A Simple Talent Will Do!

Here is another update about the game.

Status Effects 

So I've been working slowly and like usual I got distracted and decided to add in some new status effects to make the game more fun to play. So here is a list with old and new status effects that I hope will be in the game one way or other.

Burned - lose 1 health each turn.

Poisoned - lose 1 health and 1 attack each turn. This effect can not kill.

Blinded - When attacking you have a 50% chance to miss your target.

Confused - When moving or attacking, there is a 30% chance that you will move the wrong way.

Frozen - Can't move

Rusted - Lose 1 defence each turn

Bleeding - +2 damage on all attacks that hit this unit

Cursed - On Death re spawn this unit.

I'm hoping to come up with more as I go but hopefully these will be a good starting point and make units with these status effects more attractive. 

Art

I'm still struggling to decide in what direction I want the game to look. I've taken a look at low poly models which are easy to make but I'm just not really a fan of the look. Full high quality models are completely out of the question as I don't have the skill or the time to make enough of them with how many units are currently in the game. The one thing I'm slightly interested in is voxel models OR in other words 3D pixel art. I can't draw but I'm hoping I can create some nice simple ones as I think they would look quite cool. I have created some simple board grids with voxel art and I'm hoping to slowly work at making some decent looking human models but I know I lack any artist talent so its going to take alot of time but luckily I'm determined to make this game work even if it only sells to 1 person.

A quick and small update

A Small Update

So for some background in my first post I mentioned that demons would be able to corrupt enemy units for a certain period of time. I've updated the system to make it fairer so units will now only be lost/corrupted for 2 turns before regaining their loyalty (they will however keep the corrupted tag so demons can interact with them in different ways). The way the old system worked was that corruption could be an infinitive number and as long as it stayed above 10 than the unit could be corrupted forever or in till that unit died. In some situations corruption could be applied contentiously which is unfair and so was changed to the current system.

I've been doing a lot of work on making sure that each faction has something unique to offer and one of the first things I pointed out was that knights would be a buffing faction which relies on each other to slowly build up their strength. I've now got a fully working temp buff system so units may only be buffed for a certain amount of turns before losing that stat bonus. The elves are also getting their own unique feature which is an ability to spawn a natures spirit after killing 3 enemy of nature (which include any faction outside of elf, fairy or beast) or when three allies to nature(elf, fairy or beast) are killed.

One faction I worked hard on but have not mentioned till now is the adventurers faction. This is a rather unique faction which gains increased abilities/stats or addition resources by completing quests. They are one of the more unique factions in that adventurers do not have any starting abilities that make any adventurer different from any other adventurer outside of cost and starting stats. Inside of this faction are supporters which will be able to do different things like making a quest easier or increase the reward provided. Quests can be anything from killing a certain amount of enemies, to surviving a set amount of turns and a few more. I want to add more quests but I don't want too many quests as the quests are given randomly and too much RNG would be a bad thing.

That's alot of the stuff I've been working on but I think in the future I will post more about specific units and go more in-depth about their design and abilities. I hope you have a fun filled day and I'll see you whenever I remember this blog exists.           

OH! YES! MY BLOG!

So to cut a long story short. I've been lazy and busy at the same time. With the world currently being in the state it is well... some things have had to take a back burner and one of those things was my game unfortunately. However I'm back and ready to talk about some things I've been doing since getting back into the grove.

I have quite a few things to mention. The newest development is the unique mechanic for beasts. I was really struggling to give them an identity and I finally have the "confidence" mechanic. This mechanic unlocks ability(s) for a beast to use as long as an ally beast(s) are in a 2 tile radius. This mechanic is inspired by real life animals such as lions and wolves. If a wolf is on its own than attacking its prey is unlikely but when its pack mates arrive than well they get more confident and take risks while helping each other. I'm still testing this feature out but hopefully it'll stick around.

I also finished the mages unique feature which is choosing what spell to cast. Just like the mech's a selection screen will appear and you as the player will get to choose which spell to cast. An example of the kind spells will be polymorphing, summoning and giving status aliments to enemies.This should offer some more unique spells and give you the player some interesting choices to make. I am experimenting with more unique spells/ability at the minute.

I have a working AI system in place but it is rather bare bones and there are some things the AI can't do that. It is also so generic as in that it rarely attacks and prefers to more eco focused but as a general AI it seems to work. There are sometimes hiccups with it as it sometimes just doesn't make a choice which is something I'm trying to pin down. I really want to release a demo to show off my work but its still got "programmers" art and not in a state I'm happy to do just yet and I have decided on a final art style which I'll eventually show off. My art is pretty bad so don't expect anything anytime soon.

