TI-Farm

[Opry99er]

Okay--- Question for you guys. For anyone who has facebook, we all know how annoying it is to get all those damn Farmville requests for cows and stuff.... I think we should clog up the hidden reef with "send me fertilizer in TI-Farm" requests. . I don't have time to really dedicate to working on a Farmville-type game, but the TI needs one. Shouldn't be too hard, and I was hoping that several of us could focus on specific elements of a demo and spend a day and come up with a really cool demo of this game to present to the group. Anyone in? . As a group, it wouldn't take but a couple hours to come up with something wicked... I'll write the music and put it into BYTEs... That way if we wanted to use it to CALL LOAD in XB, we could... Or if we wanted to just do it in 100% assembly we could do that too.

Edited February 17, 2010 by Opry99er

[The Codex]

Sounds like fun. My partner, she's addicted to these games. Anyway, I'd be glad to contribute graphical assets.

 

EDIT: And keeping with the frequent Texas-based theme of TI games (wherever could that come from?), maybe it should be TI-Ranch.

Edited February 17, 2010 by The Codex

[Opry99er]

TI Ranch.... That sounds like a sequel!!!! . We're already thinking about a franchise here and a single keystroke hasn't been made... I just think that's awesome!

[InfernalKeith]

Okay, I'm gonna throw a curveball into this idea. Bear with me on this one...

 

ZOMBIE FARMVILLE

 

No, the animals aren't zombies. But it's the fabled zombie apocalypse, and you have x number of people hiding out on your farm. You have to continue to manage the farm, grow crops, keep the animals fed, and provide food for all these refugees... but at the same time, you have to allocate people to keep zombies off the perimeter, prevent them from destroying crops and killing animals, and most of all, keep your people alive.

 

I had an idea for a game like this a while ago, but figured the zombie thing had been done to (wait for it) death... but Zombie Farmville... THERE's a hook.

[sometimes99er]

You know what they say ... A title screen is worth a thousand words.

 

 

 

[Opry99er]

Hahahah!!!! Karsten, you are the sickest Mo-Fo I know! =) Thanks for the inspiration, man. It's always a treat when you do a mockup on here. =) I'm a big fan of both of these. Who wants to get us started with a farm screenshot? =)

[The Codex]

ZOMBIE FARMVILLE

 

That's so brilliant I hope you copyrighted it. Because you know they'll steal that idea as soon as they get a whiff of it. I'm up for this one.

 

With a knick-knack paddywhack, give the dog a bone,

These undead have overrun your home...

[Opry99er]

Hehehe.... Zombie Farm sounds great. . In Farmville you have animals and such that you have to feed.... What about if:: When the Zombies get hungry, you have to feed them IRS agents/bank executives who come to harass you about your farm payments or tax statements?

[Opry99er]

What if we all took one element of the game and worked on it over the next 48 hours?! I could code up the music and get a working "zombie" SPRITE walking across the screen.

[InfernalKeith]

What if we all took one element of the game and worked on it over the next 48 hours?! I could code up the music and get a working "zombie" SPRITE walking across the screen.

 

 

I'm still under TI quarantine till Sunday.

[InfernalKeith]

Okay, because I can't stop thinking about this idea... it's really similar to a game I wanted to do! I was gonna call it "Fort Zombie," but I Googled that title and it's an actual game coming out for PC.

 

I'm thinking of a turn-based farm-type game, which would be a more graphical version of the classic Hammurabi -- you have to allocate land for planting, seeds to grow stuff, assign labor to harvest, assign grain for feed, account for rats and spoilage, etc.

 

Then, in the midst of all this, there could be sprite-based arcade action sequences where you go out with your prime zombie response team to blast the undead as they infiltrate sectors of your map.

 

You could build walls and moats, till and rotate land, etc. Ooh, and have to allow space for your population to live as well, and morale could go up or down depending on how densely they're forced to live and how much they have to work.

 

Argh! Stop it! Too many ideas, no time!! ARGH!@!!@@!#ergeRG3hmbrg f

[Opry99er]

Hahahah.... Alright, let's wait til' Sunday. But next week, I want a screenshot! =)

 

Zombie Farmville..... What the hell are we on??? =) <3 it

[sometimes99er]

Did some repaint on Zombie Farmville title screen far above ...

[Opry99er]

That's great!!!! . Looks like the title screen will be done before the first "CALL CLEAR" is typed in for the actual gameplay.

