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[Gregg Williams]

Ohh.. that sounds complicated! Good luck.

Cheers, and I agree.

How is SpaceHero Command going? I don't think I've seen a dev log update on it in ages.

[Gregg Williams]

Well started on building support today. Got the building binary file format loading correctly, and as such I'm able to read the tile data into the building entity, construct the needed layers, and read in other bits like width, height, and name info. Still working on mapping this back to the global map however.

[Gregg Williams]

Buildings are now loading correctly onto the global map, and can be read from the tiled map editor for placement.

Theres also this.. which I'm quite pleased with so far, even if I need to make a corner tile, and to finish the edging on the other one. *Curse you transparency and showing off shortcuts.*

Next up is some very much needed refactoring and then moving onwards to actual mouse based unit selection, movement maps, and pathfinding.

[t-recx]

Neat trick is neat

[Gregg Williams]

So I was fairly happy with the transparency shown in the video above, but after a bit more tweaking I'm really quite happy with version 2. Overall I also think its one of the nicest solutions to the classic isometric visibility challenge that I've seen.

[Konidias]

To make this even better, have the transparency fade over a few frames so it's not so jarring

[Gregg Williams]

To make this even better, have the transparency fade over a few frames so it's not so jarring

Ah yeah thats quite a nice suggestion. A fade would certainly help it a touch, keep it snappy but not instant. Thanks

[Gregg Williams]

So I couldn't resist implementing Konidias's suggestion even if I'm not exactly worrying about polish to much at this stage. Still this means another youtube video I really should look into this whole screen record as gif thing though. Youtube really slaughters quality even when uploaded in a lossless format.

Anyways enough building fun, need to clean up the code base something fierce, and move onto actual movement maps and pathfinding.

[Seiseki]

How did I miss this? It looks incredible!

[Gregg Williams]

Refactored most of the Iso engine code today into proper classes and interfaces. Still more to go though.

Started thinking about how to handle movement more, and it seems like the standard move map and shortest path route isn't going to work. Players need to be able to move units along a precise route, due to things like overwatch and utilization of cover.

I think we may just be looking at a forward movement and turning instead of a full movement map. That or a full movement map, but with the hit of a key or something it switchs Into just forward movement of x squares and turnig options.

Right now mechanic wise it looks like the plan is to have essentially an action point pool and a movement pool. Spending an action point fills your movement pool up to some value based on the unit type and upgrades. Then each tile moved burns a movement pool point. Possibly two points for movement along a cardinal direction.

[Gregg Williams]

More refactoring of the engine, around 90% now.

Also was playing with design ideas on the movement map aspect. Think I've figured out a solution that should work quite decently for the time being. It might need revised if facing changes end up taking AP.

Finally looked like I found a nice A* implementation that seems geared for speed and ease of use.
https://github.com/leethomason/MicroPather

Not sure if anyone else has used this or not, but so far I think I'll give it a spin. Should save a fair bit of time over implementing my own from scratch.

[Gregg Williams]

Alright refactor of the engine is done. Hurray!

Theres still some major architecture aspects to figure out once a full set of animations, along with layered gear comes about, but for now it should be good. More importantly it should let me get back to feature dev.

[Konidias]

Very cool. I approve of the fade transitions 

[Gregg Williams]

So didn't get to any new features yet, took a massive detour, and ended up adding in support for a Mac OS X Carbon version of my framework.

This allows 10.3 and 10.4 Mac support, which has been a bit of a sticky issue in the past. AKA my brilliant partner and fantastic artist, really needs a newer computer. Ah well issue sorted for now

[Gregg Williams]

Well plugged in a first cut of movement maps today. These should be animated and fade in nicely, but that will have to wait.

[Craig Stern]

I'm glad to see this is still being developed (and that you found a good solution for those pesky buildings!)

Out of curiosity, how are planning to handle units in single player? Will they be unique characters, or just generic instances of a class type? Will they level up and improve over time, or remain static?

[Gregg Williams]

I'm glad to see this is still being developed (and that you found a good solution for those pesky buildings!)

Out of curiosity, how are planning to handle units in single player? Will they be unique characters, or just generic instances of a class type? Will they level up and improve over time, or remain static?

Honestly I don't know at the moment

Current focus is on engine development and then likely multiplayer to allow for the refinement of mechanics. Once those are settled and I'm hopefully an expert at it, I suppose AI dev and more single player aspects will be figured out.

I suspect though that it may end up being similar to X-Com where they can level up, if they survive.

