New Update for TBTK and TDTK

Following my last week post on the new asset that I've made, and the fact that I've been putting it to good use in the latest update of TDTK, I've been working on doing the same for TBTK. Now I'm pleased to announce that the asset update on TBTK is done as well. With any luck, the new update is already up on AssetStore by the time you are reading this.

Unlike the update on TDTK, this update on TBTK actually contains more. First, if you are a long time user of TBTK, remember that it use to have collectible item before version 2.0. Well now it's back again. You can now procedurally generate (during both runtime and edit mode) or manually place collectible item on the grid. I recon it has a better application than the old system. Instead of just a simple effect that is applied on the unit, you can link a collectible item to ability which can do all sort of stuff. For instance, repair all friendly unit, damage all hostile within range. You can even have a wild card item that can trigger random abilities.

Along with the collectible system, I've also added some extra 3D model. It's not as fancy as the tank or turret. They are just a series of container/parts that are meant to replace the old freighter set. Like the old asset, they can be stacked. And they works pretty well for the most part with the new vehicles.

That's about all the major stuff I've been working on for the past few days. Hope you like what you see. Now this is done, I'm going to see what sort of progression system I can add to TDS-TK.

Pretty Pretty Things! (Tanks and Turret)

So I've teased about making a new turret and unit set in my last post. This is pretty much the follow up post. In short, it's done! Voila!

 

 

 

They looked gorgeous don't you think. Well, maybe it's just me but I'm extremely pleased with what I've come up with. Objectively, there can be no arguing that they are miles better than the current tank and turret set I'm using for TDTK and TBTK.

If you are wandering, they have a very low poly count and works well with Unity's dynamic batching for the most part. You can probably tell from the images that they are modular. Parts are interchangeable so you can create different units to a certain extent. The best thing is, the color are not texture dependent. You can change both the main and secondary color on the fly in Unity. You can even apply some wacky styling by applying a 'mask' texture, with result like the images below:

At this point you may think they are great and ask if there's any chance I will release them? Yes I would. Right from the start, I plan to include the set in TDTK and TBTK as a replacement to the old unit set. In fact, I've already updated TDTK to use the new unit. Hopefully it is live on AssetStore by the time you read this. I've yet to done the same to TBTK but it shouldn't be long until I do. Just need to take care of a few other updates before I commit the update.

Anyway, the set will be available as a stand alone package on AssetStore at some point (Depend on how long the review process take). I plan to add more stuff to the set yet. Feels like there are something missing, drone or transport container for instance.

January and TBTK v2.1 update

Time flies. Feels like it was new year yesterday and now January is gone. Well I like to think the month is well spent. I've spent the month working on TBTK, giving it the same face lift I've done to TDTK.

The update (version2.1) has since gone live on AssetStore a few days ago. So basically the new update has got:

• Major restructuring of most of the framework
• New and improved UI
• New Editors (more intuitive, undo/redo support, multi-instance editing, etc.) 
• Added support for square grid diagonal neighbor
• Added new ability: overwatch

It's a lot more work than TDTK. For a start the base game logic is more complicated. Took me quite a while to restructure and optimize it. But the end result has enabled me to add the new feature. I've been wanting to do that but the old code is just a little bit too complicated for more complexity. 

Then there's the UI. Unlike TDTK, I've reskin the it on top of remaking it with new code. I really enjoy making new aesthetic for the UI. And because I've done that, the UI in the demo (campaign mode) has to be redo too for consistency sake. 

All in all, I think it's worth the effort. Hopefully all you user (or potential user) will enjoy the effort I've put in.

Now that both TBTK and TDTK has been updated. The next thing I would like to do is update the art asset for both of them. The vehicles and turrets set I've been using have started to look a bit dated. And if I'm honest, they are not very well done and I recon I can do a better job this time round. So following image is a sneak peak of what's coming next. Keep in mind that it's very much a work in progress, not everything will make it to the final build.

Now while I'm here, I would like to announce that I will be away for two weeks starting on February. I'll be carry on working on this as soon as I'm back. Until then, please don't hold your breath.

New TDTK and TBTK is out!

