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[AlexVsCoding]

Why Unity instead of, say Godot or Defold? I guess mostly the plugins you mentioned?

Thanks for the question! So the main reason was Unity was already something I was teaching at University level, and the process of skilling up on it for that was enough of a push to get on board with the tool. By the time I started on the Unity port, I already had the knowledge of how to use most of the systems within Unity, was just getting the actual programming logic figured out (Arguably even now my weakest area within the tool). Admittedly I’ve not touched Stencyl in probably over a month which is unprecedented for me and shows that I’ve managed to transition quicker than I thought! The hardest next step is going to have to shift to programming from using Bolt, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!

Exciting news! MORSE is now avaialable on itch.io to download in association with Indiecade!

Grab the game here: https://alexvscoding.itch.io/morse

Check out the trailer too to get you in the mood!




More updates soon!

[JobLeonard]

Good trailer. The mood feels appropriately depressing, given the subject matter (but in an engaging way)

[AlexVsCoding]

Good trailer. The mood feels appropriately depressing, given the subject matter (but in an engaging way)

Haha, thanks. There's definitely a melancholy vibe to the project, though the main gameplay audio is a little bit more upbeat! Luke did a cracking job getting the mood right, went few a good number of variants.

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks! Tonight at 8pm-10pm BST there will be the Indiecade awards ceremony, with any luck we'll be in with a chance to win something, but if not we've had a fantastic week and in general are just humbled by the nomination. Here's what Indiecade had to say about the project, featuring Colleen Macklin!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks! So Indiecade is over, I've enjoyed a pleasant weekend off to recover after what has been an intense few weeks leading up to the event! I'll be taking the rest of this week off from Morse related stuff for my wellbeing but also to catch up on neglected commitments elsewhere. Before I do go, here's the link to our monthly update (For September). We've more or less had October off from the project (in terms of development) to focus on Indiecade, nethertheless we will kick things back off once things have settled down. I'm heavily determined to not let the project lapse into another gap, but I need to evaulate what to focus on next (Given that the vertical slice is effectively done and the next steps are significantly more ambitious). Stay tuned for more soon!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!

So it's going to likely be another relatively quiet week (Have a backlog of admin stuff to do followed next week by development!) but nevertheless, figured I'd bob some more content on here for you folks to check out! Here's a video of me and the team talking about the inspirations for the project that we produced for IndieCade, hope you find it interesting and stay tuned for more content next week!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks! So just as a heads up, we've been using this weekend to plan out the next steps of the project (from December to March) in which we have a lot of exciting stuff we plan to work in! Development will be resuming next week and with that, expect more updates!

Because we didn't do development on the project in October, the monthly update will likely just be a minute long (or I'll just skip to November as other than Indiecade there's not much to report!)

Stay tuned for more soon!

[JobLeonard]

Just sat down to watch the video, very nice summary of the project!

(Love that you already got one salty downvote... gee I wonder what provoked that... totally not suspecting it's a man with very fragile masculinity at all )

[AlexVsCoding]

Just sat down to watch the video, very nice summary of the project!

(Love that you already got one salty downvote... gee I wonder what provoked that... totally not suspecting it's a man with very fragile masculinity at all )

Haha, indeed, pretty pathetic.

Another quick update:
+ Pause Menu: Still very much work in progress but coming together, really looking forward to refining it into delicious UI (Staggered button spawn, sliding bits). The settings menu is currently in the mockup phase, where I'll be adding features such as auto-send sensitivity and a bunch of configurations for Morse enthusiasts!
+ Main Menu: Takes you to the main menu from the splash, giving you the option to go to training mode, adjust settings and quit! 
+ Source control implemented: It's long overdue, but now the project has protection with source control! I had a scare with setting up controllers and broke mouse and keyboard input, so got it set up after with the help from Alex Rose!

That's all for now, should hopefully get most of Friday to work on the UI further! Stay tuned for more soon.

[JobLeonard]

Will I be able to interact with the menu using morse code as input?

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!

So it's been an absolutely bonkers month, hasn't really relented yet but figured I'd get a post in to keep things flowing on here! (Approaching a month without content!)

I'll be trying to post more frequent smaller blogs rather than the behemoths I usually accomplish as it's less pressure on my end to produce them at a time where I'm knackered! Having said that, this one should be a decent chunk!

One of the areas in serious need of improvement has been the units. previously the units were quite deadpan, slow and lacked interactivity. The unit tool I've created too was bloated and meant basic destructible objects/specialist units had a bunch of unneeded settings (Speed, halt whilst firing, range). The health systems were also pretty simplistic, each unit taking one basic hit because of the rigid animation setup.

Here's what I did to address these problems:
+ Split the health logic into its own block: This means it can be used more broadly for obstacles, decorations and specialist units without loads of reference errors/unassigned variables.
+ Death flashes now set by material instead of animation: Infantry were defaulting to their death animation of receiving the first hit of damage (which disables their collision), so to remedy that any damage above 0 health will trigger a flash. Because this is built into the now separated logic block, it'll apply to any object damaged with a flash.
+ Replaced the infantry unit animation: It was something I wanted to previously implement before Indiecade but I ran out of time. This was done courtesy of @SinclairStrange in time for the event which was appreciated. Because the units looked ridiculous running whilst moving extremely slowly, I made the following change...
+ New unit movement speeds: As mentioned above, I needed updated speed logic for the units to match the animations, so I increased their speed. Because I'm using forces it looked really sloppy (characters accelerated slowly into a run instead of bolting into it) so I added an initial burst of acceleration when they started running which then tailed off with a lerp. This was good and all, but I now found myself with a new problem: The units were moving really fast and even me with a lot of time in the game couldn't hold off their attacks.
Suppressing fire: To remedy this, units will spend a lot more time standing and shooting (I have a loop that once the unit has opened fire on a soldier in range, there's a 3 in 4 chance they'll fire again). This means there are a lot more bullets zinging around the battlefield and also means targets are actually easier to hit than before (And actually differentiates the combat tempo from the naval fights).

