FreeGameDev

Fred, Jane & Sex-Machine
==========================

The zombie apocalypse came and most people "died". To stay alive this unlikely trio stuck together.

Play with any modern browser


version: 29 Nov 2010, a70e246a2229
currently best with Chrome, somewhat runnable in Firefox3+




Mechanics
==========

Heavily influenced by Rogue-likes and realtime strategy games.

 * Fast-paced tactical game play
 * Lots of different weapons, outfits and utilities
 * Leveling
 * make new maps with Tiled
 * Epic Story (maybe)


Controls
=========

Easy, context sensitive.

 * Left mouse button for all actions
 * Right mouse button drag or cursor keys to scroll the map

Select a character with LMB. With a selected Character, LMB in the game world does different things depending on what you click on:

 * move there
 * attack (if enemy)
 * harvest (if harvestable)
 * barricade (if fortifable & you character has plank in his inventory)
 * solve puzzle (on puzzle items - usually that opens a door or something like that)

LMB on an inventory item drops it. LMB on an item on the ground picks it up (your character has to already stand on the item).


Level up after you finished a map.


Gameplay
=========

The core mechanic is that you micro-manage the three characters: what they wear, what they hold in their hands, where they move and whom they attack (or not).

Most enemies are very tough so that only the whole group can bring one of them down. If there are too many monsters or the monster does not have important equipment you need, then it is probably smarter to just run.

The type of monsters that appear and the kind of equipment they carry depend on the environment you are in - for example: lots of vomit & blood around? Then the raw skeletons & zombies are probably not far.

Your group lives in the underground of the city. To get new equipment and explore, the group goes up to a specific map. The stronger the group the more thoroughly they can explore the area, solve puzzles and bring home better items.


Code & License
===============


The code ist mostly my Canvas library gamejs and some extra stuff - all in the browser. License MIT.

Graphics are all by roguedjack, from the awesome Rogue Survivor (in case you did not recognize them)



and next...
===============


More updates in a week - I'm taking a break to get a better view on things and collect feedback.

Well, it's been a while.

The tech demo now has a new "map" http://gamejs.org/apps/rtsimple/

Still interested in how this runs for you guys or what you think about the idea?



I know it works best in Chrome. Safari & Firefox should work too.

I worked more on the underlying game library http://gamejs.org then on the game itself. But I hope to push out a big update for the game this weekend! So stay tuned.

Characters over-shooting their destinations and then disappearing in Firefox.

I don't think the future is the browser. I think the tech industry is making a giant f_____ mistake. Everybody is going all-in on the browser.

Say this to Google

@charlie: why so negative here? better write a blog post about it!

I was impressed by the banner above. It's pretty.

I didn't find fun in the game, mostly because of the unpleasant controls (my screen size is 1920x1200)

Perhaps this might be much more enjoyable on a touch device. Ever tried it on one?

[ot]

qubodup {l Wrote}:I was impressed by the banner above. It's pretty.

That's the html5 logo: http://www.w3.org/html/logo/
[/ot]

charlie {l Wrote}:Characters over-shooting their destinations and then disappearing in Firefox.

yep, sorry. that's a known bug I have in firefox, will fix in next release!

works best in chrome, I should have mentioned that again.

qubodup {l Wrote}:I was impressed by the banner above. It's pretty.

I didn't find fun in the game, mostly because of the unpleasant controls (my screen size is 1920x1200)

Perhaps this might be much more enjoyable on a touch device. Ever tried it on one? :)

lol yeah the banner is one of the new official html5 banners :)

about the fun: yes, it's not in there yet :) I wouldn't even call it a game. it's just a tech demo. I'm adding more items, characters and most importantly a setting, levels, story, etc as we speak.

touch screen: yes! I target touch screens, in fact :) And it's a bit more fun on a touch device already hehe

maybe i'm really showcasing too early :| not sure...

charlie {l Wrote}:I don't think the future is the browser. I think the tech industry is making a giant f_____ mistake. Everybody is going all-in on the browser.

I like the browser and I'm looking for like-minded people. I don't see "everybody" going all-in... I'm, for example, one of the few in this forum who do html5 tech. I was hoping to find others who find this kind of stuff interesting for making games. Native, browser games bring new possibilities to the table. I'm not saying it's what everyone should use.

oberhamsi {l Wrote}:maybe i'm really showcasing too early not sure...

nah, maybe I should just try the zoom mode of my browser while playing it

PS: i need to be able to select multiple guys. press-hold-draw-rectangle seems to be a no-no for browsers currently, so how about "a" for "select all"? Perhaps Shift+click = add to selection (or was it ctrl + click which is more common?)

the zooming helps me btw.

qubodup {l Wrote}:nah, maybe I should just try the zoom mode of my browser while playing it :)

PS: i need to be able to select multiple guys. press-hold-draw-rectangle seems to be a no-no for browsers currently, so how about "a" for "select all"? Perhaps Shift+click = add to selection (or was it ctrl + click which is more common?)

the zooming helps me btw.

