Aimless Roll

A cross-platform LAN multiplayer game with simple controls and simple gameplay. It takes capture the flag or base games and distills it into a single game, where each of the 'bases' can be contested and the winner of the point takes the pot of points in that 'base', and the winner either has the most when the clock runs out or whoever has more than half the points. Hosting the game will start a 'lobby' where others can join, once you start the game anyone who tries to join will spectate instead. This game was made over the duration of 15 days by me for the purpose of having something fun to play with friends during the school year ahead, which starts tomorrow as of writing this. Well, it would be for that purpose if I had friends... that lived closer to me.

To avoid disappointment, I'm going to be quite honest about this game. If you play this, I hope you can forgive the graphics (I'm not an artist by any means) some of which may or may not be stock images (I checked the license) or made by me in a digital art program, which was rage-inducing. Also, the music and SFX may not be up to par either, but I tried to be selective with what I had available (Youtube audio library ftw). I know there are some bugs, some of which I personally consider features, although I tried to get most of them out. I'm not going to tailor this to everyone's device, as I had to use a motley assortment of hardware myself to debug, which is a pain, even when using a very fine engine for a simple game like this. I doubt I'll be providing much in the way of support and updates for the game considering my current 'employment' : HS student, which doesn't come with as many benefits as I would've liked or much in the way of salary.

Now if you're still undeterred, I suppose you may as well go ahead and try it out for yourself. Probably get a friend to try it as well, since it's really not that fun playing it alone. 

(On a side note, I developed this on a Mac, so that build is probably better than the Windows one, especially since I tested the Windows one on a fairly old computer.)

Windows Users: Make sure to extract the folder before running.

PFAQ (Prediction FAQ)

In the very likely case I check this infrequently, here's some quick tips.

Q: Can't find host

Possible Solution: Make sure you and the host are on the same network and you may need to manually refresh. Check that the host also set the max number of players large enough to include all players. Or your computer may have virtual box, a firewall, maybe connected to different routers or some other connection thing going on. I'm not a one person IT support team, so I probably won't know.

Q: Clicking the join server button results in it greying out, but nothing happens

Sort of Solution: Just restart the game.

Q: The option panel for the host is closing without touching the options button

Explanation: When somebody joins the server, the options menu closes. It's the best solution I could get to make sure it didn't break once the game is actually started.

Q: What do the world settings do?

Explanation: They modify parameters of the capture points, Time grows either EXPonentially with point value, or LINearly. The Size of the capture points may scale Linearly or remain Constant. The charge/discharge option describes the progress of capture's 'Charging Circle' depending on if a member of that team is present on the target (or Capture Point) or not. The steady options holds it steady at the last progress, while the discharge option allows a given team's progress on that target to discharge if there is nobody of a given team on the target. The Time feature is fairly self explanatory, If you're on mobile, you can edit it by tapping and opening up a text prompt to enter a new time in seconds. The C-Speed feature is for Capture speed. This scales the capture contribution of each player, as well as the discharge rate, so a higher capture speed with discharge active will result in a faster discharge if all members of a team leave a given target. 

Q: What do the team settings do?

Explanation: It depends on if you're the host or a client. If you're the host, you have full control over people's teams. As either, you will see your 'Name' followed by a ring representing your team color. Clicking or tapping on it will toggle your team. If you're the host, you have a button to lock out all clients from toggling their team while you can toggle everybody's team to your leisure whenever you want before the game starts. Once the game starts, the host becomes like the clients. If somehow the host still has these settings available once the game starts ... Uhh, well that's ... almost a feature. Not really though.

Q: Why is the host going super fast?

Explanation: The host is fairly faster than everyone else because the host is special. (Remember, it's always a feature)

Q: Why might somebody be 'flying'?

Explanation: A) They joined after the game started and are a spectator or B) They discovered the special 'feature'. This was an intentional 'mistake'. 

Q: The game is taking up the entire screen on Windows

Maybe Solution: Use the Windows button to pull up other stuff and open something else, then close it while the focus is on another window. I'm not sure how to fix it; I made the game but not the engine, which is amazingly powerful but not always easy to use. I guess if you're desperate, you can force quit it with cmd-alt-del but considering how prevalent the windows button is, I think the other option is fine. I tested on only one windows computer that was fairly old, so I don't know how it's going to behave on newer windows versions.

Q: It fills the screen on Mac

Solution?: You cans like your mouse toward the top and some stuff should drop down. The view tab can bring it out of fullscreen mode or you can just close out if that's what you want.

Q: Something else

A: I don't know. Do we know anything? Are we in a computer?  So many questions.