LittleBear says: It's not brain science, or rocket surgery.The Relentless Automata Project
Relentless Automata is the working title of an arena shooter I’ve been working on for over a year now. It’s a game written in Java and making use of the opensource OpenGL binding LWJGL.
One of the ideas I wanted to explore in Relentless Automata was using Conway’s Life in a game. Life has been a fascination of mine since my University days, I think part of the reason it still maintains a hold on me for games is that it’s something mathematical (thus easy for a programmer to grasp) but displaying emergent behaviour (thus allowing for gameplay ideas). The current idea in the game is that Life operates as a background, with patterns recognized and spawned forth to the player’s level. I originally intended to have these patterns spawned from randomly generated playing fields, and before that stable cells would propagate to the front. Neither proved very workable, or at least not yet. So, for the time being set patterns are created which hypnotically run as a background creating enemies.
Recent screen shots:
Current Status: I’m taking a little break from Relentless Automata, while working on Shade. Part of this is due to getting stuck a bit on how to continue the progress. But, I suspect I’ll be back working on it shortly. It’s too interesting not to, as I’m thinking I may add another cellular automata rule-set to govern the mass of cells growing in the first image.
The following are a developer’s diary of the game:
Relentless Automata: Part 25
Relentless Automata: Part 24
Relentless Automata: Part 23
Relentless Automata: Part 22
Relentless Automata: Part 21
Relentless Automata: Part 20
Relentless Automata: Part 19
Relentless Automata: Part 18
Relentless Automata: Part 17
Relentless Automata: Part 16
Relentless Automata: Part 15
Relentless Automata: Part 14
Relentless Automata: Part 13
Relentless Automata: Part 12
Relentless Automata: Part 11
Relentless Automata: Part 10
Relentless Automata: Part 9
Relentless Automata: Part 8
Relentless Automata: Part 7
Relentless Automata: Part 6
Relentless Automata: Part 5
Relentless Automata: Part 4
Relentless Automata: Part 3
Relentless Automata: Part 2
Relentless Automata: Part 1
Related articles:
More About Life…
What Started It All…
