i have a tenancy to start ideas and never get very far with them before losing interest however this project is starting to shape up nicely so i thought it's about time i shared my progress

it's certainly not a quick project (despite it's basic amount of gameplay right now) i hope to add much more to the world as i go but i'm building it in chunks and aiming to get those working solid before i move on to the next area - so so far i only have the one base (pretty much for now) done.

The basic gameplay is the role of a mercenary/trader who will take any job from any of the 3 (so far) races in the world and will also act as a trader between them - with a dynamic buy and sell trade system which changes depending on how often he trades with a certain race and how common the goods are to them (needs events to fluctuate stock without player involvement to keep it realistic but the basic trading code is done)
and of course the "end" aim is to get the best equipment possible to kill the toughest enemies possible (this area is a bit limited right now with no real scifi weapons and/or vehicles) and be super rich

i started about a week ago and this is the progress so far (oldest first)
*for those who just want a quick list*
- trader for trade items
(items can be obtained from quests and/or from the world and the world items will respawn on a timer - along with enemies)
- quests & quest tracker
(1 active quest only but a basic reset on any current quest you might have so it's not completely lost, you will still be able to go back and pick it up again later - extremely basic system as i have to code it and track it myself and i have to learn as i went)
- repeatable and one-time-only quests (repeatable quests increase in difficulty and reward or have a time delay between repeats)
- voice dialogue (not much yet, just a test)
- weapon and ammo store
- inside and outside light system
edit; forgot to mention the penalty system
-if you attack a neutral character you will get penalised in some form (reduced rewards from quest givers, shop closure, retaliation from armed guards, removal of all your weapons - penalty depends on which character you attack, you wont get them all at once)








coming soon will be a weapon upgrading system

Really impressed, you have put a lot of work on this project.
Nice stuff, and very good lighting.
Nice trading system.
The robot great !, in summarizing a good job, keep up the good work up.

Love the last vid.

3com

well i am impressed here, uman i reckon will be watching this thread as he loves scifi too. i will follow your thread as it is full of workings and complexities i would never be able to get my head around, so i will enjoy seeing how far you push this game.

nice to hear and i really felt happy to share it with that video, even if it doesn't show much of the actual gameplay i feel it really added a lot of atmosphere.


thanks for the feedback, indeed it has taken quite a while to get the basics together but i feel i could quite easily populate the world with generic enemies and item pickups very easily (once i finalise the respawning in code form) and then it'll just be a case of adding more quests.
of course actually building the map takes a lot of time (especially as it's not my strongest area).

excellent work! love the robot and shooting bandit scum will keep an eye on this for defo

had a couple requests so havent done much on this but i did get to do an update today...

weapon upgrade system
*only going to be for the pistol as it's stupidly long winded to do right now with the lack of control on this side of GG but i think it works ok - minus the sheer number of weapons you end up with *

also added a couple extra tweaks to the shop so you wont waste money buying a weapon you already own (so you wont overwrite an upgrade)
and tweaked the target practice dummies so they look better

Nice work smallg. Thanks for sharing.

This looks amazing smallg, looking forward to seeing more

updated the visuals back to red so you can see more of what the real "final" world should look like (this was the original plan but every time you get a hard crash it gets reset back to default)

video to show the new bandit camps and the respawning in action
(there are a few bugs with people not moving out of their home sometimes (ok, quite often) or walking in the air but i think these are GG issues as sometimes it just works perfectly, i'll likely wait until the AI update before i worry too much on this side of things)


p.s. i forgot to go back to the trader to show the final count on items i had collected (hence why i went there first to show i had 0 of all items) but it does work correctly.
p.p.s this is quite a common request so for anyone interested - for the respawning i am using GG's Spawn(e) command combined with Hide(e) & resetting of the position (the bodies need to disappear quickly because if you leave them around too long the engine will clean them up and they can no longer be spawned).

added some new areas for the ants to live in and added collectibles for them (see one below)

