Towering Competition

Towering Competition:
After some very unlikely course of events happened (it's not like there would be spoilers, there just isn't in-depth lore yet), the world became a barren wasteland (save for a few big cities where most of the population now lives). The entertainment industry was at its all-time low, that was until Towering Competition became a thing.
The idea is simple: select two commanders (not official, just random people or the rich), give them resources to build two massive structures with the only goal of constructing a higher tower for the sole purpose of entertainment, and place your bets on the winner. Also, the two commanders can attack each other's towers.
Worry not, for the construction work is handled by robots to minimise human casualties during combat (trespassers still exist).

Dani's Game Jam | 2025
Yes, this game was made for Dani's Game Jam | 2025, and the theme was Attraction.
I imagined this as a sort of attraction for the rich, but in this scenario, the two commanders mysteriously dipped, leaving you to be the lucky one to enjoy this attraction.

Basic stuff I guess:
I know this description is pretty long, so I'll say the basics:
In the normal mode, you have to reach the height of 3200uom (units of measurement) which is 100 blocks. There are enemy missiles flying against you, use your turret to defeat them (slot 7 I do believe). Place one at the very beggining of the game to defend yourself from the first few missiles, place more as you see fit.
Gold increases your income, build gold blocks or barrels.

Controls:
wasd - camera movement
r - explosion at mouse cursor
t, y, u, i, o, or p - send a rocket at your build (your build must be around x=0 to work)
scroll wheel (or up and down arrows) switch selected block.
q and e to switch blocks (can select a block using the mouse in menus)
scroll wheel (or up and down arrows) to zoom in or out
press left mouse button to plan a block (it'll build itself when it can)

In-Game blocks:

1. Scaffolding: 
   1. health: 20
   2. cost: 100
   3. generally good connections
2. Bricks:
   1. health: 120
   2. cost: 250
   3. weaker side connections, stronger bottom connection
3. Metal
   1. health: 200
   2. cost: 450
   3. like bricks, but no top connections
4. Barrel (gold)
   1. health: 40
   2. cost: 300
   3. only 1 bottom connection, meant as decoration to get them style points
5. Support:
   1. health: 60
   2. cost: 150
   3. can only connect from the sides, you can build on top of it
   4. was glitchy during testing, then I never used it again.
6. Gold block:
   1. health: 80
   2. cost: 700
   3. double the style points of the barrel, you can connect stuff to it, what more could you wish for?
7. Turret:
   1. health: 60
   2. cost: 350
   3. can shoot stuff, can't connect stuff to it. Guns are not cool (even though they're neccessary to survive) minus style points Scratch that, turrets don't effect your income.
   4. firerate: 30 rounds per second
   5. damage: 3 (90dps)
   6. target: mouse cursor
8. Missile Silo:
   1. health: 150
   2. cost: 1000
   3. shoots rockets, meant against enemies that didn't make it into the game aka useless
   4. reload time: 15 seconds (450frames in a 30fps environment)
   5. damage: Look up Missile2 stats
   6. target: the sky; disappears at y>6400

Coded explosions:
For reference: 1 full block is 32 units of measurement wide.
Missiles target a random block and are spawned 6400uom away from the coordinates x=middle_of_your_build y=0
You can summon rockets and explosion in the Test Zone game mode.

1. Explosion:
   1. trigger: r
   2. damage: 128 (lessens over distance)
   3. range: 128
   4. target: mouse cursor
2. Missile:
   1. trigger: t
   2. damage: 64
   3. range: 128
   4. health: 40
   5. acceleration: 8
3. Missile2:
   1. trigger: y
   2. damage: 48
   3. range: 96
   4. health: 20
   5. acceleration: 8
4. Missile3:
   1. trigger: u
   2. damage: 128
   3. range: 96
   4. health: 60
   5. acceleration: 12
5. Missile4:
   1. trigger: i
   2. damage: 96
   3. range: 192
   4. health: 50
   5. acceleration: 1
6. Missile5:
   1. trigger: o
      
   2. damage: 128
   3. range: 96
   4. health: 60
   5. acceleration: 16
7. Missile6:
   1. trigger: p
      
   2. damage: 128
   3. range: 96
   4. health: 70
   5. acceleration: 16

Credits:

