View Full Version : 19: Tim Reaper
Evil_Toaster
02-06-2008, 02:42 PM
Tim Reaper
Play Tim Reaper Online (http://www.retrotoast.com/downloads/TimReaper/TimReaper.html)
Download Tim Reaper (http://www.retrotoast.com/downloads/TimReaper.zip)
WARNING: The game is not stable, and has a high chance of crashing your browser.
Spec Version: 0.1
Story: It's a thousand years in the future, and humans have colonised hundreds of planets across the universe. It's been a very long time since the days when the grim reaper could manage the sheer number of souls passing through to the afterlife by himself. The rise of ReaperCorp saw a revolution in the way souls are collected, with R&D labs constantly working on ever more sophisticated reaping equipment and strict performance quotas being applied to all reaper operatives.
Your name is Tim, and having become bored after dying a while ago, have decided to enter the cutthroat reaping business. You'll need to learn the ropes fast, and gather souls quickly enough to meet your targets and avoid retrenchment. Only the best survive in this industry...
Gameplay
So far, I've only chosen the concept/theme, and haven't decided exactly how the gameplay will work. It's probably going to be a platformer of some kind.
I'll be building this one in flash, which I have just started learning, so... it should be interesting. ;)
DukeOFprunes
02-06-2008, 02:55 PM
Contractual smallprint:
"The Company reserves the right to, upon termination of the employee's services, grind said employee into tasty meat pies."
It's for the greater good.
Thaumaturge
02-06-2008, 07:11 PM
Hmm... It sounds as though it could work, and I rather like the concept. ^_^
Hmm... One gameplay idea (if I may suggest) might be something like this:
The player views a city (or planet) in overview, with the living being shown as coloured dots, the colour indicating health. When a living being is close to death, the player then zooms in, the living being now more clearly recognisable as people, with their statuses (including such things as disease and injury) visible to the player. From this zoomed-in view the player employs various pieces of reaping equipment to reap those close to death - although they only work on those close to death.
However, there's more. The player is not completely at the mercy of fate in the number of available souls to reap. The player is capable of introducing various things into the world - plagues may be seeded, vehicles made to malfunction, etc. - all in an effort to, well, speed things a long. Similarly, certain measures may be taken (perhaps via a form of suggestion) to herd the living, getting them to move closer to plagues (which they tend to resist, perhaps), and clumping the dying together, allowing for certain mass-reaping tools to be used, providing bonuses to score.
Finally, there's the competition. While these tools may work for you, there are other reapers about, who may steal your "reaps". Perhaps the player has ways of keeping them out, such as wardings (although these may also keep the player out), or perhaps it's simply a matter of grouping people when the competition is away, and hopefully scattering them quickly enough when the competition nears.
Gazza_N
02-06-2008, 07:15 PM
The backstory makes me think of Grim Fandango, actually. :P
*Gazza awaits details with bated breath, while nodding approvingly at Thaum's idea*
Evil_Toaster
02-06-2008, 10:02 PM
Hmm... It sounds as though it could work, and I rather like the concept. ^_^
Hmm... One gameplay idea (if I may suggest) might be something like this:
The player views a city (or planet) in overview, with the living being shown as coloured dots, the colour indicating health. When a living being is close to death, the player then zooms in, the living being now more clearly recognisable as people, with their statuses (including such things as disease and injury) visible to the player. From this zoomed-in view the player employs various pieces of reaping equipment to reap those close to death - although they only work on those close to death.
However, there's more. The player is not completely at the mercy of fate in the number of available souls to reap. The player is capable of introducing various things into the world - plagues may be seeded, vehicles made to malfunction, etc. - all in an effort to, well, speed things a long. Similarly, certain measures may be taken (perhaps via a form of suggestion) to herd the living, getting them to move closer to plagues (which they tend to resist, perhaps), and clumping the dying together, allowing for certain mass-reaping tools to be used, providing bonuses to score.
Finally, there's the competition. While these tools may work for you, there are other reapers about, who may steal your "reaps". Perhaps the player has ways of keeping them out, such as wardings (although these may also keep the player out), or perhaps it's simply a matter of grouping people when the competition is away, and hopefully scattering them quickly enough when the competition nears.
I was considering having a world map thing earlier, I think it'll work pretty well. Perhaps having each level as a map, with the objective being to clear the area. There will be a whole variety of reaping equipment... you'll get access to the bigger stuff as you reap more souls.
I'm not sure I want to go with actually causing people to die, since that kinda goes against the principles of reaping. (See Pg 43 - Memoirs of a Reaper - Grim)
There may well be other reapers running around the same level you're on, they might even want to reap you, or maybe you'll have to reap them. It might turn into one big fat reaping orgy... dunno yet. :)
All cool ideas though, I don't know if/which I'll use, but you'll see when I get to updating the overall spec. ;)
Evil_Toaster
02-06-2008, 10:08 PM
The backstory makes me think of Grim Fandango, actually. :P
*Gazza awaits details with bated breath, while nodding approvingly at Thaum's idea*
You know, I have yet to play that game. I picked up a copy a few months ago, but thus far, it's just sitting around in the bookshelf, much like the other 15 games I'm meaning to get around to possibly playing sometime when I per chance and maybe entirely by accident manage to get time. ;)
Ye olde details shall come when it is their time. But to throw one thing out, I'm thinking a combine soul harvester will be fun.
Tr00jg
02-06-2008, 10:17 PM
Tim Reaper sounds like a psychopomp just like Manny from Grim Fandango. Escorters of souls into the afterlife.
