, but are there to test and play around with when the time comes.

It may not seem like there has been much work this week, but the entire backend gameplay is taking good shape. There is just little actual progress to show on the forefront. Don’t worry though, next week should bring some nice updates I hope 🙂 There is a lot to do and designing the gameplay of a full game is a massive task, especially when all this is new so I’m having to take the challenges as they come; I cannot foresee many of them. I can’t guarantee a basic working system by next week, but I will try. There is just so much that needs to be done first.

Will the alpha release be ready for the end of the year?

It is honestly too hard to tell at this stage, but the project certainly isn’t behind schedule.