MechCorp Update (7th November 2016)

I'm very surprise to find out that it's more than a year since the last MechCorp update. While I have occasionally took breaks to work on other stuff, I promise that I have not for one moment try to stop working on the project.

So what progress I have made since the last update? In a way, lots. But I have also taken a few steps back. The truth is I went back to the drawing board again, and done a bunch of redesign, for the n time. I have almost rebuild the whole game from sketch this time. But I believe all the changes has make the game a lot more better. 

First off, the battle system. I have ditched the directional attacking and replacing it with a shield system. Each unit now have hull and shield. Basically the shield must go before the hull can suffer damage. Naturally a unit can only be destroyed when the hull is depleted. Now each attack (based on ability or weapon) deal different damage to hull and shield. The strategy is to use the optimum attack to maximize the damage.

Another big change comes in the form of crew system. I have ditched the clunky pilot system. The new system is more intuitive and offers more strategic option. Without giving too much away it's a bit like a card system where you can put the card in different slot to gain different bonus.

Finally, the the starmap. It's now a free-roam mode with fog-of-war. Meaning the player is free to travel to anytime anywhere on the starmap. To make things more alive, I have throw in moving AI party that goes about on their business. It's still a wip this. The goal is to allow exploration, which can leads to finding treasure, or surprise attack by hostile AI party. These also allow more dynamic quest event that require more player interaction.

To sum it up, Each system is more closely integrated with each other. It certainly feel like a much better design game.

Sadly I don't have any interesting screen-shot to go with this post except the two (never shown before) mechs on top of this post. Well, guess I'll just post the ninth thousand iteration of the mech configuration screen.

Note to self: get someone to draw me some pretty artwork that I can post.