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[thuyquai]

Hi Ryansumo,

Check out our newest build here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B82O2Wq_M5SfdTdJZkpxQ1p2akE/view?usp=sharing

Hope you enjoy it. BTW the campaign is in it's really early state so bear with it

[Cristiano Vitorino]

Update Post Greenlit 14

Made some change to tutorials today according to Cristiano Vitorino's advice. The tutorials force players less frequently.

We also add the newly drew characters here since our artists finish some of the character's portrait.

Awesome and smooth art style. She's a diver? She seems ready for some underwater combat.

We asked friend who literary can't read English and didn't play a TBS before to play test our tutorial and surprisingly, he could learned it and pass tutorials.

But he stuck at one of a tutorial. The same happens to 2 guys after him so I may have made a super hard challenge to help the newbie. Thanks god I encounter that before release .

The magic of feedback haha.

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 15

We continue to update chip GUI today. The goal is to make everything clear as possible. And we could not show chip's rarity, shape yet, so the goal has not been achieved.



If you are a reader, could you tell us what do you understand about this, could you guess it's function?

About chip system: Each unit could carry a board of chip with limited space, chips provide additional stats and passive skills which help you customize your units to your liking. Patch their weaknesses or enhances their strengths.

The harder enemy AI could now use chips too. I'm planning on making a list of single scenario enemy with increasing difficulty and different type of strategy so you could play single match if you don't few like pushing your campaign

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@Cristiano Vitorino:

She is one of the Combat Officer. Combat Officer will affect robots of their speciality. Like some CO increase damage of Heavy Robot. Some increase Robot's EXP rate...

I don't know what trait is suitable for her yet, maybe increase Speed for Robots in the Wet Battleground like you would think :D.

[Cristiano Vitorino]

Update Post Greenlit 15

We continue to update chip GUI today. The goal is to make everything clear as possible. And we could not show chip's rarity, shape yet, so the goal has not been achieved.

If you are a reader, could you tell us what do you understand about this, could you guess it's function?

About chip system: Each unit could carry a board of chip with limited space, chips provide additional stats and passive skills which help you customize your units to your liking. Patch their weaknesses or enhances their strengths.

I have no clue what the different letters meanings are.

Are these lettered square shapes the chips? Or stat indicators? I'm confused, I think they are the chips themselves judging by the obvious description, but the graphical representation seems confusing to me, maybe add a circuit board detail/chip like detail to them or to their edges? If they are in fact the chip themselves.

That grid like board on the top left of the GUI, the chip unit right? With limited space like you said. Are those already installed chips? If yes, why they don't have the letters?

Can robot parts be damaged in battle? Will that be a factor in gameplay? Will mid battle repair be possible? Like a robot unit that is a repair robot that can swap parts or chips mid battle.

@Cristiano Vitorino:

She is one of the Combat Officer. Combat Officer will affect robots of their speciality. Like some CO increase damage of Heavy Robot. Some increase Robot's EXP rate...

I don't know what trait is suitable for her yet, maybe increase Speed for Robots in the Wet Battleground like you would think :D.

Like a permanent buff for that battle in particular right? Will the player be able to swap COs mid battle? Or just before and after battle?

[thuyquai]

Ha, look like we will have to improve the chip scene alot.

CO is the leader of a match and can't be switch during the match. Each CO could only fight once per turn though. So if you have 3 action points, and you could fight 3 match per turn you will have to use 3 COs. Or spend actions points on other operations.

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 16

Added a function to enable player to know where did they scanned for tactic points and where they did not.

In the standard match, your goal is to search and capture tactic points.

Each robot has scan radius = 2. But that was not made for the players so we want them to be able to track that and don't waste time searching in the scanned area.

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 17

We update difficulty today.
We use a list of opponents for player to choose with increasing difficulties if they don't want to play campaign.
Some are available from the start, some opponents will be unlock once an event related to that opponent appear.
Each opponent will have their own set of favorite robot and it will form different play style.

