Visitation
As the leader of a small community, you must make the decisions that will avert the impending disaster. This simulation is viewed from the side, and you are a leader who is not all-powerful, nor are you omniscient. Use the little influence you do have wisely to lead the community to success. Where most other simulations make you feel like GOD, the idea here is to immerse you and make you feel like you really are just a leader in the community.
Awards
Scores
Ratings (show detail)
Overall: 2.8
Fun: 2.5
Production: 2.5
Innovation: 3.5
Files
| File | Uploader | Date |
|---|---|---|
|
visitation_trunk_final.rar
— final
|
saluk | 2009/02/01 00:13 |
|
visitation_trunk.rar
— final
|
saluk | 2009/01/31 23:59 |
|
up_up_away_pywwek.zip
— final
|
saluk | 2008/11/13 07:01 |
|
shot1.png
|
saluk | 2008/11/08 09:46 |
Diary Entries
What's in a name?
saluk on 2008-11-13 08:07
We have a slew of pyweek games that were abandoned, and pyggy was the perfect opportunity for motivation to do what we have wanted to do so many times but couldn't muster up the energy - take a game to the next level. Our reasoning behind choosing "Up Up and Away" for pyggy, was that it both had a strong direction, as well as fell really short of what we had wanted.
Our other games, such as I dream of String in the last event, and Mech Revolution from the first one, basically reached their potential, if maybe missing out on things like polish, graphics, or game balance. Rather than polish a turd, we chose to mine deeper in a vein that came up empty hoping to find a gem. We'll have to see how it turns out.
Up Up and Away was fairly incomplete. Especially compared to the 5 full story-filled missions of mech revolution, and the mind-bogglingly difficult puzzles in the caverns of I Dream of String. Up Up and Away had 4 screens, and the gameplay consisted of clicking a few buttons and then watching people walk around (with my trademark SUPER ANNOYING walking sound that seems to be in every game) and hoping you made the right decisions. If you play a few times, you will quickly find a strategy to easily win every single game. And when doing so, it never really feels like you have a lot of control over the situation.
However, stylistically, we reached probably our highest point. The people are interesting to watch, and most of the graphics are pretty good. I'm still rather most proud of this game, and Don Blake is as well. So we are going to keep the style, and redesign the game, making it as game-like as possible while still keeping the simulation feel. Our main goals in improving on the original idea are to give the player as many ways to either improve or destroy the situation, and then just go crazy with the simulation itself.
Anyway, here is the link to the pyweek version: Up Up and Away
We need to do something about that title. It's just not representative. If anyone has any good ideas I wouldn't mind hearing them! If I can't think of a better name, I'll just have to leave it. As long as the rest of the game turns out OK...
Our other games, such as I dream of String in the last event, and Mech Revolution from the first one, basically reached their potential, if maybe missing out on things like polish, graphics, or game balance. Rather than polish a turd, we chose to mine deeper in a vein that came up empty hoping to find a gem. We'll have to see how it turns out.
Up Up and Away was fairly incomplete. Especially compared to the 5 full story-filled missions of mech revolution, and the mind-bogglingly difficult puzzles in the caverns of I Dream of String. Up Up and Away had 4 screens, and the gameplay consisted of clicking a few buttons and then watching people walk around (with my trademark SUPER ANNOYING walking sound that seems to be in every game) and hoping you made the right decisions. If you play a few times, you will quickly find a strategy to easily win every single game. And when doing so, it never really feels like you have a lot of control over the situation.
However, stylistically, we reached probably our highest point. The people are interesting to watch, and most of the graphics are pretty good. I'm still rather most proud of this game, and Don Blake is as well. So we are going to keep the style, and redesign the game, making it as game-like as possible while still keeping the simulation feel. Our main goals in improving on the original idea are to give the player as many ways to either improve or destroy the situation, and then just go crazy with the simulation itself.
Anyway, here is the link to the pyweek version: Up Up and Away
We need to do something about that title. It's just not representative. If anyone has any good ideas I wouldn't mind hearing them! If I can't think of a better name, I'll just have to leave it. As long as the rest of the game turns out OK...
