2011-07-12 00:44:51

Castaways is a roleplaying, strategy game, that seems like a mix between Sound RTS, Oregon Trail, and Lunimals.  I promise that this game will provide hours and hours of fun, plus considerable replay value.  There are 31 types of units, 25 types of buildings, and you have to manage 21 different resources.

After a violent storm smashed your ship against some rocks, you, and your fellow survivors wash up on the shore of a hostile land filled with Goblins.  Using the limited supplied, scattered across the beach from your ship, you must put together a settlement to keep your people from starving.  Building placement is important, and I'm sure people will develop drastically different strategies for where they should be.  Also, you are required to choose 1 "starter", 2 "perks", and 1 "fault" when you begin a new game.  These 3 benefits, and 1 disadvantage, will uniquely change the way your game experience will go.

Rather than controlling each individual unit, Castaways takes more of a macro management approach.  When you build a Tavern, any peasants will automatically work to keep it stocked with supplies.  When you make a Hunter, he, or she, will automatically travel out into the woods to hunt.  The challenge is, finding the proper balance, and knowing what to build, and when.

I hope you all enjoy this new game!

Castaways
www.kaldobsky.com/audiogames/castaways.zip
(17.2 MB v2.7d, last updated 4/10/2018 at 4:30 PM EST)

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2011-07-12 01:01:59

Wow, Aprone.  The speed of your development efforts continues to amaze me.  I've downloaded this latest game and plan on giving it a spin soon.  I'll be sure to post my impressions as I do so.  Looking forward to it!

2011-07-12 01:37:21

Thanks zkline, I hope you like the game when you get time to play it.  The rest of my day, well until I go to work, is going to have to be spent on all of the things I didn't do over the weekend, hehe.  I literally spent my whole weekend, and today up until I posted the game, coding this thing!  I even forgot to eat a few meals, and lost out on a lot of sleep.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2011-07-12 02:11:45

Cool game, it doesn't even run. Hmm.

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2011-07-12 02:12:16

it runs here!

2011-07-12 02:14:55

Hi Aprone,
Okay, initial impressions here.  I like it.  I like it a lot.  This reminds me of the cult favorite Dwarf Fortress, in style if not in exact details.  This is a game I've been wanting to play for a long time now.
SOme documentation or a walkthru is probably a good idea.  My peasants managed to construct a few buildings, laid out in a rather haphazard fashion, before either falling ill or starving.  Perhaps I simply don't understand the resource supply chain.  I did manage to get some initial resource production going, though it wasn't anything to write home about.  Next time, I suppose.
I'm looking forward to trying this out again.  Great concept, audibly awful, but we'll work on that.  Seriously, thanks.
Best,
Zack.

2011-07-12 02:16:38

The game won't start for me, and here's the message in the debuglog.txt file.
Starting program
Creating DirectSound...
error: ActiveX component can't create object

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2011-07-12 02:17:08

Stirlock, please send me the contents of the debuglog.txt file, that is within the game's directory.

Added:

Whoops, right after I posted, I saw that you already did.  Here is how to fix that problem, it just means that your windows 7, or windows vista doesn't have direct X 7 properly registered.  It's a rather simple process.  I'm cutting and pasting the instructions from my Lunimals game.  If you need any help with it, many people around here have done these steps at some point.

If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 you may encounter an error if you don't have direct X7 registered. Follow these steps to register the file and the error should be corrected.
Put dx7vb.dll into the c:\windows\syswow64 folder. The file to copy can be found within the game's folder. After copying, open command prompt as an administrator. Go to c:\windows\syswow64 and type regsvr32 dx7vb.dll

If you are running a 32 bit version of Windows Vista or Windows 7, you won't have a syswow64 folder.  If that is the case, follow these instructions instead.  Put dx7vb.dll into the c:\windows\system32 folder. The file to copy can be found within the game's folder. After copying, open command prompt as an administrator. Go to c:\windows\system32 and type regsvr32 dx7vb.dll


If you attempted to register direct X, but had difficulties, here are step by step instructions:
(If you are running a 32 bit version of windows, replace "syswow64" with "system32" in these instructions.)

