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edg3
02-11-2011, 01:03 PM
So a bunch of guys saw my multiplayer roguelike prototype a while back at the Jhb community meet, and with some revising of ideas and mechanics (and some inspiration from the Gears of War boardgame, monaco is mine and gunpoint game) I have worked out how to build a player vs player vs environment roguelike that would make sense and hopefully be fun.

I will be finishing as much stuff for it as I can today, then the next work I can do will be the evening of the 15th, so Im hoping to get a lot done today.

Current Progress:

Implementing donjon dungeon generation sauce (http://donjon.bin.sh/dungeon/about/)
Networking skeleton in place using Lidgren


Current todo:
- finish the dungeon generation
- find and squash the bug in afru causing all gamescreens to update and draw when then shouldnt
- finish the network lobby
- add the turnbased structures that game pieces must adhere to

Tech in use:
- C#/XNA, Afru engine
- Lidgren, networking

What is the game?
The objective is for you to survive to get to the exit first, as simple as that. You are in a 3-storey hospital of sorts designed to keep clones in captivity, where the guards and hospital staff are trained to keep you there (so clone vs hospital staff, kind of). Yourself and a bunch of clones of George managed to escape from your restraints and are ready to break out of there.

Mechanics
Turn based:
Everything first does a move-step, where they move closer to where they want to do an action (the AI will move first so the player can decide better what to do), everything measured in arbitrary world units, everything moves around at the same speed.

The next step is the action step, you can do things like pick locks of doors, attack enemies, turn of lights, use adrenalin kits, and so on.

Health system:
You will never die in the game, but if your consciousness goes to 0 you will black out, and when you wake up 1 turn later (ie you skip 1 turn) you will either be where you were with low consciousness, or if a guard or one of the nurses found you you will be put back into your restraints, which take another turn to break free from, though you will get full consciousness from this. (So if a player knocks you out they can get an advantage, or they can weaken you to send you back to the start, there are holding areas on every floor though, so you wont go back to floor 1 if you manage to get up to level 2, or 3 for instance). Adrenalin would increase your consciousness.

Weapons:
I plan to generate random furniture in rooms and so on, in your move step if you move next to someone to attack and you are also adjacent (not diagonally) to an object, you can do a "critical" attack by hitting the person with that object, and objects would have certain effects, if you hit someone with a chair for instance you could still be holding the chair when their strike happens (whoever goes first in combat will be based on consciousness) and deflect some of the damage.

Combat damage:
I plan to borrow the same system more or less that the Gears boardgame uses, you would roll say 3 dice that have a chance of [0,0,1,1,2,crit] for you damage, and a chair would be say + 2 dice, and the crit would add an extra damage point, or if you picked up a baton it would be + 1 dice, crit effect instant KO. Which if I get far enough would mean I would have an unarmed/armed system so you could keep the baton for yourself, but not use environmental objects while carrying it, and so on.

AI objectives:
- Primary: stop you, if they can see you they will try to stop you
- KO: skip 1 turn, then skip another turn to get full consciousness
- Secondary: Turning Generators back on, checking out alarms (for instance medicine cabinets would have alarms for if broken into), and so on
- Special abilities: Guards - crit = more damage, Nurses - do no damage, but crit = instant KO (sedative injection).

Your objective
Get out of there, there is a 1 man helicopter on the roof, it is the only means of escaping the hospital where you clones were made, so in all honesty you dont want to be hanging around, escape is first come first serve. Also, with the AI objectives you could use them to your advantage, if there are several guards in a room you can draw one out by setting off an alarm near enough to them, but you could also use it to call out a guard into a room with a player (if they are closer than you and in sight the guard will move to try subdue them and call for assistance for people inside the same room), so this could work to your advantage in certain areas for getting the upper hand from another player.

Wishlist: - things I want but cant be done till the core is complete
- More enemies (corporates? I dont know yet)
- Armed/Unarmed combat system
- Alarms/Cameras
- A decent amount of usable things that can be randomly placed in the game world for your use/abuse

Cant think of what else to add here for now. Lunch time, then back to writing code.