+ Machine guns: This was one of the features cut for Indiecade because it wasn't crucial, but I've finally managed to get them implemented again. It was important for me to get them working because to be blunt, trench warfare is over too quickly without them countering the now rapid charges from no man's land. I was a little apprehensive about implementing them (with raycasting deciding where they'd shoot) but for now, I've instead opted for a constant peppering of fire with the barrel of the gun pivoting back and forth across a 40-degree range. What's nice is they mean that combat can actually have a lot more going on and when they're destroyed it massively raises the stakes.
+ Sniper: This is very early on, but basically it's a static unit that sits in no man's land and will emerge to fire and be visible temporarily before disappearing again. They'll kill most units in one shot if not destroyed before they fire. Still very WIP but can see missions of clearing out sniper nests or countering ambushes. May have them scurry onto the battlefield then disappear when they find their hide.
+ Added extra health to units in the trenches: To give a tactical advantage to being in a trench, units spawned/stationed in trenches will get +2 health (Meaning they can sustain multiple hits). In time I'll have units move/react to where gunfire is being bought down, but for now, it'll do.
+ Adjusted the fire point: Until this update, units fired from their stomachs. I shifted it to a child object at the end of their weapon barrels.
+ Simplifying animation states: I also standardised the animation sets for the various units (Now have idle, firing, moving and hit), putting them in folders specific for the unit type but keeping the animation names simple (E.g. Not EnemyInfantryIdle, but Idle in the folder EnemyInfantry).
+ Grid Adjustments: As a subtle last fix too, I've cranked the opacity of the grid waaaaaay down as it was making it hard to see the characters. Definitely an improvement.


Here's a before and after of the land combat:

BEFORE


AFTER


That's all for now, I'm mid-way through doing this new integration so should hopefully be more updates soon as I populate the battlefield!

[JobLeonard]

Sounds like the game plays faster now. How do you balance the "speed" of the game with the inherent limitations on speed for giving command in morse code? I imagine that reaction time works a bit differently in this game, even if you're really fast at telegraphing (?) commands

[AlexVsCoding]

Sounds like the game plays faster now. How do you balance the "speed" of the game with the inherent limitations on speed for giving command in morse code? I imagine that reaction time works a bit differently in this game, even if you're really fast at telegraphing (?) commands

It's a really tricky balance! It may turn out what I have above is too fast for regular users. Other stuff that should hopefully make things less harsh is taking less on an absolutist state for the win/lose states. At the moment, if any enemy reaches the British lines, you lose. Having instead a threshold/healthbar of 3 or 4 may be more appropriate and give a little more wiggle room for players with less experience. Alternatively, having players not instantly win for getting 1 unit across might also be a good idea (showing what the winstate is) may be a good shout.

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks! Here's the latest monthly video discussing the latest features we've integrated and what we've been up to. Hope you find it interesting! If you're wondering where the October video is, not only did we produce a metric tonne of video content/media, we also took most of that month off to recover from the push for Indiecade.

I'll be doing a little bit more work on the game before Christmas, so hopefully will squeeze in another update before then!

[AlexVsCoding]

BEFORE


AFTER


Hey Folks! Just a quick post to show the revamped overworld view! Was torn between doing a diorama style overview of the mansion and doing an announcement board. I opted for the latter since it was more grounded in the player perspective, allowed for more narrative texture in the form of information attached to the board and was less demanding from production (Just need to make documents, rather than entire scenes of animated characters/rooms/furniture).

For the layout of the map itself, I used the blueprint of Audley End, a manor house in East Anglia which was home to the remnants of the polish airforce during the Second World War.

This is still a first pass of the design but it's significantly more compelling than the placeholder setup I had before!

This'll likely be my last update before Christmas, but thanks again for following the project this year, really appreciate the support.

[JobLeonard]

Narrative texture via notes on the announcement board sounds like a great idea!

[Alain]

Hi Alex! The new overworld view (an your game in general) looks beautiful. I think the diorama style overview could also have worked, but the board works nicely and your reasons for going that route make total sense. Keep up the great work!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks! Hope you had a lovely Christmas, I'll be doing a bit more work on MORSE before the new year, just wanted to show you the new title screen and update to the main menu. It's really strange that the title screen took so long to update, it was one of the first elements I created for the project (at a time where I didn't really understand Unity), so now that I've spent a lot of time in the engine (and with the animation tools) I was really able to go to town. I broke the higher resolution version of the title card into individual letters and animated them separately in the editor, then used a black mask to cover the underline and reveal it in sync with the letters.

For the main menu I originally wanted to get a network of pipes/splines all interwoven and have messages travelling along said strings, but it proved too complicated for me to implement at this point (Have got the contact of someone who can implement it if I decide to go ahead with it). Instead I opted for an explosion of dots and dashes, which looks tasty and also is thematically relevant with the game content (Explosions called down by Morse code commands).

I'll be working on the air battlefield tomorrow, excited to do so and cautiously optimistic! Stay tuned for more soon.

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey folks!

Just a quick post showing off some exciting new elements implemented: Air combat! We now have the sky battlefield in very early stages and biplanes which arc across the map. It's been a delight designing this so far and I'll be having more info on it as things increase in depth, but here's a gif so far:



As a heads up, I'm going to be doing 70 projects of marking over the next month so updates might be a little less frequent for a while, but we'll see!