Anyway as always stay safe and I'll be seeing you around.

The Mech Faction - A Closer Look

"Father? What happened to the dwarfs?"

"If I remember correctly, they had an accident and their whole city went boom! They say the blaze went on for months. By the time the fire went out only the dwarfs finest creations withstood its fury. Now lets put you to bed."

"One more question father, Did you ever meet a dwarf?"

"HAHA! no my boy I wasn't around back than. It must have been atleast 200 years ago. I only know the story thanks to my grandpa."

The Mechs 

The Mechs were created by the dwarfs and were built for any purpose they desired. Ofcourse the last dwarf was 150-200 years ago after their only city went up in flames. After the blaze there just wasn't enough survivors to repopulate and so the dwarfs went extinct. However the mechs, their finest creations, are still around and have walked the desert near the now dead city for years. The mechs can be deadly and have killed alot of people. Some do appear to have a rather high intelligence which alot of mages suspect to have been created by dark arts. In recent years they appear to be gathering and the once dead city is now a city of machines and the old dwarf forges are blazing once more. For what purpose we don't know.    

Okay! That's the simple lore out of the way. Lets talk about their factions identity. They are all about building and making weapons to attach to themselves or give to allies in battle. This is the main attraction for this faction. All weapons made do cost iron equal to the amount of the stats it provides.

The item names are randomly generated from a choice of words (Max upgrade is three for now). Reforge costs iron. Not all units get the choice for reforge.

How to play this faction

When playing this faction you want to generate as many items as possible and have a good supply of iron coming in to make the weapons. Items can buff in any of the four stats and have a max increase of 3. There are multiple ways of generating items. Some mechs will gain items when killing an enemy and some may spawn with you choosing what items/stats you want. Whenever choosing an item you are given 3 choices and some mechs will allow you to reforge the items for different stat buffs. 

Their early game is generally weak and can be expensive. Their mid game is where they shine as you should have a good supply of iron to make weapons and be able to buff them to the highest degree. Once you hit late-game and resources start to dwindle it can be difficult for mechs to build any kind of pressure due to them being generally weak without a lot of support to buff them.

Unit Highlights

So lets show off 2 of the units this faction has to offer. The first is the Recycler which I think is shown off in the starting post (ooopppsss). Anyway this unit you want in play for late game. It doesn't offer alot in terms of stats and is more of an eco unit to help maintain production of those units you'll need by putting dead mechs back into the iron from where they came. You may notice that it is rather expensive unit this is because I feel that unit is one of the more powerful eco units in the game. 

The next unit I want to show off is the mech factory unit which has alot of health but lacks in all other stats and can't move or attack as its a building and they generally don't move or so my doctors keep telling me.... anyway this unit is great to buff multiple units at once. Ofcourse this is expensive on your iron.The buff radius is one tile which is for balance reasons as well as to allow the player to choose which mech's they want buff. You generally want to place it in a safe place on your side of the board and make sure it is well protected.

                                                   

Thanks for reading. Hopefully you are all in good health!

Some Factions Explored!

"Our history is unknown. We have no knowledge past the last 400 years. Whether this was done on purpose or accident we can not say"  - H-M

Hi there I'm back and today I want to give a brief summary of some of the core factions. I don't want to delve too deep as the game is still in an alpha state so things may change. 

The Knights

"The knights of Lapis are loyal to one man. Their king and some would say messiah. He has upheld peace for the last 30 years and infighting in the country is but a memory." 

The knights in the game are all about buffing and helping each other. This means the faction as a whole is about buffing each other and over-coming hardships as a team. While buffing allies is not a knight only thing, It is heavily reserved to this faction so if you enjoy slowly building large buff men than this is the faction for you.

The Bandit/Outlaw

"You can only hope they'll steal from you and not take you to their hideout. The hideout can only mean slavery and anyone would prefer death over that fate." 

The bandit faction as a whole is a bunch of misfits forced into a life of crime. The factions main feature is the unique ability to steal resources from the other player. This is mostly done on attacking enemies but there are exceptions. When playing this faction you are not as strong as others but you can stall your enemies by reducing their resources. This is the only faction where units do not cost gold up front but cost gold every few turns. Of course if you run out of gold than well they will abandon you so gaining control of gold resources is the main goal when playing.  