Finally, I can now get back to working on MechCorp. Well, in case you haven't read the title, both TDTK3 and TBTK2 is now live on AssetStore. It has taken me 3 full months of working like mad to rebuild both of this packages from ground up. But it's well worth it I say. Both of them are now more polished than ever.

It's as promised, they now use the latest uGUI. For that reason, they now require Unity4.6 to work. And since uGUI is a lot more accessible then both NGUI and old script-based GUI, both the old GUI has been scrapped.

Anyway, I've updated each respective page to reflect the new update. Check them out for more info.

• TBTK - http://song-gamedev.blogspot.co.uk/p/tbtk2.html
• TDTK - http://song-gamedev.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page_27.html

Oh, did I mention they are free update to the older version. So if you already bought it, go download it! Just remember they are not backward compatible so don't import it into an existing project.

TBTK v2.0b WebPlayer Demo

Took me quite a good while, but I think I'm almost there. So I'm happy to present you the webplayer demo of TurnBasedToolKit:

>> TDTKv3.0b WebPlayer demo <<

Like the old demo, there are self-contained, stand-alone levels, as well as a mini-campaign where you get to choose your unit lineup and upgrade before each battle. The units and upgrades are carried forth to the next battle. Oh, did I say the units level up if they survive? Yes this is very much a  improved feature of the coming update. Well it's there in the current version, but I don't think it's fresh out enough.

Please note that since this is the first build, there might be bugs. In that case please let me know. At any rate I would love to hear some feedback.

Anyway, I might, I mean I'm planning to do a soft release of both TBTK and TDTK to AssetStore very soon. By soft release I mean include the source unity package as part of the current version. So if anyone wants to, they can unpack the package themselves to the latest version of Unity and try things out. Just a plan though, we'll see how it goes over the next few days.

TurnBased-ToolKit v2.0 (Work In Progress)

Well well, what do you know. Following TDTK, I've been started to rebuild TBTK from ground up too. I've only created the package a little more than a year ago. It is not even that old. But my OCD gets the better of me I guess. 

Consider that many user do end up doing modification of their own, I think it's only right I clean up and streamline the old code, which is pretty messy at place. The turn logic is quite dodgy on hind sight. Not to mention there's lot of patch work since I've added stuff like hotseat multiplayer, fog-of-war and cover system, etc. The goal in the new TBTK, is to redesign all those features as an integrated system from the start. I'm quite happy with the result so far. I'm sure another who want to mod this in the future would appreciate that. On that note, if you are trying to mod the current released TBTK, I do apologise...

I've also taken the opportunity to redesign most of the editors to make it more manageable, if not more intuitive. The spawn/deploy area on the grid for instance, now can be painted using mouse in SceneView. Instead of painstaking setup factions information across different component using Inspector, there's now a window to do that with all the information at a glance.

Also the grid system has been overhauled and now it can support a much much bigger grid. See for yourself, the next image is a 80x100 grid. Keep in mind I still haven't test this thoroughly so while the grid generation is not an issue, other aspect of the game might be. We'll see.

It's early days and I still have a long way to go. I barely manage put the key components together at this point. But I do hope you like what you see.

TBTK Update (v1.0.7)

So I've updated TBTK a few days ago. With this update the vertical component for the grid is finally in place. let me explain what is it all about.

The grid can now be fit to a terrain/scene that has height variation. The system is pretty flexible imo, any collider with the designated layer can act as the terrain. The tile will adjust itself so it fits just above the terrain, in a perfectly horizontal manner. You can specify the minimum height difference required across the tiles to be considered of different level. I've design the system with XCom:EnemyUnknown in mind. So it works best when the level has a very well defined height level without too much slope. It still works with slope of course, but unless the tile size is relatively small compare to the elevation, the tile may seems partially sink into the terrain. In that case, some manually adjustment might be needed.

The height difference across different tiles will affect the gameplay in the sense that moving across tiles with different height will cost movement point. The bigger the height difference is, the bigger the cost. Also unit attack from higher ground will gain a bonus in hit-chance. On the other hand, any attack made from lower ground will suffer a hit penalty. The value of the movement cost and the hit bonus/penalty can be configured of course.

