RTS: Moon Project v0.5 released!

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AlexZ
Posts: 55
Joined: Aug 09, 2007 9:23

RTS: Moon Project v0.5 released!

Post by AlexZ »

UPDATE v0.5 - 04 Jan 2008

New version of the game available! Get it here!

Screenshots
Image
Image
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Hey there,

I made my first small game with FB, it's a mix of RTS and Economy Simulation, nothing too fancy but overall a nice game to waste 10min when you need to :-P

Description
You have landed on Moon and your goal is to sort of Gaia transform it to make it habitable. You do so by building water pumps that will make plants grow who then produce an atmosphere. To build water pumps you will need to build Metal Mines, Habitats, Solar Panels and Research Centers. Habitats can only be built with enough food which is also produced by the plants, so you really need to take care what you build or you are out of ressources and you can't finish the game. Though, I've balanced it to make it very easy, so don't worry.

Additional Info
There is no intro, no save/load option, nothing. You directly jump into the game, also the graphics are probably not the best. I didn't bother creating nice tiles, I'm no artist, but if anyone is interested in doing better ones or can point me to where I can find better tiles I will update the game with them.

Tips
- Build the water pumps in valleys (dark zones), plants grow quicker and expand further, which means more food for you.
- Concentrate on building Metal Mines in the beginning of the game, you can never have enough ;-)

My best time to the end of the game was around 10min, good luck!
Last edited by AlexZ on Jan 04, 2008 11:26, edited 3 times in total.
D.J.Peters
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Post by D.J.Peters »

nice how do you get 130 fps?

Joshy
AlexZ
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Joined: Aug 09, 2007 9:23

Post by AlexZ »

D.J.Peters wrote:nice how do you get 130 fps?

Joshy
Is that a lot for you? I only have a Core Duo processor with 1.66 GHz. My brother has over 500fps on his PC :-P

By the way, is the screenshot broken?
radicoon
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Post by radicoon »

That's an impressive game you got there. Nice work, and the graphics are fine (for me anyway :) ). I haven't beaten it yet, but it's fun and I'll try again. I did notice a bug though. When I demolish the solar panels, sometimes the max energy will drop below the used energy and I end up with a negative energy balance and can't buy anymore solar panels because of the energy requirement, which is 0. But since my energy's in the negative I can't fulfill that requirement without buying more solar panels, so then I am stuck.
anonymous1337
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Post by anonymous1337 »

That's a slick looking game you got that. Keep up the good work! ^.^;;
Lachie Dazdarian
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Post by Lachie Dazdarian »

Hmmm...I had 15 FPS (stop laughing) and the game ran rather smooth. :P

Time-base movement?

Anyway, fun game. You shouldn't worry about the graphics. They are good. Serve they purpose quite well. And I love the music/sounds. Especially, "Here I come." I kept ordering balloon where to go just to hear the sound. :P

Like I said, a fun game despite being a fairly easy one. I did need 22 minutes to complete the game. Might be those 15 FPS. Thought about adding best times table?

BTW, is this a final version for you, or you plan to add some major changes? I'm asking because of http://games.freebasic.net?

P.S.

Please including documentation with future projects. Espacially with games that need it, like yours. I'll never understand people not writing them.
Deleter
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Joined: Jun 22, 2005 22:33

Post by Deleter »

Lachie Dazdarian wrote:Please including documentation with future projects. Espacially with games that need it, like yours. I'll never understand people not writing them.
Well because the person who wrote the game is so intimately familiar with its workings that usually it never occurs to them that people are going to need a manual ;).
Conexion
Posts: 236
Joined: Feb 23, 2006 6:04

Post by Conexion »

Really nice. But it crashed on me and quit when I uncovered about 95% of the land. . . .

I'd like to see something actually making the buildings (AoE style)

and maybe some sort of opposing force (The Russians? :P jk)

Great feel though and nice music without being annoying :)
AlexZ
Posts: 55
Joined: Aug 09, 2007 9:23

Post by AlexZ »

Lachie Dazdarian wrote:
BTW, is this a final version for you, or you plan to add some major changes? I'm asking because of http://games.freebasic.net?

P.S.