Here is some more opponent/ally portraits:

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 18

Hello!
We have been busy with multiplay. The mechanic worked already . We used Photon Turn-based to communicate and Parse for data. everything is running as expected.

For the campaign, we add Alliance and Trading land feature for it. You could buy other's side land, you just need to have a lot of money. Every proposal will be affected by CEO's valor, honor, cunning and hatred toward each other.

The Robot selection for the match screen has changed as well. Have a look and see if you get what it's about

[thuyquai]

Update 19

Hi there, another batch of avatars for combat officer arrived . They are from the dark side, manipulative and ruthless. But if you could pick one as your main character, which would you like?



This week we focus on multiplay battle, and almost done it, the core of it. We also made ranking table, weekly reward, chip shop and so on (no Microtransaction so rest assured). The multiplay will use diffirent chips from single play for security reason, we don't want a player to mess wit our data. And for the database we use Parse.com, if you are looking for a free and reliable DB, check it out .

[Highsight]

Looks neat!  If you're still looking for "bashing" feel free to check my sig.

[thuyquai]

Thanks buddy, really nice idea from you here , I hope your twitch channel grow. I have entered the game as you suggested.

[thuyquai]

Update 20: 25 days until Early Access

I have recently know that our Background Music will come on Oct 15 and we going to put the game on early access once Multiplay became solid.

Have a look at our multiplay shop:



The currency is Glory Point which earn through your battle and weekly rewards.
Do you guys know any good article about ingame shop?

[thuyquai]

Update 21: World map, World Events

It's been really long time since our last update . But it's not because we stall the project, it's because I'm too caught up in coding it, too much fun, too little time.

We have got many feedbacks and they address everything so I know the game has been improved, thanks to our testers.
Special thanks to Jonas Hünig - whom has put days testing for us and pointed out so many issues, it's really lucky we met him.

There is 1 problem that we can't fix: Grammar and Spelling error . All errors that could be detected by us has been fixed but our English is not perfect and the tester whom pointed that out didn't help any further, other testers are from error (but not UK) and they admit that they can't find any error since their English is also not perfect. We could only hope for the best.

Here is the long list of our update:

1. Multiplayers Security
We improved our multiplayers match security. Since we have not enough manpower to create a real server-client model where the server handle all the logic, we compromised, here's how:
- We lets the loser of the match report the result so hacker can't send a ""I won"" message.
- We use webhook from Photon and Parse so when a user disconnect, the server will no, the hacker can't say his opponent disconnected
- For other simple tasks like shopping, identifying items, we just use the standard Client-Server line, client say he want to buy this item, server check if he has enough money and update the database, client then got the new item from the server

2. Chips

The chip UI has been improved a lot, we replace the letter icon on the chip storage with the actual shapes of the chips. We also use color to show chip's rarity, tell us if this looks intuitive enough.



3. Multiplayers GUI

Nothing to say about that since we only apply graphic to it, but it took too much time. I didn't think that it could be that long, all the pixel adjustment, all the calculation for multi-resolutions, font size consistency and much much more. Be careful on your estimation with any function related to GUI, trust me. And I'm really glad I chose to stick with the legacy OnGUI of Unity, it's actually made the GUIvery flexible and still loyal to the artist's design.




4. Matching

The Elo matching implementation is really fun, we create a room which only allow a range of ELO different from the first player in the room and wider the range every 15 secs to make the chance for a match bigger, nothing different from what everyone is doing.

Then there is a minor problem, when the second player come and start finding room, the first player is still creating room, so the second player didn't find it. He created another room. After 15 second, the fist player stop and start to search for an open room, but the 2nd player also stopped and start searching. The process would repeat forever. So we combat this by changing the waiting interval from 15 sec to a random number, 2 players will likely find each other event though they start searching at the same time.

5. Battle flow

Like any other multiplayers turn based game, we implemented a turn timeout feature almost like competitive chest, nothing else to say, all turn based games must have that .

