Guys, I want to make a coding game where some of the micromanagement of units/turrets/allies is defined by player code, like "if 5 enemies are bunched together, throw a bomb" or "if on low health, run to nearest healer"
@AlexMitan sounds like a RTS or turn-based squad managment game would fit this best. Could be set in the future where you controll a team of robot police forces to take down cyberpunks :D
Genres are about marketing rather than description, so use the genres that help you find the audience you think would enjoy the game.
Puzzle squad management meets turret defence, for example
(consider that “science fiction and fantasy” are both typically grouped together despite having almost nothing in common -- because the same crowd of people is interested in both.)
part of it is you can be correct now, then do further work and make changes, and that thing is no longer correct so you update that as part of your iteration
which means changing names, descriptions, the genre you're labelling it by, etc
Ok, then I should probably start with a very basic scenario: a grid-based, turn-based little game where two opposing units bump into each other to death
no, simpler
a turn-based "JRPG" where units don't move
That's fair right?
I'm too afraid to scrap and rewrite, and I tend to try to build this architecture and game engine before I even have a game
But the minimum viable product is about building a super basic version of your game which works and shows people what your game is about
If your game is not a turn based JRPG, then a turn based JRPG is not an MVP of your game
Perhaps another term would be Minimum Representative Product
You won't be there for several months. Before that, you'll be in alpha stages, iteratively working on your game and getting its mechanisms working. You'll get various bits of it working and eventually it comes together and produces a minimal version of the game that's working.
You'll want to focus on the end result of a good game. An MVP is a possible outcome along the way, but you shouldn't focus purely on the MVP. For example, your game needs different levels and environments, those may or may not be in an MVP but you'll want to develop for them anyway.
An MVP is not necessary. Many games do not have one, they just have various stages of the game working more and more through the course of alpha development then suddenly they're in beta.
Yeah, basically I'm trying to see if a game where you control a party of units is more fun if you script their behaviour
I figured I don't need 2D space for that
not at first
Plus, the strong point of automation is scaling: with a good and fun and rewarding scripting system, you'd be able to run around with huge fleets or squads
Whereas in game like Shadowrun your party size is limited to about 5 so your turn doesn't take a whole hour
But as I was meditating upon the pool of wisdom that is Pareto's Law, I figured that a fraction of player actions in a turn-based game are really "PLAYS", novel, cool moves that cause most of the enjoyment
That's why there's such a rise in idle games
Maybe
Because so many of the choices are mindless
I envision this badass big-squad game where you issue high-level orders like "attrition" or "turtle", maybe as you control a single complex unit running circles around your allies
@doppelgreener Also, what if I have a real-time game with "ticks"? Where there's no "end turn" button, but rather each tick resources are replenished and such, and units start moving? Any idea what games do that sort of thing? I'm wondering because if a slow unit takes "two ticks" to move to an adjacent space, where is it during that time? On the start tile? End tile?
I made a tick-based game where it was used to synchronize movements between COOP players. In that instance, I treated the character as being within their origin cell until they completed a move to a new cell.
Rather than treating the move as a third of a move, then two thirds, then full, I modelled it more like anticipation/buildup leading up to the discrete action at the end.
That was convenient for my purposes because I had events that could open/close passages or shove characters around. If they were always on one side or the other of a tile boundary, I didn't need special handling for what to do with characters straddling the gap.
It helped in my case because I had a cartoony style. The character could run in-place for the wind-up then dash across the tile border and elastically snap into the new tile. ;)
Not a working copy. ;) It was for a jam and the end-of-day build would only run on my machine, inexplicably. I haven't gotten around to finding out why...
Don't listen to Almo. It definitely must be a 3D MMORPG with photo-realistic graphics, millions of players and innovative and balanced gameplay. The best way to plan games is "My game should be a mix of [list of AAA titles]".
(I might be slightly insane right now. It's temporary, I promise.)
I think most here would agree that whenever someone asks Is this a scam, the answer is almost certainly, Yes, this is a scam.
Have there been any instances of questions like these where the answer was actually, No?