Yeah, I've wiki-ing too much. :P
Evil_Toaster
02-07-2008, 04:33 AM
Okey... so the final comp version is up. Sorry it's late. (See first post for details)
I spent the last 3 hours trying to squish an extremely elusive bug that causes flash player (and thus your browser) to crash, and have given up on it for now.
The game itself is playable, has an end and whatnot, but isn't too deep in terms of gameplay. Unfortunately, learning flash as I went slowed things down a lot.
Enjoy.
P.S: Check out the Readme page, you will enjoy it. :) (I consider it an integral part of the game.. it just isn't in it... yet)
P.P.S: I really hate unstable programs (especially if I wrote it...), so the millisecond I've found a fix for the crashing problem, I'll put the update online.
Thaumaturge
02-07-2008, 06:24 AM
It's pretty cool, Evil_Toaster, and quite fun - good work! ^_^
Wow, those other reapers are like flies - they swarm all over souls sometimes. o_o
The corporation is pretty ruthless too - if I read the scores correctly, only a winning score will have you being kept on.
I do have a question: what advantage is there to reaping with the braai tongs (an amusing addition ^_^) or one's hands? At the moment, my impression is that the scythe is a superior tool.
I didn't encounter any bugs (using my current version of Firefox, at least).
As to developing while learning a new language, heh, it can slow one down a bit, can't it? I'm currently doing much the same thing myself. ^_^
I do hope that you manage to find and kill that bug in short order - good luck! ^_^
liquid.silver
02-07-2008, 08:26 AM
worked fine with me (firefox on ubuntu) played quite a while till i realised i was at work and my boss could just look behind him to see what i'm doing. the scythe seems much superior to me too. great work, was a fun little game :)
Evil_Toaster
03-07-2008, 10:46 AM
@Tham: Thanks. :)
Yeah, the other reapers are psycho. I had total moron AI in, and the game was way too easy. I put in some last minute stuff, which I didn't expect would work very well. I was rather surprised when I started getting fired.
Well yeah, ReaperCorp is cheerfully evil, kinda like real corporates. The winning score thing was added to round off the game in its current state. A lot of things didn't make it in, so I simplified the scoring and added a simple win/lose condition.
You're right about the scythe, it's simply better than the other two weapons. I didn't have time to implement any real differences between them apart from reaping speed. The only reasons I can see to switch at the moment is for amusement value, or if you want a bigger challenge. Winning with hands is much harder than winning with a scythe. :)
@Liquid: Well, it's cool that it didn't crash on you, but the bug definately is there. I've had many reports of crashes. I'm glad you enjoyed the game.
liquid.silver
03-07-2008, 12:57 PM
It could be that i'm running linux and most others here are running windows *me doesn't miss an opportunity to slap m$* ;)
for interests sake, is the bug random? or can i try reproduce it?
Evil_Toaster
03-07-2008, 02:06 PM
It could be that i'm running linux and most others here are running windows *me doesn't miss an opportunity to slap m$* ;)
for interests sake, is the bug random? or can i try reproduce it?
lol, perhaps it only happens on windows pcs, dunno.
All I can say is it's somehow tied to keyboard input, and the code that runs as a result. I can leave the game running for 24 hours without it crashing, but if I'm actually playing it, it can crash in 5 seconds, or 5 minutes, or 10 minutes, etc.
Attempts to isolate it haven't gone well so far, but the most likely suspect at the moment is the physics module. (If I disable all physics code, the crashes stop... I think ;p) That doesn't make much sense to me though, since the player and AI reapers are both the exact same class, and the physics module treats all reaper objects in the same way.
liquid.silver
03-07-2008, 03:49 PM
well i didn't play for that long. was at work after all. if i run into the problem, i'll be sure to tell you. could be a bug in the modules you use. can't you run some sort of debugger on flash games?
Thaumaturge
05-07-2008, 04:31 AM
I had total moron AI in, and the game was way too easy. I put in some last minute stuff, which I didn't expect would work very well. I was rather surprised when I started getting fired.
That sounds interesting, and potentially useful - if I may ask, what did you include that had this effect?
The only reasons I can see to switch at the moment is for amusement value, or if you want a bigger challenge. Winning with hands is much harder than winning with a scythe.
Heheh, fair enough. :P
To be honest, at the moment winning with the scythe is sufficient challenge for me (although admittedly I haven't played through it very many times yet). ^^;
Evil_Toaster
07-07-2008, 05:53 PM
That sounds interesting, and potentially useful - if I may ask, what did you include that had this effect?
Heheh, fair enough. :P
To be honest, at the moment winning with the scythe is sufficient challenge for me (although admittedly I haven't played through it very many times yet). ^^;
It's just straight logic really, it goes like this:
For each reaper
Find the closest soul
If the soul Is Below, or on the same level as me, walk towards the soul and do not jump.
If the soul is Above, choose a random direction and jump.
Somehow, that makes for fairly smart reapers. ;) Oh, and they just reap constantly, so if they're near a soul, it gets reaped.
I have managed to win with hands, but it really depends on the random level generation. Sometimes there's a platform or two that the other reapers have a hard time getting at, and you can win. Other times they manage to get to all platforms, in which case, better use the scythe. :)
Thaumaturge
10-07-2008, 12:59 AM
Aah, fair enough, and thank you.
I quite like that such simple rules produce such effective behaviour.
Essentially, the enemy Reapers jump up until they end up above or level with their target, and then walk towards it. If they fall, they repeat the jumping behaviour. Randomising the direction of the jump should reduce problems with Reapers getting stuck trying to reach targets that involve jumping to a platform that's greater than their jump-height above them.
Good work! ^_^
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