We also add a regen functions for both side base, so you don't have to battle to the death, you can now retreat and come back later, this function was introduced to enable more strategy options and we always feel like retreat is always an option in war.

The destroyed units will now have a chance to drop items, it's just like RPG game, and the reason we think it's necessary is to make some surprise gift for players. Because non-predicted gifts bring more joys.

6. Camera

Apparently most of our testers hate it when the camera is locked for ANY reason, they don't care if we locked it on the important event, they need to be able to move around if they want, they need full time control, so we compromised, make the camera auto move to important event position but enable user to take control and override camera action anytime, another lesson learned.

7. World Map

We started to add variety of game modes to the world map, and reduce match duration on "Mob battle", helped greatly, reduced player's exhaustion after long battles, profited.

World Map has a total make over in term of graphic, here's how it looks now, hope it caught your eyes



Each region will now has a specialty that improve your army power in general, and you could upgrade you region to further improve it. It could be focused on Military (affect the units directly), Technology (after the battle rules) and Economy (more money for campaigning and upgrading your army).

We also generate random name for each region because it's fun.

8. Tutorial

We remove more lines from tutorial dialog since our testers seem to skips most of them, hope this help, I can't be so sure about this so I can only hope.

9. Skills

We focus more on the representation of the skill, make sure players understand what they do, change the number texture for easier tracking how much damages the skills did, add status icons cause by skill, we planned on adding a battle log also. The game could be great and still no one will love it if they don't understand it.

10. Lab

Crafting Lab GUI changed, some love it and could understand how to use it right away, some don't. We don't know how to react yet so have a look and tell us if you could understand it. Any help is appreciated!


11. Balance

We reached the balance state, and made some huge change. First change is about units stats. Before they have strong stats from the beginning and only got slightly better after each level. Not they start weak and each level make them way stronger, it make you feel good when you level up an unit. We also make it's easier to level up, make the battle flow change constantly.

We also change the skills to make more position-shift skills like slide or knockback, to remove enemy from important positions and change the tide of the battle. We still feel like it's not enough though but planned to add more units to fill that role instead of making more changes.

The battle difficulty is also balanced, there will be an easy mode where it's hard to win and a normal mode where you actually have to think. We also make sure the game is harder as player progress in campaign.

The first tactic point also changed, it will appear at the middle line of the battle to make player less frustrating about it's random location, but the following tactic points will appear randomly anywhere to keep the unpredictable element.

We also change any unit that similar to other unit. If there are 2 ranged attacker with high damage, we will change 1 attacker to scout type, has high speed, movement but lower attack so there are more strategic choice in the units selection phase.

12. GUI

As stated before GUI improvement focuses on making sure players understand what going on.
And we added objective to the game so players will never feel lost, also nothing special but it's necessary.
We also make sure players notice any change on the battle general's state.
Whenever players get new items, we will put an "!" mark on the units management menu so players know there are something new there. We did it all for you, players.

13. Battle ground

The battle grounds were random generated, and every shape has equal chance to appear. The problem with it is it'll make every battlegrounds as the same, if every items are unique, none of them are. So we define what kind of battle ground shapes are common and random more of that. One in a while a completely different shape will appear and make you feel wow, this look so weird and unique. Maybe.

The Defend skills were completely random before. But we changed it, make it slightly favors the user whom activated it more, just slightly to make an unpredictable situation.

*Defend skills are skill that not related to the units, have long cooldown time and usually affect the whole battleground, but has a chance to screw the user up if use it at the wrong time.


14. World Map Events

We made change to the world events, make sure player could always affect the event outcome. But we still lack events, and don't have enough resource to create more, hopefully our Early access won't tank

15. Bug fix

When we first decide to focus on multiplayer mode we thought we only have to send command between player. That was naive, we totally forgot about random factor. Like a skill from Wingenal that shoots 10 bullets and each bullet has random damage, each client will then auto random the damage, thats was bad. And there are like 20 skills like that so we have to create a batch of random number from server then send to both client at the start of the match, works like a charm, lesson learned.

