Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Category: gratuitous tank battles

Gratuitous Influences

I’ve uploaded a new video blog thign about the influences on GTB, with me rambling about Dr Who and Blackadder. Here it is:

 

Obviously it’s on youtube. if you have a second, and you thought it was worth watching, please up-vote it on the youtube site. better still, share it on facebook or twitter. That kind of thing is really helpful, and it doesn’t take much effort to do it. I really appreciate it. Also, does anyone have any good ideas for sites to submit/notify about this sort of thing? I’ll post it to the GTB moddb page, and also nervously submit it to reddit, but I’m not sure where else it should live.

It takes a silly amount of time and effort to make a video, in comparison to a normal blog post. i want to get into the habit of promoting GTB through video though, because it looks so much better in motion.

I started early work on the tutorial today. yay!

Edit: here is the reddit submission:

Me nervously talking about the influences behind my humble indie game (Gratuitous Tank Battles)
byu/cliffski inIndieGaming

Glowing damage

On my todo list for ages was fixing damage sprites so they glow in the dark. It always bugged me that my damage sprites were not really good enough, to my mind. We have wood-burning stoves at my house, which I light almost every day right now, and for a lot of the time I worked on GSB I used to sit there staring an a blazing inferno of logs and coal and feel annoyed that the damaged bits of spaceships didn’t look that awesome. I am using a very similar system for GTB, although with less hassle for placing the individual damaged locations, which makes it a bit easier for modders. They still do not pulse and glow the way i want.

One complication though, is I have lighting in GTB (not real 3D lighting, but cunningly faked), which means they needed to glow in the dark like this:

Which they now do, and I’m very happy about it. Unfortunately it took 2 days work, because in investigating it, it turns out I had to totally re-write my lighting system. The game uses multiple render targets for the lighting and composes them right before displaying the end image, which means that anything that actually gives off any light, such as a searchlight, laser beam, particle, or damage sprite, needs to also render to the offscreen lightmap buffer. It also means you have to batch these, and there are all kinds of annoying  unlikely scenarios where it actually breaks down, in some way, although I doubt anyone will ever notice.

At the end of those 2 days, I was very glad I took the effort. Maybe one day I’ll manage to get them pulsing properly, and have particles flitting around ‘inside’ the damaged areas. Maybe!

Repair bonuses and how they should work

I’m dithering a bit about how some of the ‘support’ units in Gratuitous Tank Battles should work.

Right now, you have dedicated command vehicles and buildings, and repair vehicle and buildings. The command ones give a rate-of-fire bonus to every unit in range, and repair units reduce the damage that units take.

I’m not happy with either of these. The main problem is they just aren’t intuitive enough. What would you expect them to do? I assume you would guess command units give a boost to accuracy (like spotters or radar would) and repair units actively repair damage done over time.

I changed from repairing, to reducing damage because the ambulance module and hospital ones (for infantry) were useless, because the minute infantry got injured, they probably shortly afterwards got killed, so the modules were rubbish.

I guess with infantry, I could apply a damage reduction, and have repair modules (for vehicles and turrets) work differently (actively repairing damage done, at regular intervals). That makes more sense right?

That still leaves command units. Would a hit-chance modifier possibly be overpowered? Maybe… it obviously needs balancing like crazy, but I suspect it makes more sense than a rate of fire unit.

And even as I type this, I wonder if if would make more sense to have a new type of deployment slot on maps, one which can *only* be filled by a support unit. It might make for some more interesting tactics and map design. Ho hum…

Sense of humour / offensive check

I’v started doing some of the flavor text for GTB. My plan ( to be explained more in a future video blog) is for it to be a bit ‘blackadder goes forth’ in approach. I am assuming you are a british soldier fighting in and endless world war I against the Germans.

Note that the ‘story’ is a very small part of the game, just a few mission briefings and the manual. You can ignore it happily.

My concern is that I might accidentally be offending some people. So my question to you is this. Do you find Blackadder and Allo Allo and other world war 2 comedy style things offensive?

I assume hardly anyone does, but if you are a German strategy gamer who would be put off a game that affectionately mocked the patriotic jingoism of World War I/II Britain, and referred to the enemy as the Hun, ‘Jerry’, The Bosch, etc… Is that offensive?

I assume not, but we live in an age where people take offense at almost anything, so I’m checking. My stats show 5.7% of GSB buyers are German. I’d rather they still bought the game.

Gratuitous Tank Battles Challenge Browser

I’ve been working on the challenge browser for GTB. There is still more to do in terms of making it look pretty but there is a clickable screenshot below. Basically there is a scrollable list of challenges just like in GSB, some of which will be user-made maps, some just armies and deployments on existing maps. Clicking any of them brings up the details window from which you can play attack or defence with that challenge,

Unlike the simple username in GSB, GTB shows you the posters emblem, their username, general and regiment name, and the idea is to build up more recognition of especially good map designers and players. You can immediately tell if the map is made by a newcomer, or someone who clocks 500 hours in the game :D

Also, the details shows a list of comments that players of the challenge have left as feedback for the poster, and hopefully as a bit of explanation for other players. With luck, there should be some good, lively debates about the pros and cons of new maps here :D

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It needs prettying up, for sure, but this is the layout, and the content. Thoughts?