Copy dx7vb.dll into the c:\windows\syswow64 folder.
Open up the command prompt as an administrator (being on an admin account does not mean the same thing).
There are 2 ways to achieve this.  If you're able, right click on the command prompt icon and select "Run as Administrator".
If you must use the keyboard, use the Windows context key after you have highlighted the command prompt icon.  This will bring up the menu allowing you to select "Run as administrator".
Once command prompt opens, type the following 5 commands, and press enter after each one:
cd..
cd..
cd\windows
cd\windows\syswow64
regsvr32 dx7vb.dll

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2011-07-12 02:20:18

Just did. See my post before yours.

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2011-07-12 02:23:30

Sorry to double post, but I think if I add on to the end of the last one, most people would skip it, thinking it was just more instructions.

Zkline, I've never played Dwarf Fortress, but I do believe I've heard of it.  A agree that the audio is currently bad, but of course, I have Locutus currently hard at work to replace just about everything sound related.  Getting the economy running takes a little work, but once you've had some practice it goes pretty smoothly.  Always be sure you have a cook, at the very least, plus a few hunters and/or fishermen.  If you aren't getting farms up right away, you'll want even more hunters, just so that they can bring in food fast enough to keep everyone fed.  Once you start getting farms, mills, and bakeries running, you won't need as many hunters or fishermen.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2011-07-12 02:44:34

the problem i'm having is people, i cant get more people, i built two houses, they didn't seem to do anything though, is there a way to get tpeople in the houses? as i  just started running out of people in the end, i was literally providing for 2 others with one fisherman and a cook!

2011-07-12 02:51:11

robla, each house supports 4 people, so depending on how many you start with, you will have to build more before you will start producing more people.  Lets assume you started with 12 people.  You will need to build 4 houses before you can expect to start seeing any women getting pregnant.  The first 3 houses were just getting you even, and the 4th house finally means you have enough room so that your people are comfortable reproducing.  Hopefully that helps!

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2011-07-12 02:57:26

saying that though, i only bilt 2, i started with 14 i think, and one of my injured  cooks got pregnant and gave birth, tough she was the only one left, i'm just watching her starve, now!

2011-07-12 03:00:24

Yeah, once your population of 14 dropped below 8, your 2 houses were enough to allow that cook to get pregnant.  Sorry to hear she didn't make it.  lol, just don't tattoo her name on your arm or anything!

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2011-07-12 03:03:43

we were very close, me and amber!
uh, but anyway, i get the basic conscept, i just suck at it, but with practice, i'll get the hang of it, let me say how much i apreciate all the work you do, and how quickly you do it.
makes me wonder how we see games from some people in  years, and their excuse is, i am only one person, but that's for another topic,
well done!

2011-07-12 03:12:18

Thanks Robla, it does help keep me going, when I know there are people here who appreciate what I'm doing.  I think we all need to feel like our work is worth something, and you guys really are good at remind me of that.  I've been involved in some communities where the people practically ignore me, to the point where there doesn't seem to be any reason to stick around.  This is a great place, with a great group of people, and I don't plan on going anywhere!  big_smile  Rock on!

Bloodbath and Eminem found that I'm missing a sound file.  If you experience an error when you try to load a game, that is the reason why.  I've included the correct sound file and re posted, so you can download the game again if you wish.  The fastest way to fix that problem though, is to just copy one of the existing sounds, and rename it load.wav.  That will fix the error.

ADDED:

I've posted v0.2b.  It has a bug fix, so you'll probably want to grab it when you get a minute.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2011-07-12 05:06:13

hi aprone,
I tried to load a game, but I don't saved that before. the game says, "this file is not found under tempral derectory!" I think visual basic have brane and remembering its old game haha

This is not a signature.

2011-07-12 05:47:06

Hey Aprone,
I love this kind of concept in a game! I can't wait to get into it. It's sure been tough balancing everything out though, someone's always getting sick or injured, or starving to death. Might I request that only lumber be required for the simpler buildings such as houses? Bricks weren't generally required for primative houses anyway, and it seems it's near impossible to keep everything together when you need resources right away along with so many other things. But I completely understand the desire to make it challenging. I'm really excited to see where this goes, any chances of being able to raise an army to stamp out the goblin threat? big_smile
Anyhow best of luck with your future developments. I'm certainly glad for something to sink my teeth into.

