https://gamejolt.com/games/Corporatocracy/677937

TL:DR – The creation process was a mess, but in the end it's my first actually working real time tactics game and it is a good way to flex OASIS 2 Engine capabilities.

I made this Game for a gamejam with some friends of mine, including @bamfux who already released his submission. The Theme was apocalyptic/dystopian. Having recently remembered a Video about the 1993 Game "Syndicate", I was heavily influenced in my idea.

I could have gone with a plethora of game ideas, but after several years and attempts at making real time tactics games, I thought this was another good opportunity to give it a shot. This is among the hardest things I could have chosen, so instead of starting to work on the actual game, I got my in-dev top down rendering engine OASIS 2 in a usable state. It's based on the same principles employed in OASIS 1, which was used in Battlefront Scratch, but it’s way more performant, has a drastically improved ability to render high fidelity graphics among other things, more on it soon.

After that I stole list Pathfinding from Griffpatch, reworked it just a bit so it runs on a per clone basis and implemented list functions for control and stats of Player Units.

Shooting Damage is applied to a Grid index and is being read out and applied to itself by the receiving side (to circumvent the issue of not being good enough to have any other system like raycasting), in the end it’s the best system for this I’ve ever built and I’ve solved an issue that has been plaguing me every time I’ve attempted this kind of game.

With about 20% of my vague vision for the game done and some 1.5 days left in the jam, I scaled down on sleep and scope. Making Assets for the Map was important next and pretty straight forward: Top down reference, convert actual size to pixel per Meter scale, draw, repeat. Then started building the map, an absolute pain that took ca. 1h until I had the basics down. I wanted to detail it more with all the Assets I had made but saw that there was no time, neither was there for lighting, so that’s why it looks bland af.

As for Units, I took sci fi cyberpunk clichés such as Cyborg, Mech, Robot and dark seedy underground marksman. In code, I balanced them horribly, but that’s not to important for now. As for the Art, I knew that I’d have to use my favorite Robot design, that being “Chappie“. I took a 3D model in a 3D model viewer, turned it and took a top down screenshot. Imported into Turbowarp, size and trace. Didn’t get a good Cyborg Human Soldier going, so I „borrowed“ one from @Tomcat5 . My creative energy was non-existent, so I made the mech a kitbash from parts of Chappie and the Soldier and the Marksman is the most low quality thing I spit out in 5 minutes, which still took to much time.

Menu was next, inspired by the “Sydicate“ menu and looks somewhat decent.

Now onto putting 4 different Projects into one. Surprisingly, this didn’t take as long as I thought nor were there many bugs, mostly just wrong Variables and detection blocks.

After I had actual Gameplay for the first time and was some 2h over the official deadline, I started doing sound design for a bit, as other people had scheduled taking a bit longer as well. I was really looking forward to this, as I had found some “designed“ weapon sounds on zapsplat (media weapon sounds are not real recordings, but rather soundwaves designed from scratch, therefor they sound punchier and less airy than actual recordings). Those Files I found sounded like AAA weapon sfx to me, so I was just waiting for an excuse to put them somewhere. In the end I also used some other sfx for the Units and even made a “custom“ sound for the sniper by combining a tank firing sound and a warship shell being reloaded. UI sounds as well as ambiance fort he menu came from various sources, mainly a free and extremely high quality sfx pack called 99 sound effects and the Shockwave select & hover sounds (pls don’t kill me sky).

I didn’t have the time to look for other music and the game was still lacking the Dystopia Vibes, so I took the OST of Sydicate which is absolutely genius imo. In the end, this ist he best a game of mine has sounded and I’m really proud of having been able to step up the quality from my last games.

I also added a sick explosion I had ripped from some scratch game long ago and a muzzle flare effect with the help of the “virtual object“/particle system in OASIS 2.

In the End, I’m pretty proud of this game for several reasons, those being:

-This was my first game jam for me ever, so I’m happy to have finished sth (although be it with a 10h delay)

-I was able to fix problems that I had with real time tactics since forever and get an actually functioning framework with pathfinding and combat working

-The Lore was fun to think of and this is the first real game for which I didn’t use existing IPs or bland concepts.

-The game is alright in terms of gameplay and I finally have a good Idea I can work on.

-OASIS 2 has shown itself to be quite handy and mistakes that I wouldn’t have discovered without making the game, can be fixed now

-The Project has given me a start to make a (Graphics) Demo for OASIS 2 to show what it’s capable of (both to others and myself, as I have no Idea how far I can push the Engine rn)