S.C.U.M. - Luciente's War - DONE

[NiallM]

[edit]
Done!

Windows
OSX
Linux/Source code
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Hi,

I've been lurking on this forum for a bit now, but I had to join when I saw the subject for the latest games pageant.  I've had a soft spot for Valerie Solanas ever since seeing the manifesto quoted on the Manics' first album as a teenager.

Going with the themes of utopia and violent struggle (I see) in the manifesto, I'm making a game based on Marge Piercy's 'Woman on the Edge of Time' (a combination of utopian science fiction and a feminist One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).  So the game will alternate between flashes of a potential utopian future and the dystopian present, with the player incarcerated in a mental institution.  The goal is to bring about that utopian future by killing the doctors and nurses in the institution.  Of course, the player will be heavily drugged up, so movement won't be easy, and if a doctor/nurse sees them doing anything untoward they'll be force fed even more drugs.  There'll be various different ways to kill people, with the more effective ones being harder to pull off (e.g. steal key to cupboard; get hazardous cleaning product from cupboard; pour hazardous cleaning product in coffee machine; wait for nurses to go on a coffee break; all without being noticed).

I plan on syncing the whole thing to the music (ideally this, but I should probably come up with my own music) so the game only lasts as long as the song and there's a time limit to the whole thing.  I'll probably randomise things like the items and people in the game, so it'll take multiple playthroughs to piece together the story and see all the ways to take out the medical staff.  It's all probably a bit too ambitious, but we'll see how far I get.

[Jonathan Whiting]

Wow, that does sound ambitious, but also very interesting indeed, best of luck with it :)

[agj]

Sounds like a good idea. Ambitious indeed, though. Hope you make it.

[Stephen L]

Welcome to the forums!

I like the idea.

My advice for this particular project (given that you have ambition anxiety): get a mechanical prototype working as quickly as possible - worry about graphics/audio/&c. later.  You might already be doing this, or you might not like the idea, but there it is.

[NiallM]

Thanks.  I usually do the graphics and code all at the same time, but I think in this case an initial mechanical prototype makes a lot of sense.  I've got some time off next week, so I'm planning on getting the core of the game done then.

[NiallM]

I've got the basic mechanics up and running; you can download it for yourself here.  A screenshot of my ugly placeholder graphics:

Keys are:
cursors: movement
z,x,c: pickup items/use items.
space: interact (open doors, speak to people)

And for debugging:
b: display bounding boxes (red = collision boxes, blue = player's pickup zone, green = authority figures' sight zone)
1,2: switch between the two locations (present, future)
t: trigger a nurses' tea break (this and the location switching will be triggered at particular points in the final version's song)

When a nurse spots you doing anything untoward, he'll run over (or try to; they're not particularly smart) and force feed you more drugs.  The more drugs you have in your system, the harder it is to do anything.  The doctor's drugs are twice as powerful as the nurses'.

Feedback would be most appreciated (especially re items, and potential chains of actions you could use to kill the doctor and the nurses).  At the moment it feels like I'm going to have to add a lot more stuff (items, events etc.) to make the randomness actually work and give the player a reason to play the game more than once.

[agj]

You might appreciate my telling you that I wanted to give it a try, but it didn't work on this computer at all, which is not a surprise, since nearly no game works here. Sorry.

[NiallM]

Oh dear.  If it's not too much trouble, could you try this version and post the contents of the stdout.txt file it generates?

In the meantime, an update on my progress with the graphics:

[agj]

That looks quite nice.

---------------------------
LucientesWar.exe - Unable To Locate Component
---------------------------
This application has failed to start because zlib1.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

I got this message before it even started. So, no stdout file.

[NiallM]

Oh, oops.  Weird that I didn't notice that on either of my machines.  Fixed version.

[Stephen L]

Tried it out there - worked fine for me : )

[agj]

Okay, here we go:

Debug: Application::Application()  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:69)
Debug: Application: SDL Initialised  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:79)
Debug: Application: Window name set  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:84)
Debug: Application: Loading config settings from file.  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:227)
Debug: Application: Config settings loaded.  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:243)
Debug: Application: OpenGLDrawer created.  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:247)
OpenGLDrawer: Display is 32bit.
Using GLEW version: 1.5.1
Shader support: OpenGL shaders *NOT* available.
Debug: GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE = 1024  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\NiallsDrawingLib\OpenGLDrawer.cpp  line:161)
Debug: GL_TEXTURE_WIDTH = 0  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\NiallsDrawingLib\OpenGLDrawer.cpp  line:173)
Debug: Application: OpenGLDrawer initialised.  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:250)
Debug: FutureLocation::FutureLocation()  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\FutureLocation.cpp  line:63)
Debug: FutureLocation::FutureLocation() end  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\FutureLocation.cpp  line:86)
Debug: PresentLocation::PresentLocation()  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\PresentLocation.cpp  line:110)
Debug: PresentLocation::PresentLocation() end  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\PresentLocation.cpp  line:197)
Debug: Application: GamePlay created.  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:254)
Debug: Application: Audio started.  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:273)
Debug: Application::Application() end  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:280)
Debug: Application::eventLoop()  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\Application.cpp  line:335)
Debug: font georgia.ttf:32 atlasSize = 512  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\NiallsDrawingLib\OpenGLFont.cpp  line:93)
Debug: Little endian architecture, not flipping bytes.  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\NiallsDrawingLib\OpenGLFont.cpp  line:98)
Debug: FutureLocation::draw() images/fonts/shaders loaded  (C:\Programming\Applications\LucientesWar\src\FutureLocation.cpp  line:113)

PA - PlatformId = 0x2
PA - MajorVersion = 0x6
PA - MinorVersion = 0x0
PortAudio on DirectSound - Latency = 5292 frames, 120 msec
InitOutputBuffer() returns 0
PaHost_StartOutput: IDirectSoundBuffer_SetCurrentPosition returned = 0x0.
PaHost_StartOutput: IDirectSoundBuffer_Play returned = 0x0.

Are you... using shaders?

[agj]

By the way, I hope you don't mind my pointing it out, but your sense of perspective has improved greatly since this. :)

[NiallM]

Are you... using shaders?

There is one to handle the darkening of the screen as you get more drugs in your system, but it should be disabled automatically if your card doesn't support shaders.  Thinking about it, it's actually fairly superfluous, as the same thing could easily be done with an alpha blended texture over the whole screen.  I might change that for the final version.

Anyway, from the log, it looks like the problem is that my background textures were too big for your card.  Here's a version with the backgrounds split into more manageable sizes.

By the way, I hope you don't mind my pointing it out, but your sense of perspective has improved greatly since this. :)

:)  Maybe, but making this has brought me to the conclusion that I can't draw people for toffee, let alone animate them in a remotely convincing fashion:

[agj]

Still not working, but please don't sweat it, this computer is really bad.