Signal: Home

[Injury]

Signal: Home

You are a survivor who left home after the Boom Booms destroyed it all. Now it's time to go back. Use the radio signal network you created along the way to trace your way back to the source of the signal: Home.

Spoiler: Screenshots

Movement:

Click the mouse towards the pointer.
Press Left-Shift to run.
Mouse-Wheel to zoom the camera

Actions:
Scan - Scan for nearby towers

Scavenge - This is not implemented 100% yet. Scavenge for junk or other resources on a tile

Rest - Rest! If you are in a "shelter" with radio signal, your signal will accumulate overnight, adding to your personal signal strength. You will also recover a small amount of HP.

Download:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10WytHU ... sp=sharing



I'm going to be adding a lot of random encounters (friendly, enemy, flavor, story, etc), debris, flora and fauna, and much more.

I would like thoughts and suggestions as to what should be improved or iterated upon.

- What sucks?

- What is fun about this game?

- What would you personally like to see added to the game? Removed?

Hope everyone is doing well. I know I haven't posted in forever. I've just been really busy. This place looks dead af.

 

[Xilef]

It has potential to be good. Could do with some more intelligent grid layouts, like generating highways and lakes and oceans, that kind of thing. I'm not sure moving smoothly between grid points is really needed either, I think clicking to move onto each tile would be just as good.

Resting and waking up in a different grid sucks. One idea could be to have a fog of war that you cut through each day, then when you rest the fog resets and you don't get information on previously visited areas, but you can still see the geographical layout.

Could be like a weird, haunting version of The Oregon Trail. I image events happening with character portraits popping up to inform the player of the situation, or something like that.

Using a fixed grid might simplify things once you get a base system down. Won't need to worry about collisions or whatever.

The way you use 3D black cubes to hide the tiles is weird, there's a million things you can do to change this system. The 3D camera gives you a good opportunity to have an isometric orthographic camera angle.

Game-play wise, feels like it needs events. Those random encounters would be cool. Maybe consider vehicles as a way to quickly move over terrain at the cost of fuel/vehicle breaking down and needing repairs.

 

[Injury]

Hey Xi

1. Highways, lakes and oceans
- Yes on possibly making road systems that connect/are broken here and there
- Lakes were a thought, or at least bodies of water where you can resupply or spend "junk" to get water
- I'm not great at cellular proc-gen, which seems like it would fit great here

2. Moving between tiles/grids
- The player moving is adding to a distance counter. Moving between tiles checks the counters, and updates stats and resources if certain things are met.
- I get what you are getting at, but does that mean more clicky clicky?

3. Resting and waking on a different grid
- The demo doesn't have this like a previous version does, but the location, if any, you rest on will become the starting point for the next day.
- I'm not great at proc-gen, so if you know how I'd be able to generate as the player neared an edge, and just keep it all to one "map", that'd be appreciated.

4. Haunting Oregon Trail
- Exactly what I'm trying to go for, with a splash of Fallout (not the stuck in the 50s-60s thing, just the post-apocalyptic end-result)
- I'm trying to work out a proc-gen event system that will keep that spirit alive.

5. Fixed grid system
- Like static map? Or just use the tile array to hold event/location info instead of relying on prefabs w/colliders + scripts?

6. Fog of War
- It was just the easiest thing to do, and that was the intent trying to push out the "fun"/working prototype. Definitely open to suggestions here

7. Events, movement, etc
- Events are in the works for sure. (Friendly, Enemy, Flavor, Story, General events...Anything else?)
- A flora, fauna and debris system are also in the works, I just picked up the assets for it today
- I definitely like the idea of finding temporary wheels that cost "gears" and "junk" to fix and use. Temporarily stopping water/food consumption at that cost for a duration of time or until the end of the day (or it randomly breaks down)

My biggest hurdle for events is trying to make enough for each category. I'll probably start small and build from there.

Animals will be limited for now as well: Bears (enemy), Deer (food if you have ammo), and wolves (because why not?!).

Thanks for the feedback, hope you are doing well sir

 

[Injury]

Oh and the ruins/assets from top down look crappy with orthographic. I really did try it, but it makes any details from medium to high zoom levels kind of pointless and flat. I was going to angle the world more

Another person suggested that I wrap the world, which could be a good solution to my inability to make an ongoing proc-gen solution ala Minecraft

 

[boon]

The ruins/assets from town down look crappy with orthographic

Is the game only viewable in top-down view? It could help to improve your textures or switch to a totally 2D and pixelled environment.

At the moment, the textures are noisy and challenging to scan what they are/represent. Maybe more simplistic/pixel art textures would go a long way in improving the information that the user gets about the environment.

 

[Injury]

I was considering it at the start but I've kinda stayed away because I haven't invested much into 2D assets, and I'd want them to be custom and specific. I had already gotten a lot of 3D assets from the store for other things I worked on.

I'd happily pay to get the graphics but I don't think artists are around here anymore that would be able to assist.

Beyond that, it could easily be re-coded for 2D.