Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

General discussion about LÖVE, Lua, game development, puns, and unicorns.
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MadByte
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by MadByte »

The current draw system wouldn't allow for overhanging terrain, that would be my main complaint. Also I'm not sure if / how the terrain formed with lines could be generated in a similar way the tile based terrain looks. Also the rocks like in my concept drawing wouldnt be possible that way I believe. I mean we might not need the exacpt style of the terrain with overhanging terrain, the rocks etc, but I think it's a nice challenge for me :awesome:

Having near infinite tilemaps wouldnt be doable I think. We could store the tilemap in temporary chunk files and load them back in if needed (ie when players fly back to the left). The question is, do we need to allow players to fly back at all? We could limit the distance a player can fly back and just save like 4 - 8 * screenwidth worth of tiles and then block the way back.

Regarding deterministic terrain generation:
I thought we could use a custom random generator (love.math.newRandomGenerator) with a shared seed between clients in the same multiplayer session. That would require us to just sent the seed over to other players and thats it.

I'll look more into all that when I'm back home later :)
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togFox
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by togFox »

We don't need overhangs but if that's exercising your grey matter then go for it. :)

The line thing can work with some math's (I think) but the current lines took me about 15 seconds to invent with little thought (actually surprised it worked!). I'm sure there are better ways.

The current code creates terrain as needed and generates on the fly. Lets leave that alone until it becomes a problem.

I think players should be able to fly back a little bit (to the previous base) but lets not worry about memory until it's a problem.

I'm sure we can exchange a seed. That's doable.

Edit: window is now windowed for dev's.
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milon
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by milon »

Philbywhizz wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:10 am I don't like that it is full screen by default.

Full screen looks great though! (I have a repurposed 27" iMac running linux), but its a bit cumbersome switching back and forwards between full screen and window mode when developing (having a large screen means I have multiple windows and tabs open, and I lose all my debug monitoring and variable watch screens.

Maybe I need to work on that settings screen and full screen mode toggle can be one of the options :)
Once the settings screen is implemented, just write the user settings to a file in the project's save folder. When the game is run, load that first and set window size accordingly. Then you only have to adjust things ONCE and you're set. :)
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by Philbywhizz »

milon wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 4:57 pm Once the settings screen is implemented, just write the user settings to a file in the project's save folder. When the game is run, load that first and set window size accordingly. Then you only have to adjust things ONCE and you're set. :)
I've done up a PR with a simple settings screen that does exactly this. :)
Philbywhizz.com - a blog too far...
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togFox
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by togFox »

Heh - you guys are going great guns in github. I'll hold off and let the good work flow. Feel free to commit to 'main' when you're confident.

Edit: will likely make a new release (v0.10) on the weekend so fans can use the 'score' feature to play the game with some purpose.

Also - we think this is ready for itch.io (alpha)? I think I'll add some 'promo' cards to github so we can move in that direction. Maybe we can get some cool video promos for a v0.11 release to itch.io if anyone is good at that.
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MadByte
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by MadByte »

togFox wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:01 pm Heh - you guys are going great guns in github. I'll hold off and let the good work flow. Feel free to commit to 'main' when you're confident.

Edit: will likely make a new release (v0.10) on the weekend so fans can use the 'score' feature to play the game with some purpose.

Also - we think this is ready for itch.io (alpha)? I think I'll add some 'promo' cards to github so we can move in that direction. Maybe we can get some cool video promos for a v0.11 release to itch.io if anyone is good at that.
Honestly I think the game isn't ready to be released anywhere outside of this forum. Imo the game still is very bare-bones without much to do, lacking real gameplay and also needs better visuals to be played by anyone.
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togFox
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by togFox »

Putting on itch is more about developing a broader community. Getting play testers with fresh ideas. Demonstrating iterative improvement with regular releases. Showing responsiveness to player feedback. Enticing new and existing LUA coders to the project. It's about marketing.

They said, I'd like to wait till we at least have some promo material so this is for the back-burner for now.

Edit: I'm trying to add a single bot to race. Tricky stuff!
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MadByte
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by MadByte »

I made a prototype for new lander physics which I think would be cool to have in the actual game.
The collision code is a mess and buggy as hell, but I think you'll get the idea of what I'm proposing.

- The rotation movement is not linear, more like the lander having actual side thrusters and physics - the rotation keeps going.
- A simulated wind drag that counter-rotates the lander at higher horizontal speeds
- The lander can bounce on the ground at certain speeds
- The lander will get destroyed when landing up-side-down or landing with to high vertical speed.

The bounding may need to be further reduced for the final game - especially the fine movements at the end of each landing.

Control with arrow keys.

What do you think?
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togFox
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by togFox »

oooo - way harder. Some will like that and some won't. Can it be a setting in the game menu or is it a rewrite of the code?
Current project:
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American football manager/sim game - build and manage a roster and win season after season
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MadByte
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Re: Mars Lander. Any collaborators? Noobs welcome.

Post by MadByte »

I'm sure we can add a setting but we"ll need to rewrite a lot of the lander code non the less.
Regarding the difficulty, we can fine tune the rotation and thrust speeds to feel more responsive but personally I'd like this part of the game more challenging because the original is all about the difficulty of landing a lunar lander. It should require some skill to control it perfectly imo but also shouldn't be too strict (like a lander explosion if the angle to the ground is like 1-2 degree).
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