Week 31 – Expanding

Thanks so much for all the testing and feedback! Together we have identified many more bugs to add to my hitlist. The power of community is immense. We’re not huge, but the amount of help you have been together is enourmous! I’m glad to have you all onboard 😀

In the component status display, you can see I have added a new section at the bottom representing completeness. This takes into account the art, so will only be 100% once all components are both blue-listed and have art for them. As you can see, we are coming up to 20% done. We have 23 blue-listed components and 21 lovely pieces of art.

And while we are on the topic of art….

Concept Art (maybe)

On the home page you can now see a link to concept art. This is a WIP and I may remove it entirely. But let’s see how it ends up when I get Laura’s concept art through.

More Art!

Talking about Laura, she made even more art for us! Woo!

AP Shells, Armor, Oil Spill. Wonderful! And even though these art sections do appear to be getting shorter, I am no less amazed and extremely grateful for the effort that goes into these pieces and the time you spend making CCSO a better game. I have just run out of positive terms to describe how pleased I am 🙂

Second Artist!

SHOCK! GASP! WHAT?!

That’s right! Welcome ElDromedario! A second highly skilled artist who is willing to devote their time to CCSO. They wish to focus on the chassis and weapons and so far two chassis have been produced. Check out the Juggernaut and Power Hull!

They don’t display great in this blog due to their different dimensions, but be sure to check them out in the alpha game 😀 They are in there ready. Aren’t these just perfect or what? That Power Hull looks exactly how I imagined it, except ten times as awesome!

You know what having two artists rather than one means? Art coming out twice as fast and each artist’s workload halving. That’s right, ElDromedario, by helping us out with CCSO you now have half as much work to do. 😛

Seriously, this is more than I could ever ask for. I will work at CCSO and continuously improve it so as to never let you down. The game will one day be as grand as the art it holds.

And with this newest addition, our team is now:

Programming and Coordination: Keyholefixed
Music: Harmless
Artwork: Laurasnake (Abilities), ElDromedario (Chassis, Weapons)

Chassis Section Style

Further to the inclusion of chassis art in the game, I’m trying out a new style with the chassis layout. The art/text now alternates between left and right (land chassis only). I’m a little uncertain on it and it is hard to determine how it will end up looking without having all the art. But what do you think? Do you like it or should I stick to having all the art down one side?

And Finally…

Progress has been a little slow recently, at least from your perspective. I’ve been rewriting all the backend code to make it easier to add new components. The previous(/current) system is just too solid to be flexible enough to easily add new mechanics.

The old database table used about 100 columns to store the game data, and I thought that would be enough. Turns out that is it difficult to work with. This new table I’m in the process of designing has ~2500 columns (o.O). This version offers a much simpler system for storage and contains very high levels of redundancy to enable it to be able to cope with a wide range of gameplay and mechanics. I can’t say if this will be the final version I need, but it is a step in the direction that will let me add a lot of new components at a much faster speed. I thank you for your patience 🙂

Once the table is designed I’ll go about translating it into SQL code the server can read so I can then add this table to the game. Should be awesome. Hope to have it all done and working this week.

See you in a week!

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 😛

————————————————————————————————

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.

————————————————————————————————

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 – 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 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 😀

_____________________________________________________________________

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!

_____________________________________________________________________

See you all in a few days! 🙂