Plan for Drew Hitchcock

GID 7, woo!

GID 7 was my first GID ever, and I think it actually turned out pretty well.

(This is pretty image heavy and a long read, so be warned)

EDIT: I replaced all the png's with jpgs, it should be smaller now, I also updated the game zip, it had some serious scoring problems.

In the beginning, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to make. I had scribbled an idea for a farming game on a legal pad a few weeks before, but I didn't want to tackle it for a GID, because I thought the game would require a lot of engine mods, and I wanted to do something that could be almost entirely done in script.

The theme for this GID was "cash cow." I had absolutely no plans of actually using the theme, but at some point I realized that if I swapped cows for crops in my farming game and scaled some other things back, it would make for a great GID.

So that's basically what happened. I ended up with a game in TGE called "Hover Farmer" which revolves around the hatching and selling of cows. Below is a step-by-step explanation of what I did.

I started with starter.fps, and the first thing I did was swap "Kork" for a long line of cows. I made the cow model really early in the day, it has no animations and is pretty strange looking.



A closer shot of my weird looking cow.


After that point I replaced the player with a flying saucer. I decided to use a normal Player for this, rather than a HoverVehicle or a FlyingVehicle, because I knew that those wouldn't be very easy to get working quickly, and the control scheme was closer to what I was going for.

(My art sucks, if you haven't figured it out yet)


I gave the player the ability to pick up cows (which the previous shot shows) by simply using a ShapeBaseImage that looked just like the cows on the ground.

Cows hatch from eggs in this game, so the next logical step was to get the eggs working, which ended up being incredibly easy using TGE's image/weapon stuff and the item class.



About this time I started having major problems with the engine crashing. I really still have no idea what was causing all of the problems, but I managed to fix most of them by the end. This was probably the biggest snag I ran into.

The next step was to add the triggers which would function as the "shops" in the game. One type of trigger is used to sell the cow you are carrying for cash, and the other simply allows the player to purchase items using the elaborate three-button shop dialog. (which I don't have a screenshot of, for some reason)

The last thing I really dealt with was the weapon. The weapon can be purchased from the shop, and is basically the starter.fps crossbow with a new, uglier model, but it works ok.

At some point, I decided to experiment with the overall look of the game, and I ended up making everything look really awful.


From there, there was a lot of tweaking. I made one really barebones map, using the default towers and dock stuff.


Unfortunately, this is a multiplayer only game, and I never got a chance to try it multiplayer. It really has no point singleplayer, because there's no one to compete with.

So in the end, I ended up with something that I feel is pretty cool. It's fairly barebones, there's only one gun, one map, one player model, and it's not configurable at all, but I had a lot of fun making it, and I'm still pretty proud of what I ended up with in the end.

The Game

If you'd like to play this game, for some reason, It can be downloaded here:
www.uccs.edu/~ahitchco/HoverFarmer.zip

It may or may not be fun. As I said, it's multiplayer only and I didn't have the resources to test it multiplayer. :)

How To Play

The object of the game is to get $10000 by selling cows.

You start with $2000 and you can spend that money by flying over to one of the three towers, going inside and pressing 'Q' to open the shop dialog. (When you are able to shop, a shopping cart will show up in the hud.)

You can buy eggs and guns in the shop. Eggs are used to grow cows, and guns are used to defend your makeshift cow hatchery from other players. Both Items cost $500 each.

The left mouse button fires the gun (if you have it) and the right mouse button drops any non-gun item which you may be carrying (cows or eggs)

When an egg is dropped on the ground, it sits for 15 seconds before cheesily "hatching" into a cow. (If an egg is picked up, the timer is reset.)

You can pick up eggs and cows lying on the ground by flying over them.

If you carry a cow over the central wooden platform, and hold it there for 1 second, you will get $1000.

if you successfully get to $10000 the game awkwardly ends by showing the standard TGE scoreboard.

Oh my god

That was a long plan. Bottom line, I had an awesome time, and I made a working prototype, and it may or may not be any fun :)