Next Weeks Plan

Well Nonulok and I are really trying to finish up a good number of things to get Tik Tok Tank into it's alpha phase. As far as I can tell alot of the major bugs have been weeded out and it's the small little ones that happen randomly are my main concerns. We are working on levels and enemies. I am also working on events. Such as when you drive into this area enemies will spawn, or an explosion will happen, kinda like a scripted event but with out the scripts. More like triggers.

Our main plan is to get enough content into the game that we can start selling it at a discounted price on Desura under the Alpha funding program and give content updates and of course bug fixes during this time.

Objectives:

Created Base levels: we are planning on having over 40 levels. Each stage has a pool of levels it will choose from. Eventually we plan to have at least 20 in each stage's pool. There are 4 stages, the 5th stage is always a boss level which we plan to have anywhere between 10 - 15 bosses, hence will be having 10 - 15 boss levels. We also plan on having at least 3 over worlds the game will choose between making the experience different every play through.

We also have sound FX planned as of right now the game is silent.

So during the alpha funding stage the game will be available with little content at a discounted price but will grow by a significant amount. Possible prices are $3 for final product and $2 for Alphafunding discount price. We will always support all of our titles after final release whether it's bug fixes, minor content updates etc....

Nothing as of yet is carved in stone but these have been the running numbers and plans for this title. We appreciate the following and interest everyone has shown and hope everyone shows their support by getting the discounted alpha release so we can continue to make Tik Tok Tank better and continue on making fun games that will keep you all entertained for hours in the future.

Enguised Studios

Neuntoter/Nonulok

Tik Tok Tank's AI

Just a small update on the AI situation with Tik Tok Tank.

Basically it is finished (not including boss AI which will all be scripted per boss) and running very smoothly. Enemies walk around patrolling until you come within eyesight or hit them with weapon fire. At that point they will engage in combat by shooting at you and hunting you down. They will also let out a shout that will get the attention of any other enemy within earshot distance.

This right now is working smoothly for about 120 enemies on screen and in world at the same time and running on a 1Ghz 2X core laptop. I believe that these numbers will most likely be the cap for levels since that is kinda high and already provides for some fun battles.

I will be working on scripted sequencing next. So triggers will set off explosions, unlocking doors, spawning enemies, stuff like that. Hopefully we will also have some more levels made soon so we can put the game under Desura's Alpha funding program and allow those that want to play early and receive free updates. It's been some really exciting times and the closer it comes to release the more excited we get.

On that note, have a fantastic weekend.

Neuntoter

Fun Updates

Well, it seems that are logo image and background image broke, so it goes, very weird......
Edit: Messed with the images and re-up'ed some of it. Should work now. -Nonulok

As far as the updates, alot of the core code is actually finished. Now we are creating the special events and triggers and some visual FX along with updating the node pathing to be more extensive and very invisible to the player. So with this comes updating the hell out of the level editor, which hasn't really been touched since before working on the main engine itself.

So far I did add some sweet changes to the editor to help streamline dev time better. And later tonight should be more updates to the interface and then adding all the "Coded" events to the editor.

Nonulok is working on some sweet boss sprites and screens. The sprite task this time around is not as intensive as last time (DooM 2D) since the amount of sprite animation is low. (most is coded) But the sprites themselves will be some crazy detail and bad ass.

Neuntoter

Some New Updates

Now this blog page is looking a little more like a game dev page thanks to Nonulok's fancy work. As stated in the previous post we now have a company page set up with Desura/ModDB/IndieDB. Which are all actually the same database but different front ends. This actually starts our ball rolling plan that we mapped out for releasing Tik Tok Tank through Desura before bringing it over to Steam.

As far as coding goes I did get some bugs and glitches fixed last night and made some headway on things that needed added. The development is still going smooth. AI is being touched in small pieces while I tackle other things such as world counters that will start events and things like that.

Currently we have a few enemies just for testing purposes for path detection testing and such. We will have more to come of course when Nonulok and I can dedicate some serious time into patterns for enemy attacks and movement to really vamp up the excitement.

Well, that's all for now

Neuntoter

New IndieDB Page!

Just opened up our company page on Indie DB. You can find it BY CLICKING HERE.

It's currently not too populated. We have to wait for Indie DB to accept our page before we can add any real content. Once that happens, this post will be modified with a few more details. Or maybe there will be another post altogether, who knows?

Nonulok

AI .... So Much Fun

So currently working on the background mechanics on AI and other things involving the dumbness ... err, I mean smarts of the enemy. AI is a fun and annoying thing to work on. Since you try to make the "enemy" seem like they know what they are doing without making it too predictable and yet the minor randomness that comes with it can break and not always show it's ugly head when a bug or glitch is in the code. Ah, good times.

Like I said, AI ..... So much fun.

Well, that is where we are at and making some really good progress.

Neuntoter

Time to Let the Cat Out of the Bag

To shed some light on our current project. Remember how I said that I was working with the overhead portion of the engine. Well here it is.....

The current project running name is Tik Tok Tank. It is an overhead arcade style shooter. Featuring:

Weapon and player based power ups.

Enemy spawners.

An over world.

Randomly generated dungeons.

Custom created enemy bases.

Crazy ass bosses.

And tons of different enemy types.

So basically you will be given a certain amount of life to search the over world for enemy dungeons and bases. While on the over world you will be fighting off enemies of various difficulties. after finding a dungeon or base it then turns into smaller maps containing 4 levels then a boss fight. Like stated in features, what makes the dungeons different than the bases. Simple, bases are premade levels with randomly placed enemies and power ups. Dungeons are completely randomly generated. Cool thing is, no one game will be 100% identical.

So what is the progress, A lot is actually working but enemy AI is right now kinda bad. So that is the current big task. We will be posting some video footage and images of its current status. We may also post a percentage meter showing where everything is sitting as far as completion wise.

well for now that's a rap

Neuntoter