itch.io

Hobby - no money

Starting a hex-based/turn-based grid iron game. I can do coding and game design but I have terrible user experience design skills. I can't make screens look good. You don't even need to be an artist - just someone that can put text and images on a screen in a way that flows and makes sense.

I'l provide the content and the concept and you can have fun trying to make my ugly screens look better by thinking about placement, fonts, colours, background images, sizes, buttons, headings and bling etc. If you can do art to make things better than bonus!

For example - here are 2 wire frame of the "season" screen for my game. It's all draft and nothing is locked in. If you think you can turn my idea's into a positive user experience then lets make magic.  :)

Check my itch.io page for my portfolio of games I've already released over the last few years.
Discord: togfox

New discord server: https://discord.gg/phFqyhK4Su

v1.0.1 is released.
Includes a much improved AI that will give you a serious challenge. Suggest a fresh install is used to ensure the new AI is installed correctly.

Artificial Intelligence details

This game uses genuine machine learning AI. It will study how you play, build a statistical model and learn to counter your moves. This AI uses QTables to understand which move it should play given the current set of circumstances. v1.0.1 brings you a few things:

1) small bug fixes and defect remediation where the AI wasn't learning as fast has it could have.

2) the introduction of a second Qtable - or 2nd AI that can look ahead one move and try to outwit the player.

3) the primary AI for Jungeong now comes pre-loaded with a library of valid moves she has learned during play-testing.

v1 doesn't have a look-ahead function. It simply tried it's best based on it's current position. v1.0.1 now has a look ahead component.

The first AI, the "current move" AI, has priority and if it determines it can strike and win right now then it will take that option. if the "current move" AI can't determine a move that is appealing, then it defers to the "move-ahead" AI. This 2nd AI's responsibility is to assume it can't win this round, but can try to move to a better position for next round.

The only bot that uses AI is Junjeong. Play her for ten rounds and watch her noticeably improve. Play her twenty times and you may find yourself on a losing streak.

The bot called Kim Won-sul hasn't changed. He plays completely random cards and is a good bench mark. He will often try to play illegal cards (and fail) and can regularly beaten.

Kim Yu-sin will play random cards but only legal cards. This means he is much more effective as every play is a chance for you to lose.

Junjeong is the machine learning bot. Play her enough times and she'll give you a serious challenge.

This card game has gathered a lot of attention over the last 8 months and I wanted to refresh the AI for those that would like to revisit it. Thanks.

v0.1.0 is released. It will break v0.01 save games.

Read the wiki for instructions.

Read the blog for updates.

MS Windows game

Hi all - very happy to share my most polished and complete project thus far

A card game that brings sword fighting to life. Simple to learn, hard to master. Learn when to advance, dodge, strike and counter. Learn how to strike without being struck.

https://togfox.itch.io/hwarang 

Discord: https://discord.gg/HeHgwE5nsZ

Thanks for trying the game and finding time to comment. The beauty is in the simple short and sharp battles but I can see how some might be looking for more complexity. I have zero artistic skills so that's why the images are what they are. Hope your own vision works out for you. If you care enough, you can send your qtable.dat file to me via togfox @ gmail.com or discord. I can then use your fight style to train the AI. Cheers.

Finally introduced passing, meaning they can throw the ball to the receiver. QB's can now run the ball or pass the ball. This makes for a very dynamic game and brings an "it's not over till it's over" feeling.

About 4 weeks after the initial release this game is quickly approaching "feature complete".

That does not mean I'm done - there is more to do:

- add and improve graphics

- add quality of life features

- add more meta

- add more content to the supporters pack

- improve the bots behavior

- add more everything

- kill bugs bugs bugs

If you've been waiting and watching then this v0.07 is the version you've been waiting for. Try it now. I hope you're impressed.

Change log

- QB can now pass the ball

- defending team can intercept the ball

- game rules are better enforced

- fixed the UI in many places

- fixed the punting animation

- lots of bug fixes

- probably lots of other things

Backyard gridiron manager - completely free - can't even donate!

