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 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.