You can probably tell from the image that all the existing feature work with the new height element. Terrain can be used as cover if desired (just slap a Obstacle component on it) and will block line of sight when fog-of-war is enabled. Obstacle object can be place on any tile of any height. Walls can be used to block of adjacent tiles with height difference to create a cliff face.

The only thing I might left out is the movement and animation. There's no special animation movement pattern support for movement. The way I see it, there's no one size fits all solution for this due to the fact that the model of the unit can be anything and each can require a very different movement pattern and animation code. I'll just wait and see what's the user comment on this.

Apart from the vertical component, I've also tweak quite a lot of the internal working in hope of optimizing/improving the framework, and the bug fixes of course. They full change log is as follow:

Version Change – v1.0.7

addition/change

• change the way grid info is serialized which should improve grid generation time and grid limit
• added height component to the grid (see example scene – ExHeightComponent)
• optimized the AI code so it's more modular and easy to work with.
• improve a few things about how ShootObject works
• added effect type 'damage reduction' to unit ability

bug fix

• spawn unit will now work with ability that “shoots”
• ability with shootObject will now shoot towards their target (both unit or tile) instead of just tile
• using ability no longer reduce the attack count available on a unit in the turn
• fix bug where AI unit with movement disabled will not attack
• fix bug where all attack never missed

TDTK Update and WIP for TBTK

So another update for TDTK (v2.2.5f2) has just gone live on AssetStore. It's not much of an update really. Just bunch of bug fixes and some minute changes. And they are listed as below, please note that some very minor stuff are not listed:

• made some changes to ObjectPoolManager, unrecognised/new object requested to be spawned without initiation will be added to the pools
• fix a bug with default UI where certain screen area become non-responsive to cursor input after a tower has been selected
• fix bug on resource editor where the data wont load/save properly
• fix bug on tower editor where damage over time setting doesn't work
• fix bug and improves menu extension regarding adding UI or NGUI to a scene
• fix bug on SpawnManager where it throws up error in some case when set to auto-generate wave

Now that is out of the way, I can shed some light on things I'm working on for TBTK. If you are familiar with TBTK, You can probably tell what it's from the screen shot below.

Yes it's vertical component for the grid. It's functional but I'm not sure how well this will go down when released. It's rather primitive imo. Still, I'm pretty pleased at how well it works with the existing line of sight and cover system. So that's that. I'll be giving more details when it's released. Finally, expect an update for TBTK soon!

Status Update (I name thee MechCorp)

It's time for another status update for what I've been up to. I'm quite happy to say I've been quite productive for the past week. My mech game prorotype (which for now on shall be known as MechCorp) is finally taking its first shape and now playable. It still looked pretty rugged to be honest. There isn't much polish done yet. I merely manage to put the core concept in. And there's still a chunk of it missing.

So the big picture of the game is inspired by FTL and Oregan-Trail, the player will be trying to get to one end of a big map to another end. Along the way there will be random event to spice up the journey. The meat of the game tho, is to manage a squad of mechs, engage in turn based combat and try to survive. Imagine X-Com, in this case the player will be able to build their squad composition, customize each mech, manage the pilot leveling and so on. They also choose where to travel, which battle to fight and so on. You'll get the picture looking at this:

The mech can be customized in pretty much several aspects, which should cover most of relevant factor in the battle system. There's weapons, which determine the damage and damage type each attack. Then's there modification components, which can be used to modified the mech's basic stats like HP and dodge chance or even add new abilities. Finally the pilot, which will determine the effectiveness of the mech in battle. Of course, the pilots can also be leveled up after gaining experience in battle, improve their effectiveness, as well as gaining new perks and abilities.

The battle, as I've said in an earlier post, uses TBTK. Although I have to modify it a bit to fit various aspect of the game. Not much tho as the new MechCorp system is designed with TBTK in mind. The biggest difference of course, is each mech can carry at least two weapons and can be switched at any instant to meet different tactical need.