Please including documentation with future projects. Espacially with games that need it, like yours. I'll never understand people not writing them.
Maybe I'll do some major changes, don't know yet. Anyway, how can I add my game to games.freebasic.net?

I will sort out the bugs and write a documentation ASAP :-)

Thanks everybody for your feedback!
Frank Dodd
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Post by Frank Dodd »

Thats a great little game very well done. it works very well and once you get into it it has a very natural control mechanism. I was getting 32fps on my old Athlon 1.3 which was perfectly playable. I would suggest: -
  • Music volume or on/off (a repeating track will be annoying after a while)
    Quick and simple instructions or perhaps in pop up tips in play.
    Opposition (dust monsters, plant mutants, meteorites)
Great working RTS foundation!
Dr_D
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Post by Dr_D »

This is pretty cool. I wouldn't mind taking a stab at some tiles for it. :)

Edit:

I don't know if you like the looks of this, but if you do, I can make more buildings.
Image
Image


I could also do some ground tiles, if you want. It's pretty easy to make tiling images in gimp. It only took about ten minutes to make this one:

Image
Lachie Dazdarian
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Post by Lachie Dazdarian »

AlexZ, I usually find games to update myself, but people are encouraged to submit their own and other people games as I can't be aware of every FB game released out there. Anyway, I'll hold with updating your game and when you are ready, use this form to notify me that you have finalized the game:

http://games.freebasic.net/submit_game.php

And if you decide not to continue upgrading this game, no probem. Just notify me on this too (using this thread).
duke4e
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Post by duke4e »

Nice one! Played it twice in a row.


Keep up the good work!
TbbW
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Post by TbbW »

realy nice game!

i noticed some bugs when toyed with it.
i rised the oxygen lvl to 20000 ( to high... u cant win... go for 15000 if you want to just fill the map with grass ).

when i compiled with -exx it complained with array out of bound at:

Code: Select all

Aborting due to runtime error 6 (out of bounds array access) at line 606 of MoonProject.bas()

	' Draw Hover Rectangle
	If building_selected > 0 And hover_map And building_info(building_selected).canbebuilt = 1 Then
this may be connected with the bug if you select i.e the ground then scroll to the left and when the square you selected is where the panel is it's drawn ower the gui.

also when i whas close to have the entire map filled with grass i put a water pump on the ground ( i had alot of buildings at the time ) and it crashed :P

also when i builded a controle center (lvl1) something wierd hapend... i klicked on the ground at a diffrent spot and the ground turned green and i culd build a water pump there ( far away from the controle center... like... 60 or more squares away ), but it only hapend once.

well... realy nice game... it killed a total of 3h for me :)
AlexZ
Posts: 55
Joined: Aug 09, 2007 9:23

Post by AlexZ »

Thanks again for the feedback :-)

Dr_D: Nice work, can you apply final textures and show me some other buildings if it's not too much work? Will probably use your buildings if they are going to look as good as I think :-)

I'd also need ground tiles that link the different ground types. Like dust to mud and mud to grass, for all possible directions. Would certainly improve the overall look a lot.

TbbW: Cool you tried altering the settings, didn't think of that yet. As for the first bug I have no idea, will look at it. 2nd bug: For the water pumps I use an array with a total size of 100, maybe if you exceeded this array by building to many pumps this crash occured. The last bug is the best hehe, found it out too yesterday, gonna have to fix this because this is really major.

So far I've done some changes on the HUD, removed large parts of it, because all those borders on the left, top and bottom were really not necessary. Also I added a C&C like TAB switch to toggle on/off the HUD. Finally, some optimizations to make the game run better, should give +20% more FPS overall.

Next stuff I will add
- Music volume or on/off
- Pop up tips

I was thinking about using OpenGL to draw everything (here's a German tutorial that shows how to do it: http://other.storm-master.de/ogl/index.html) but I'm a bit lost when it comes to display text with OpenGL. If anyone can help me with that I'd be grateful. With OpenGL I could scale the map when you rotate the mousewheel, much like in Supreme Commander, so you could zoom out and in. This may be a bit of an overkill for this game but why not add it ;-)

Cheers,
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