Cowboys Vs Monsters

Just an Indie game blog about trying to make a game and burning midnight oil. It's an RTS game that involves Cowboys exploring caves for fame and fortune while defending their camp using built defenses.

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Some new buildings for the wild west's town

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Some end of year development footage of Cowboys Vs Monsters. This is recorded at 15fps ... but with Audio in place! The game runs a lot smoother than that :D

It's 11 months on from when I started development, things have cropped up and got in the way (mostly other games) but I would like to finish this some time next year.

There is a definite lack of RTS cowboy games, and I've always promised myself to make one. Hope you like the clip, thanks for following and if you like leave a comment below of any ideas you may have for the game play!

More updates next year :D

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This probably wont look like much, but those little dots around the dude in a circle are like some SIN and COS goodness! Unit range indication is in. This is going to be the best 'game design document' I've every done - I've never done one.

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So, this was interesting, the game running on a Nexus7 tablet. Amazingly all the mouse interactions work! Press, hold and drag to select units or dirt blocks. From a performance point of view it's not great, it runs about 17fps, but then again I never started making the game with mobile / tablets in mind. It's making me wonder though, with some optimizing ...

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Managed to work out a solution for seeing if selected blocks are valid. I had been trying to write some crazy ass data scanners which were a) complicated and b) a complete waste of CPU resource. Because I have a bitmap object in the HUD and its only updated as dirt tiles are dug away, I realized all I have to do is create a flood fill from the base camp which is where all the prospectors start from. Then a selected block can simply work out if it's valid for the prospector to get to by seeing if it butts onto the flood fill colour - bingo! A sort of mechanical solution, but works a treat  

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Big dump of graphic changes ... detailing it up. Also decided to introduce flag on all structures. A new trading post for advanced units.

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Getting defences in ... building, tracking and shooting!

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Message flowchart and gun turrets ...

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Getting something to go to it's most nearest target, here's a formula for getting point distances which can be sorted to the lowest number.

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Saloon in place properly and some ‘creeps’ making there way in, MAN the Defenses!

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New saloons for hired guns. Decided to put this in rather than having a separate overlay where you have to hire workers. From a Saloon you will be able to hire various cowboy classes such as Snipers, Rapid fire, TNT experts etc.

Also been working on gun towers which will be making an appearance soon!

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New class - BOOMER! This chap can chuck dynamite!

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Head shots ... each character has a randomly generated cowboy name! :D

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Portraits are in! Need to record the voice overs at some point, and probably rewrite it all but it works :D Now just getting down to number crunching and working out features of who builds what, how you get XP, gold, Research, items etc.

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Adding in new cowboy portraits, these will help provide feedback that may be happening off screen, for example someone under attack, or a zone that's been lost. Clicking on them will navigate you straight to where the event is happening.

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Started to think about the actual styling ... even though these are technically vector I'll rez them down to pixel 2X.