Help create a community

Be the very first person to join the discord server for Backyard gridiron league!

https://discord.gg/k9YGh6ek3 - also completely free!

v0.07 is available. See dev log

v0.06 is available. See dev log

v0.05 is released and now the game is much improved from the pre-alpha developers version. I've achieved quite a lot in 7 days in terms of features, bling, stats and meta, bug fixes and improved game logic. I've hit a steady rhythm with incremental releases and things can only get better from here.  :)

Backyard gridiron manager

v0.05 is available. See dev log

v0.04 is available. See dev log.

v0.03 is available. See dev log.

v0.02 is available. Release notes:

• tool tips now guide you how to play
• many GUI improvements
• can now delete a league
• roster screen and draft screen now show all player stats
• many bug fixes

v0.01 pre-alpha developers version is now available!

This is a super raw version but I'm making it available for the brave and foolhardy. This project will continue for many more months and I didn't want to wait that long to make this game available.

v0.01 is functional - it works - only just. Many images are place holders, some buttons don't work, and fonts are all over they place - but it works.

Updates will be on a regular cycle to enhance the game, fix presentation and make this a solid and fun game. Thanks for reading!

Backyard Gridiron Manager

Help create a community

Be the very first person to join the discord server for Backyard gridiron league!

https://discord.gg/k9YGh6ek3d

Development is progressing and the game is now functional - as in it can be played.  :)  It is very very ugly at the moment with lots of placeholders that will be replaced over time but the fact is that multiple seasons can be played now, even if they are boring seasons.

I'm gearing up for a pre-alpha developers release (v0.01) for those that want to get a feel for this type of game.

Screenshots remembering everything is placeholder:

Be the first person to join the discord server: https://discord.gg/k9YGh6ek3d

Backyard gridiron manager

Backyard gridiron manager

This will be a gridiron (American football) management game where you look of a bunch of stats and numbers and performance metrics for players, form a roster by balancing offense and defense stats and then watching your team play football against bot-controlled teams. You cheer when your team scores and you cry when they don't. 

Between games and seasons, you sift through key statistics. You look for the winners and weed out the under-performers. The bot teams are doing the same. Can you out-roster the competition and win season after season.

Be the very first person to join the discord server: https://discord.gg/k9YGh6ek3d

Itch.io: Backyard gridiron manager

Features

- 5 vs 5 format. All starters play offense and defense. Choose strong offense or strong defense or scout that star player that can do both!

- has a "backyard" look and feel. No fancy stadiums with roaring crowds. You won't get 53 players in this game.

- become attached to your players and watch them excel, or fail, on the field.

- track stats across games and seasons and use key metrics to decide when to cut that over-rated player.

- injuries and training events will keep you constantly pruning and reviewing your roster.

- a draft pool at the start of each season lets the weaker teams pick new players and balance each season.

- watch the players push each other around the field using a real 2d physics engine.

Stretch goals

- physics engine that lets you watch tackles and break-aways play out using real mechanics

- hot-seat with a friend and co-op your way through seasons. Can you out manage your friend?

- offline replay mode so a host can run tournaments and distribute replay files for later watching

- team editor for changing team colours and names

- build a name for your backyard crew and start playing in school yards and local club grounds

Early screenshots

Known issues:

* Some graphic resolution issues on laptops and small screen sizes

Features:

• Slow burn relaxing game
• Float in zero-g space and make a small living mining rocks
• Sell rocks and upgrade the vessel. Lots of meta-data for meta-gamers
• Manage your vessel's key components like oxygen and electricity
• Customise your ship so it handles just as you prefer it
• Uses physics engine to simulate real zero-g space
• Experience damage to your ship components using true physic impacts
• Basic economy provides you a means to upgrade and repair components

https://togfox.itch.io/asteroid-hunter

Very novel. I hope you continue.

Interesting. Not seen one quite like this before. I know this game is 'complete' but it would be more interesting if you can make multiple 'trades' without having to wait for the first trade to end. You can click the up arrow three times in a row and watch them all 'win' or all lose. Keep it more engaging.

Hobby project looking for pixel artist to create frames for me to animate. No demands. No schedule. No pressure. No payment.

