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[jay]

Hello again all! I've been getting a bit of interest in this project, so I thought I might as well start keeping some kind of decent record of this thing as it progresses.

I'll be keeping an active devblog over at my site, but thought it'd be useful to have this one too. For anyone who'd just rather read it on here, and the like.

There’s a new project on the go. It’s called Strike Force Nova, and currently looks a little something like this:



As you might have figured out from the screen, it’s a turn-based tactical game a la X-Com/Laser Squad. This one’s a fairly ‘clean’ design, drawing mostly from tactical Grandaddy Rebelstar, with a few twists.
I’ve currently got a bit to go before a release-worthy demo, but a lot of the work’s already in place at this point. Expect some form of demo pretty soon. Well, depending on your definition of 'soon'

Any releases and updates will be posted up here in the first post, natch. The rest is for the story of the project's development and/or release/binning.

Now read on...

[jay]

#2: Happiness is a Full Clip

Bit of a rude opening there. All ‘blah blah plug plug’ without even introducing you to the team. Well, say hi to the Nova lads and a few of their current foes.


(L-R: L.T(with autorifle), rifle grunt, launcher grunt, lasrifle grunt, sentry drone, robo gunner and some angry lookin’ robo missile-launcher thing. I really don't like that launcher design, but that's a problem for another day.)

Today I’ve been tying up a few loose ends, fixing a crash caused by missile troops getting caught in their own backwash and implementing a (currently very) rudimentary camera system for tracking the active enemy as well as following projectiles as they go offscreen. Oh, and I finally got around to implementing the ammo system.


Lt.Avon there, no doubt happy he can now run out of rounds at catastrophically inopportune moments.

It’s a pretty simple system, in that everyone has infinite clips. Basically I wanted the tension of running out of rounds without the book-keeping of wondering who’s got enough clips left.

Which is a large part of the design ethos, really. Streamlining turn-based strategy to the core essence of why I love it so much. Now, I like a bit of Silent Storm, but sometimes I find myself wanting something more pick-up-and-play. Like when I don’t have a couple of hours free to ponder on stances, movement modes, facings and so on. And no Panzerkleins, obviously

That’s pretty much what I’m aiming for. Something Rebelstar had that its successors lost along the way. But still with enough meat on it for a fun blast of an evening.

Anyway, on we go. Things are shaping up pretty nicely at this point, with only overwatch/op fire missing from the core features. Currently the test mission can play to completion with the rest of the rules all working away, albeit with some pig-stupid AI. Which is what we’ll be dealing with next. Bugger.

[george]

Which is a large part of the design ethos, really. Streamlining turn-based strategy to the core essence of why I love it so much. Now, I like a bit of Silent Storm, but sometimes I find myself wanting something more pick-up-and-play. Like when I don’t have a couple of hours free to ponder on stances, movement modes, facings and so on.

I'm totally with you on that. Looking good man!

[PsySal]

Looks great. What I really like is the idea that you can blast walls. When I saw your first screenshot I thought, "awesome, I hope you can blast holes in walls" and then I saw a later one that showed the wall pre-being-blasted and I was made happy.

Great graphics, perspective, looks cool.

[jay]

Yeah, definitely, I'm all about the destructible terrain. Walls, doors, crates, everything will crumple and eventually fall if you lay down enough fire. There's no such thing as permanent cover. The missile troopers in particular can happily cut their own path through a level.

Cheers for the comments so far, I'll keep you posted!

[FishyBoy]

Oh man, I'm really excited to see where this goes. The whole streamlining idea sounds really interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

[Nate Kling]

Looks incredible!  I love the art as well!  I'd be happy to play test it if you need any playtesters. even on a buggy version of the game.

[Styg]

Looks good, looking forward to checking out the demo.

By the way, what mode of play will it offer: single scenarios, campaign, random maps? Will there be multiplayer?

[jay]

Single scenarios to begin with, certainly. I'll almost certainly throw in some form of random mission generator at an early stage too. Maybe not in the first release, but probably the second. Some kind of campaign system will most likely make it into the game in a later release.

Multiplayer is not really a focus right now. Hotseat will be fairly trivial to add, so that'll be added at some point. Online and PBEM will be much more difficult to implement, so it really depends on how many people want the functionality. I'd quite like to add PBEM, but I'll have to figure out a decent replay viewing system first. That's a whole other headache, so I'll focus on the absolute essentials for now.