• Ground + heavily edited and used in other sprites (mainly the color palette for rusty textures)
  • Pixel art abandoned factory tileset by iPixl
• Metal textures + metal/gold color palettes 
  • Pixel Platformer Metal Expansion by Pienkrings
• Awesome parallax background
  • Post-apocalyptic background by LittleSmith
• Music
  • Post-Apocalyptic Music and Soundscape: Abandoned by MakotoHiramatsu
  • Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
    • https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Crash sfx
  • Computer Case Carnage Sample Pack by WangleLine
• Explosion sfx + Gun sounds
  • 50 Free Game Sounds Pack (Not A PlaceHolder) by Place Holder Assets
    • (gun sounds are explosion sounds, just quiter)
• Letting me know this game jam exists
  • Mikitys, you can also find him on Scratch and YouTube
    • He also made textures for game features that unfortunately didn't make it into the game, but still, the effort counts, and he gets to be here.
    • He also submitted a game to this game jam, make sure to check it out! (after finishing my game, that is)

Notes:
03.05.2025 11:08 (around 2 days and 3 hours before deadline) I hate Windows auto update. (I believe I actually disabled it this time; only time will tell)
By the way I totally missed that this game jam was happening, got notified by a friend about 5 days before the deadline.

Stuff that could've been:
AI Skirmish -- The actual normal game mode:

• That's what the missile silo block is for: build missiles, send them at the enemy.
• I don't really know how I would do the enemy AI but I'm sure I could figure something out, eventually.
• The income was planned to be more dynamic, it wasn't planned for it to be directly connected to the amount of gold things you have (barrel adds 1, block adds 2, take 1.75th root of the gold stuff round it up (in other words: ceiling operation) and multiply by 10. boom, income that is actually in the game, and this explanation was probably supposed to be somewhere else, eh, whatever) As I said, the income was originally planned to be dynamic, build gold blocks at a steady rate and you'll be rewarded nicely, destroy gold of the enemy - another income increase, lose gold - lower income.
• You could choose between two goals:
  • destroy enemy
  • reach a certain heigth

Multiplayer -- The thing that had better odds of becoming a thing than AI Skirmish

• Practically the same thing as AI Skirmish, but it would be with other people.
• TurboWarp servers would handle the communication between devices and I don't think my game would have more than 10 players online (the upper cloud variable limit, one cloud variable per player).
• Eventually, this idea died down because I don't really expect even two players to be playing simultaneously.

Ground Vehicles -- Like things on wheels that can go to the enemy and shoot 'em

• Similar to the Missile Silo block, there would be blocks creating vehicles, those could be tanks, or cars with explosives attached to them.
• Eventually, the idea got scrapped, the lack of time can be difficult (especially when you can't use the last 6 hours and would have to sacrifice sleep to get the other 6). (sacrificed 3 out of 6, not bad)

Bugs: (This section might receive updates, but I think I got most of them)
Technically not a bug, but due to a poorly managed structure integrity calculation, the game gets laggy very fast. (plus, if the game doesn't detect changes in a short while, it'll stop until something happens; that's the best optimisation you'll get right now)
Background can do weird things when you zoom out too far or in too much, doesn't affect gameplay though. (no, I won't add a limit)
You can plan two blocks on top of each other, not really an issue since the game checks if it can place the block when it gets to it.
You can connect stuff to turrets and barrels... why...?

Fixed Bugs before release:
Setting zoom to 0 will freeze the game. The slider won't exist in the final game, so it won't be an issue, but right now, in this prototype, it will freeze the game, and you'll have to refresh the page to get it working again. 
-- Fixed: Slider removed; now use scroll wheel (or up and down arrow keys)
Sometimes, some blocks just forget that they're supposed to fall? I guess they just support each other, but still, not cool (I got other problems to solve though). 
-- Fixed: Made sure blocks are punished for supporting one another (both mentally and physically).
Solved problems from the "Notes" section.
Also, this game doesn't have a name yet. Help.
-- Fixed: Towering Competition is the name now, not very fitting when there isn't as much competition as originally planned.
This description is getting updated along with the version of the game that I have on my computer, some things mentioned in the description might not be in the game that is uploaded to itch.io (currently is accurate, new version just dropped)
-- Probably Fixed: It should be all up to date since it's releasing soon.