I've been enjoying Slay off and on since 2000. It's a wonderful game. Your adaptation looks interesting. Edit: And after playing a bunch of levels, i'm hooked :)
Yes I'd say it is a utility based AI at it's core. The AI always simulates a few diffferent moves from the ginormous number of options, this is done following some heuristics that try to cheaply guess which moves make sense; there's a bunch of auxiliary data structures that help the AI understand which tiles are important to defend or capture etc. After it has those candidate moves, it then runs a pretty expensive utility function to properly score the end result of each candidate move sequence and pick the best looking one.
Balancing defense and offense correctly was indeed a daunting part, but the solution I ended up is pretty simple. One of the candidate moves always includes commiting everything to offense (because sometimes that's the best defense :)), and the others each use different offense/defense splits. The utility function will decide which approach works out best for this turn.
On one level, I got defeated and had no idea how. I accidentally pressed undo instead of telling it to show what happened, then couldn't find any way to cancel the undo, so I left the level hoping that I could come back and that would get out of it, but it just deleted the entire level and now I have to start over from the beginning. Please fix this bug. It should be possible to look at the present turn, even if you've lost during it.
For me it seams a perfect example of how good can be strategic game without ultra realistic graphic, tons of pages of scenario and billions of complex mechanics. I really liked how userfriendly is UI in this game, I think I haven't met such good UI before. Graphic style is also blowing my mind, although it looks very simple for the first time, it feets perfectly to the game. Regarding levels (I passed first ~20) I think they could be more variative in terms of winning strategies, I mean I liked levels like this with treasure in the center of the map :) Before this game I felt similar emotions after playing Ozymandias bronze age
I love this game. I love that is difficult enough to make you think of a good strategy without making you ragequit. I like the rewind button, it really helps you learn from your mistakes. Keep up the good work!
Did riposte (currently newest island, #75) in 3 turns. I was playing aggressively for sure, but a bit stupidly so, was sure I was gonna lose that angle of attack. Nope, the ai just focused on everything else that was happening.
First time playing, made it to island 9 so far. Great fun, well put together, ramping up the difficulty at a comfortable pace. Lots of fun figuring out the mechanics and how to best make use of them!
Easily the best game on itch.io. I've enjoyed it for a while now and it just keeps getting better with these updates. I don't see any other creators update and care for their game this much. Thanks for all your hard work on this, embair!
Man, I can't seem to beat 79 and 80 (Valhalla and Foccacia) If anyone has a general strat that they used, I'd be interested to hear it.
Edit: Thanks for the responses guys. Both completed now, 79 was a balancing act where I tried to hold off red at the choke between the hedges where his eastern base originally was. Also needed a castle at the starting point to keep myself alive early game as I gathered resources slowly. 80 felt like a puzzle where there's a great 1st move that can cut almost straight up to bankrupt the knights, with a diagonal cut to keep the western side with <20 gold so they can't make a pike. From there it was enemy income management.
For 79 I attacked the closest red base then just slowly started taking land and setting defenses, letting the ai fight each other.
80 was just luck really, I cut the map in half to bankrupt the knights, then killed any villagers it made while cutting more area off. The ai was making a lot of castles for some reason instead of units so thats the only way I won it. Thought it was impossible at first.
Hey could you add a local multiplayer so I can play with my friends on 1 device? Or just a multiplayer in general? I feel like that would be really fun. Also it would be cool if people could make their own islands for custom senarios.
As noted in the description, this game (same as Antiyoy) is heavily inspired by Sean O'Connors Slay!. However, it does bring some pretty impactful twists to the formula. See this older post for list of the differences compared to Slay! (and Antiyoy): https://itch.io/post/6419763
Honest question - I'm currently working on a game heavily inspired by an existing game, it has similar mechanics but with some new twists, all new art and all new code, would that be considered a "ripoff"? I looked it up and legally game mechanics aren't copyrighted, but still, should that be considered unethical in some way? I think that building on existing ideas is fair game, but am I missing something? I am planning to give credit to the original game within the game itself, and link to it.
Small minority of people will always call it a ripoff as long as there is any similarity at all, even just for being in the same genre. I wouldn't worry about that.