There is another novice mistake worth mention here: we send command in sequential order, the only problem is they do not arrive at the same order and they send, so the match is out of sync, and what make it bad is it rarely happen on good networks. The fix is to send the order number along with them and wait for the command with the right order number to arrive to continue.

When we try a multiplay battle with Jonas from Germany, things are getting weird, there is an unit that move 10 times before other could move. Turn out his speed was 10 times of other unit. But that can't be true, the config side didn't say that, most units have speed = 1, that unit has speed = "1.2". Turn out the euro system culture treat 1.2 as 12 and load the config file accordingly. So we have to force using a global number format. Make sure you learn from our mistake and always check for culture format.

=================================================

That's all folks

[thuyquai]

Update 22: Battle log

We continue working with the battle log today and its took longer than expected. Well its even take long just to asset which should be on the log and which should not, how detailed is good enough for users to know what's going on and not too much so users will just ignore it altogether. I guess the only way for now is just to make sure the information is enough for me to keep track of the battle.

[thuyquai]

Update 23: Reconnect multiplayer

I have to add reconnect function when a player disconnect today. It's kinda hard to know if I have covered all arena so a lots of testing is needed. Thankfully I'm not the only person in the room so testing is quite easy.

But found a totally unrelated bug today. Turn out it's the cause of 2 for loop.

Here is how it looks:

Code:

for(int i =0; i < 2; i++)
{
   for(int hitDataIndex = 0; hitDataIndex < hitDatas.Length; hitDataIndex++)
   {
       DoSomething(hitDatas[i]); //[color=green] <- the devil is here, don't use i as index, its a bad habit[/color]
   }
}

So restrain yourself from using i as a runner in for loop as much as possible, I hope this helped some fellow developers :D

[thuyquai]

Update 24: Finish touches before early access

1. Bug fixes:
 We continues to fixing bugs to make the game runs non-stop on early access build. One of the worth mention bug is the out of sync bugs from messages in multiplayer. We didn't put enough detail in those messages and hope that the message queue comes in the right order. It's not. So we put in a lots of constraint for when will the message be processed instead of leaving it to faith. And indexing helps too.

 More spelling and grammar mistakes fixed by our friends.

2. Items drop chance:
 It's kinda hard to balance items drop so we added a self fix system. It's simple, the enemy will mostly drop item they uses so players will keep up with them and also can't surpass the enemy by a large margin.

 We also make sure some chips will drop early and some certain kind of chip could only be dropped later in the game so players could easily notice and be happy when they appear. The problem with us is we can't feel happy anymore since we got everything as a dev, this is a blind shot.

3. Feedback collecting
 We have put a feedback form inside the game, lets see if anyone care :D

4. Overheat effect
 The heat is an important stat of a robot and we finally able to make it clearer for player. When your robot uses skill, it's heat raise. When the heat reaches 100, they are overheated and can't use skill, the Heat doesn't stop at 100, it could be 150 if you use a skill that cost 60 heat and your robot is 90 degree already, it'll reach 150 and it's will take a very long time to goes back to 100. It's a way to prevent a strong robot from spamming their skills too many times and it works as intended after some play test :D.

Have a looks and tell us if it's easy to understand:


5. Chip mechanic
A lots of useless chips have been fixed since they depended on situation too heavily. Not much can be said about this since these only matter after few hours of playtime.

6. Camera
Although camera shake make the game looks great, it's also make it hard to know what's going on so we reduce it's appear occasion.

7. Object pool
We have been using objects pool since the beginning of the project but we learned something new yesterday :D. If the object changed it's too much, should just destroy it and create a new one instead of trying to reset it's state and put it back in the pool. Too many thing to care for and we got good devices nowadays. Worth the guilt!




 

[thuyquai]

Ground Breakers is released on Steam Early Access

Storepage: Store.steampowered.com

This is an old trailer but still
Why Early Access?


