August 7, 2011

Evil Cult v4 release

Evil Cult has now moved into its 4th stable release (actually third, but nevermind). Not much different from v4pre2 except the version change.

July 21, 2011

I have a new domain

... due to the decision of Google to remove .co.cc from all search results.
So now everything is hosted on: http://www.in-fi-del.net/
Please update your bookmarks.

July 13, 2011

Evil Cult v4pre2 release

After a huge amount of time the new dev release of Evil Cult is finally ready. You can play it here. The list of changes is significant:
  • Sects - after the cult grows to some point every cult member can make a sect for himself. Sect is useful for lots of small tasks - gaining information about other cults, confusing investigators, etc.
  • HTML5 Canvas for map display - map no longer uses crazy divs for displaying nodes and lines between them. Everything consists of images now which are drawn on canvas surface.
  • Virtual map bigger than the screen - canvas display almost immediately lead to implementing the old feature request of bigger maps. Minimap included.
  • Custom game - you can now set all difficulty parameters in a separate "Custom game" window
  • Local Multiplayer - up to 4 players (and more after I'm done with cult colors) can now play on the same computer.
  • And a nifty favicon, courtesy of qubodup!
Saving and loading has been disabled until later.

April 24, 2011

Evil Cult Status Update

Okay, while I still vaguely remember what I did before and also to get my thoughts in one place, I decided to describe what I'm working on right now. Well... okay, I don't remember what I did before my current task (that was half a year ago) and my notes are not really helpful. But the current big task is to implement Sects. At the start of this sub-project I decided that I wanted to add more depth to EC (actually that is my whole plan - add more depth until I'm sick of it and then stop). The idea was to make each follower more individual and slightly different from the others. And then to send them on missions, XCOM-style.

After spending some amount of time trying to think up a compelling mission mechanic (there's a 5kb text file full of ideas, just like there is 12kb text file full of vague designs for Dr West - most of them unused), I understood that I had two big tasks in front of me instead of one - first is to make the agents (that's what I called them back then) system and then to make a mission system on top of that. What I decided was to make agents system + non-interactive agent tasks and later expand that into full missions.


April 14, 2011

Dr. West v3 is here!

After only 2 weeks of waiting, the new version is here. What's new here? Loads of small stuff.
  • Quests support - I've built basic framework to make hard-coded quests  into the game. More on that below.
  • Random Events - from time to time a green ? will appear in the laboratory. In some cases it will be an Anxious Assistant quest but more often it will be a random event with a chance of success and failure. More on that below.
  • Finite Police and Police Ending - the amount of police available at the police station is now finite (around 20 or so officers). This amount is displayed on the station itself and each time an officer dies, it goes lower. When all officers are dead, the game ends with victory - the town is now under the terror of the reanimated and no one can stop the doctor from his work.
  • Town Panic - now when there is less than 30% or so of townspeople alive, the authorities will order the police on patrol. The police is a bit scared at that point and will only patrol areas close to the station. Incidentally this also solves the rare situation when theory is still lower than 10 but all townspeople are dead and player has to resort to waiting until fresh bodies are available at the cemetery.
  • Image support - now all tiles and objects are stored in images making eventual graphics version possible.
  • Smarter movement around obstacles - Small improvement but your reanimated are now less likely to stop unable to move around the corner.
The new version is as always here.