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[.Uberren]

@Reilly.  The transition between beach to ocean is quite small, yes.  I quite like the height difference between the grass and the ocean though.  I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask Daniel about increasing the height to see how it looks, probably by lowering the ocean tiles I'd imagine.

@Sjonsson.  hmmm...We purposefully left out grass from the farm tiles because it would kind of ruin the uniformity of farms, seeing as a lot of them are closely packed together in real life.

@Mef @Bombini.  thank you, I'm glad you both like it

[klamp]

Holy crap, it's been a while since I've seen this project but it's really come a long way! Lookin' pretty sweet guys. Keep it up!! :D

[danieru]

@Reilly: Awesome idea! After some refatoring ( ) and experimenting with the height we now have easy to adjust height. We have some height consierations. Too high and the cursor becomes detached from the ocean terrain's location. As well the river to ocean transition cannot be too riverfall-like.

What do you think about this?



@Sjonsson: Uberren is right, we had grass in the farms and the transition looked out of place. Maybe if we add a bevel'd dirt "pile" under the wheat it will look better. Thank you for the mockup, It has convinced me the change is something we should try. Those rounded corners should match our style better than our sharp squares. We were going for this look:




@klamp: Wow that means a lot. Your AW: Remix is by far the most impressive 3d take on AW ever and your advice on the terrain saturation was a big help.

@Mef: Nah man you should check out Klamp's scene. His water and shoals are perfect 

[Reilly]

Yes! I think that looks way better!

As for the challenges
The cursor itself could change heights depending on the terrain it's on. would look pretty nice floating above the terrain dynamically.
River hight could maybe split the difference between land and sea, so when you have to make a transition it could just be a slight angle.

[dynasty9]

I love advanced wars so this is great. The art style is also great love the model outlines. Is this WebGL? Threejs? I'm also making a browser game so we should swap notes.

[danieru]

Today the internet went down in the apartment. I worked on interface stuff.  

There is now a proper "back" action, a working pause menu. The menus even loop around now at the top and bottom.



There is a bug in the main menu switching which caused the main menu's back drop to be a randomly generated map. With some rotating and zooming it could work.



@Reilly: That's a cool idea but the way we do the movement area is with a flat plane that would require dynamically moving the plane. Workable, but the mouse's screenspace to tile x y mapping is most painful since it also tests against a flat plane.

@dynasty9: Thanks. We are using WebGL and Three.js but the only notes I have are "avoid real time lighting, go diffuse textures only". It looks like you guys are tackling the hard stuff.

[dynasty9]

Yeah we're going with some graphics settings so if you have a nice card you can turn on the shadows, otherwise just the shadow disks.

[danieru]

Scoring is now "in-game". We still need an end of mission menu to show the user but the statistics are being tracked.

My goal with the score is to make the player challenge themselves. Our scoring incorporates things like turns taken, number of moves made, units lost, and number of buildings captured, etc. That last score is counter-intuitive, your score will improve if you capture fewer buildings. I want players to make trade offs but in general to push themselves into doing more with less.

For example: If the player rush caps an HQ at the expense of unit losses their total score will be miserable. Their speed will be topped out but those losses will tank tactics. Instead said player needs to rush while bagging kills and avoiding losses.

Testing using an over powered by map editor win:

[.Uberren]

Just a quick update on my part.
Was working on basic map tile fixes like adding new cliff tiles for the rivers and fixing the colours on the ocean texture.

I also started working on a missile tank since we were lacking in long range, anti-air.  Will post screens of it a bit closer to completion

[.Uberren]

Here's a WIP for the missile tank

[danieru]

  We've completely destabilized the visuals. Today I got things not-crashing after Uberren replaced most of the river riles. Then I refactored our map editor so building ownersip is not a separate layer.

Here's the current state of the visuals. Complete with bloom, missing beach cliffs, my WIP attempts at more interesting grass. Also of note is Uberren has added lines to the capturable buildings.



I am not sure how this week became mess-with-graphics week.

[.Uberren]

Here's what I have for the missile tanks


(I'm not sure why my images become so huge).


Edit: doing some more tweaks to the chassis and textures!

[.Uberren]

Did some more work on the missile tanks 

[Bombini]

I prefer the new version!
Clear what its suppose to do

[danieru]

In the past our beaches and rivers had the beachline and riverbanks baked into the tile models. Now we've seperated the "cliffs" from the tile themselves. This fix some edge cases which otherwise would require dozens of extra models. Today along with bug fixing that cliff system now handles the rivers and beaches as it should:

[deab]

Looking great!

[danieru]

Thanks Deab!

So on another topic: I need your (yes you the reader) thoughts on these pitches. Is what comes to mind when reading Super Battlelands? Is it a game you would want to play? What is your favourite pitch? Which is the worst pitch?

In Super Battlelands, players will wrestle map control across the fractured battle lands. They will command tanks, ships, and planes on handcrafted maps.

Decide the future and destiny of the battle lands. Develop your strategies and tactics against 3 personality driven commanders.

A turn-based-strategy of territory control, unit building, and personality driven commanders.

The next chapter of turn-based-strategy. High resolution 3d, animated battles, litehearted characters, world wide war. Embrace the luddonarrative dissonance.

Capture cities and use their tax dollars to build your army.

After centuries of war, and a few decades of peace, your nation has been thrust back into the old conflict. March across battle lines to keep your homeland free. Fight for alies, or turn your back on their plight. In Super Battlelands you will shape the conflict through your decisions.

[Bombini]

You might want to distinguish between game vision pitch and marketing pitch.

For marketing i would use:

After centuries of war, and a few decades of peace, your nation has been thrust back into the old conflict. March across battle lines to keep your homeland free. Fight for alies, or turn your back on their plight. In Super Battlelands you will shape the conflict through your decisions.

For game vision:

A turn-based-strategy of territory control, unit building, capturing cities, use their tax dollars to build your army and personality driven commanders.

[danieru]

Thanks Bombini, you make a good point about the dual needs. I'll start refining based on those pitches, you did happen to pick my favourites.   

[.Uberren]

Been working on some tiles for deeper under the ground for the edges of the map
Maya semi-WIP screenshot: