Abandoned Force - Top View Strategy Game

Dev diaries
#1

EDIT<

Hey there.

I am working on my first DEFFOLD Project called “Abandoned Force”. Its a remake of my first game I’ve coded some years ago. Original name was (how creative) “TestObject”. It was written in Purebasic. I’ve never really finished it. It worked, but with couple of bugs.

Abandoned Force (TestObject) is and was a “oldschool-multiplayer-strategy-grid-based-topdown”-game. Maybe some of you know an very old game on AMIGA called M.A.X (Mechanised Assault and Exploration). I loved that game. Never found some fun like that.

In Abandoned Force you’ll start with a constructor-unit. With this unit you can build structures like a base, unit-factory, airport, turrets and research-lab to get upgrades and new technology etc. All these are working and uses simple energy with refules automatically. Other units are tanks, rocket-launcher, emp-launcher, buggy, collector etc. Collectors - like the name says, are collecting resources like iron, gold or artefacts. all needed to build units and structures. The maps are random. Its a stategy game so its on the player which stategy he’ll use: rush at the beginning, “castleing” and building a hard to beat base or / and researching for upgrades or new stuff. the goal is to defeat the other player(s). maybe there will be singleplayer with AI.

Why in DEFOLD? Lot of devs go and use the “famous” unity3d. I’ve also tried it out. But it seemed to be not the right one for 2d games. I know there are TONS of unity games - also 2d. But if I play them, it seems unity dont really support 2d. The games are lagging etc. So I decided to use DEFOLD. I hope it will fast and stable enough :slight_smile: After some starting problems with lua and DEFOLD I am on the run to make it.

Its in an early state actually. Some units are done and working also as building structures. Item spawn is working in early state etc.
Of cause a lot to do. Hope to get to a playable state. If the main things are working the multiplayer part will be the next goal. On Testobject the main game was playable after 1,5 month. Another 2 month for network and optimizations :smiley: I quess in this new engine and language it will need a bit more o.O

Here is a quick screenshot

abandoned force ingame.jpg1296×678 143 KB

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#2

Nice! Good luck with the project and please keep us updated!

3 Likes
#3

Hm… there are not many calls for this thread an just one komment.

Not the right game/genre? Ugly graphics? Noone likes a strategy game???

Should this be a “dead project”???

#4

Hey, I gave you a like! Jokes aside, it sounds like an interesting concept, and I look forward to seeing your first playable.

By the way – have you seen the War Battles RTS Sprite pack? They are made for Defold (i.e. all your atlases, tilemaps, etc. are in order) by @ansimuz, and completely free to use for everyone.

1 Like
#5

Thanks for the tip, @Axel.
Its not the right units etc and its in 16px (I am working with 32px) but good to know :wink:

I am no graphic artist and dont have one, so I have to paint all this by myself - thats why it is so ugly :smiley:

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#6

I love this kind of game - i played command and conquer a lot, that was a cool series. Building AI is going to be difficult, though. good luck

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#7

It looks interesting - I want to play it! Please finish it and keep updating the thread!

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#8

I am no graphic artist and dont have one, so I have to paint all this by myself - thats why it is so ugly :smiley:

Programmer art FTW! I do all my own ‘art’ too and prefer it that way.

1 Like
#9

:slight_smile: hey thanks for your comments. Now I am not sure if you just wrote in case of my “crying” :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Of cause I’ll keep you all up-to date.

About the graphics … I am not sure if I keep the old “style” I’ve made earlier or if I draw everything again more simple. Actually there are lots of pixel-art in every unit and all the windows have a kind of pattern. I am thinking of clear colors and more plain objects and windows. This also lowers the installation-size. Not sure… what you think?

For example, thats the “old” unit-info-window:

Here is a plain new one:

Size ist a 10th (35kb to 3,5kb).

#10

hey @benjames171, I like your rouge redemption (you already know) and I saw your psychon 2. Very nice! also pretty good work. random map would be nice and more stuff of cause :slight_smile:

a top-down-character-game is my next project. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#11

Didn’t see this post until now. I am also a big big fan of these games and always wanted to do something similar. I also believe you’ve come to the right place for a 2D game so best of luck!
So are you planning on single-player or will you try multiplayer?
I have always seen both of these sides quite challenging for an RTS.

