More bloodshed and combat (scroll down for the video)
Basically the game is build on 4 basic stats for units, (health, stamina, defense and attack, each related to a resource and unit alchemy ingredient, blood, essence, bone and steel)
in the first combat iteration, I had a full unit stats interface. Which was both confusing and cluttering up the valuable mobile screenspace. After some prodding I revisited the idea and wiped away the Idea to expose the stats to a user. So I went looking for a combat feedback interface that would give enough information and control to retain a strategic approach but also was immediate and clear. As you can see even without the unit alchemy, resource management and special abilities the interface is starting to clutter, and already confusing.[/size]
So Introducing the evil eye These dudes look pretty confident going in. Or sneaky , who can tell yet.
Basically the evil eye pops up on an Unit if its engaging an enemy, or being engaged. It won't tell you any stats or detail, but it will tell you if your unit is scared or confident about the looming confrontation..
On top of that the Evil Eye is a button that will retreat the unit from the engagement, and cause him to flee and abandon his squad (to fight another day).
In the future the Evil eye will also allow the player to assign special abilities to the evil eye, not just fleeing, but for instance giving the unit a beserk mode, buffing him but also draining his stamina.
The Evil eye now serves multiple functions in the game design.
1. it gives the player enough info at a glance, does this unit stand a chance or not! 2. Allow the player to control individual units only when needed, flee being the default control (regular controls are squad based) 3. gives urgency to the combat interactions and creates a bit of twich and respons during and preceding combat. 4. removes the need to forward more detailed info to the player , especially when he doesn't need it. De-cluttering at least a sizable portion of the interface.
Its a very very simple gameplay device, but I feel it works quite well for a mobile oriented RTS.
video:
Got a quite a heavy squad roaming the map killing units.. At the end you'll see them running out of steam, and at the very end i retreat my remaining units.
Well.... onto unit Alchemy for the next iteration. (oooh, and yes unit death anims will be replaced by a cool effect later, not just sinking into the ground, emm working without textures here;) Tomas
The game is without textures, so zero textures in the game. that's the style..
regarding character recognition, and enemies. Still working on that. The idea is that they're all shades.. So either in interface or silhouette I need to make a further design iteration. For now in development, they're just clones of the player units.. so look at them as placeholders for now..
and also the idea is not to have any static RTS tropes like beating each other for multiple seconds.. its a joust,, 2 units enter, 1 walks away.. that said, the blood is probably gonna go, and be replaced with a more satisfying death sequence. (some sort of dissolve triangle explosion vortex type effect thingy, dunno yet, but needs more awesome )
Its been a long time, but development is now making headway. here's a link to a video showing the first gameplay code.
I'm still working on the animations, but the video grabbing disabled my fps capping, so some animations are a bit out of sync in the video.. Its very rough, but here's whats done:
Pathfinding
rough first combat animations
touch controls,
Android build and partial optimisation (running at steady 30fps on archos cheap-ass tablet, 40+ on galaxy note II)
object pooling
Level generation, and enemy spawning
Mobile optimisation of all shaders
Realtime shadows on top of unlit custom shaders (phew that's a nasty trick in unity3d)
basic level design setup
basic storyline and setting
first UI Design (not shown
anyhoee, its definitely not dead, It took some effort to find the time, but I'm now set on a q4 release. The next update will hopefully show the new combat animations, and the combat resolution system in action, after that its resource management and gathering.
Hope you like the update, and looking forward to any feedback and comments.
Its a quick screenshot i made,, I'm currently working on the enviroment shaders. And as the game is partially meant for mobile I had everything set to mobile quality forward rendering, hence the anti-aliasing.. as soon as the enviroment is more def, I will make some screens for wallpapers. Incedentally the parade shot was done form the game assets in 3dsmax wich renders nice and crisp..
@Pishtaco, I love this,the look, the theme everything about it.. it seems you'r going really in depth on the physics and command system. Really Really nice, would love to play it when its done..
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