“We believe in the wisdom of the crowds. We also believe a game should suits the taste of many people as possible. So we created a game with many ways to growth, and need your help to point the best direction. It could focus heavily on online competitive battles or deep, re-playable campaigns with multiple aspects of war or a units collection type of game.

The early access is also a way for us to keep moving forward steadily. That does not mean we will stop developing if we didn't receive enough support. This is our dream game and we have been devoted to it for more than a year so we will just find a way to finish it preferably with you involved.”
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“3 months for finishing what we are pending but actually it's totally depend on your feedback.

There is one thing you could be sure about, we will try to deliver each new feature with no game-stopping bug.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?


“We plan on staying until we got the single-player campaign right, everything polished and we will release it as a full version. And even after release, we will just keep adding feature until the game got its recognition!”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?


“The current game focuses heavily on multi-players battles and optimizing your army so those parts are already polished.

The single-player campaign on the other hand still lack content and we intent to create a dynamic stories so each time you play, not only the world map is different, the stories, major events, the characters, allies, enemies is also new.

Here is the list:
Single match core mechanism: 100%
Map Design: 100%
Chip system: 100%
Craft system: 100% (but we have some interesting idea to upgrade this)
Multi-players: 90% (fully functional for normal battle, some play modes are not available yet)
Campaign: 40% (Need more dynamic events)
”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?


“We plan to change the price depend on how many new content and features we developed. But that number wont be large.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?


“As we already said: We believe in the wisdom of the crowds. We will ask you for new unit ideas, new battleground ideas, new chips ideas, and ultimately, new features to enhance whichever experience you enjoy the most. It's all about experience. You tell us which make you feel good and we try to deliver it.”

================================

The development will continue as usual except we will have to update builds frequently

[thuyquai]

Early Access Update 1: Minig0d

We introduce to you the new god in town - Minig0d, the master of space and time. Minig0d could create a Private Dimension on the battlefield and manipulate the reality within it. It possess physical shape reflects its creator's desire to be closed to their deity.

    Skill1 - Placement: Deals damage to an enemy and push them back by 3 squares. In Private Dimension, Minig0d could use this skill to places any unit in the same dimension anywhere.

    Skill2 - Time: Slow an enemy's speed. In Private Dimension, Minig0d could use this skill to <color=yellow>stops</color> a unit inside the same dimension for a few turns, stop their skill cooldown, heat reduction, HP Regeneration.

    Skill3 - Private Dimension: Creates a Private Dimension. In this dimension, Minig0d could move to any location and use skills in their advanced form.


This support unit could easily prevent enemy from capturing tactic point and isolate any unit by using its "Placement" skill.

Have a look:





Enter the game to find parts and craft him to try out.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

New version detail

1. Fix bugs:

    Fix a bug when the ground breaks and Tactic point spawn at a unit's position
    Fix a bug when AI counted the wrong number of living unit
    Fix a bug when a unit dead while still performing a skill
    Fix a bug when Antibot's trap still stays on the battlefield even after being fully destroyed without durability left



2. Graphic Update:

    Update Yeti NPC Model - Yeti is an NPC which could be summoned by player on Singleplayer mode. Yeti devote his life to the eradication of Skills and Magic trick. He will throw snow balls to any unit's face if that unit try to use skill.

    Update Fortress Model - Now could be destroyed with style



3. Gameplay Update:

    Sensei will always use Wrenchy in Scenario mode
    Added Minig0d unit



------------------------------------------------------------------

We will post a road map for everything that we want to implemented in the game soon.

[thuyquai]

Early Access Update 2: Descriptions revamp

With the help of our friend Jack Mayol from Germany, we have been able to revised and fixed almost all grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in Robot's descriptions, skills descriptions and chips descriptions as well as all dialogs in game.

I think that will boost player's enjoyment greatly, no more eating on a dirty plate!

For detailed bugs fix which I know won't interest any of you here unless you owned the game, check here:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/376250/announcements/detail/42020744032327318

P/S: is there anyone here?