Advancement (2019-10-03)
At last something a bit like more war!
Today:
- Brawlers seeking out the closest enemy units.
- Brawlers punching their enemies.
- Brawlers discovering that their enemies can also punch back.
- Brawlers collapsing under the fist of their way too numerous enemies.
Also, this make very nice movements:
Which ends up with bodies and chaotic ending formations nonetheless.
I’m only missing the Result screen + retry command to have the core demo ready! That should be ready tomorrow.
Advancement (2019-10-04)
Today I’ve implemented the basic loops:
- Results screen that tells you if you won or loss.
- This screen can also show you basic stats if you maintain B.
- Every time the game is launch, a new configuration of opponents is found, in both number and position.
- There is also an option to relaunch the game, which simply “reset” it, leading to what will be the Title screen.
Also, there is now an early demo of the game at the first post of this thread!
It’s missing a lot of stuff, but the core is here.
Advancement 2019-10-07
Today I’ve implemented a Menu for the Title Screen, and the Sandbox Mode.
- The Title Screen allows the Player to choose from the Quick Battle (Same Randomized Enemies as before) and Sandbox mode.
- It beeps and features a nice zombie hand.
- Related GIF below.
- The Sandbox Mode allows the Player to deploy whatever Units they want on both sides.
- It’s great for testing things and as such it’ll also help me creating the Battle Plans for the future Challenge and Campaign modes.
- Unfortunately the position aren’t retained yet after a battle, so it’s not that useful right now.
- A new No Man’s Land forbids the Player to place Units too close from the Enemy’s side.
Next feature:
- Slapper Unit - Slaps tangentially units instead of pushing them back.
Advancement 2019-10-08
Today, I’ve added the Slapper and some UI.
- The Slapper is a new Unit that will push back to the left their target - this can provide them some tactical superiority depending on the context.
- Also they’ve got a nice hat.
- I also added counting, both in number of units and cost, for each side. This is quite helpful to balance the game later.
Slappers in action
A Slapper dying.
Next Features:
- Adding a unit of our choice (which is, right now, between a Brawler and a Slapper).
- Rendering a limit between the two Areas in the Preparation.
- Challenge Mode (the mechanic, not all the challenges themselves)
Advancement 2019-10-09
Today, it was dedicated mostly to the Battle Preparation Phase:
- The Pad Menu was revised in order to work as a Hold-C+Press-Direction.
- The Pad Menu can now change the Current Unit.
- The Unit that is going to be added is now shown on the Bottom Right, with its cost.
- The Brawler’s Cost was set to 20$
- The Slapper’s Cost was set to 25$
- The Result Screen was updated with the actual cost of both armies.
Me demonstrating my poor tactical choices.
Next Features:
- Challenge Mode (Main Menu Entry, Challenge List, Cost Restrictions, and 2-3 simple Challenges, No Save of any sort).
- Rendering a limit between the two Areas in the Preparation.
Advancement 2019-10-10
Today was about implementing the mechanics of the Challenges:
- The List of Challenges is available from the Title Screen, as a new Menu Entry.
- It provides all the available Challenges.
- A Challenge is about fighting a fixed Army with limited resources.
- It doesn’t feature Unit Type Restrictions yet as I only have two for the moment.
- The 4 challenges aren’t very elaborated yet.
- I refactored the Preparation and Battle code in order to provide more ways to customize it.
- Also, each challenge provide a few flavor texts.
- No record is made about solving them or not at this time.
Navigating through the new List and solving a rather simple challenge.
Next Features:
- Retrying a Challenge/Battle with the last positions. (Going to make thing muuuch smoother)
- Visible Areas of Placement. (Convenient and cheap to implement)
Advancement 2019-10-15
Today, I focused more on the UI/UX part.
- Proper areas of deployment were added for both Armies.
- They’re also rendered in the Preparation Phase, so you can see where exactly you can place your troops.
- C-Menu has been added to both Battle Phase and Result Phase, which allows the Player to Retry or Exit from there.
- Interestingly, the battle will still happen but at a reduced rate. This is of course, totally intended, and that’s totally not something not optimized properly
.
- Battle/Challenge/Sandbox can now be re-prepared again, with each unit’s placement kept intact.
- This will avoid the pain of having the redeploy every troops, and allow for easier experimentation.
- Playing the same placement will yield the same results!
- This is a feature that also helps me a lot, for designing Challenges, and for balancing Units as well.
Demonstrating the Areas, Retry Feature, and Menu Integration in Battle Phase and Result Phase.
Next Features:
- Impersonating/Possessing a Unit.
- Sword Unit
- Shield Unit
Advancement 2019-10-16
Today, I’ve added two useful health bars and a way to control a single Unit:
- Two health bar are now present, colored in the Team’s color, and represent the ratio between the current health and starting health for both team.
- When full, they say an army is intact, and when empty, well that one was defeated or is about to be defeated.
- Very satisfying to watch them deplete as the battle goes on.
- From the Preparation Phase, it is now possible to mark a single Unit.
- Both the Brawler and the Slapper support Control.
- When retrying a battle, a Unit marked as Controlled will still be marked as such.
- Unfortunately, since the current AI is quite efficient at dealing hits, going melee while controlling is very hard.
- The Player’s controlled Unit doesn’t have any advantages, and actually has the inconvenient of not being able to control exactly the angle of their punches and slaps.
- However the base feature is here, and already has its usefulness!
Those life bars are sure very convenient to check how a battle is going on.
Controlling now allow to use the advanced tactic of Benny Hilling around in order to slowly deplete a more numerous army.
Next Features:
- Sword Unit
- A stronger melee unit, using a sword.
- Longer reach than Brawler and Slappers.
- The Sword hits harder, but swings slower than Fits.
- Also, more expensive.
- Shield Unit
- A sturdier melee unit who bears a Shield.
- The Shield can absorb some hits from its direction.
- The Shield can also be used for bashing, which is slower than Sword, has the same range than Fists.
- They’re more expensive too. Probably the same than Sword, but testplaying will determine that.
Stay tuned!
Advancement - 2019-10-18
Today and yesterday I worked on the Sworder Unit:
- Refactor in order to extract the common code between the Slapper and Brawler.
- Implementation of the Sworder, a Unit that uses a Sword to attack other people
- They got more HP, more reach, and more attack power.
- Their speed is slower, both for walking and attacking.
- They cost 50$ (Brawler costs 20$ and Slapper 25$ for comparison)
- (That’s a temporary name - tho I found it was an archaic word for Swordman)
- They’re also a Controllable Unit.
- They won’t fare well as a decoy unit tho, because of their slower speed.
- They’re currently the most powerful unit, and don’t really have a proper counter yet.
- Fixed some bugs related to attack - before the fix, all Melee Units’ weapons would wrongly go their maximal range and animate from there. Now they’ll go back from their hit position.
- That also increase their attack speed (up to 100%) when they’re closer from an Enemy Unit, as the weapon will have less distance to travel.
- Added a quick challenge related to the Sworder.
I might need a Wiki dedicated to TAZS soon enough haha
Unfortunately not as resourceful as Link.
They like swinging it so much.
Next Features:
- Shieldbearer - A Unit that bears a Shield.
- They’ll absorb direct, front hits with little pushback - tho they’ll still be vulnerable from behind.
- They’ll also bash their shield into their opponent’s face.
- They should make a great counter for Sworders and others units, as well as a great decoy Unit in general.
Also, after the Shieldbearer, I’ll publish a new intermediate demo.
it is a chaos-based with a hint of strategy game, after all!
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), and also some parts could be more refined (like using an acceleration for the cursor)