BlackShipsFillt
02-11-2011, 04:30 PM
This sounds interesting! How do the multiple players work? You're doing networking? That would be impressive.

How are actions performed? I really like how in Monaco (which you list as an influence) each item can be used in one way by pressing against it... It's really simple, but I think it is a really effective, and flavourful, way of building up complexity. I think it is total genius that just about everything in Monaco can be controlled just by using directional keys.

How do things like darkness affect players? Can I switch off the lights on a player and then they can only see a square in front of them or something. (I know you mentioned Gunpoint style light switches)... Or maybe the thing to do is switch on the lights in a room with a player so that they get caught. Although, I guess the question really is: Is stealth a factor?

Is there line of sight on the players, or can you see where your enemies are?

Would love to play this.

edg3
02-11-2011, 06:00 PM
The multiple players fits in via the same move step in the turns, Im hoping this will make the server/client setup easier.

I was thinking for simplicity in the action phase to list all possible actions with the objects around you, most probably as icons that pop up around the player for them to click on, this way a player will always know what they can do with everything immediately around them. Unfortunately Im not sure the walk into something to use it works turn based. The game should be entirely playable with your mouse, and Im hoping that it will only be inter-player chat that requires a keyboard.

I think stealth is a factor, but Im not sure how much yet. Also, light affecting players could be tricky to implement nicely, though I can totally see a player being able to move 4 blocks but only seeing 2 away, and being able to bump into things which would make a noise, alerting guards. The turning on lights would work too, I can picture a player turning off a light to sneak past a camera only to have another turn it back on to get that player caught.

I was thinking that players could just have a sense of how many people were in the next room, though not necessarily exactly where they are unless they get line of sight, (eg. through an open doorway) but similarly to Monaco there will probably be things like bushes you could hide in to ambush people.

I also have a bunch of other things on my mind after writing this, such as should players permanently see other players? Should I make alerts after each action step for nearby things (like hearing a player pick a nearby lock, or a rustle of bushes?) but not necessarily what they are? Because you could (or at least should be able to) by all means move through a door and lock it behind you. I think chatting between players should be allowed all the time, it would allow for players to work together in parts of the level that are too tough should they want to do it like that, but it could get fascinating when they turn on one another, or someone keeps getting bad damage rolls.

Should I put replays onto my wishlist? All it would require is storing my packets and then re-reading them to recreate what happened.

edg3
11-11-2011, 08:05 AM
Oki, so uh, after Fengol's talk at the meeting on Tuesday, I figured that this would be easiest to build as a boardgame (fastest too), so yesterday evening I built the board and the base card decks. I taught my dad the rules and we played through a complete session. As part of the conversion a bunch of rules were changed.


Turns:
Start phase:
1. Each player rolls the dice to see who goes first, they then as a group decide what direction to rotate in.
2. Starting with the first player, pick up a board tile from the shuffled pack, and place it somewhere in the play area
2.1. if there is already a board tile there you need to match up at least 1 set of entrances
2.2. if this is the first board a player places this is their spawning room, and their token goes onto that spawn
2.3. Spawn 1 of each marked token space on the board piece
2.4. Continue up to 3 board pieces more than the number of players
2.5. The last board placed becomes the target board, your first goal is to get to this staircase, this must be placed in the furthest place it can be from where all players enter the level
3. Enter play phase, starting with player 1

Play phase:
1. Move phase - roll the dice, you may move up to that many blocks (ie. you can roll 4 but choose to stay where you are, or just move 2 of those blocks).
2. Action phase - you may do any action required by the block you are on (eg. pick up a supply).
3. Attack phase - if you are directly next to an enemy you can attack it, to attack roll the dice once to get your attack, roll the dice for their defence, with modifiers added if you deal at least 1 damage the guard dies (you can also attack players, but only do 1 damage a turn).
4. A.I. phase - draw 1 A.I. card and follow its instructions, the A.I can only deal one damage to a player if they successfully hit, using the same attack mechanic as for players vs guards.
5. If a player reaches the exit, either move to increasing levels, or end the game (if you are in the second level).
5.1. otherwise it becomes the next players turn