[sometimes99er]

The latter is a 256char32color2sprite1screen-monster. All in all almost 3K in binary size (resulting machine code/data). That’s not even possible with pure XB (no LOAD) and I’m not even going to guesstimate the size there.

 

Okay, you might do a 3K "LOAD" from XB and have it copy the VDP to EXP, do its thing, and copy back to VDP, hence leaving XB intact ...

 

Edited February 19, 2010 by sometimes99er

[Opry99er]

Wow.... That's almost as big as Destroyer!!!

[The Codex]

Great splash screen! I'll see if I can work up some character graphics. I'm guessing 8x8 is going to be the ideal, given the screen real estate on a TI. I'll start in monochrome and whoever's doing the hard work of coding it can decide if it's in bitmap mode or not.

[Opry99er]

Are you talking graphics for the farm, or the zombies?

[Opry99er]

If you can post your character renderings on a "grid" I would be happy to run 'em through PATTERNs and then set up the COLORs to have a big ol' colorful screen. . I love graphics and music. The part that drives me batty is getting gameplay engines tight enough and knowing how/when to pass variables. I'm getting alot better at it, but still not a master yet. Codex, if you want, do up a few graphics renderings of some zombies, and I'll draw the farmhouse. A cool trick is you can have multiple colors in SPRITEs by layering two together and hard-tie them together. . They will move at the same speed and directionand it can look like a 2-3 colored zombie

[The Codex]

I was thinking of starting with the farm basics (animals and crops), but I can do you up a zombie or two as well. Should I go for 16x16 graphics for them, since they'll be sprite based?

[Opry99er]

Whatever you think, man.  Go with the farm basics.  . It would be great to get the farm in place.... Then, we'll go to town on the zombies later.  I think the size of zombies will be dependant on the size of the farm and surrounding "farm-stuff".... We don't want the zombies to be 3 times the size of the farmhouse.  

[InfernalKeith]

OK, I brainstormed this on the drive home from dropping off kids this morning. Here's one proposal for a way to do it, see what you guys think. (And again, I need my head examined, I don't have time for yet another project right now).

 

I see the farm portion of the game and an action bit as two separate programs. The farm screen is, say, 16x32, with eight lines at the bottom for stats, alerts, etc. The "map" of the farm consists of squares in various states, such as:

 

uncultivated land

plowed ("reclaimed") land

planted land

grazing land (need x amount per livestock)

water (there'll be a river on one side of the map; digging a canal from it will increase the max amount of crops, and max amount of sustainable population)

house (need housing units per x number of people)

barn (allows storage of x amount of grain and animals)

 

A square can also be "overrun" which means it's infested by zombies, and nothing can be done with it.

 

Each turn you get x number of "moves" depending on your population, morale, etc. You have to allocate food, decide where to plant, to send people out to dig canals, plow land, build more shelters, etc. You can also select an "overrun" square, adjacent to your cleared turf, and pick how many people to take along on a 'zombie clearing.' At that point the game saves its variables and loads the zombie attack portion, which should be a simple, fast, assembly-based arcade sequence. Once that's over and casualties are counted, it transfers control back to the farm program.

 

In addition, the zombies will periodically attack new squares of turf, so even if the player doesn't aggressively go after the zombies, they'll be forced into "battle mode" to defend their existing farmland, buildings, etc.

 

"Winning" could be a certain population threshhold, or the clearing of the entire map of zombies.

 

There's more detail to work out, about how overrun the map would be at the start, the formulae for how fast food grows, etc, but this gives you the general idea.

 

Let me know if doing it this way appeals to anyone. If not, I'm totally ok with it (and will likely make a game like this in 30 years when my schedule opens up). If you DID want to go with this idea, I'd be happy to tackle the XB farm portion of things, and would love for someone else to handle a fast-paced assembly arcade portion, nicer graphics, etc.

[InfernalKeith]

Holy crap, three new messages in this thread just since I started typing the post above. This place is on fire!

[Opry99er]

Hey--- whatever you guys want... I'll do up the music real nice and you and Codex can work up graphics. . Codex has a true knack for graphics, as does Karsten. karsten's title screen is freaking great.

[The Codex]

Great ideas Keith! That's a well fleshed out design concept and a good starting point for the game mechanics.

 

I would suggest one possible addition, though it might be an unnecessary complication - separating silos for plants and barns for animals. That way you could strategise further on which you wanted to focus on (crops, herds, or both), as well as having events that pertain to each (fungus infection or rats in silos, hoof-and-mouth disease in barns). Dunno if it adds anything to the game, but wanted to toss the idea out there.