0.60a closed out!

• Really good progress on buying lives and upgrading to a larger level for real money (it’s just not enabled/visible yet..)
• Chat was disabled after entering a camp via allies screen (use enter to chat)
• Fixed a dangerous bug in the login that could cause interesting random disobedience.
• Added particle effects when plants are fully grown or close to fully grown.
• Added information about the current total amount of money held in the current harvest.
• Wrong and hard to see color of low lives/ammo count fixed.
• A player without any weapon now animates correctly.
• A lot of refactoring in server side to improve stability and fix issues with higher player activity.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a glitched list of camps to appear at wrong places in game.
• Fixed a problem with server selector when a server in the list is down.
• Fixed an overflow in camp ranking comparison, making it impossible to attack a high ranked camp.

Update 0.56a is out!

• Very loud music volume has been reduced. Finally!
• New homing missile rocket sentries, dangerous AND fun
• New plasma sentries (slow but high damage and high range)
• Fixed old bug regarding all robots, shooting at a stationary robot sometimes had no effect
• More adjustments to prices! Laser is now very expensive, plasma more affordable
• Fixed a focus detection bug that could make the game go darker and darker
• Better connection error reporting and game version check for server/client

New update

• Bandwidth reduction through more clever enemy update scheme.
• New homing missile sentry that can shoot over any near by wall. I discovered serious bugs just after releasing it. They have be be fixed, so it’s not available just yet… :(
• Hardened wall has a new look.
• Dark floor has a new look.
• Floor pieces and rails dont shatter as easy (survives multiple blasts, but not a nuke)
• Adjustments to wave spawn to avoid stuck enemies.
• Harvesting generally brings less money.
• Sentries more expensive, but mid level sentry is better.
• Weapons increased in price.
• Ranking score generated from weapons are now 1/2 of the price.
• Robot pause when sustaining heavy damage has been reduced/removed.
• Attack waves do no longer have a fixed time between, next one starts directly after the last wave.

Small/large update

Hi there!

DRUG CAMP is always progressing somehow, even though I’m pretty bad at updating here. Last week I was kinda sick and had problems focusing on work. Still managed to get most of the GUI for repair/upgrade option running. You will be able to upgrade sentries and stuff pretty soon, but introducing this was more work than I anticipated. So right now, no upgrade scheme is implemented, only the GUI.

The game activity has begun to reduce slightly recent days, but this was pretty much expected. It’s interesting to see that it kept high for this long really, without any email notification system implemented. You will eventually receive optional email notifications when resurrected, attacked or even when the plant harvest reaches some threshold.

Last week I also needed to do some backend stuff that were pretty complicated to test and fix. I think it runs as it should now though, so I will release it discreetly this week and see how it flies. It mainly enables enemy waves to keep running in a camp without any players left. Don’t worry, they wont attack your camp on own initiative, for now. It should also fix quite a few bugs you encounter when trying to coop-defend a camp with other players, or just jumping into a camp with another player already in it. I may use this mechanic to later on trigger scheduled and notified attacks on camps that are very low in activity, basically trying to jump start them.

I’m also very keen on implementing a sentry that fires homing missiles. They will add a new level of fun when trying to raid someones camp.

Along with upgrades for camp defenses, we will implement special damages soon. Think freeze shots and poison shots.

The enemy waves are lacking in variety as well, we need to try and get more enemies in there. We have one big ass beetle and a smaller robot to write up code for, but they are far from finished right now. Producing interesting behavior for them takes a little testing and fiddling (not to mention a whole lot of debugging).

On a final geeky note, the game passed 60 thousand lines of code yesterday. Here’s what it looks like when I assemble it (the majority of this game is written in a custom assembly language for a minimalist virtual machine I invented some time ago):

(debug build)
start assembling from src/main.b on 23 Jan, 09:13:03
output image rs/pb.image
merging ... 173ms io (105 files 1262 KB src 188 KB inact, 60.0 KLOC)
indexing & parsing 52518 entries ...
compute offsets ...
565 strings pooled (17783 bytes) @ offset 320966
48528 instructions (@382 Ki/s).
634272 bytes written to rs/pb.image (1ms io)
done in 0.47s

DRUG CAMP alpha update 3

So the alpha is going pretty good I think, people seem to be having fun despite pretty nasty bugs - that has to be a good sign!

We’re not that many players yet, somewhere just below 200, but their activity is surprisingly high and constant. Every day 20% of these users log in and play, and some are pretty darn good.

We’re not rich from this donation for invitation code idea yet, but we just passed 400 USD in donations! In relation to the poor traffic the site gets on average (~90 visits a day), I’d say this is pretty good! And you early supporters will not be forgotten, thanks for your support! Every time someone donates, it will be the most we’ve ever earned on a game of our own. 

The trailer passed 3000 views pretty quick, I also finally passed that particular number in followers on twitter. Hello everybody!

So, a big update is heading your way. Here’s what’s in it, so far:

• Forest grows back the way it was, unless you’ve built something there. Right now, after a camp has been left alone for 48 hours, realtime.
• Floor pieces have increased in price, since now they have a function: stop the original forest from growing back.
• Items, floor and railway pieces are now destroyed by blasts.
• Radioactivity no longer stick to your base forever after a nuke.
• Camp has 20 min cool down timer after attack, with 1 min wide open gap. You can’t attack the same camp over and over as much. Also it will increase the risk of running into other players that raid the same camp.
• Ranking computation revised, not including money, only count bought stuff. Anything in the level is counted in now.
• More adjustments of cash reward from killing enemies (hint: it’s less).
• Sentries are no longer tree huggers; they will break them down to get you.
• Put a cap on grenades (8 max) and nukes (3 max) to prevent bugs and mass destruction.
• Slight increase energy of sentries (80,100,120) -> (100,120,140).
• Removed giga nuke from shop since it will never be implemented. Sorry, but it was never meant for this game..
• Added mines to design mode, both hidden and visible. Create your own minefield, but watch your step! A player can learn how to spot a hidden mine, but when chased by a swarm of bullets, it inevitably gets harder!
• Rails are much cheaper, but can now be destroyed.
• Mid level sentry increased range (from 200 to 300) and damage (from 10 to 15).
• Fixed bug where flowers were being shown in wrong state or not updated when visiting/attacking a camp.
• The old wall types are now a little stronger (150->200, 300->400).
• Added hardened wall, more than double the strength of concrete.
• Moon flower changed, now grows full in 15 minutes but rots after 16!
• Grenades cheaper (500), nukes more costly (2500)
• Pumple stays ripe a little shorter.
• Sunfire grows full in 18 min.
• Extra lives will now cost a lot more but only sell for 1/5.
• Nukes deal much more damage per square.
• New kind of robot that doesn’t stop when taking a hard hit and also carries a nuke…
• Plugged a memory leak that caused instability in longer game sessions.
• Fixed a very dangerous bug in the camp attack listing. I’m surprised the current version works at all, having this bug!

Basically, we want this to be a game about trying to run a drug farm, protecting it from attackers. Not just grinding down monsters to get money that you then sit on. Money is meant to be spent!

The new nuking robots are truly awful. They barge in, die eventually and destroy everything around them, poisoning the ground at the same time. Fortunately, they do not show up until you pass ranking score of 500 (that is 500.000 in the old score system).

I am probably able to release this tomorrow evening, that is in 24 hours from now.

Any of this seem horribly wrong to you, please tell us why!