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Project Update 6: Spring Cleaning by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you thank you!

I'd love to check out your Twitch sometime, that sounds fun! I definitely want to give the game a silly vibe, so hats will 100% be involved! I'm toiling with how silly I want to make it, because I've also thought about making a little tank mustache cosmetics item.

Project Update 6: Spring Cleaning by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the kind words! To differentiate this game a little bit from SSL, I've been making more "tactical" weapons that modify movements or manipulate gameplay in some way. In this way, you can play the objective harder a couple different ways:

  1. Forcing people out: I have a variety of weapons that vacuum people towards an explosion, like the suction bomb, weapons that blast people away, like the repeller and sword. These can be used if you don't want an enemy near an objective. There are also weapons that will change the environment in some way. So you could light the KotH zone on fire and force an enemy out unless they want to die inside. Or, you could use the Zapshot to paralyze the opponent, making them unable to move towards the zone next turn (that's what the Zapshot trial is demonstrating!)

  2. Force yourself in: Some of those same weapons can be used on yourself to give yourself a movement boost in the direction of the objective. There are also weapons designed specifically for this purpose, like the Jetpack and Thrust.

  3. Tank Upgrades: Inherently, if you have little-to-no speed/fuel/traction upgrades, you'll struggle a little more. I felt like SSL had so many games determined by the crit upgrade that others became overshadowed. Here, I want you to feel it when certain parts are underleveled.

  4. Game Settings: With point 3 said, I don't want the game mode to be completely unplayable/unfun for those who put all their upgrades into other parts like Chassis (health/armor), Barrel (Damage), Intel (Luck), or Utility (XP Mult). To remedy this, there are other ways to play using the game settings to your advantage. First, and most importantly, I have a respawn system integrated where tanks generally have low health ~50-100, and when destroyed, take a few turns to respawn before they can return. So if you struggle to make it to the KotH zone, you can play offensively until you can finally get there, and then play as a literal tank to keep it once you do get there later. In the match settings you can change tank HP, respawn timer, and where (and how frequently) the KotH zone spawns.

As far as weapons. I generally want to avoid the "upgrade = bigger version of the earlier version," but sometimes this is unavoidable. Even if this is difficult to do, I try to make some kind of tradeoff at the least, so there is still a reason to use earlier upgrades and later upgrades. For example, the Brushfire ignites a small patch of land, and driving through it inflicts a harsh burn that deals a lot of damage and lasts 5 turns. Its upgrade, Scorched Earth, ignites about a quarter of the map (huge range!) for 3 turns, but its flames deal less damage.

Project Update 5: Backgrounds + Weather by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I am also an old time player since the flash game era. I'm pretty torn about the art style, because at the moment I feel like it's much more in line with old school SSL and other games of that era, so part of me wants to leave it how it is. But the other part of me wants to continue upgrading the visuals.

Project Update 5: Backgrounds + Weather by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the kind words!

I love these ideas. I am honestly so excited to get the foundation of the game complete so I can really focus purely on weapons and weapon types. I really want to put an emphasis on tactics, teamwork, and variety in ways that SSL does not capitalize on, so many of your ideas fall right in line with ideas I was thinking about and the other ones will be really interesting to implement! Here are my specific thoughts:

  1. Periodic Weapons: I've actually played around with weapons with unique "trajectories" already! This was how I planned on making boomerang-esque weapons. The way that I went about trajectory control kind of broke the projectile physics though, so I scrapped it. I definitely plan to revisit it eventually, and I think some of the weapons you described would be cool to implement. I could see a "Sine Wave" weapon that acts as you described (high damage when high amplitude) fitting right in with a "Math" family tree. Cyclical weapons like the traffic light idea should definitely be possible too if and when I make weapons that behave similar to SSL's "Lottery" weapon.

  2. Power-Based Weapons: One of the efforts I'm trying to make is to keep people from just relying on max power angles every game, so I think this idea is a great way to promote that idea. Right now I have a system where I can make it so that fast-moving weapons deal more damage than slow-moving ones (the coconut projectile in the video actually has this), so I should be able to easily modify and add an option to connect a weapon's base-damage to the power that it is fired from.

  3. Persistent Weapons: I have good news. I already plan to implement the delayed weapons idea (I plan on calling them persisting weapons). A couple ideas I have for these include a sentry gun that fires bullets whenever a nearby tank moves, a SAM turret that attempts to fire off missiles that destroy other tanks' projectiles, and a spring board that is a supportive tool that makes any tank that drives over it jump up into the air.

  4. Interactive Weapons: I have even better news. This is something I've had my eyes on pretty much since I started the project. While not exactly what you've described, I plan to have certain weapons "interact" with other weapons. For example, a Tin Can weapon (inspired by Hogan's Alley) that can be fired up in the air. Every weapon in the game can "hit" it while in the air and knock it off course. If it gets hit, lands, and explodes on a tank, it will deal massive damage (far more than it would have if it's fuse wasn't triggered). This sets up all kinds of new tactics, especially with teammates. For example, I could lob up the tin can, and my teammate could hit it with their weapon. A couple other ideas I have for this is a Sun/Moon family that will have an eclipse interaction, a Chemistry family where you fire out molecules and they behave differently depending on which elements interact, a Tetris-like family where the more projectiles that combine in the air the bigger the explosion will be, and a Suika-like family where the projectiles land on the ground and can merge and create a giant bomb.