Thanks for the feedback. If *I* zoom it just uses more CPU... I play on 24'' too, I know that's weird :| but if it works for you with browser zoom, all the better.

selecting multiple guys... you will always have 3, no more, sometimes less. but I might add *double click* to send them all to a location. I don't want the player being able to select multiple units for simplicity of code & UI reasons (touch).

I tuned it a little bit and added a FPS counter. I noticed that it now looks a lot better in Chrome then in Firefox :| Might have to work on that too.

I desperately need dialog. I brainstormed a story piece for the first map and hope to get that in next.

edit: Some eye candy. If you can call it that. First couple of maps play in Vienna close to Eastern Europe.

Recently I spend a couple of days tuning the showcase level and the first items / weapons / experiences a player has.

I get that there isn't much of the promised depth and most importantly no persistancy in what the group achieves. I'm not even talking about multi player persistent worlds here :) Which is what I went to get at in a couple o' years (secretly I'm hoping 'one' but that's what I thought last year).

To make my goal for this game more approachable, maybe even understandable, I tried to do a screen cast of a play through and some thoughts. Just imagine three people play this together in a persistent world.

There's already a lot of substances and easily customizable content there. I'm not even showing off most features in this thing, not the boring ones at least (stats, skills, tiled integration).

What the video walkthrough on vimeo.com

The video takes a whole 5 minutes - we walk from central downtown vienna to schwedenplatz

I worked on it some more:

* optimized map drawing (you still need good PC or chrome browser :)
* you can now actually finish the map by finding the stairs-down
* i tuned the fighting and moving: it's now faster
* fixed sometimes too many enemies spawning
* fixed actor walk AI\
* prepared game code for more screens, i have in the workings:
*** level up screen (already kinda works & is integrated)
*** world map (to chose next deployment location, i got art for that finished but no code yet)
*** inventory / shop screen (nothing to show for)
* couple weeks ago i did a walk-through video http://vimeo.com/22254153

I hope I can create content - story & some quests - soon.

I already several more or less raw maps to show for:

* http://apps.gamejs.org/rtsimple/#00 -- very basic intro map, just rush through to the right and find the stairs
* http://apps.gamejs.org/rtsimple/#01 -- has some story, puzzles and items; mostly done; oldest map
* http://apps.gamejs.org/rtsimple/#02 -- no story, but first half of map has items and enemies
* http://apps.gamejs.org/rtsimple/#03 -- only the landscape (vienna inner city) without anything to do :)

NOTE the last two maps are HUGE - 10MB each.

have fun
simon

http://vimeo.com/22254153 is private

well, I think the control scheme and the resolution don't mix well. some possible solutions:

1. allow multi-unit selection and commands (selection box)
2. allow commanding buddies to follow and help fighting
3. add drag commands (is this possible in a browser? on iOS I could only move on the map after zooming in that way)
4. use keys for movement (combined with #2) [not best - mobile devices are left out]

Fred, Jane & Sex-Machine Lo-Fi Strategy Indie Game by Iwan Gabovitch, on Flickr

thx for trying, qubodup! the video is now public.

i'll think of something to improve the control scheme! next todo :) i agree it's sub-optimal. as you correctly observed, most of the weirdness is b/c it want this to eventually work with touch devices.

and now the world & the actors are persisted in browsers.

i also added the beginnings of an inventory screen and a map screen ('situation screen')

Phew, I managed to turn it into a persistent sandbox you can explore and plunder - though without a goal, yet

http://apps.gamejs.org/rtsimple/

Your inventory of items and your team are stored in the browser. I tested with FF4 and a recent chrome.

i tweaked and tuned it (not the controls, sorry) but the content, the items, the ui and most importantly first and now only level. still far to go, but i'm glad i gotta work on content :)

if you tried it before, you might want to do a good reload with the browser;

and put this in your location bar and press enter while on the game page, to clear your character stats. after you press enter nothing happens, but after a reload the characters reset:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

     javascript:localStorage.clear();


definitely needs loading screens between world map and levels. I thought the game froze on my netbook and on the desktop it also takes a while.

qubodup {l Wrote}:definitely needs loading screens between world map and levels. I thought the game froze on my netbook and on the desktop it also takes a while.

yeah, i added loading screens - they are half broken until i do a proper release and hard-code all file-sizes. the loading is so bad, that it often freezes the whole browser (it later gets unfrozen but that can take a while)

didn't do much else today, some gui tweaking...

i finally did something about the controls. something weird: a unit now follows the screen if it has no other order. so you can still order them around, but if they don't fight/move/harvest/whatever they will mimick your screen movements.

other then that: loading should now be smoother, and i added async pre-loading and improved gui somewhat.

oh and the map is now persisted - meaning you can put/drop items or chop down / burn down a forest. enemies will keep coming, though.

I changed the URL to be NSFW: http://apps.gamejs.org/fred-jane-and-sexmachine/

i think, i'm coming closer to something of a coherent experience.