WANDERERS.IO

Project description:

Browser based multiplayer PvP game where you lead a tribe of autonomous minions. As a player you don't give direct orders to your units but provide them with upgrades and direction while they automatically interact with the surroundings. A love letter to the old games featuring tiny folks such as Cannon Fodder, The Settlers, Mega-lo-mania, Lemmings.

Release date:

End of November 2017

Previous projects:

WILDS.IO

Author:

Rezoner. Find me on Twitter

Platforms:

In case it does well on desktop browsers as a free-to-play I am considering targeting mobile stores, itch.io and Steam. Native executables will be one-time paid apps with all premium elements unlocked.

Project goal:

When you look at these little people doing their jobs you are probably getting a whole lot of ideas for RTS, city building and sim games that could employ these cute creatures. This reasonably scoped project is supposed to get me enough funds for turning it into a virtual village more alike to Knights & Merchants and Settlers games with more focus on folklore and relations in emerging societies. I literally want my little people to dance and sing and make it an important element of gameplay.

TODO:

o - in progress
x - done

[x] Multiplayer
[x] Melee combat
[x] Ranged combat
[x] Moving the tribe
[x] Death
[o] Building a campfire
[x] Shield / Blocking
[x] Armor
[x] Picking up items
[x] Animals
[x] Hunting
[ ] Monsters / NPC
[x] Meadows
[x] Trees
[x] Gather wood / Axe
[x] Grass
[x] Gather wheat / Scythe
[o] GUI
[x] Rocks
[x] Mining / Hammer
[x] Mushrooms
[x] Recruiting folks
[x] Healing
[x] Equipping
[ ] Unlocking upgrades/items
[x] Text system
[x] Tooltips
[x] Animated hand cursor
[ ] Lobby

FAQ:

What engine are you using?

> I write everything from scratch in pure javascript. I am using WebGL as a rendering API. Server runs on node.js, database is PostgreSQL. Networking is brought to you by uWebsockets and msgpack. My coding software is Sublime Text running on Ubuntu. I manage and scale my servers with a bunch of bash scripts.

Is this 3D or 2D?

> From a technical point of view it's pure 2D. My art style is a mix of traditional pixelart and prerendered low poly models styled to look like pixelart. My art software includes Blender, Aseprite, GIMP and TimelineFX on Ubuntu Linux. I am using bunch of python, node.js and bash scripts that help me post-process graphics and optimize spritesheets.

DEVLOG

Day 29 - Life cycle

One of the basics of the game is the life cycle. The rain is circling between meadows and makes them fertile again. I have also added the grass that attracts the rabbits - it can also be cut for a minor chance of finding some items.

Day 28 - Appear shader

Rain will have a magical power to bring dead things back to life.

Day 27 - Rain

Everything is better with rain.

Day 26 - Rocks

How can an indie game success without mining these days? Hit the rocks and maybe you will find some gold that you can spend on upgrades.

Day 25 - Mushrooms

Have you ever played Beasts and Bumpkins? Mushroms can either increase your food supply or have a poisoning effects. It's recommended to memorize which mushrom is edible.

Day 24 - Text and tooltips

Due to a lot of confusion caused by my non verbose tooltips I've decided to implement a text system. It's a bitmap font. I am attaching images to unicode characters to embed icons into the text.

Day 22 - Trees

I can define leaves colors so maybe we can have seasons later.

Day 19 - Grass and Shields

It took me some time to finally decide the grass style. Eventually I've picked a good compromise between something good looking and very easy to implement. To reinforce the effect entities interacting with grass get an additional grass sprite in front.

Day 16 - Handsome cursor

Every good god game begins with a HANDsome crsor. I am really pleased with what I have achieved in that matter today. Coordinating cursor animations with viable actions is quite obnoxious but the effect is worth it.

Day 15 - GUI implementation

I wouldn't be myself if I haven't developed another GUI solution from scratch. It's super fast but very limited. I am using only one texture and one mesh to display the whole GUI with one draw call. Manipulating sizes on the fly requires updating the whole mesh - I am pretty sure that I can pass some transforms and effects as an additional buffer into the shader tho.

Day 14 - GUI mockup

I have started to prototype a GUI. I would like to not use any words. I am showing it to random people and ask what facts can they deduce from the picture.

Day 13 - Kings and Queens

It's hard to track the movement of a crowd when there is no steady reference point. Here comes the king who is pretty useless but he defines the center of a group.

Day 11 - Bows and Rabbits

Equipping a bow turns your minion into a hunter. His duty is to hunt animals and provide supportive fire to his melee companions.

Day 9 - Campfire

Sitting by the campfire is a time when the player can use collected resources to upgrade his tribe. Resting warriors will automatically consume food to heal the wounds.

Day 7 - Oh deer

I've made a deer. I don't like it.

Day 6 - Looting

The gameplay reason for skeleton sprite is to display the difference between equipped and looted corpse. After the fight our little dude will loot his foes.

Day 5 - Skeletons

Added some gore. I have animated the corpse and now we have distinguishable skeleton fighters. I think the player will be able to buy/unlock more races.

Day 4 - Combat

Minions can now use their weapons. This will be the core of the game. There will be 4 basic vocations. A lumberjack, a miner, a hunter and a knight.

Day 1 - Start

Sprites from wilds.io rendered in a low resolution look super cute. Let's turn this into a game, shall we?