Hello!

This is meant to be a quick read.

This post contains information on the 10 year anniversary update for johnsgame, a game I made and maintained from age 13 to 15 before moving on. This was my first public release of a video game, and one of the few games greenlit on Steam before that program went away.

The originally game was a small RTS that expanded into having both a Survival and RTS mode, Eventually the game had a few versions of both + free expansions for the RTS mode. I enjoyed my time when I was working on this title for a lot of reasons. It was my first big title, it was enjoyable to learn to make games, the art style was my own unique design, I was able to talk to other people making games and learn from them... it was overall very fun.

But, it was my first game.

Up until now it was very hard to play. Not because the game itself is hard (though it is unforgiving and designed in a way I would not today), but because there were so many small things that stacked up into what felt like a bad experience. The easiest example to give is simply colliding with anything in the game in Survival mode would have you permanently stuck until you restarted or died, and the RTS mode would have enemies totally ignore your units and go for your settlement. Not only are those two very glaring problems solved, but many others are too. You can read everything changed, added to, fixed, and tweaked below as well as see the new cover art. Please note that this is just Part 1 of the update and the main reason I am getting it out is because the game simply did not work well anymore both on modern machines or in general. There are still issues. Please send all issues my way via Steam Discussions only.

The goal of this update is not to change the fundamentals of the game, but simply to make it more approachable. The core experience is not changed. It is essentially a Quality of Life update. This is not some extreme overhaul to make a new game. I would rather work on a new game than make this game awesome because so many systems are seemingly duct-tapped together it makes it impossible to improve things more than I did here (like I said) without simply making a new game. There is a genuine possibility I will simply release the project files so others may mess with this game and submit updates but that would probably only happen if the right people asked.

Out with the old..

In with the new:

What's Changed in somewhat the order I did it:

Changed the version of GameMaker from GM1 to GM2026.

Updated Steamworks from SDK 2016 to 2026.

Removed 2 Achievements: Follower of the Apocalypse, and Cow King.

The buttons on the main menu are now properly centered and those Buttons no longer expand/shrink in a confusing manner.

Changed creditors.

Removed "Mode" wording from the RTS button.

Fixed Audio overlapping on the main menu issue.

Updated All Player Collisions so you cannot get stuck on literally everything anymore in survival mode.

Fixed animal text not displaying in survival mode, i.e "oink".

Animal Collision/Movement no longer can randomly go through walls in survival mode.

Changed the fundamentals of how Animals move.

Animals are generally better basically...

Removed random broken build system in survival mode.

for now, changed the game over screen to not crash the game for survival mode by removing it.

Changed death parameters for survival mode to be less insane.

Fixed MrTree from not working in survival mode.

Fixed showing Survival UI in RTS mode.

The Tutorial map has been improved.

Guns can be picked up properly/with ease now.. sorry!

The windows mouse no longer draws in RTS mode.

RTS Mouse has been remastered but not changed drastically.

Building mode is properly enabled in this version (they already worked, but not in the build I am working with)

Building mode sprites have been remade to better suite readability.

Decided this would be a 10 year anniversary update rather than just an achievement fix.

Building mode button placement has been updated.

Walls and Landmines have been re-enabled.

Building itself has been made easier and the code is cleaned up to work better for future additions (if any).

Unit Selection Box in RTS mode now has a cleaner look.

Unit Control is working better than intended.

Fixed Farmers getting stuck in task.

Units and All "NPCs" in general now collide differently.

Edited unfair path speed boost to be fair (2.50, to 80)

Depth is properly sorting now. You should not see any unit/npc/etc visually ontop of buildings.

All NPCs, Enemies, Animals, etc. now avoid all obstacles more efficiently and easily.

Units in RTS mode no longer rotate randomly, distorting their view.

Units in RTS mode now fire, always, towards the nearby foe rather.

Units in RTS mode no longer go right for your home base instead of attacking the units you sent, though realistic it made for an unfun experience.

Changed what RTS units shoot, when they shoot, and why.

Units no longer create random bloat objects called "Place".

Unit Selection Circles now have a cleaner look.

There are now more trees to look at rather than just 2 to look at.

Overhauled RTS Projectile so that they are more efficient.

RTS Projectiles are now easier to look at, and easier to see where they are coming from. Lastly they need some affects and they are done.

Landmines now affect all Units rather than just enemies.

Improved click-ability of RTS units you can now click units to select them.

Improved multi-select you can now select multiple units by ctrl+click which I hope is intuitive for the average RTS player.

Fixed Collision and Visibility of Gates facing West and East based on an error in Survival mode.

Steam Store Art has been remade to not look so blurry.

The base in RTS mode can now be targeted as intended by enemies. If it is destroyed, as always, that is game over. The only difference is that it can be targeted.

