Slick Forums

I'm Kevin, and this is my first time posting in the forum, but I've actually used Slick for a few games before (an ATC game and a Tron-light-cycle-like puzzle game.)

This will be the dev blog for 'Let It Rain.' I came up with the title in a rush, because I didn't want to be locked out of the comp for late entry. So, I might change it later, but I'm going to stand by my choice of theme. 'Rain' seemed to be the red-headed step-child of the lot, so that's what I went with.

I wrote down about a dozen different ideas, but only one of them really came together in my mind for how it would work as a game. The player must defend his base from a mutant army of carnivorous plants created by a mad scientist. The plants spawn wherever rain falls, and rain clouds will be visible on the map. So some of the game will be maintaining a network of towers to ensure that the rain falls (and enemies spawn) where the player wants and not, say, right in the middle of the base. I'll probably add a few other weather control towers for the player, but it's the cloud seeding tower that I thought of first (wind towers? 'dehumidifier towers'? I need to do some meteorology research!)

So, yeah, it's a tower defense game. But I've never seen a tower defense game where the focus was more about controlling enemy spawning than just creating an efficient grid to blast with, so let's see how it works out.

EDIT : Been looking for an excuse to set up a personal site anyway, so...

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"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."
-GK Chesterton

Nice idea: I don't know any games like "Let it rain"
I like it and thanks to have opened this thread for Slick Competition 2011

good luck!

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| Last game

Above is a time lapse of the first day of development made with the open source program Gawker and hosted on Youtube. Not much happened: I really only had an hour today, but I should have more time tomorrow.

An important part of the game will be growing and shrinking clouds that will move across the map and, after they reach a certain point, rain. The rain will spawn the carnivorous plants for the player to deal with. Left to their own devices, clouds may very well rain directly in the middle of the player’s base: not good. Players will need to use a combination of tools, from cloud seeding to wind turbines to other weather control devices to keep the rain (and the baddies) away from their base.

Today, I wrote the clouds. Clouds are assembled randomly from wisps that were drawn in GIMP. Even the smallest cloud consists of at least a dozen or so wisps, so it all adds up to clouds of quiet varied shapes. Of course, they cast shadows on the things they pass under, so the player can know where the rain from the cloud would fall.

No rain yet. No baddies. Nothing remotely resembling a game.

http://trentonzero.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/day-one/

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"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."
-GK Chesterton

Got to spend a bit more time working this time. Again, attached is a time lapse video of the day’s development hosted on YouTube. I’d keep working, but I need to get ready for a church function tonight. Maybe I can do a bit more tonight, but I doubt it.

So, more work on clouds. Better cloud generation. There are now a few cloud shape algorithms (TALL, LONG, DISPERSED, SQUARE, TIGHT).

The clouds rain now, though I’m not very happy with how the graphics of rain look.

They also change size dynamically. I was worried it would look artificial, but I’m very pleased with how it looks. The growing and shrinking looks quiet reasonably organic given the simplistic way the clouds are being drawn. In fact, I’m pleased with how the clouds look overall. I think the only improvement I should make before going on to other aspects of the program (besides the look of the rain..grrr…) is to enter a random rotation to each ‘wisp’ of cloud when the whole cloud is built. This will make the cloud look a little more organic and chaotic (since each wisp is more or less a square.)

I tried to make a video of the clouds, but Slick didn't get along very well with Quicktime's screen recorder (1000+ fps down to 15).

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"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."
-GK Chesterton

I managed to get a few hours in on it this morning, so I spent the time working on the button bar where the player will select towers to lay down and actions to perform. Also drew terrible graphics for the cloud seeder button, just so I have something to look at when I am testing it.

Getting closer to having all the basic building blocks of the game assembled. Probably next time I sit down, I will be able to start putting them together and there will be something resembling game play to show off. Right now, I have a simulation of clouds moving across the screen while growing, shrinking, and raining called ‘CloudTest’ and just a fast program called ‘ButtonBarTest’ that loads and displays a button bar.

_________________
"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."
-GK Chesterton

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| Last game

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=)

_________________
"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."
-GK Chesterton