If you strictly remake the original game with different assets and add nothing new to the gameplay or story, but also promininetly give credit to the original, IMO that's a clone and there's nothing ethically wrong about it (see games like OpenTTD, Remnants of the Precursors and countless other tributes to cult classic games)
If you do the above, but without giving credit, that's where I would draw the line personaly, and that's when I think your game could get some bad rep (but as you said, you're still not in any danger legaly. (cough)not-a-legal-advice(cough).
If you take inspiration in the original game but make some substantial changes to the mechanics or story, IMO giving credit is totally optional (how many people call Minecraft a ripoff of Inifiniminer?).
Legaly speaking, reusing assets is obviously a big no-no, and I believe there are also some cases where copying the UI can get you in trouble even if the assets aren't exactly 1:1. But I'm not a lawyer.
“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” - attributed to Pablo Picasso
Thanks! I very much appreciate the detailed answer. :)
It's always nice to get the validation that I'm not doing anything wrong. I hope the creator of the original game will feel the same way and won't get mad. Given that they open-sourced their code (which again, I didn't use), I think I can be optimistic.
You must be very delicate: the first few moves allow for no inaccuracy in your play. First, a hint. Within the first move, the knights should be dead, and the enemy must be unable to construct pikemen. Do this by carefully segmenting and cutting off territory. Continue until you have won, the rest is comparatively trivial. If you need another hint, just ask!
yep, lvl 29 is very disappointing. Maybe it's possible to put enemies' energy into wars between them as long as you are not able to own the knight to clean other kingdoms out and simultaneously not no lose everything at other directions, but it seems to be impossible
I have completed all the campaign maps, so they are most certainly possible. As the numbers change with added maps I'm not quite sure which one you are referring to, do tell which it is by its name and I'll see if I can give you a hint?
Agreed, it was too hard for such an early level and not that interesting in terms of strategy options. Just gave it a major overhaul in the newest update!
The game is totally an attempt to make my own preffered variant of Slay!, a game that has been my addiction for years :). So while it's quite faithful to it's core formula, there's a number of subtle but impactful differences that I found make the game more fun for me. Hopefully this also makes it interesting even for Slay! veterans:
Towns in this game don't respawn, so cutting away chunks of territory or losing towns is a lot more impactful (also makes the late game much faster and brutal); on the flip side, you also don't need to worry about towns despawning when you merge provinces
In this game AI oponents have a relationship towards you which affects their actions, so there's more to consider when chosing who and when to attack
Bandits and bandit camps fill a similar role to Slays forests, but they work quite differently
Towers (castles) are more expensive and have a maintenance cost in this game, but they also enable units to retreat; cut-off towers turn into bandit camps
Upgrading units is more expensive in this game (you always need two units of the same kind to get a higher-tier unit)
Going forward, I hope another difference will be that this game will have a lot more interesting hand-crafted content (campaings, alternate modes etc.) and even better AI (though I will admit Slay! is not easy to beat in that aspect!), but time will tell :).
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FOCACCIA HARD MODE - WIN
Important first 4-5 moves
Main rule: put some land for opponent to conquer, then with next run kill solders (keep opponent money in low).
If opponent put torrents - it is good, because he spends money (and later it will cost money for keeping them) Good Luck - Try to win :)
Very Good game! Played all levels Expeditions many times, easy to play.
Need more levels :)
I would like to request easy mode for this wonderful game. It's too challenging on normal mode for me , when enemy grows it becoms unstoppable force
this game is perfect, i love it.this is the game that i was searching for all the time thank you for making this game
I've been enjoying Slay off and on since 2000. It's a wonderful game. Your adaptation looks interesting. Edit: And after playing a bunch of levels, i'm hooked :)
Awesome game!
How did you program the AI?
With some implementation of Utility AI, or some other system?
It is impressive how the AI knows to keep some units back to defend, that would otherwise be at the frontline with a simpler algorithm!
Thanks!