2011-07-12 08:56:45

wow this sounds amazing. Aprone could you make this game online so we could build up groups together an make a lot of teamwork? That would be amazing! I haven't tried the game yet, and sadly I might not have the time to try it this week.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2011-07-12 09:21:44

Well, instead of working on my games, I've been in bed for twelve hours. And I wake up to find that Aprone's managed to create the universe again in the time it took me to make two extremely simple maps. lol

Well, at least I know how I'm procrastinating today. smile

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2011-07-12 09:33:31

dhruv, I had copied that section of menu code over from Temporal, and I didn't realize it had the wrong game name in it, lol!

niall, I'm glad you like the game concept.  Odds are, I won't be changing the resource amounts for the different buildings, simply because I'd have to rebalance a lot of things if I started making changes to the lower level things.  If I get enough people telling me that the game is too hard, I will adjust the difficulty settings accordingly.

SLJ, I'll let you in on a little secret, I'm about 70% of the way done with that.  big_smile

CAE_Jones, sorry to distract you away from your own project, hehe.  But if you're going to be procrastinating Anyway, I hope this new game helps you have fun doing it.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2011-07-12 09:46:22

If I remember correctly, during our discussion of the game, Aprone said that this is actually the reason he started making it, in an atempt to test online player capability and how best to get it going.  he wanted something that people could grasp the concept of as quickly as possible, thus the lunimals feel of the game, and with as much replayability as could be made, so that even if certain aspects of the game remained the same, any outcome was possible, while trying to keep it relatively simple.  Many people would probaby shoot for a server, but that wouldn't necessarily make it the most efficient way of doing things for everyone.

So, in short, at some point in time, we're all going to become guiny pigs for an Aprone test that will, hopefully, allow us to play with each other at any given moment in time of our choosing.

Here's a few things to keep in mind as you play with the game:

Try to keep important buildings as close together as possible.  there's no sense in having a storehouse out in the middle of nowhere and all of your buildings everywhere else.

Try to build things as close to the resources they produce, such as the sawmill which needs forests, the quarry which needs stony fields, and, if you plan to depend more on fishing than hunting in the forests, keep storehouses and butchershops near the water.  the longer your people have to walk, the longer it takes to acquire any resource to store and or use it.

It is possible to stop the game at any moment in time and read the last ten messages by pushing 1-0 on your number row.  the speed of the game can also be altered with the [ and ] keys.

Every resource has a layered system.  If you want to produce bread, you need a wheat farm, from which farmers will harvest wheat that will be taken to a mill, where peasants will grind it and turn it to flower needed in the bakery, which bakers will then turn into loaves of bread.

Though it is possible to keep your party alive on only meat, any group of people who takes from the four food groups available will be much better off than someone who only eats meat.

Anyone who is at the tavern to get food will not move from there until said food is gotten.  If your builders are hungry, they will not build.  You can check the status of every person in your party by finding them using D and F.

Buildings can be toggled open and closed by hitting the backspace key.  When a building is closed, nothing will be stored in it.  this is particularly useful if you want certain tasks accomplished faster, such as the construction of a building you wish would be built more quickly.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2011-07-12 09:51:16

Hi Aprone.

Well I've spent the last good hour and a half letting my peasants run around the map and build stuff. Deffinately an interesting game, and in fact I can see the similarity to dwarf fortrace sinse the point there was you didn't control each dwarf either but setup for instance an area as a dumping ground and let the dwarves use it, ---- though the dwarves would sometimes go a bit nuts!

Firstly, well done on the ai and getting the game complete, however I do have some comments.

One thing I found, was that because many of the peasants had long names, I'd only get the peasants' name spoken before a second message, eg, mcenzie, without saying what he did.

while I love the named peasants (it makes them very individualized), perhaps something to make messages easier to hear could be added, for instance instead of "ezekial drops of meet at the tavern" something more like "meet dropped at the tavern by ezekial.

I'd also suggest perhaps for common actions in the game, eg, dropping off of item x at location y, making bricks or cutting down a tree, sounds could be substituted instead, sinse it doesn't seem absolutely necessary to know who does what with those sorts of actions.

Another way to cut down spam, would be able to cycle through each building or construction site and see how much of a given resource was there, for instance, how much food at the tavern, how many logs at the saw mill etc.

