Immunocide - Update 1

Posted by Joewoof on July 20, 2006, 12:55 p.m.

It's been a long time since I regularly blogged about my game projects. Blame it on college finals.


Development

Anyway, I've been hard at work on this game. Immunocide is going to be a mid-sized project. I started it a couple of weeks ago and it is going to be finished in about a couple of weeks. At least, I hope as much.

Since the WIP demo on the site, I've made a number of major additions to the game:

  • New Cell Unit - Helper T Cell

  • New Enemy - Virus

  • Further refined all unit stats

  • Fixed a unit movement bug

  • Unit Health indication through transparency

  • Adjusted difficulty curve & scaling

  • Improved in-game help - you can now press 'D' to show brief unit information

    Next priority:

  • New Enemy - Parasite


    Design & Other Stuff

  • I'm going to make use of a "Paradigm Shift" within the game. It's an effective element that is often overlooked, but highly-regarded professionals often use it with amazing results. Can't say more, but it'll be interesting. :)

  • This game turned out to be much bigger than originally planned. At the very beginning, I was thinking about making an RTS out of the Tolerance theme, again thinking about doing another "4-hour time trial challenge". Later, I wanted to try something new instead. As the ideas take shape, I realized that the game, despite how short and simple it is (at least, compared to my other, massive projects), is going to take a month to complete (it's been 2 weeks now, with progress right on schedule).

  • When I was a little kid, I was fascinated by illustrated diagrams showing how our immune system fights off the invaders. I used to wonder how it's like to see all that in large-scale warfare. After all those years, I'm still insterested in the idea and I'm glad that I can turn it into a game. :D It's cool when your childhood dreams take shape in reality.

  • Oh yeah, thanks to ParadoxEquation, Jabberwock, melee-master, contrendo, Hatonastick and vanhelsing for giving feedback! Glad to know that I'm on the right track. :)


    And in case you haven't tried it yet, check out the old demo:

    Immunocide WIP Page
  • Comments

    melee-master 18 years, 4 months ago

    Sounds cool. How about a smooth moving view? [=D]

    Joewoof 18 years, 4 months ago

    I've been thinking about that too. The problem is how the view follows the cursor, not how it moves, I believe. I'm also thinking about setting the resolution, since the game screen may appear too small for larger monitor displays.

    Malaika 18 years, 4 months ago

    hehe a malign paradigm shift? Thats my favourite term :D

    Ooh, and is the virus like a supersoldier? Cos there isn't much that can neutralise a virus… I'll have to try out the game, but I can't download off of 64D atm, cos my Java is messing up. I gotta fix that first.

    Joewoof 18 years, 4 months ago

    Quote:
    hehe a malign paradigm shift? Thats my favourite term :D
    Oh, it is? :D

    Quote:
    Ooh, and is the virus like a supersoldier? Cos there isn't much that can neutralise a virus…
    Haha, I'm not that ambitious with this one (it's not a big project). I'm not really interested about recreating microbiology accurately (hence, the time setting), but there are many insteresting inspirations that you can draw from it.

    Unfortunately, I don't want to post another demo, so you won't see the 'Virus' unit in action until the final version. It's just weeks away though, so it's not that long of a wait.

    Quote:
    I'll have to try out the game, but I can't download off of 64D atm, cos my Java is messing up. I gotta fix that first.
    I'll be looking forward to your comments. :)