Edit: Ah read in your first post again that you will plan mp as soon as you get the basic mechanics in.
I’m actually sitting writing down some network tech that I hope I will be able to release for you guys or at least showcase and do some tutorials/learnings from my work. Things are new to me so it will probably take some time :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#12

Hey @andreas.strangequest. Thanks for you posting and your “good luck” wishes :wink:

Like you can read above I already coded this game without any engine before. Sure, it is unfinished and buggy, but it is/was playable at that time! We played multiplayer with 4 (or 5 - not sure) players. Including stupid bugs.
It was in a powerful basic language (Purebasic). Not a 2d engine, so I had to code all the stuff by hand. Including the networking-stuff. The basic game was playable (building and fighting “alone”) in about 1 month. another month was network-coding for the client and a dedicated server. another month was optimizations, network and game. With just a few TCP commands and simple sprite-commands its a lot to do. The client is about 10.000 lines of code. The dedicated server I quess about 3 or 4.000.

And now I “try” this in DEFOLD. After some “starting” problems with lua and defold I am getting on it. sure, maybe a lot of things are not optimal and maybe solved “easy” or stupid, but optimizations will be at last (at that point my knowledge about lua and defold will be better ;)). I dont know anything about networking in defold and lua but I’ll get on it and it is possible. With my knowledge of the past project … I think positive.
You are on some networking-classes? Sounds good. Maybe its a good idea to use it if possible and if its working fast and good :slight_smile:

#13

luasockets gives you TCP and UDP out of the box. I’m trying to get rid of all TCP and write my own layer on top of UDP with 4 different levels of priority:
1 - Unreliable messages (if dropped no one will ever know or care, will also be dropped if there is no room in package)
2 - Unreliable messages ( same as 1 but will be queued and at least sent once)
3 - Reliable message. Will be sent, acked and resent if necessary. Always executed when received
4 - Reliable ordered message. Same as 3 but will make sure that all ordered messages are executed in correct order. Only message that can queue up on receiver side, but will not clog up any of the other types.

Beside this ack, I’m trying to find nifty ways to serialize in a very optimized way and in the end making all info being sent as messages to all objects that are interested. Then some connection, handshake, disconnects … stuff like that.

2 Likes
#14

That would be awesome Andreas!

As a side note: We held an internal Defold coding competition here at King and one of our employees wrote a native extension based multiplayer networking module with a lot of nice features. I’m gonna look into it a bit more and see if it would be possible for us to open source it.

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#15

Awesome britzl.
Yes I have come to a point where especially the serialisation/deserialisation and prioritisation of data takes too much time for my taste and am wondering how I would bring some of these things to a native extension. Still I want to fulfil all logic in lua first and then afterwards see where I could optimise it.
Sry for hijacking thread @stephenkalisch. :slight_smile:

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#16

Update.

  • Build-Menu for unit constructor and structure factory is now dynamicly generated - not a static gui. Based on the content of the Unit/Structure-Table

  • Performance-Optimisations. Kicked down the drawcalls from >120 to <30 :slight_smile: // EDIT… to 15 drawcalls :smiley:

  • Code-Cleanup

  • Removed ununsed graphics and logos, defold-stuff and code to bring down package size

  • Extended the player statistics for killed/destroyed units and structures

Next Goal: RESEARCHING

the research-structure for researching perks like “faster reloading”, “more damage”, “faster moving” etc.

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#17

New dynamic build-menu with sprite-background.
picture shows the “build a structure” menu of the constructor-unit

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#18

Nice one @stephenkalisch, love to see the progress! :raised_hands:

2 Likes
#19

Eqivalent to the “build structure” now the “build unit” menu. Dynamicly of cause .)

3 Likes
#20

Thanks @Axel

I like defold and happy to be part of it and part of the 2d-game-dev-scene :wink:

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