Cycling buildings would also be a nice way to get an overview of what you have and where each thing is as well, sinse while I did! build enough houses for two of my ladies to have children, I wasn't sure if I'd need another or not and this would've been easier to calculate if I could've had an overview.

I also would like a full description of what each building does and how the jobs and resources interact, just as in Lunimals, sinse while some are no brainers, some are not.

I made the mistake of building a textile mill because I assumed my hunters would take their kills there, but that didn't seem to happen and I'm not sure why.

On the food front, I found something rather strange, which was that by building up a good reserve at the start, I could have 1-3 hunters and fishermen to keep the population going, sinse I tried to stay away from foods that looked like taking lots of man power and resources to make, eg, bread which presumably takes a wheet farm, a mill and! a bakery all with jobs to do as well.

You might actually considder reducing someof these production steps sinse currently I just can't see a circumstance where bread is viable, ---- perhaps by assuming the cook can bake bread quite successfully in the tavern, sinse afterall a bakery is more a business than a necessity sinse while butchering is indeed a specialized trade, baking bread can be done by any reasonably knolidgeable cook (I've done it myself on occasion).

Ditto with vineyards and barrel makers, ---- unless either the barrel maker or vintner do the actual bruing of wine and there is no specific job for this.

I like the graphics for the game, though much as in towers of war, it'd be nice to actually see the buildings on the map and thus get something of an overview of what was where, especially sinse placement and distance are so important.

Lastly, I'm afraid I have a bug to report.

Once I saved the game, my builders stopped building! This was most irritating.

I've got some work to do this morning, but will try again later.

Deffinately another interesting game and one with lots of potential for expantion in terms of different missions, maps etc, ---- in fact missions as in lunimals might be a nice way to ease players into the game a bit at a time rather than throwing them in at the deep end.

Btw, why isn't the barrel maker called a cooper? ;D.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2011-07-12 10:19:45

I'm simply surprised on how it's even possible to make advanced games like this so quickly. Aprone, you must simply have a brain which is more than twice as good as most of the people on the earth, lol. Have you made a game engine or are you making all this stuff from the ground? I simply don't understand how the heck it's possible to make this so quickly. smile People are coding and coding and some people takes munths to make games. smile
I really love your games and I think I'll find this one extremely great. The thing I'm waiting for is a online game which is running on a server with a virtual world where you can spent your whole life if you wants to. Not that I'm going to do that. smile You know, a game which requires teamwork where you are making friends, but it should also be possibl to play as a single player if you wants to. It would be extremely awesome if sighted players could play the game too, and of course I would pay for it. smile I think that's what you have in mind, ad I can't wait for it since that's my dream. smile
Sorry for the misspelledwords. Te computer I'm currently o is crap. It on't respond on all key-presses so I have to dubbelt check each time I type something. smile So it's not me who's crazy or have smoked anything, lol.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2011-07-12 10:21:45

Dark, you're probably right that I should switch around the messages to put the names at the end.  Actually there is already a plan in motion to categorize messages so that they can be enabled and disabled, much the same way that individual animal types could be muted in lunimals.  Also actions will have sounds associated with them.

Cycling through the buildings is a good idea.  I've written it down, and I will try to have it implemented in an upcoming patch.  I'll also work on adding full building descriptions.

The food situation is actually meant to be unbalanced.  It's true that something simple, like meat, will sustain your population with very little effort needed in the production chain.  The 4 food types are all their own separate fuel tank within the person, so lets assume you've been keeping them all fed on meat alone.  Even after filling up on meat, your workers are all heading out with 1, of 4, tanks filled with food.  They burn through it, and have to once again stop to hang out at the Tavern.  Another player, who has put forth the investment to produce vegetables as well, would have workers heading out with 2, of 4, tanks full.  Their people would stay out, performing their duties, twice as long before needing to return to eat.  It is definitely a mistake for a person to rush into producing the more complex foods, but as you're able to support more types, it actually does greatly improve the efficiency of your labor force.  Ah, as a final benefit, the more food types your people eat, the more resistant they are to illnesses!

I have no idea why the builders would stop building.  Perhaps the game paused?  There is still a persistent bug, where pause inducing messages (like births or injuries) don't line up with the actual pausing of the game.  So it pauses on some mundane message about lumber, when it should have waited for the next upcoming message about some guy cutting his head off in a freak shoe tying accident.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software