Farmageddon

A game by Cort Stratton (cort at cortstratton dot org)

Another Fine Product from Your Friends At Dangerware

News
Introduction
Screenshots
Download
Credits
Links

News

12/3/2003 10:09 AM
So, for what it's worth, I've finally figured out a workable real-time river simulator algorithm. Prototype work in PyGame shows the algorithm to be stable in all the right ways, so now I just need to code it up in C++ and see if it's fast enough.

11/19/2003 11:07 AM
Farmageddon moves to SourceForge!

11/19/2003 11:07 AM
A rudimentary form of actual gameplay has finally emerged! In addition to a few technical enhancements (removing the dependency on libSDL, for instance), players now have funds. Planting a farm or terraforming the land costs money. But if you plant a farm near a river and keep it well-irrigated (read: partly underwater), you'll eventually earn money from the harvest.

And don't be afraid to use the terraforming ability to divert the river away from your opponent's farms -- eventually they'll dry up and die.

Okay, it's not terribly gripping gameplay. But it's gameplay nonetheless! Go grab the latest installer and join the fun!

2/24/2003 11:09 AM
As of this morning, all the disparate changes to the Farmageddon source have been merged back into the new CVS repository, so in theory I'm back on track. The changes are almost entirely internal: more robust text output handlers, vastly simplified PixelMap classes, and so on. But to celebrate this momentous occasion, I've posted a new development snapshot to download -- now in Windows installer format! Gone are the days of Zip files!

2/16/2003 9:42 AM
So, real development has yet to resume. This is mainly the result of my being without a working home computer for the better part of two months now (!!!). I've gone through two replacements, both of which were DOA. But I have not forgotten about this game, and I insist upon seeing it through to fruition!

12/17/2002 10:49 AM
I'm about to leave for winter break, but before I go, I've uploaded the most recent development snapshot, which you can download below. It fixes a few of the bugs I found while giving my demo on Friday, and adds internal support for music (but seeing as I'm not including any music or sound in the distributable archives, you the player won't notice a difference).

Real development will resume sometime in January.

12/13/2002 12:25 PM
Okay, time to call it quits for now. Project demos are in half an hour. All in all, I'm pretty happy with how far I've come in just five days. This definitely isn't the game I envisioned yet -- much remains undone. The river simulator turned out more like a lake simulator, the AI is even stupider than even I dared to dream, and the farms don't behave like farms yet (really, they don't behave like much of anything).

But I believe I've reached a point where I could easily start iterating on the original design, trying out gameplay ideas and seeing what works and what doesn't. And damnit, that's exactly what I intend to do!

Download the version of Farmageddon that I'll be demoing in class! Oh yeah, speaking of which, thanks to Rachel Gockley for being my first and only beta tester. She found a rendering bug, and pointed out that I wasn't including all the necessary DLLs in my distributable packages. Yay Rachel!

12/12/2002 11:47 PM
13 hours to go until the deadline! Most of my basic gameplay features are implemented -- I just finished the terraforming system, and gave a little squeal of joy!

Just uploaded another screenshot and downloadable development snapshot. That's all the news I have time for right now though -- there's developing to be done!

12/11/2002 11:16 PM
I had another ETC presentation today (the LAST, finally!), and now that project is officially done with. From now on, my ass belongs to Farmageddon!

I just finished up another chunk of work on low-level engine stuff, and the results are another piece of code that I'm extremely proud of, and that will serve me well in many projects to come: a real-time hierarchical in-game profiler! It tells me where all my cycles are going (at this point, oddly enough, about 3/4 of my CPU time is spent either waiting for the vertical refresh, or rendering the placeholder teapots. Who knew?). Check it out in the latest downloadable version.

Anyway, I'm off for a quick break, and then I swear I'm going to start working on actual gameplay. I've been doodling about the river simulation system, and I think I'm on to something...

12/11/2002 2:27 AM
I didn't have as much time to work on Farmageddon today as I would have liked. Instead, I spent about 8 hours moving AquaLounge stuff around from place to place, first to give a demo for the BVW show, and then to set up for a demo tomorrow at the Pittsburgh Technology Center. This does not bode well...

