Turn-Based Tactic Framework Update#7

Another week gone by and it's getting there. I'm almost at the stage where I'm mostly doing polishing and applying finishing touch. I'm hoping to get it done in two weeks time. I wont be releasing any demo now. Instead I'll only get to that when I'm done with everything. Also I'm planning on working a a video to show how everything work when that happen. For now, please just enjoy the screen shots I included in this post.

A lot of work has been put into polishing the interface. The most notable addition is perhaps the option/pause menu. HUD wise, more information is now available on screen at a glance. There's quite a lot of information to be displayed to be honest (who would have thought eh?). That just make you appreciate how hard is it to design a clean and intuitive interface that show all the vital information without getting too busy or confusing. Unit basic status, tile bonus, attack information and that's just the on screen information. I'm still working on the Unit Info panel. Even though it's there in the last update, It's still missing information like tile bonus and active effect.

I've redone a lot of code restructuring for the past week, to keep it more organised and simple so it make more sense to any potential user of the  framework. While at it, I've added more configuration option and make the corresponding interface for them. It's really sort of a clean up of the code in development stage and packaging into a end-user ready stage.

Of course, the framework is getting polished here and there while I work on the more notable stuff. There are a lot of small but significant changes/additions which I don't keep track of. Most of them wont even be visible on the surface. They are mostly about giving the framework the flexibility for future extension/addition.

The thing that are still on my to do list for now are completing unit information panel, rework the unit placement screen, finalize ability system (This is the real pain here) and finally, and this is just a thought,  let AI use unit ability.

Overall, it's still quite some way from the vision I have for this framework. There are still many things that I like to work on and add. But I'll keep that for myself for now. At least it is a pretty solid turn base framework for now. Hopefully I'll be wrapping things up this week and start to write the documentation next week.

Latest Release

2 updates has just been released on AssetStore, TDTK and InputTouches

The update to InputTouches is minor really. It just to fix up 2 minor bugs. They are as follow:

• Fix bug where third mouse button click is recognised as right-mouse click
• Fix bug where multi-finger drag event wont be triggered if more than 1 fingers landed on the screen at the same time.

The update to TDTK is basically a fix to the recent update of v2.2.3. It's just to fix a few bugs with AbilityManager. As well as getting rid of the warning message when used in Unity4.1.

Both of them are now live on AssetStore.

Turn-Based Tactic Game Update#6

Finally I manage to put together a build worth showing (link at the end of this post). It is quite an improvement over the last one but it's still pretty basic. You can probably tell from the build that I spent most of the time I have last week nailing down the details. The game is playable and much more interesting now. It's by no mean balance of course, and there are still lots of rough edges that need polished and definitely bugs that have slip my attention. But hey, it's still a wip.

Although I've add a lot more stuff in term of code since the last build. The thing is I simply don't have the asset/resource at this point to show every features. Still missing lots of things like animation, audio, visual effects, more model for unit/collectible object, and the list goes on. But I guess that is something to worry about further down the lane, after the base framework is finalised.

For now, please just enjoy what it is.

>> WebPlayer Link <<

'f' to autoplace unit during unit placement

q and e to rotate the camera, mouse wheel to zoom

hold spacebar to toggle units overlay

'Escape' or right-click to cancel ability
right-click on a unit in game to show more information
'Reset' at the unit selection screen reset all units and points

Turn-Based Tactic Game Update#5

A major step forward this week. I've made quite a significant leap forward in several aspects. Starting with a few tweaks to the game mechanic. I 've got to pretty close to a state where I'm quite happy with. There are now various attack mode for the unit which is range, melee and hybrid. The first two are quite obvious, hybrid is basically for unit which can do both range and melee attack based on the range of the target. Then there's the counter attack mechanism, which allow unit to perform a counter attack to the attacker. All this combine with the abilities system, I guess it provide sufficient amount of flexibility to create a variety of interesting game play.

A great deal of work has been done to the details such as audio and animation. Unfortunately I don't really have the asset to showcase it yet. And I've put together a proper unit editing system. It's pretty much like the tower and creep editor in TDTK. Looking at the screen shot of the unit editor, it should give you a pretty good idea to what extent you can modify things. Just keep in mind it's not final and everything may still be changed.

Also I've ported the similar DamageArmorTable system from TDTK. This should enable setting up some rock-paper-scissors relation between the units. I've given the editor a face lift as well so it is more intuitive to use. The same update has been done to the one in TDTK too. So here's how the new editor looks like.

At this point I'm happy to say big picture is pretty much established. There are still many details that needs to be straighten out. Especially about the ability system. There's things to be added with the new tweaks to the core mechanic. I must say it hasn't really settled since I first started to work on it. On a hind sight it probably should have been the last thing I work on.

Anyway, until next week...

TDTK v2.2.3

A new version of TDTK is out. The main focus of this update is to to fix some critical bugs and polish the user interface. so it hasn't got a great deal of addition. Except the ScoreManager of course. So it's like what it says on the tin, a component to keep track of player score.

Like every other component, you can configure the various variables of the score calculation. Like how much score each creep kill gives, bonus for clean wave and combo for clean wave streak, boss wave bonus and so on. But again, it's all quite intuitive in my opinion, nothing too complicated. Following screen-shot should give you a pretty good idea about it.

Finally, here's the update log:

addition/change

• Added ScoreManager for scoring purpose
• UI support for ScoreManager
• Updated DamageArmorTableEditor with slicker and more intuitive interface
• Added support to PathTD to auto re-sample and fit path to terrain height (still in testing state)
• option to use custom gameobject for tower preview during build phase
• added animation shoot delay for turret tower

bug fix:

• fix selected tower UI bug where certain stats are not displayed
• fix error with spawnEditor where wave count cant be edited in finite auto-wave generation mode 
• fix a few critical error with infinite spawn mode
• fix tooltip error with UI
• fix some bug with wave info display
• some other minor bug.

A Showcase of TDTK - "Diabetes Defender"

I would like to give this project by Bill Pomidor, MD - "Diabetes Defender" a shout out. Bill has been a TDTK user a long time back and I'm very glad to see the prototype he has made. Obviously the game is a TD game built using TDTK as its backbone. I think the concept is pretty cool and very refreshing. I especially like the fact that it's factual and educational in its unique way. Here's the trailer:

Don't just watch the video, go try the webplayer demo (current prototype) on the website. The level design is rather wonderful!

I would very much like to talk more about it but unfortunately this is all the project has got at the moment. It certainly very interesting to see where this is going.