Building a game similar to Plague, Inc. Is it possible?

B1984

Would it be possible to create a plague, Inc style game including social aspects common to most Facebook titles such as Farmville using gamesalad?

If so, would anyone be interesting in being hired to develop the core of this game?

Armelline

Plague, Inc, yes. It wouldn't be a simple project but I can't think of anything in it that would be impossible with GameSalad.

The Facebook social aspects, though, would be considerably more difficult if not impossible. GameSalad are currently working on adding Facebook posting, but it's still a way off.

B1984

Yea, the game itself doesn't seem difficult at all. It's the social aspect that bothers me. I've never done anything like that and from what I've read GS seems to have the same problem

Armelline

@B1984 said:
Yea, the game itself doesn't seem difficult at all. It's the social aspect that bothers me. I've never done anything like that and from what I've read GS seems to have the same problem

The only part of the game that jumps out at me as being challenging is the map. Making a map where you can accurately select countries by touching anywhere inside their borders isn't going to be as easy in GameSalad as in a tool that allows pixel collisions.

B1984

I've got that figured out. I'll just have buttons inside the regions that changes the image(map) to give the illusion that you are clicking on country( or in my case, state). Since I'm making a hunting game of the south east, I'll just need to make 8 images that change when you click the center of the state, where the button will be.

Armelline

States are definitely 100x easier than countries - lots of straight line. I don't think the same method would work on a map though, with such huge variation in size and shapes for countries.

You should be all set then other than the whole social sharing aspect

SourJacksSlicer

Why not just make each state an actor. Take a map, but out each state, make an actor of each state, re-assemble the actors in to map layout. Any touch event of that actor equals clicking it. works with any size/shape actor

imjustmike

@denethor said:
Why not just make each state an actor. Take a map, but out each state, make an actor of each state, re-assemble the actors in to map layout. Any touch event of that actor equals clicking it. works with any size/shape actor

Because the States aren't perfectly square or perfectly round. The way collision boxes work in gamesalad is to be a square/rectangle or a circle/oval, regardless of what the image used for the actor is. So there will be overlapping areas where you might hit the wrong actor...

StormyStudio

You could get around the map problem with
@Rthurman (s) Collision Detection For Odd Shapes in the Spare code thread.

It uses maths to work out the touch area for each actor.

It would take a bit of effort, as you'd have to create the necessary values to draw lines around the outline of each countries shape. But once done you're golden.

I used it for my isometric grid in my current project, as each actor overlaps, with a diamond shape in the middle. I used Rthurmans method to define the touch area was only inside the diamond.

As for the social aspect... i guess start building the game now, by the time its finished hopefully more social options will have arrived. They're working on it now so it is happening (touch wood, cross fingers).

Armelline

@StormyStudio said:
You could get around the map problem with
Rthurman (s) Collision Detection For Odd Shapes in the Spare code thread.

I considered this, and concluded it would probably be the only way it would be possible, but it would be a simply enormous amount of work to make a map equivalent to Plague Inc's.

I really can't think of a better way though. Perhaps we should make it a challenge for the forums.

Would definitely work a treat for a map of the states though. Much simpler shapes.

BBEnk

You could use this example from the spare code thread to create perfect states.

just page down to @RThurman‌ example I think that would work.

http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/52494/spare-code-dump-it-here/p14

not to mention This game was also created in mine craft.