A bigger change; I removed Farmers, Miners, and Fighters in favor of a universal worker that gain skills the longer they are doing a job. No other RTS does this and it is what will probably get me to make a more complex RTS/Civilization management game. After writing that I think Dwarf Fortress does something similar but also not really + that game is not that deep, it's just confusing. Think if Civ wasn't Civ 7, and was real time rather than turned based and you could build homes and businesses like Tropico. You may think "Wow, that's ambitious", not really.

Whenever I design a system I write out the whole scope and so this specific system looks like this:
"Use workers to gather materials from various locations like farms and mines.

All workers can do all tasks, including fight.

The longer a worker is at a location, the better they become and thus

are faster, and bring in more resources, or fight harder.

Right click any unit to see it's stats."

"The more workers you have, the more food you need to have to feed them

so make sure some are farming."

"You need places for workers to live or they will burn your nation to the ground.

Build them homes, or die."

"More people can become your workers buy reclaiming them from other villages,

or by using enough resources to breed more at your base."

"To win, conquer the planet. To lose, watch your base burn to the ground

by enemy combatants.

This system is half implemented. The rest of implementation is adding informational text, and homes but like I said: This update is not intended to overhaul the game. There is no settelement building in johnsgame, that's a new game. This system is what I will end up using for that. It may be the only system out there like this and I want to do something with it.

Anyways: 37 hours into making this update, about 8-12 a day, I am at where I am at now. There is not much left to do that I can do without making a new game.

Updated RTS resource menu.

Fixed Trees in Survival mode from moving in weird ways while being chopped and post stump.

The unit marker in RTS mode is now above all other objects so you can see where one might be active.

RTS Units properly go from location to location without destroying the location or getting stuck.

Added Unit Information Panels, at least the minimum it is.

You have no idea how long making those last two lined work took.

Changed small shed texture in RTS mode and moved it.

Optimized trees.

After about an hour of optimizing the game I have come to the conclusion that to do any more optimizing would be basically remaking the game or creating an expansion for this that is essentially a new game using only the art and ideas as a base and even improving upon those. There is basically no way to optimize this game more without someone who is better than me coming in and taking a peek and he may come to the same conclusion.

Zoomed in the camera. That seemed to change the resolution of the selection around units from looking cool to out of place. :(. -had to manually make it.

Fixed it so Jeremy RTS (The Orange Unit) can properly break trees, rocks, and collect them.

Survival Mode Guns work better than before.

Health bars of enemies have been updated to properly reflect current hp.

Improved RTS projectiles and test in RTS and in survival tutorial mode.

Basically the game has been modernized to better fit new hardware and a new engine from GM1 to GM2.3. I spent around 100 hours in a week to get this done. Enjoy.

Oh, and the game works on Linux? Someone should let me know if it worked out.

That's Part 1 and what I did (most of it) in order.

Stuff I am working on for Part 2:

RTS Fixes

• Find a fix for mass amount of units colliding and then sliding down the map until they fix themselves.

• Add more effects to projectiles as prior.

• Building a wall, rotating with R, UI to prompt said rotation

• Market Visuals (Globals 2 is the market, press space)

• Do a Snowman Audit of the bullets and spawning

• Do a Satan Battle Audit and Improve it.

Survival Mode:

• Avoid Buildings

• Avoid Aiming at enemies through buildings

• More Attack Types

• More Encounters like Patrols

• Fix the terrible UI

• Fix text displaying weird.

• Fix animals noises changing the display color

Generally:

• Add more rocks to look at.

• Fix the game over screen for both modes.

• Add an in-game manuel so the online manuel is no longer looked at or ever needed.

• Make sure achievements all work by testing in tutorial mode.

• Overhaul fonts? Check out all font instances. "Overhauling all Fonts to better support new hardware."

Stores

• Add new trailer

• Finish Library assets

• Look for Gamejolt johnsgame build

• Look into whatever GameJolt trophies were/are and how they worked and if they still do.

Future Possibilities:

Full Controller Support for both versions.

Languages

Achievements Menu + Itch.io and GOG build release.

RTS Tutorial Mode.

Improved Survival Tutorial mode.

Re-adding Hell for the RTS mode.

Re-adding Vault (whatever that is, I don't remember but it's in the files but doesnt work)

Adding the newer map and experience of Survival mode as a play option so you dont need to switch games. Right now it's version 1 and 2 combined. No V3 at all as it's technically a different experience.

RTS Improvements:

• Have it so enemies, instead of immediately going towards home base, have an intel collection period that gives players a chance to stop a large attack.

• Team settings/control for easier mp intregration later on. I should be able to spawn a unit that spawns units in the same team. Team = 1, all things it creates are on team 1 so team 1 controller can only interact with team 1 units.

Overhauling Enemies in general to be smarter and do more than just shoot.

Remaking the camera rather than just improving it.

Thanks for Reading!

Do you like this old gif?

Due to the enjoyment of fixing the game there may be a sequel of some kind that is a full game rather than a couple of experiences experimenting with modes.

Lastly, it's 10 years 2025, or 2026 The Steam release day isn't correct.

published 11th, updated the 12th.