Yes I'd say it is a utility based AI at it's core. The AI always simulates a few diffferent moves from the ginormous number of options, this is done following some heuristics that try to cheaply guess which moves make sense; there's a bunch of auxiliary data structures that help the AI understand which tiles are important to defend or capture etc. After it has those candidate moves, it then runs a pretty expensive utility function to properly score the end result of each candidate move sequence and pick the best looking one.
Balancing defense and offense correctly was indeed a daunting part, but the solution I ended up is pretty simple. One of the candidate moves always includes commiting everything to offense (because sometimes that's the best defense :)), and the others each use different offense/defense splits. The utility function will decide which approach works out best for this turn.
Thanks for the reply!
Keep up the good work!!
Towerfall was hard! Finally got it, though it took 97 turns.
Amazing game but is 'Harvest' mission in Dead Islands actually possible???
I got it. I should move west, not east, as there are bandit-type zombies that do not re-capture land
이 게임이 재밌습니다. 따라만들어도될까요? 모든 레벨을 클리어했습니다.
How to beat this level?
Any tips?
땅을 일정부분 밑 하단을 내어주고 싸먹으면됩니다. 우측 성부터 차례대로 함락시키면됩니다.
Amazing game!!
오우 재밌네요.
Got stuck on level 4, 10/10
Very polished little strategy game with interesting mechanics! Thanks for making it!
it took me a while to get back to this game but it is really fun!
On one level, I got defeated and had no idea how. I accidentally pressed undo instead of telling it to show what happened, then couldn't find any way to cancel the undo, so I left the level hoping that I could come back and that would get out of it, but it just deleted the entire level and now I have to start over from the beginning. Please fix this bug. It should be possible to look at the present turn, even if you've lost during it.
Hit the "see last turn" button that looks like an eye
This is great! 5 stars
10 Stars!
i thought 5 was the max
69 STARTS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12345678900987654321 to the power of 12345678910e+15152626277272737272838 stars
Good game! :)
https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-end-times
https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-winter-is-coming
https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-mortis
zombies!
A level with event: https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-valor
https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-landahoy
https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-obsidio
https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-gloria
https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-gloria
https://www.konkr.io/#campaign/l-guardia
HOW GOOD CAN THIS GAME GET?
For me it seams a perfect example of how good can be strategic game without ultra realistic graphic, tons of pages of scenario and billions of complex mechanics. I really liked how userfriendly is UI in this game, I think I haven't met such good UI before. Graphic style is also blowing my mind, although it looks very simple for the first time, it feets perfectly to the game. Regarding levels (I passed first ~20) I think they could be more variative in terms of winning strategies, I mean I liked levels like this with treasure in the center of the map :)
Before this game I felt similar emotions after playing Ozymandias bronze age
I love this game. I love that is difficult enough to make you think of a good strategy without making you ragequit. I like the rewind button, it really helps you learn from your mistakes. Keep up the good work!
this game is too good!
Did riposte (currently newest island, #75) in 3 turns. I was playing aggressively for sure, but a bit stupidly so, was sure I was gonna lose that angle of attack. Nope, the ai just focused on everything else that was happening.
Love this game !
I've got a line for an ai when its neutral then attacks you (friends close enemies closer-sun tzu)
First time playing, made it to island 9 so far. Great fun, well put together, ramping up the difficulty at a comfortable pace. Lots of fun figuring out the mechanics and how to best make use of them!
Easily the best game on itch.io. I've enjoyed it for a while now and it just keeps getting better with these updates. I don't see any other creators update and care for their game this much. Thanks for all your hard work on this, embair!
Man, I can't seem to beat 79 and 80 (Valhalla and Foccacia)
If anyone has a general strat that they used, I'd be interested to hear it.
Edit: Thanks for the responses guys. Both completed now, 79 was a balancing act where I tried to hold off red at the choke between the hedges where his eastern base originally was. Also needed a castle at the starting point to keep myself alive early game as I gathered resources slowly.
80 felt like a puzzle where there's a great 1st move that can cut almost straight up to bankrupt the knights, with a diagonal cut to keep the western side with <20 gold so they can't make a pike. From there it was enemy income management.
Very fun, if frustrating maps.
For 79 I attacked the closest red base then just slowly started taking land and setting defenses, letting the ai fight each other.