Increasing level(s):
1. the player that reaches the exit first becomes player one
1.1. remove all the current board pieces from play and reshuffle them
2. Starting with the first player, pick up a board tile from the shuffled pack, and place it somewhere in the play area
2.1. if there is already a board tile there you need to match up at least 1 set of entrances
2.2. if this is the first board a player places this is their spawning room, and their token goes onto that spawn
2.3. Spawn 1 of each marked token space on the board piece
2.4. Continue up to 3 board pieces more than the number of players
2.5. The last board placed becomes the target board, your first goal is to get to this staircase, this must be placed in the furthest place it can be from where all players enter the level
3. player one gets 1 free move dice roll, then takes a turn.
4. game re-enters play phase

Additional mechanics:
- If you land on a supply token and choose to pick it up you cannot move further, you draw a Supply card, you can choose not to take what you find (adrenaline/equip/weapon) then on your next turn pick up again to try get something else, otherwise if you get "there is nothing of use here", or pick up the item, remove one supply token from that supply.
- There are door markers on the board, currently there is no locking/unlocking mechanic, and as such they just act as a line of sight blocker
- line of sight is defined by a straight line from the furthest corner of any 2 blocks, if this line touches a wall or cover there is no line of sight
- A.I. cards affecting a group of guards must be played on every guard of that type across all rooms
- Guards cannot see through map piece exits, but can move through them by certain cards
- You cannot hide in a corpse, or stand in another player.
- You cant move through guards, or diagonally.
- You can however "brush past" another player if you roll enough to go completely past the player (ie. not stopping on the other player).
- When a player gets knocked out their piece immediately goes to the nearest spawn (the previous room if you are in the exit rooms).
- Nothing attacks diagonally
- All guards have 1 health (ie, your damage lands you take out the guard), All players have 4 hearts, which are lost 1 at time with successive attacks, when you drop to zero you have been knocked out.

Finished the playtest at 10:30 last night, so I might have forgotten something, but I will update here as I get around to it.


Ive only got 4 board tiles, so technically it is single player by the rules, but played against my dad last night. And the levels werent very difficult.

I will also speak to a guy I know at uni who has a 3D printer later in the month to try get some nice looking game pieces made.

pics or it didnt happen...
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/1170/wp000074t.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/wp000074t.jpg/)
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/6219/wp000076q.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/141/wp000076q.jpg/)
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/1774/wp000077y.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/718/wp000077y.jpg/)
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/3553/wp000078.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/62/wp000078.jpg/)
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/3702/wp000079.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/337/wp000079.jpg/)
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/7518/wp000080.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/508/wp000080.jpg/)
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/7830/wp000081x.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/685/wp000081x.jpg/)

EDIT: Sorry about the image sizes, fighting with my image host :<

BlackShipsFillt
11-11-2011, 05:08 PM
And...? Was it fun?

Also, can you hide inside the corpse of one of your clones like a buffalo carcass thus making a gruesome Russian doll?

edg3
11-11-2011, 05:12 PM
It was pretty fun, I think it will be more interesting with more than 2 players though, it started slightly slowly, but many initial kinks were ironed out.

You cannot hide in a corpse, or stand in another player. You cant move through guards, or diagonally. You can however "brush past" another player if you roll enough to go completely past the player (ie. not stopping on the other player). When a player gets knocked out their piece immediately goes to the nearest spawn (the previous room if you are in the exit rooms).

Reminded me of a bunch of rules I need to add.

Fengol
11-11-2011, 11:29 PM
Very awesome to see another board game being created! Do you have examples of AI and Supply cards?

Something to do while testing is make a small mark on each tile a player moves through and look for any long straight lines you can break up with walls/line of sight and if you have tiles with lots of marks from different players and play-throughs consider making alternative paths that take just as many steps to get through. Basically, your players are acting out A* pathfinding and see if you can make it a little more interesting or else obvious for them