Project published on itch:  Autarky

This is the existing image/pixel. Need someone to help me animate through walking and doing activities etc. Could be a fun thing and something different. Looping animations might be walking, working, talking, playing, singing, dancing. Help me bring little ppl to life.  :)

Discord = Fox#4471

It's really quite pointless to post or look for unpaid work in the LFP/LFS forum as you instantly get drowned out by ppl looking for free advertising for their commercial interests.

Splitting the forum lets everyone have a place to post and makes both forums relevant once more.

Cheers n beers.

I've been thinking about the type of game-play I'd like this strategy naval-combat game to be. This is perhaps a small point but I think it will be a tactical game (not strategic). I say 'tactical' because it will be combat at a ship level - not a large ocean. A little more micro level but not too micro. In fact, I'm thinking a mix between formations and ships. Let me elaborate.

Reading history books about glorious naval battles in the past (which were tragic in terms of human life) naval battles were largely about clashes between FORMATIONS. Squadrons of ships would be in formation and battleships would all maneuver in unison according to that formation. For command and control reasons (and survival), battleships did not maneuver independently. They followed the flagship and stayed in formation. I'd like to try to emulate that. I'd like to see if large formations of 10 - 20 ships can be navigated around a screen following different rules and logic. The player maneuver's the squadron/formation, and the ships within do their best to keep a coherent formation. And, just like in battle, a formation that breaks down causes chaos and mayhem.  :)  You might have seen old black and white photos of flotilla's four or five 'columns' wide with dozens of ships in formation. Capital ships are in the centre and smaller screening ships are in the outer columns. I think it would be historically accurate plus good game design to maneuver at this formation level.

Image source: dailymail.co.uk

Combat will be at a ship level. Two opposing formations will engage in combat by targeting individual ships. This lets you target flagships, battleships, cruisers, destroyers etc. You will be able to concentrate fire on a single vessel or spread the damage out across the squadron. Disabling a ship in the middle of a formation will trigger that formation to reform. There combat effectiveness might be impacted until the cohesion is returned. Line-of-sight will also be a thing so formation positioning and configuration will be important. Screening vessels on the fringes will block LoS to the capital ships. 'Crossing the T' is a naval strategy used to get the most number of broadside shots on an enemy formation. I absolutely want to replicate that so gun-turrets will have facings or fire-arcs. For example, a cruiser might have two guns facing forwards but 6 guns facing sideways. Obviously, you'll want to try to get a broadside shot but that means maneuvering the formation/squadron and that will be a challenge in itself.

Damage will be simple - vessels have hit-points and 1 hit means 1 damage. Damage will impact the ability to return fire and speed. Actually sinking a large battleship will take concentrated fire. Historically, these large ships were disabled and then scuttled.

I thought about making this hex based but I've decided to go 'free form' meaning full 360 degree maneuver and fire will be possible. So - a top-down 2D tactical war-game where the player maneuvers formations (squadrons) so that individual ships can out-range and out-combat other ships.

Sounds like a coding challenge!!  :)

I've released four projects on Itch.IO - my proudest being Mars Lander (a collaborative project), but I now want to computerise a table-top war-game. I've gotten inspiration from battleship and ironclad war-games that have markers and rulers for measuring and paper-pads with hit boxes and rules for maneuvers etc. I look at those games as something that can be fun to play and also fun for me to code. I am not an expert at game design and coding but I'm not an amateur either. I have much to learn and I learn by doing things (don't we all). A 2D top-down table-top war-game will involve much math, trigonometry and calculations. There will be individual ships, missiles, groups of ships (flotilla's), laser turrets and the usual mayhem of combat. There will be lots of objects to track and code for and I think this will be a challenge I'm ready for.

Genre: naval fleet combat - but in the future.

Ironclads, WWI and WWII had behemoths launching shells and torpedo's at each other. I'm thinking of a twist: near-future battleships that use laser-turrets and airborne missiles to engage targets.

Format: turn-based

It will be turn-based like any good war-game but it will have simultaneous movement and firing. I think this is an intriguing mechanic that forces players to try to pre-empt their opponent when maneuvering and positioning. Sometimes it will work and you'll get an amazing broadside shot off and sometimes, well, you're on the end of your opponents broadside!

PVP LAN play

I have some experience in multiplayer programming over LAN (see Mars Lander) and also in machine-learning artificial intelligence. I hope to make this game both single-player against AI and two-player head-to-head over LAN.