80 was just luck really, I cut the map in half to bankrupt the knights, then killed any villagers it made while cutting more area off. The ai was making a lot of castles for some reason instead of units so thats the only way I won it. Thought it was impossible at first.
I searched for "Foccacia" on the Discord server and the hint I found on Discord was to "hold off from making any pikemen for as long as possible."
Divide and conquer is the idea here. Should be doable in 4-5 turns (at least against the current version of AI in the game.)
Hey could you add a local multiplayer so I can play with my friends on 1 device? Or just a multiplayer in general? I feel like that would be really fun. Also it would be cool if people could make their own islands for custom senarios.
ripoff of antiyoy
As noted in the description, this game (same as Antiyoy) is heavily inspired by Sean O'Connors Slay!. However, it does bring some pretty impactful twists to the formula. See this older post for list of the differences compared to Slay! (and Antiyoy): https://itch.io/post/6419763
Honest question - I'm currently working on a game heavily inspired by an existing game, it has similar mechanics but with some new twists, all new art and all new code, would that be considered a "ripoff"? I looked it up and legally game mechanics aren't copyrighted, but still, should that be considered unethical in some way? I think that building on existing ideas is fair game, but am I missing something? I am planning to give credit to the original game within the game itself, and link to it.
Just my personal opinion:
Legaly speaking, reusing assets is obviously a big no-no, and I believe there are also some cases where copying the UI can get you in trouble even if the assets aren't exactly 1:1. But I'm not a lawyer.
“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”
- attributed to Pablo Picasso
Thanks! I very much appreciate the detailed answer. :)
It's always nice to get the validation that I'm not doing anything wrong. I hope the creator of the original game will feel the same way and won't get mad. Given that they open-sourced their code (which again, I didn't use), I think I can be optimistic.
Foccacia was an amazing puzzle, felt positively brilliant when I figured it out. All in all, 10/10!
whats the solution?? ive been stumped since it came out lol
You must be very delicate: the first few moves allow for no inaccuracy in your play. First, a hint. Within the first move, the knights should be dead, and the enemy must be unable to construct pikemen. Do this by carefully segmenting and cutting off territory. Continue until you have won, the rest is comparatively trivial. If you need another hint, just ask!
Pretty sure 5 moves is the fastest you can beat it, optimised this to what seems to be its maximum. Feel free to prove me wrong!
Edit: Got within 10 gold of beating Foccacia on Move 4. Definitely doable.
this game is a awesome little game tho with loads of content can someone tell me how to complete island 29 in the campaign XD
yep, lvl 29 is very disappointing. Maybe it's possible to put enemies' energy into wars between them as long as you are not able to own the knight to clean other kingdoms out and simultaneously not no lose everything at other directions, but it seems to be impossible
yeah it does seem impossible although the game does warn that not all the maps may be possible
I have completed all the campaign maps, so they are most certainly possible. As the numbers change with added maps I'm not quite sure which one you are referring to, do tell which it is by its name and I'll see if I can give you a hint?
Zombies are an awesome event! Love this game. Permanently pinned to my browser.
The new Valhalla level is great! I love the new Idea of having nothing but an army, that has to be used to expand and then stabilize.
Good game!
Scramble is making for quite the doozy to beat with such a small amount of land I can claim around my start point compared to the AI
Agreed, it was too hard for such an early level and not that interesting in terms of strategy options. Just gave it a major overhaul in the newest update!
Had a much easier flow this time, and lil ol grey no longer had such a massive early advantage
Is there any difference between this and Slay! ?
The game is totally an attempt to make my own preffered variant of Slay!, a game that has been my addiction for years :). So while it's quite faithful to it's core formula, there's a number of subtle but impactful differences that I found make the game more fun for me. Hopefully this also makes it interesting even for Slay! veterans:
Going forward, I hope another difference will be that this game will have a lot more interesting hand-crafted content (campaings, alternate modes etc.) and even better AI (though I will admit Slay! is not easy to beat in that aspect!), but time will tell :).
Very cool, I used to be a huge Slay! player, haven't played it in a while though. I'm enjoying your game a lot so far.
this is so good!