00:00
00:00
snoboxstudio
We are a couple from Canada; passionate about games and overflowing with ideas. Aaron Norell(aron-ato) is our artist and game designer, Sabrina Stuckless(myself) is the administrator, coordinator, programmer and ERADICATOR! Sorry.. got carried away.

SnoBox Studio @snoboxstudio

Age 34

Game Designer/Artist

Canada

Joined on 7/4/16

Level:
4
Exp Points:
113 / 180
Exp Rank:
> 100,000
Vote Power:
3.62 votes
Rank:
Civilian
Global Rank:
> 100,000
Blams:
0
Saves:
15
B/P Bonus:
0%
Whistle:
Normal
Trophies:
4
Medals:
189
Supporter:
7y 6m 10d

Hive Mind: alpha, Development Update!

Posted by snoboxstudio - March 28th, 2017


5947181_149072826023_HIVE-MIND-02-sml-land-unit-melee-02-atk.gif          5947181_149072849871_HIVE-MIND-02-sml-air-unit-ranged-02-atk.gif

Well, we're over a month into development, and Hive Mind is coming along (slowly but surely)(and don't call me Shirley). There have been a few bumps along the way, as with any game development, and because I'm trying to be more social these days, I figured I would write a post about it. (Side note, above, are some new enemies. They haven't been fully processed, but they look kinda neat in greyscale.)

One of the major issues we've had involved one of the critical functions of the game; building hive blocks! To properly understand the issue, I'll explain a little bit about how we WANTED it to work, and the hiccups we had along the way to MAKING it work.

The idea Aaron and I had when designing the game was that you'd have a power source which you could build blocks off of, to protect the power source, and create a hive. Off of those hive blocks, you could then add clones which would act as towers and defend your hive. A cool idea we came up with, was that when you place a new hive block (built ONLY off of another hive block or the power source), a 'tracer' of sorts would flow from the power source through the connected hive blocks, to the new build location. Here's a video Aaron made using Photoshop, as an example for our programmer.

 

As Fletcher, our programmer, progressed and we tested, we ran into an issue where the 'tracer' would try to map all of the attached arms of the hive; instead of taking the quickest path to the new build location. If you built a huge structure, with many arms branching off, it would take way too much time between your initial click to build the hive block and the moment when the block actually builds. 

Since Aaron and I aren't coders, we just had to remain patient while Fletcher looked for help with the issue and tested a number of solutions, before coming to (what we hope will be) the ideal fix. It can be frustrating, sometimes, during this process and we had to remember that communication is the most important thing; it keeps the development process running smoothly and allows everyone to point out problems as they arise. 


Hive Mind is going to be one of the games included in our 'beta testing' perk on Patreon; we only ask that you donate $5 or more (per game, not per post or something crazy like that) IF you want to gain access to alpha and beta testing. [NOTE: THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION... just a hopeful suggestion]

If you made it this far, I congratulate you. I tend to ramble. 
Comments are welcome, I'm interested to know if anyone is intrigued by this game/has questions/etc.

 

- Sabrina; Jack of all trades.

[SnöBox Studio]


1

Comments

Hi! Your game looks neat so far, nice blog/news post about it. I have to try and be more social myself. Regards your tracing the quickest path problem, what you have is a classic grid traversal problem, assuming your screen is laid out in a grid with each square an optional block. It can easily be overcome by using A* path finding with a Manhattan heuristic. see this site for a nice example of A*, https://qiao.github.io/PathFinding.js/visual/

Good luck with your game, I will defo be following your progress.