Automaton Annihilation

Welcome to the first devlog for Automaton Annihilation. I am excited to show you the first demo!

First a little bit about me.  I am a 24-year-old engineer with a full-time job living in the Netherlands. It is winter time again, which means I spent quite some time inside, which I love to spend working on projects like this one. The game has been in development for two months and is made using the GODOT 4 game engine. It's my first time using a game engine, and so far has been a great experience. I have started a lot of projects using C++, but I have never been able to finish any of them since the scope I set was always way too ambitious. Although you can learn a lot of things about how things work under the hood by doing things yourselves, a lot of mental capacity is used to implement low-level things that have been invented and implemented by others already. Using a game engine takes away a lot of these tedious tasks and I gained some confidence that I might be able to finish a project for once :). All code, sprites, and animations have been made by me.

Automaton Annihilation is a game about automation and resource management. The game got a lot of inspiration from games in different genres like Real Time Strategy, Factory Building, and Tower Defense, and tries to combine the best aspects of each. 

Controls:

• Drag a box with the Left Mouse Button to select a group of units
• use the Right Mouse Button to move a unit
• When a unit is selected, click on the bottom left panel or use the indicated shortcut to select a building, and place the building with the Left Mouse Button
• Use shift to queue actions after each other and to place multiple buildings in a line.
• Use space to put actions in front of the queue

Some hints for the early game:

• To avoid getting deadlocked (by being out of resources/energy), select the Architect and start building a few Windmills (shortcut ZC) and a Mining Drill (ZZ) on top of an iron resource patch (dark blue tile). Place a Conveyor Belt (VZ) next to the Mining Drill pointing into a Furnace (VX), and put a Chest (ZQ) next to the furnace. 

• When not in Sandbox Mode, enemy troops will soon start coming for your Architect, so make sure to place an Energy Tower (XZ) between you and the enemy.

See the image below for an example starting layout.

TODO list for the next Demo:

• Buildings:
  • Laser Tower (Similar to Energy Tower, but a more complicated recipe, but stronger, shoots faster)
  • Walls to slow down enemies
  • Input panel for Buildings:
    •  Miner / Furnace: put items anywhere / only on belts / only in chests / ...
    • Energy / Laser Tower: choose the target closest / strongest / ...
• Enemies:
  • A few more Enemy Types (stronger / ranged / faster)
  • Smarter enemies that can attack Buildings
  • Better Enemy Wave manager, Let more enemies come in one wave
• Other:
  • Add allied units that can fight
  • Block walking on water
  • Expand and Improve the layout of the map
  • ...
• Fix some known bugs:
  • Sometimes the game crashes, cause is to be found
  • You can control enemies and move them around :)