That is looking better and better.
I love the trader script. real nice...
And nice weapons.
Great job..
edit( a nice idea if a egg could break with a dozen smaller ants)
Harry

As an artist, that try's to make the best looking visuals in a game that I can,... many times I am in awe
at what you coders can do,.....yes,....I suppose the visuals are what get's peoples attention first, but
without you coders to bring those visuals to life, they would mean nothing.
In years gone by, I tried to learn some coding, but alas, my brain was having none of that, and it said
to me, " what the hell,...you are an artist, not a coder, stick with what you know",......so I did.
Us artists know how to make a game look nice, but you coders know how to make it all work,.......
....respect, ,... and very nice work that you have done on your game so far,.....I like it, carry on sir.

this script was very much the starting point for the whole game and i'm very much hoping i'll get to add enough "life" to it to show it's true influence on the actual game play - but a long way to go yet.

they are all from BSP's sci-fi weapon pack, i don't plan to add any others due to the continuity (unless the TGC sci-fi adds something cool i guess?)

lol, a great idea but probably impractical (maybe a decal for the ants would work) and the egg doesn't animate so maybe an idea for the future

@Shadow man
i will continue building but it's very much a slow pace, i'm still enjoying it but it requires a lot of tweaking as i go as i don't generally do full map making i'm learning a lot - this is the biggest game i've made so far - but other than a few minor annoyances i think GG is doing well but i have to definitely hold back from adding "visual" stuff for the most part because it slows down so much with the amount of entities in use (i'm already running at around 10fps in my editor, the game runs at a decent 30fps for me still though, it's certainly playable)
I certainly want to add more life to the map yet but for now im trying to keep it in "areas" so the frame rate stays consistent

edit
- reworked the bandit loot so they drop different items now (hopefully this fits the general game more, let me know if you agree?)
- added more lights & sound effects
- more map areas added

few more areas added & just wanted to show the map so far
(really wishing we had a copy and paste selection box at this point, it would make actually filling out the map so much faster)
editor frame rate has started getting a bit too low to enjoy working on the map too (as i'm doing a lot of moving around picking stuff up to copy/place into the new areas) so i'll likely start adding more to the scripts again soon

From the looks of your map it looks like it's gonna be a massive game, Nice!

This is looking brilliant!

thanks guys, i do plan to fill the map entirely with areas to kill stuff and then of course add a few bases near each area of the map to place the traders inside
this is just a quick video to show the update of the trader system so you can see it now has an automatic update (basically something like a real time supply and demand to simulate the traders doing business with other people - this will be updated to only happen when you're out of range so you can trade more effectively) and also a less often "general event" system (to signify larger events)
the later of which will be used to exploit the trading system to your advantage - i.e. when a trader loses his stock you should travel there and sell any stock you have, and likewise if he has a big boost you can travel there and buy the excess for cheaper (events are random but once a trader has an event he must wait until the others have had an event before getting a chance at an event again - this should mean you can't realistically just wait near the same trader to sell back after a boost)
remember price is based on stock and some traders will stock more of certain items than the others

the timer is of course much faster for the video & testing purposes, it will be balanced (much slower) once i have all traders in place and a general idea of how fast i want the game to actually play
and of course i will add actual names to the bases etc so you can tell which is which - just the 2 traders right now so you can see it swaps between "other" and "starting base" and clean everything up more
i will also add a stock checker or something similar at some point so you can check local stock & prices where ever you go (but buying/selling from a distance wont be possible as that would ruin the gameplay i feel)

that's so nice smalg!

bravo awesome complex scifi. nice to see a different genre

more map areas

really impressing stuff. this level of scripting is really awesome! ah and now i know about the ant eggs attacking ants are great

Great work Smallg ! I wish I could script like you

I really like this, seams very original. your scripting is impressive and it shows how much you've been able to produce in such a short amount of time. i'll be following for updates.

Love the implementation of the trading system. Well done. It makes me think of just how vast you could actually make this game. I mean, are you an intergalactic space mercenary or are you just a local fella trading some goods?