INTRODUCTION:
Hello StarEdit! I work with a team of four programmers known as qMopey, and we're developing a free casual-style RTS called Ancient Forest and Grumpy Monsters (AFGM). In AFGM the players plays as a forest that fights a faction known as the Grumpy Monsters. The Grumpy Monsters are corrupting the land, and it's up to the player to prevent the spread of this corruption by expanding the forest!

I figure since most all of you enjoy RTS games that you'd enjoy playing our RTS as well

ABOUT qMopey:
qMopey is a team of four programmers that are currently attending DigiPen IT that are developing the game Ancient Forest and Grumpy Monsters. This game is our second semester project. The game was coded in C using a DigiPen in-house DirectX library. The only functionality used from this library was loading images into memory, and displaying them on screen -even mesh creation is handled by our team. The team consists of:

• Anh Do
  
• Kevin Giang
  
• Colton DeGraw
  
• Randy Gaul (CecilSunkure)

THE GAME:
The whole idea of the game is to play as an ancient magical forest to fight off a faction of Grumpy Monsters! Placing down tree structures is the main mechanic. These structures act as defensive towers, spawn creatures of the forest, and spread purification on the land to counteract the corruption from the Grumpy Monsters.



In order to gather resources you must place down tree structures underneath the rays of the sun. Each tree placed on a tile with a cute little sun gives the player an income boost.



As the player progresses through the campaign levels new Monsters are introduced, and new tech available for the Forest to equip against the Monsters becomes apart of the player's toolset. Here are some images of various units and sprite art from within the game!



MAP EDITOR
Our game comes with a built-in map editor. The awesome thing about our map editor is how easily it allows us to create new levels. The best thing however, is that the user can create and play their own levels very easily. You could even modify the scenario levels that come with the game and play them to your own liking!

Features of the editor include:

• Place unit
  
• Place Structure
  
• Set tile settings
  
• Right click for tile coordinate
  
• Save and load map files
  
• Launch loaded map file into gameplay for a Custom Match
  
• Easy resize of map dimensions

Map files (aka scenario files) have the file extension .afs. afs stands for Ancient Forest Scenario. A more detailed explanation of the Map Editor and its features is in your readme folder of your installation.

SCRIPTING EVENTS
Ancient Forest and Grumpy Monsters employs a scripting language called Condition Action (CA) developed by qMopey that allows for simple event based actions to be implemented during the running of a map file. The idea is that you can create multiple events with the scripting language in a text file. Then the game will load this text file and parse the contents into actions to take while the game is running.

An event in CA is a list of conditions and a list of actions. The conditions of an event are a list of checks the game makes during gameplay, if all of these checks pass then the actions are fired.

For example say you want to destroy the Grumpy Monsters Castle if the player builds 15 trees. Perhaps the idea of your level is that the player rushes to build many trees before dieing. This is very easy with CA. You create an event that holds one condition and one action. This condition checks to see if the player has at least 15 trees at any given time, and when this condition is met your action of destroying the Grumpy Monsters is then fired!

Here's a small example CA file used in the past for testing, this CA file creates a main tree when the game starts:



This CA language allows for interesting levels to be created very easily! A more detailed explanation of the CA language can be found in the readme in your installation. CA files have the .CA file extension.

FEEDBACK:
We would absolutely love to hear any feedback from anyone who plays the game! Be it about art, programming, gameplay, whatever! Post up here in this forum Feel free to share map files with one another, CA scripts, anything!

Please also take a moment to complete our survey: LINK

This survey helps our team gather valuable information about the game!

FAQ:

• Will this work on my MAC?
  • Windows only

DOWNLOAD:
LINK

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Apr 23 2012, 6:11 am by CecilSunkure.

Sounds interesting, I'll check it out now.

Selecting L11 crashes with this message:

Assertion failed!
File: Events.c, Line 239
Expression: 0

This is on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1

Level 12 crashes when I am about to steamroll the enemy with my 3rd magic well. No specific error message.

Crash whenever I restart a level.

More input later. Random thoughts:
- First 1-2 levels are a bit hard when you don't already know exactly what to do first since the computer rushes you. Maybe script it to only build his "barracks" when you have at least x units produced.
- I love the idea and the graphics are cute
- More hotkeys please. I'd like to be able to restart or go back to the menu found it. However make it clearer that pause is the menu.
- Allow resizing the window. Scrolling by moving to the edge of the screen when the whole map fits my monitor is annoying. Or at least have an option for fullscreen mode so you can't "overshoot" the window when trying to move to the edge to scroll.
- I have no idea how to stop the slime/ghost rush on L15
- building on tiles on the upper left is difficult because the resource interface is drawn over the build menu

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Apr 19 2012, 3:54 pm by NudeRaider.

You ditched Lost Souls for THIS??!

I was like 'ehhh like I'll care'

And then I was like "HOLY SHIT CECIL DID IT?!"

I'll try to get on it after work. Lots to do today, though.
It is so fucking cute. zomg.

-level 9 to easy
-level 10 to hard
-stuff under construction shouldn't show "no res"
-the level where you defend is... kind of lame. I'm building owls in the back and camp because the front is immortal and I can't build in front of my defenses...

New version! Various bugfixes and crash fixes.

Make some way to control the units or something ... They all just hang out in my base being in the way preventing more units from spawning and doing nothing about the hoards of enemies attacking.

No more crashes. I've beaten all levels now except level 15. What's the strategy there?

Is there a way to make it Macintosh compatible?

Definitely not

Be smarter about how you place your structures!

I didn't make level 15. Honestly I don't like it haha xD

So that the enemies just come in and kill everything ...


Anyway, it still crashes when I try to load a map level file thing.

Has every level actually been beaten?

Standard methods don't even remotely work, so I can only assume there is some gimmick to it, if it's possible at all.

So are you going to give a hint or are you just laughing at our incompetence?

I beat level 7 without using the introduced range upgrade. I'm not sure if that's an issue.

Also, I get an "AFGM.exe has stopped working" message when I press "Restart" on the pause menu.

I really think you're reading into this too much nude. I doubt he was laughing at you, he was laughing at how silly the level is.

I know. I still want to know how to beat it. If it's beatable at all.

Those owls are retarded. The regular ones really like to just wander aimlessly around, even when they're being attacked. Took me ages to complete level 6 cause they kept ignoring the long range tower that stands in the way for your expansion. The flying(blue) really shouldn't suddenly fly off to a random location when they're already attacking a target.
I also keep getting more or less instantly overwhelmed by the slimes in level 10. Could just be bad luck with the infestation though.

How long did you work on the music?

Up to level 8 or something, the one with the ghosts. Pretty fun so far.

Suggestions:

• Resizable window if possible
  
• When going to the edge of the screen and scrolling, change the mouse pointer into an arrow or indicate somehow that the screen is scrolling in the direction you want (refer SC arrow)
  
• Upgrading to long range towers should have a cooldown, not be instant
  
• Rename defense and offensive trees to Turret and Troop, because I usually use the 'defense' towers more offensively
  
• Troop towers aren't very good, the owls get stuck easily. Also calling them "flying owls" isn't a good name because people would think owls always fly...
  
• Bigger font
  
• Consider a better way of displaying resources rather than just a number, like a bar that fills up
  
• On the dynamite level, consider some way of letting the map creator give a unit higher HP than usual. This level had lots of thickets, presumably to make the neutral eggs stronger, but in turn it made it easier for the player as well.
  
• When selecting a unit and attemping to sell it, the unit will often move away and the sale won't do anything. If a unit is selected, it shouldn't move, or should wait a couple of seconds before moving if it was just about to.