The Demons

"Some would say death is a blessing over a demons touch." 

The demon is a faction which can corrupt its enemies into turning against their own allies. This is called the "corruption". This feature is unique to the demons and allows them to be a rather aggressive faction. Turning allies against allies takes time and corruption will reduce other multiple turns so if an ally is near being corrupted you can withdraw them from the fight to helpful stop them turning. This feature is being adjusted all the time so I won't go into details how it works for now.   

Any questions or feedback is welcome and hope you follow this project. 

An Introduction!

Hi there! This is my first post using blogger to help document my progress for my game. Lets start with an introduction. I am 25 and live in the United Kingdom. I have a passion for video games, anime and anything nerdy. I only got into game development in the past few years after I decided to create a game for my degree. After making a really bad tower defence game I fell in love with the process of game making and programming really sat well with me. I'm by no means an expert and I still have a lot to learn. That's my introduction now lets talk game!

A basic screenshot showing the game. Resource tiles are coloured differently and the lighter they are the less resources you gain from controlling them. (yellow = gold) (red = food) (purple = iron). The grey box in the left is an event holder which will show when abilities are used who used them as well as when damage is dealt etc. It is in the early stages of development. Tiles will change to the players colours but it currently doesn't work when units first spawn in. 

About a year ago I was following along with a simple chess tutorial in Unity and I really wanted to expand on it and so I added in some extra rules and features and I'm now at the point where it's no longer chess but something a lot bigger. It still follows the main principles of what chess is which is that each unit has a move set assigned to it and can only move or attack inside of that range as well as being a 2 player game only and while other things might change this will not.

The White squares represent movement allowed by the unit selected

Unlike chess my units have stats and cool abilities which is where the RPG elements comes in. These stats are health, attack, defence and pierce. Health and attack should be easy enough  to understand what they do, the other two may confuse you so I'll explain. Defence will negate attack and if the defence of a unit is higher or equal to the attack than the attacking units attack will deal 0 damage. Pierce is only able to destroy defence and is done before the damage calculation. So if your unit has 1 attack and 1 pierce and the opponent has 1 defence than you will still do 1 damage to that enemy unit. I also mentioned abilities there are a wide variety of them which I'll discuss later but I'll give some examples to show what I mean.

Health(top left), Attack(top right), Defence(bottom left) and pierce (bottom right). In the top is the units name and below that is the units faction. The white square is the units image which this one doesn't currently have. The ability description is on the right side and the bottom left part displays abilities and any status effects the unit has. The bottom right numbers are used for tracking how many turns an ability requires to use/activate. 

You have counter attack which allows a unit to hit back when attacked as long as it doesn't die. You also have dodge which allows a unit when attacked to move to another tile to avoid taking damage. You also have spawning effects, turn based effects and a lot more but some abilities are locked to a faction for balance and lore reasons.



Chess is a game about positioning and checkmating the opposite king. My game is to kill the opposing king before they kill yours.You may be wondering how do pieces/units work Are they spawned at the start like chess or is it something different? Here is a basic summary - Each king is allowed to spawn a unit from a pool.You can pre-select your units before the game starts or enter a random mode which shuffles the units you can spawn each turn randomly.

Rerolling costs 2 gold and adding in additional units costs 10 gold. (Screenshot only displays for the random game mode)

Pieces are spawned in a clockwise rotation around the king and cost resources. Resources? What are these resources? In Territory there are three resources gold, food and iron. When a piece moves to a tile or is spawned on a tile you gain control of that tile and at start of each turn you gain the resources provided by that tile. Resources are not unlimited and will run dry which fits into the lore which I'll discuss in the future.

When hovering over a unit it will display this box showing you details before you purchase it

The bottom number represents how many resources you made at the start of your turn. The top number is the amount of resources you have.

You may notice that there is an allowed moves in the screenshot above. What is it you ask? Well unlike chess you may move multiple pieces and spawning in any additional units will cost you a move point. This system is going to see some changes in the future depending on feedback and how I feel after some extreme playtesting.

I will say this now the game is still in the early stages and will need alot of fine tuning as well as me learning art cause currently everything you see is a placeholder I found online and is not a true representation of what the finished product will look like. I will only allow access to it when all placeholder art has been replaced and any major bugs I can find are gone.

Thanks for reading.... If I remember I have a blogger I'll try and update weekly with lore and explaining any major changes to the game.