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[happymonster]

I'll see how I feel about the eyes and other things and change them as I see fit as the game progresses.

Work is very busy at the moment, so not done too much lately on the game.

Nevertheless progress will continue!

[Birdorf]

Initially I didn't really like the far apart eyes, but having seen them closer together, In my humble opinion, I think far apart is the way to go.

[TurboLento]

I think it would be an interesting exercise to see how it would look if every unit type had a unique eye color: the green aliens have green (or yellow) eyes, the grey ones (robots?) have red or blue (think: led) glowing eyes, and the humans have black or brownish eye colors.

Good luck with continued development, it's a nice thread to follow.

[happymonster]

I tried red, orange and yellow eyes when I first did the graphics for the Robot. However it looked a bit sinister, not really the mood I am looking for.

Done:
+ Made icon colours in GUI more desaturated - like the colours used in the tile highlighting.
+ Colours of the move and fire icons now change depending on the number of shots (if any) that can be fired - i.e. Green, Yellow, Orange, Red and then Grey.
+ Highlighted square overlay now updates every time you turn in one direction, and movement points count goes down.
+ You can't continue to turn once you've run out of movement points.
+ More Gfx work.

[tipp]

i like how you fight space shreks

[happymonster]

Started to add damage to units, rather than just one hit killing them. At the moment I'm showing health in their logo by showing reduced health as having a darker top part of the logo. The more of the logo is darker the lower the health. Basically like a vertical progress bar (but in reverse).

It seems to work well for now. Not sure if this will be the final approach, but now I have damage and HP in there and a way to show a rough figure for HP remaining.

[peous]

will lower health reduce stats, by the way ?

[happymonster]

I've not thought about the effects lower hp will have on stats yet.

[happymonster]

Reworked the logo slightly today (now a bit thicker)

I've also started to add in armour objects which can be linked to a player. These have different stats for front, side & back (I always liked that in Laser Squad / X-com). At the moment it's just using the front stat though to reduce the amount of damage taken, and I need to add in a proper damage calculation formula.

I like the idea of being able to damage armour as well as the wearer, so that's something I'd like to add too.

[happymonster]

I'm in the middle of revamping the user interface.. It will be shorter, but much wider and persistent (unlike the old design where it popped up only when over units). Originally I wanted to hide as much of the user interface as possible, but after playing with it and experimenting I like the feel of having a minimal, but constant status bar / user interface.

It will help avoid that 'lost' feeling when you don't know how to get to the next unit, or end the turn.

[Udderdude]

Well.. 5% accuracy is pretty crap - I just managed to kill my own human team mate who was no-where near where I wanted to aim at..  

Why does the game even have randomness like that? 

[eigenbom]

Well.. 5% accuracy is pretty crap - I just managed to kill my own human team mate who was no-where near where I wanted to aim at.. 

Why does the game even have randomness like that? 

So you can level up?

[SolarLune]

Well.. 5% accuracy is pretty crap - I just managed to kill my own human team mate who was no-where near where I wanted to aim at.. 

Why does the game even have randomness like that? 

So you can level up?

And it didn't even sound like he liked it like that. He just mentioned a percentage that could be qualified as poor aim.

[happymonster]

All weapons (and unit aiming ability) will lead to less than 100% accuracy. Otherwise every shot will hit regardless of distance, which would be unfair.

5% is too low, but I was seeing what it looked like..

[Udderdude]

Is this one of those cases of "X-Com had it, so I'm going to copy it into my game without even thinking about it"?  There's no reason a skill based turn based tactics game should have randomness.

You should come up with a different way of reducing shot effectiveness based on distance, like longer distance = less damage.  And if you still want leveling to have an effect, you can make that damage penalty lessen by leveling up.

[Miguelito]

I think anything is fine as long as happymonster gets it in line with his vision.

I, for one, appreciate the randomness in X-COM for the sheer difficulty it adds, but I can also see that it might be off-putting to certain players.
I wanted to ask you, happymonster: Are you trying to create a tough, hardcore experience? Or something more streamlined, fluid and rewarding? I can see the visuals working either way, perhaps harmonizing more with the latter.

Should you need inspiration on how to condense complex mechanics into a more digestible experience, I'd personally recommend the Mario RPGs - the have the right depth, but are also wonderfully focussed.
But go on and create whichever you prefer - I can only hope it's consistent and not a mishmash of simple/fluid and finicky/stressful.

[Scut Fabulous]

Some amount of randomness is a lot of fun in wargames.  It's a level of friction that the player needs to manage.  It also allows for abstraction of the kinds of unpredictable things that occur in chaotic situations, such as a gunfight.
When done well it can encourage a player to trust their experience and use their intuition.  When it's not done so well it can lead into 'math-hammer' where players spend more time crunching probabilities than they spend actually playing the game.

My suggestion would be that the acid test for random elements in this game is 'did it offer the occasional fun surprise or heightened tension?'.
If the player is constantly mulling over the odds instead of making moves it probably means there's too many percentage marks sloshing around in their head.

Looking back at classic X-Com, it probably had too much randomness and percentile overload.  The lack of clear links between stats and likely outcomes added to the confusion.
It was a brilliant game, but I believe it was the cryptic delivery of stats and random chance that led most players into adopting a strategy of inching across a map with overwhelming firepower.  The tactical battles were not showcases of maneuver.

[happymonster]

It's not the case that I'm copying X-Com / Laser Squad features just because that's how they did it. I'm using those elements because they are fun!

Laser Squad and the earlier Rebelstar games grew more out of a simulation wargame approach. This is not the same thing as the Final Fantasy / Advance Wars and other games of this style.

I'm not a hardcore wargame fan, but I've learned from playing and creating remakes of Chaos that randomness (when balanced) can be a great thing to add to games. Sure it can be frustrating, but can also give you an unexpected victory when attacking opponents that other games don't have.

BTW: The randomness in aiming (within a certain percentage) represents the accuracy of the weapon and aiming ability of the unit. So it's more representative of a skill with shooting, than with 100% accuracy with any shot.

[Miguelito]

Well at least make them shake their little fists in anger whenever they randomly miss.

[happymonster]

Ohhh... for that I'd need the talents of a really kick-ass animator!