Development approach

I'll use an AGILE style of approach where I'll build something super basic and rudimentary with wire-frames and terrible text-on-screen GUI's and incrementally build in more functions and gradually build up graphics and GUI's and add sound.

I've learnt that I enjoy projects more when I exercise patience and planning. This means time! This won't be a rushed project. I have a real day job and family and that remains my priority, but I can invest a lot of time into this and will chip away at it.

AGILE means releasing a lot of small updates frequently. I think this is a good way to demonstrate progress and to build a community and user-base. Some updates will be meh and some updates will be exciting. I think it's a good way to engage those following project progress. I'm an experienced and disciplined project manager and I'll be bringing those qualities to this project as well.

You will read in the next paragraph how I'm not going to jump in and start coding. I'll have a plan on paper about what the code will do, the code functions, the player experience, the pseudo-code, the GUI designs etc. I'll start coding only when I feel the game is technically feasible and within my skillset.

Collaboration

Mars Lander was a community collaboration and without a doubt brought some quality and polish to that game. I'm happy to collaborate again. If anyone is experienced in graphics or sound or marketing or LUA programming (Love2D) then feel free to contact me. I have a gmail account. It starts with togfox and maybe you can work out the rest. :)

What can I offer that might interest you? Vision, discipline, project management, experience, coding experience, control, empathy (you won't be a slave), patience.

Progress

I didn't want to post a blog that says a bunch of stuff without any real evidence so I'm posting my initial pseudo-code on what will be the main move/fire/damage game loop and also the likely data-structure and functions required to execute most of the game loop. It probably won't make sense to you - it's not meant to. It's just a little insight into how I will start planning for this project. Some 'objects' I've identified already:

• a nation will have one or more flotilla's (a group of ships)
• each flotilla will have a bunch of ships
• players will move ships by moving the flotilla. That is, all ships in the flotilla will move together
• players will each plan their movements and then watch ships move around the screen simultaneously
• players will each plan their combat/targets/firing and then watch combat results simultaneously
• the them is near-future naval combat. Instead of gun batteries with shells, there will be laser turrets with ... lasers.
• missiles will act like torpedo's of old
• the theme will be cyber-punkish (but not cyber-punk). Old mechanical ships with uninteresting technology will duke it out with high-tech lasers and missiles

Hello, my hobby project is a top-down 2d WW1 naval battleship game. Would you like some practice doing battleships of different types and sizes?

My game is about 50% done and not released but you can see my blog here had place holder images that need sooner love.

https://togfox.itch.io/general-quarters

togfox@gmail.com

Hobby project is about 50% done and needs a LUA/Love 2D coder to help with coding. Must use github and enjoy problem solving (and LUA).

Will need to collaborate with me on code. Suggest reading devlog (from modest to newest) to see if you are interested:

https://togfox.itch.io/general-quarters

 I'ma mature and experienced coder but there are some mathematical and graphical challenges ahead. My code is here. Check out my style and see if you can contribute:

https://github.com/togfoxy/GeneralQuarters

Togfox@gmail.com

I've created a dozen devlog entries inside my itchio project but only just realised there is a community forum also called devlogs. They seem too be different but have the same name. Also potentially different audiences.

I'd like to make my project devlog available to those reading the community forum. Should I copy and paste my project devlog to the community forumsince the rules state dumping links is not allowed?

I'm beginning too think I've been making devlog inside the project which had very little exposure. If so then that makes me sad. :(

v1.04 is available

=============

• parachute now auto-deploys
• font sizes are now larger
• removed unused DEBUG code
• the end game text message is now correct
• the game music now plays properly
• fixed a runtime error when AI travels too far

v1.03 is available

=============

- can now play against a real machine-learning artificial intelligent lander that learns from its wins and fails

- the scripted bot is much improved

v1.02 is available

=============

- android compatible

- the ENTER key now resets your lander

- added a parachute module. Use the side thruster buttons to steer the parachute

- added a new 'guidance' module

- added a bot to fly against

- high score now shows the player that achieved that high score

- better LAN support

- there is a game options window to configure the game as you like

- lander animates introduced

- shop menu is now clickable

- fixed some bugs