Yeah…, drawing all my own cards is way too tedious a task. From one of the most important lessons I learned from General Assembly, MVP (Minimum Viable Product) was one of those lessons. So I’ve always had another idea in the back of my mind to tinker around with as a second option and a much more reachable goal in the meantime. And that idea is an updated version of Metal Marines! I rather enjoyed this game as a kid and in the 90s and it was one of those memorable games back during Windows 95 even though this game was made for Windows 3.1! I’ll attach a screenshot and this can be played at https://classicreload.com/win3x-metal-marines.html
The idea came when Battleship was one of the options to select from for my 1st GA project even though I selected Minesweeper instead. A few of my peers did select Battleship to code and at the time, I’ve always heard of the popular board game but never understood how it was played. Then I watched a few online videos and it really reminded me of a simplified Metal Marines game. Metal Marines came after and it maybe was inspired by Battleship but anyway, that’s what I’ve been working on quite recently after scrapping the card game idea.
I understand that it doesn’t look very pretty so far but those are just placeholders that will all get replaced by Pixel Sprites that I’ll draw eventually. For now, I’m more so focused on the functionality. You will notice in the video that:
- When placing a Structure, it snaps and each sprite will be 32 Pixels.
- After placing a Structure, there will be A Bar that represents the Health. This will not be visible unless the building is damaged.
- Building Factories increase the rate at which the structures build and eventually, I’ll probably add a repair function. Building Energy Plants and Finance Buildings work much the same way as Metal Marines.
- You will also notice that when placing a Structure, particularly the Mech Building (Light Blue) and Missile Building (Green) that it pops up on the right hand side of the screen too. That’s basically a shortcut button to Launch the Missile or Mech Soldier.
- Scrolling has always been kinda janky in the original PC game imo as well as the SNES version which is quite different altogether. My goal is giving the players many means to Scroll around whether that be using the minimap on the bottom right to target or the shortcut UI buttons on the right.
- AntiAir Missiles (Orange) you will notice have a Field of Vision in front of it. This basically detects when a Missile enters it and it will have a % to shoot down that Missile. AA Missiles also have a cooldown and Normal Missiles will as well when I’m done testing it enough.
- Mech Soldiers will work similarly but also different in that it will land and do it’s thing which I’ll work on very soon.
And that’s the very basic framework of what I have got so far. I have plans to make this multiplayer as well and it’ll be good practice I think. So Stay Tuned!