Successful blitz, too little too late
saluk on 2009-02-01 19:18
Unfortunately, we haven't had much time lately to work on the game, and what little time we did have, we didn't use. We worked on it more this weekend than we have in the last few months. As far as time management goes, it's too bad that we didn't focus on that until a few days ago, but what we were able to do in that amount of time when we really did focus on time management, was great. We did more in the last few days than we've done in some pyweeks in fact.
The game is obviously unfinished, and likely very confusing to play. It has changed a lot from the original version, as an effort was made to give the player actual things to do and micro manage, instead of having it feel like you just sit back and watch things. Instead of controlling a faceless entity, you control a person who can walk around and interact with things. If you read newdesigntoruletheworld.txt there is a better idea of where we are going, along with a story that you won't find in the hastily written readme.
The control so far, is mostly limited to building buildings (interact with the tower, get a flag for the building you want to make, walk to where you want it built, and press space to drop the flag), and hiring and firing workers at each building.
Important: At the last minute, I mistakenly forgot to add flags for making houses or new towers. These can be instantly added by pressing "A" or "S" respectively.
There are no longer away missions like there used to be, as the landscape is continuous in either direction. Explorers and soldiers are planned, but we ran out of time :) The goal of the game is basically to make a thriving city, more goals are also planned, hehe. The most unique features are the day and night system (where people work at certain times and go home at night), and being able to help out carriers by moving resources around.
Work on this is far from over, but at least we finally know where we are going. Hopefully it will be more complete in the next pyggy, if games can be entered repeatedly.
The game is obviously unfinished, and likely very confusing to play. It has changed a lot from the original version, as an effort was made to give the player actual things to do and micro manage, instead of having it feel like you just sit back and watch things. Instead of controlling a faceless entity, you control a person who can walk around and interact with things. If you read newdesigntoruletheworld.txt there is a better idea of where we are going, along with a story that you won't find in the hastily written readme.
The control so far, is mostly limited to building buildings (interact with the tower, get a flag for the building you want to make, walk to where you want it built, and press space to drop the flag), and hiring and firing workers at each building.
Important: At the last minute, I mistakenly forgot to add flags for making houses or new towers. These can be instantly added by pressing "A" or "S" respectively.
There are no longer away missions like there used to be, as the landscape is continuous in either direction. Explorers and soldiers are planned, but we ran out of time :) The goal of the game is basically to make a thriving city, more goals are also planned, hehe. The most unique features are the day and night system (where people work at certain times and go home at night), and being able to help out carriers by moving resources around.
Work on this is far from over, but at least we finally know where we are going. Hopefully it will be more complete in the next pyggy, if games can be entered repeatedly.
visitation feedback
claxo on 2009-02-09 21:31
It is a reduced version from the initial version, right? I dont see the hud elements , like Oxigen, that shows in the pyweek version ( and the current piggy screenshot)
with pygame 1.7 text has black bg, not transparent (looks ok with pygame 1.8.1).
soft scroll.
sun sprite looks good.
Getting cheap gains from openGL:
Would be better if your game logic decoupled from screen resolution. After all, the render is done with openGL. I mean writing the logic in world units, and the render scale acording to resolution. That way, you allow to select the screen size that better feels. Think the variety of display devices: netbook screen, 17'' crts, 22'' wide screen, OLPC.
floats for world coords: If at some time you want to guide objects along soft curves using delta physics, int coords will introduce inacceptable rounding errors. Even moving a sprite in the h axis at slow speed looks much better using floats coords + openGL.
with pygame 1.7 text has black bg, not transparent (looks ok with pygame 1.8.1).
soft scroll.
sun sprite looks good.
Getting cheap gains from openGL:
Would be better if your game logic decoupled from screen resolution. After all, the render is done with openGL. I mean writing the logic in world units, and the render scale acording to resolution. That way, you allow to select the screen size that better feels. Think the variety of display devices: netbook screen, 17'' crts, 22'' wide screen, OLPC.
floats for world coords: If at some time you want to guide objects along soft curves using delta physics, int coords will introduce inacceptable rounding errors. Even moving a sprite in the h axis at slow speed looks much better using floats coords + openGL.