Posted August 25, 2020 by MGD MillsGameDev
Voting for the LowRezJam 2020 has ended. I am not sure if you can see the results as a non-participant, but CovidFighter came in 87th with 13 ratings. The total number of entries was 368. That is about 76%, a C+. which is not bad for a jam this size. But I was scratching my head, there were a lot of "Make a hot dog" games that beat me. My map maker said that this is more a popularity contest and to use the comments I received as a true measure of how the game did. The comments were mostly positive, and the issues are easily fixable. I have decided to keep working on the game to finish it. But what exactly does finished look like? After discussing it with the team and the jam community, here is the release plan (as of now) on what we will work on for the next set of releases.
I am a very open developer and love feedback. If there is some feature or thing you want to see improved post it in the comments below!
Covid Fighter V0.1 was release on LowRezJam 2020 on Aug 16, 2020, and the bug fix V0.2
It was a very limited product and it does not hit all the things I wanted. This is a road-map of features that I want to add for the product. The plan is to do a release each month with significant features while slowly adding Maps to complete the content. Each release has a theme about the features it is added and they are in the order needed to implement the follow up features of the next release. I have six releases planned, but you know how it goes.... Your mileage may vary. Things may be discovered along the way which may require another release.
The first release is about breaking out of the limited lowrezjam limits. We do not want to break out of the lowrez style, just open up the canvas size to fit whatever screen size there is, and likely double the pixels per inch for the shapes.
(The rest of the release info is just the synopsis. A more detailed breakdown will be listed after the previous release)
Upgrade the Cut Scene engine. This is the code that tells you the story using text screens. It needs to be updated for the larger screen. That means added artwork, possible animations, etc. Update the minimap, add legend to it and icons for key locations. Add road signs to locations on ornaments. May have time to animate some tilesets.
This release will be about upgrading the AI in the game. We left out a lot of AI features due to time, now we can add them in. Add a Statistics screen showing the status of the game, time/date, points, ammo, etc. Adding tracking for time of day and date. Modify AI to change behavior of citizens for weather, work schedule, holidays, etc. Track their mood, add events for protests, mask removing. Start keeping score/political/research points. Add research centers.
Due to the limited time (I think this is about the fifth time I said this) we only gave the player a spray can of disinfectant, and a mask launcher. We have a lot more tools to add, and a store/research tree to unlock them. Area Closed signs, more mask capacity, stronger masks, better contact tracing, better map tracing, longer lasting spray, relaxing spray (chill out people), Disinfectant stations, masking stations. Purchasable population restrictions like quarantines, social distancing, etc.
Remove the limitation of a single state. As the agent you travel to other states while the pandemic is going on. Work with the spread at a national level. Update screens to display state by state statistics. (I think this mode will be really hard to play) Try to get all states done. Remember its not just the agent that can travel across states, the population can too and along with it the virus.