The major addition of the day is the mini-map, a little overlay in the corner of the screen which constantly updates to reflect the current state of the map (player locations, water levels, farm locations and so on).

12/9/2002 11:06 PM
Another day of coding comes and goes! I didn't make nearly as much progress on the river simulator as I would've liked, but I've at least got some damned water in the world (as is clear in today's screenshot). In addition, the players are behaving and moving much more realistically. I also fixed innumerous little bugs, and gained a deeper understanding of quaternions. The results are available in a new development snapshot, for your downloading pleasure.

This is all fine and dandy, but I suspect I'd better implement some gameplay before too long...

12/9/2002 9:55 AM
Ah, hell. Go ahead and download what I have so far. It's just a technology prototype, though -- don't expect any gameplay at all!

12/8/2002 11:55 PM
As the first day of real development draws to a close, I've made significant progress! Basic camera and character movement is now possible -- the former via the arrow keys, the latter by clicking the mouse on the terrain. The problem of using the mouse to select a particular vertex of the terrain was a daunting one, and I still haven't solved it completely elegantly, but it works!

In addition to controlling the character's movement, the mouse will also be used to plant cropfields, as well as to select parts of the terrain to raise and lower. The field-planting interface can be seen in today's screenshot.

Definitely not much of a game yet, but all in all, not bad for a day's work! Tomorrow I plan on tackling the river simulation system.

12/7/2002 4:35 PM
This project was assigned over a month ago, but due to my other academic responsibilities, I haven't been able to work on it until right about now. This leaves me with less than a week to complete a five-week project! Daunting, yes, but morale is high. Anyway, this website is one of the project requirements. Check here for up-to-the-minute information on Farmageddon's development. With only a week to work on it, I'm sure that updates will be frequent!

Overview

The player controls a poor farmer, struggling to make enough money through crop sales to purchase the riverfront land he's currently occupying. The player earns money by planting fields along the banks of the river. However, the player will have to contend with other like-minded farmers with their eyes on the same stretch of land. Players will have to manage their own growing collection of cropfields while sabotaging the efforts of their neighbors through low-down, dirty trickery. A balance of resource management, strategic offensive manuevers and diligent defenses will be necessary to come out on top. First one to raise enough to purchase the land and legally evict the neighbors wins!

Planned Game Features:

Core:
- Single-player mode with computer-controlled opponents.
- RTS-style gameplay rewards effective resource management, strategic thinking and quick reflexes.
- Players sculpt the terrain to re-route branches of the river, irrigating their own fields while their opponents' crops wither!
- Soundtrack and sound effects
Wish List:
- Networked multiplayer mode.
- Spend money on items to improve your fields (e.g. better fertilizer, hi-tech pesticides), or to undermine your opponents efforts (e.g. industrial waste to pollute the irrigation water, gopher cubs to release into opponents' fields).

Minimum System Requirements

Windows 2000/XP
700 MHz Pentium 3
128 MB RAM
OpenGL-compatible graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX or equivilant)

Screenshots

	Posted: 11-19-2003 11:07 PM Slight evolution in gameplay is now visible: farms now display their health and time-to-harvest. Terraforming also costs money, so make sure you have some farms producing income before you go reshaping the terrain all willy-nilly!
	Posted: 12-12-2002 11:45 PM Basic gameplay features (farms and terraforming) are implemented, as you can see! Almost there!
	Posted: 12-10-2002 10:20 PM Added a mini-map in the lower right corner, which constantly updates to reflect the current state of the map.
	Posted: 12-09-2002 11:23 PM Ah, that's much better. More conducive to a game set in rural farmland, nes pas? Note the addition of water as well -- though right now, it's much more of a lake than a river.
	Posted: 12-08-2002 11:57 PM The first public screenshot showing anything interesting at all! Here we see my 3D terrain engine from a previous project, with a few ubiquitous teapots chilling out waiting for instructions. The wireframe quad in the corner is the mouse-driven field-planting interface. Please ignore the fact that the game is still set on the surface of Mars... I haven't had time to look for grass and river textures yet.