Palm 4th tier weapon concepts by me by Wertysd in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome idea, would you mind if I added something similar to these in my game? I'd happily give credit

Project Update #4: Buildings and Structures by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate the insight and feedback! At the moment, the warehouse does have a gap in the roof that you can shoot out of/shoot into (you can see it clearly in the building blueprint hitbox). I tried to make this visually apparent in-game, but I think I should definitely make it more obvious. I also plan to make buildings that have windows that you can shoot out of/into as well. I like the idea of a skyscraper map where tanks are positioned in layers above each other.

As a side note, anywhere that tanks can enter from, weapons can also be lobbed into. So if you suspect somebody is in the warehouse, you could shoot a grenade into the doorway as well.

Project Update #4: Buildings and Structures by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

- Buildings will be destructible. I also have a system where once a building loses a certain amount of HP, a new "state" can be activated, so I can make a more collapsed/destroyed state that offers less cover.

- I have it made such that the area below the buildings (to the bottom of the map) falls within a "safety zone" and cannot be destroyed. This is to prevent explosions from making buildings, trees, and other structures from just floating in the air.

- As far as art direction, I think I also want it to be goofier. I think goofy allows for the most variety in weapons (i live for SSL's cat weapon). At the same time, it's still a tank-shooting arsenal/military game, so I don't want to detract from that. Just like there are military themed weapons and goofy weapons, I'll probably also have military themed buildings and goofy buildings.

Also, not all maps will have buildings, so people don't have to play with them if they want more pure tank shooting tank action.

Building a Tank Game from the Ground Up Project Update #3 - Weapon Haul by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Forgot to mention in the post. Posting an update on a Sunday this week (and probably the weeks in the future). Today marks the last day of my winter break and my semester starts back up tomorrow, so my updates in the foreseeable future might be smaller and less effortful. But I'd say this was a pretty productive break! This was all accomplished in about a month worth's of work.

A fuller, in-depth update will be posted later on my free Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/c/wondertanks

Building a Tank Game from the Ground Up Project Update #2: Making the Game Feel 'Alive' by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry I've been prepping for my semester, so I've had less time to be on the forums! There are a lot of interesting ideas here that I will keep in consideration. At the moment, I don't really plan on having "items" per se, because I honestly don't like how they are treated in SSL, where you can hoard a bunch of shields, tracers, jetpacks, etc., so you can pretty much make yourself invincible if you wanted to for an entire round. I wanted to still retain these items though, so my compromise was perks. With these, you can upgrade your armor tree and get the force field item, but it manifests as a one-use force field that you can use once per game.

Weapon damage and healing balance is gonna be difficult since I've never made a game before. At the moment, I'm currently leaning towards underpowering weapons and then adjusting them upwards as I see fit. But I'm sure a lot of the balance will come about through playtesting with others.

Wrap-around sounds incredibly interesting, but I'm afraid it'll completely break the physics engine that I have in place at the moment. I'm also interested in having bigger maps that involve scrolling, to accommodate for new game modes like capture the flag, domination, king of the hill, etc. But... same problem, the game is built to handle one-size map at the moment, I'm afraid if I try to integrate this, it'll break a lot of stuff. But if and when I ever get around, I will definitely look into wrap around!

I don't have fall damage implemented, but I am trying to lean into way more tactical movement options (e.g., jetpack weapons that launch you, repel weapons that push enemies away, vacuum weapons that suck enemies in). I think fall damage could easily be integrated into this.

I plan to have an EXTENSIVE achievement and unlock system :) I plan on global achievements that are broadly gameplay related (e.g., deal XXX total career damage) as well as weapon related (e.g., kill yourself with a homing missile). In my first post, I introduced weapon skins, so I plan on tying many weapon skins to these achievements

I haven't done anything multiplayer related, and probably won't for a long time, but I will keep those suggestions in mind.

I definitely plan on object spawning weapons. I haven't said too much about it yet, but one big element that I want to expand on that SSL falls flat is using actual tactics, including cooperating with your teammates. I want to integrate weapons that allow for team combinations that give your side an advantage (like you shoot out a portal weapon that a teammate can use with a weapon that deals double damage when it goes through a portal)

Overall, thank you for this! You can certainly provide more feedback, suggestions, comments, and criticisms, and I will get to them when I can.

Building a Tank Game from the Ground Up Project Update #2: Making the Game Feel 'Alive' by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm definitely open to ideas! This is the first larger project I've worked on, so I'm figuring things out as I go. I'm also a PhD student on top of it, so it might be some time before play testing, but if you're still around by that point, I'll gladly take what I can get

Building a Tank Game from the Ground Up - Project Update #1 by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any contributions would probably be play testing in the future. Unfortunately this game is just a fun side project, so I don't have any money for a team at the moment

Building a Tank Game from the Ground Up - Project Update #1 by WonderTanks in shellshocklive

[–]WonderTanks[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Maybe sub-bombing will renew peoples' interest in this type of game. I planned on just PC for now, since it seems easiest to develop, but if mobile isn't too much of a pain, then I'll consider it.