TGB and Prototyping

So it was just over a week ago that I decided to stop procrastinating and finally sit down and make something with Torque Game Builder. I'd had an idea of what I wanted to do for a while, but I kept getting bogged down in design specifics when I would try to write out a game design document. Finally, I just said that there's no way I can really know beforehand what's really going to work, especially if I want to try different things. So I just decided that I knew enough about what I was trying to do to just start working and see where I ended up.

I've been wanting to do a turn-based tactical strategy game for a while now, so I basically began at the beginning. I created a script class for the base unit (which will be customized through datablocks), the player (with support for multiple players on the same local machine), and the battlefield controller, which keeps track of everything and maintains order.

I essentially assembled everything one piece at a time, keeping in mind where I was trying to go, but not really trying to plan for features that may or may not make it into the game. This type of development was pretty revelatory to me -- usually I like to have everything laid in front of me before I start development. Unfortunately, when I have that, I start trying to develop the whole thing at once, instead of doing things in small, iterative pieces. This time around, I started with getting units to snap to the tile layer grid. I can place them anywhere on the map, and they'll automatically snap to the center of the nearest tile layer grid. Nothing fancy, but it was something that I could see.

The following days, I worked on the mechanics for selecting a unit, determining and highlighting the tiles that he could move to, selecting and moving the unit to the selected tile, calculating the targets in range and the ability to select them, and actually performing an attack. It was nice to see things come together piece by piece so quickly. TGB is pretty much perfect for throwing together a prototype really quickly.

As of tonight, I just managed to get multiple player controllers into the game, meaning that here are actually two teams of units on the map that can attack each other (before this, any unit could attack any other unit). So in some basic form, I actually have the beginnings of a game.

So a week later, and here are a few screens of what I've got. You'll have to forgive the temporary art. My intention wasn't necessarily to make something that looked great, but something that demonstrated the gameplay elements clearly enough.

What you see when you start the game. Notice the tile cursor in the upper left corner. This moves around with the mouse cursor, but stays snapped to the tiles so that the player knows exactly what tile he'll be clicking on when he clicks.

Here is a screen after one of the units has been selected. The tiles where the unit can move have been highlighted. Notice that it looks like the unit's movement is severely hampered going over the sand tiles. I implemented movement costs into the tiles using tile custom data.

The red unit is about to attack the blue unit. When a unit moves within attack range of another unit, the tile beneath the opposing unit with turn red, denoting that you can attack him. You can't see it in this image, but multiple units can be in attack range at once, allowing the player to pick from multiple targets.

Poor blue unit. Even though his friend came to help, it was too late.

So there you go. It doesn't look like much, but as this is essentially still the prototyping phase of the project, it doesn't need to look like much. Just the fact that the essential gameplay elements are there is a big help in determining some of the specifics for the game's design.

Up next on my plate is to try and figure out TGB's GUI system. Also, I'm planning on putting in networking support for the small portion that I have running here. I've written the classes in a way that I think will make it easy to just write the client/server scripts on top of. We'll see how it turns out though.

Also of note, I'm using 1.5.1, but I decided not to use behaviors. I felt the added complexity of trying to get behaviors to talk to each other and not step on each other wasn't worth it considering that most of the units in the game will have what is essentially the same functionality with a different coat of paint. I do plan on using behaviors for certain things though. I think the great part of TGB is that I can choose to use either method.

Anyways, that's all for me now. Time to sleep!