EDIT: Following the suggestions below, I have implemented a tanks system. You need to protect the tanks, and refill water from them to put out fires. Fires will break tanks. Also territory is now damaged by prolonged fires, so be sure to put out those fires real quick!
Finally, if you get stuck, use the random teleport to get to a different location. That won't save you for long though!
Let me know if you find any bugs, and thanks a lot to Cowirrie for the amazing ideas.
Original post :
Hi everyone! I am releasing Fires Everywhere, my first game on Pico-8. It is still under a bit of revision, but the main stuff is done I believe. Hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think!
Lessons learnt:
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Particle systems are so expensive! The game currently has ~100 particles at any point of time, and that itself takes up 0.1 CPU.
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Music is impossible. You can see my unsuccessful attempts in the music/sfx tabs. That's why the game has no music.
- A large number of animations is a big no-no. I have too many of them (~340 max) in the fires. That takes up another 0.3-0.4 of the CPU.
Even with this number of particles they look really nice, and instantly suggest embers starting other fires. They combine well with the fire graphics, and suggest depth too. The basic play loop of running back and forth trying to keep them under control is compelling.
Think now about how to make sure the game has some choices - where we might see two areas on fire, and need to choose how to which is the greater risk or reward. What happens if the player needs to refill their water from tanks on the map, but tanks can burn and lose their water? Or if the floor can burn away leaving holes the player can't cross? There is a lot of creativity to explore here, and it won't take much to get some really emergent gameplay happening.
I like how this gets tense now. But don't trust suggestions from me, or anyone, too much. But try different ideas out. Experiment with them, and see how they reward or discourage different play styles. Do you want the player frantically running back and forth, or gradually retreating from the inexorable growth of the fire? How do the holes change this?
I confess, I wasn't sure how scoring points worked. Looking at the source code, it seems that you get points based on how much of the map is intact? So once only 50 tiles haven't burnt, it is impossible to score more points?
Yes that is correct. The restriction of 50 is there so that you don't follow the strategy of just sitting near a tank (which won't give you any more points eventually).
Your tanks idea definitely made a lot of sense to me, so I decided to implement it into the game. I also added the option of teleporting into a random spot, so that you dont sit somewhere helplessly when you run out of water and cant access a tank.
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