In the end though the game is very much aimed at MP so well see where SP goes. It does seem SP is hugely popular though, as witnessed even in the Telepath Tactics kickstarter, so I'm sure we will have to really give it some thought and effort.

[Craig Stern]

Yeah. There were a few folks who cared about multiplayer, but way more people cared about single player! I definitely wasn't prepared for it to be that lopsided. The Banner Saga experienced something similar. You'd be wise to put some feelers out about that--I have a feeling you may end up in the same situation if you focus too much on multiplayer...

(But of course, that said, multiplayer is super helpful for getting the system refined and balanced early on before you dig into single player.)

[Sar]

Yeah. There were a few folks who cared about multiplayer, but way more people cared about single player! I definitely wasn't prepared for it to be that lopsided. The Banner Saga experienced something similar.

I love tactics games, and I used to be very much into tabletop wargaming... but I'd barely even consider playing a turn-based tactics game multiplayer.

Two main reasons:
- Firstly, people on the Internet are dicks. Not just in the "racist misogynist homophobes on XBox Live" sense, but also in the "perfectly willing to cheat if they can" (c.f. connection drops in pretty much every multiplayer game ever) sense, and I could do without all that.
- Secondly, tactics battles can take a long time to complete, and I'm not sure I can definitely commit in advance to that much time for another human being I've never met. Maybe something comes up at home, maybe I'm really tired, maybe I've just had enough gaming for today... and it's not fair to ruin another guy's fun just because I can't hang around another half-hour.

I'm also just not really that competitive; I enjoy the mental exercise of planning out tactics, but I don't hunger to beat other human beings into the dust or anything, which I get the impression is the main draw for competitive multiplayer games.




(Being in the middle of writing a tactics game myself, I have to wonder how many people are opting primarily for multiplayer because they're afraid of writing AI. It's certainly not the easiest thing in the world to do...)

[Gregg Williams]

Yeah. There were a few folks who cared about multiplayer, but way more people cared about single player! I definitely wasn't prepared for it to be that lopsided. The Banner Saga experienced something similar. You'd be wise to put some feelers out about that--I have a feeling you may end up in the same situation if you focus too much on multiplayer...

Yeah it is certainly an interesting scenario, especially when you look at the popularity of things like multiplayer Starcraft. I also use to involved in the Heroes of Might and Magic II/III online and tournament scene and that seemed to be a fairly healthy space, despite games being able to go for ages.

I love tactics games, and I used to be very much into tabletop wargaming... but I'd barely even consider playing a turn-based tactics game multiplayer.

Two main reasons:
- Firstly, people on the Internet are dicks. Not just in the "racist misogynist homophobes on XBox Live" sense, but also in the "perfectly willing to cheat if they can" (c.f. connection drops in pretty much every multiplayer game ever) sense, and I could do without all that.
- Secondly, tactics battles can take a long time to complete, and I'm not sure I can definitely commit in advance to that much time for another human being I've never met. Maybe something comes up at home, maybe I'm really tired, maybe I've just had enough gaming for today... and it's not fair to ruin another guy's fun just because I can't hang around another half-hour.

I'm also just not really that competitive; I enjoy the mental exercise of planning out tactics, but I don't hunger to beat other human beings into the dust or anything, which I get the impression is the main draw for competitive multiplayer games.

(Being in the middle of writing a tactics game myself, I have to wonder how many people are opting primarily for multiplayer because they're afraid of writing AI. It's certainly not the easiest thing in the world to do...)

Its interesting how people are willing to throw down 4 hours for a few thousand point battle in say Warhammer 40k, but potentially not online

I think a good portion of this can indeed be attributed to the lack of socialization that happens from an internet turn based perspective. E.G waiting on an opponent around a table in the real world, tends to be a hugely different experience from doing so online.

I'm hopeful though that some of this can be mitigated with options like maximum turn times per player. I also think theres some potential for the ability to play a game, pause it, resume it later, or be playing real time, and then drop into an asynchronous mode almost similar to play by email, but integrated much better. 

For myself, I have almost zero interest in SP turn based tactics. It almost always comes down to eventually learning the flaws/limits in the AI, and then the game is easy. My joy in the strategy realm comes from actually playing against a live thinking being. (I'm open to non-humans though if they can muster a good challenge.)

Thankfully my partner though is indeed very much into the SP side of these games, so our design focus gets nicely split, with me thinking about most of the MP aspects, and him the SP ones.