I would very much like to release a demo. However it's still too early in the development. There are simply too many things missing. The art asset, especially icons are none-existent. That makes thing a bit confusing. Also the event system is a bit half-baked so the gameplay is a bit dry. Until I figure everything is a bit more polished, I will hold on to it.

NGUI3 for TDTK and TBTK! Yay!

It has been a rather productive week. I've build 3 GUI solution for TDTK, TBTK in total. Two based on NGUI3 for each TDTK and TBTK, and a default Unity GUI for TBTK. With that done, I'm releasing new update for both TDTK and TBTK. And this will be the only major updates in foreseeable future. Both of them are now live on AssetStore.

New Unity GUI for TBTK

New NGUI3 for TBTK

New NGUI3 for TDTK

Update Log for TBTK v1.0.6:

• added new GUI that is based on NGUI3
• added new GUI that is based on Unity GUI
• added new ability to spawn collectible
• added option to spawn collectible procedurally
• unit has the option to spawn collectible after they are destroyed

Update Log for TBTK v2.2.5:

• added new GUI that is based on NGUI3
• Resource can now be bring forth to the next level
• Platform and overlay mesh has been replaced with more optimized custom plane
• NGUI free no longer throws warning message in Unity4

Happy 2014!

Another year gone by and I'm still here. 2013 has been a pretty decent year. I've played some inspiring games, leaned some stuff, make some stuff... Most importantly, I find myself better equipped to take on more challenging task.

I know I've been talking about making a real game rather than working on endless development of various framework like TDTK. Honestly this has been going on for ages. Too long in fact. So the new year resolution is to get on with it. The project (the wip mech game that I mentioned in an ealier post) has been put in motion. Now I just need to find time to concentrate on it. I might also have some idea for a new toolkit. This one is more complicated at first thought. So it will only happen if I manage to pull it off.

I'm currently working my ass off on adding NGUI3 support for both TDTK and TBTK. It's a hell load of work and I'm trying to get it done asap. But having said that, instead of just porting the existing code and implementation to NGUI3, I'm taking the opportunity to review and redesigning most of it, at least in term of coding structure. The result is a cleaner and easier to maintain code, which should help to keep me sane when I want to do any update in the future. This is especially true for TDTK. The old UI code is so bloated because the idiot who worked on it has the brilliant idea to squeeze all the UI code into a single script. It makes me lost my will to work just by looking at it.

While I'm at it, the visual has been redesigned to be more coherent. I know this is a matter of personal preference but I find the new coherent color scheme much slicker. I've put up a couple of sneak peak in this post. You might notice that I have recycled a lot of the older layout and interaction to save me some effort.

Ideally I would really like to rebuild TDTK from ground up. With that I can clean up and re-organise all the code. Make it cleaner and more mod-friendly. As it's currently, there are quite a bit of messy hack that I put in much later after the first release to accomodate feature that never planned for in the first place. But I'm afraid given the existing feature on the toolkit, that is a herculean task that could easily take months. So just the UI overhaul will have to do for now.

So that's it for now. I hope that after all this, I can concentrate on "the real game"... game. Hope you all have a good year!

p/s: My asset sales on AssetStore are ending 4th of January. So this is the last day!

TBTK Update (v1.0.5) - Build the Wall!

Another update of TBTK is up. Didn't expect it to happen so soon after the last update, but here it's. 

For this release, I've added a editable wall system. It works very much like the obstacle system, only that it's between two adjacent tile. And of course, it's compatible with the cover and fog-of-war system.

Apart from that, the less noticeable update would be the overhaul of the effect duration tracking. Now it should make more sense to each different turn mode. It used to be based on round completely so faction which use an ability towards the end of the round will find the effect last much shorter. The new code keep tracks of the turn cycle between each faction so no faction will gain any advantage.

So in short, here are the new stuff:

     addition/change

• added wall system, now support wall between adjacent tile
• new wall system is integrated to existing cover and line-of-sight system
• duration tracking for various ability/collectible effect has been reworked
• SelfDestruct script has been updated to work in tandem with the new duration tracking
• added support for manual faction's color assignment

     bug fix

• fix a few editor bug with grid/unit generation
• fix some bug with unit-abilities
• fix bug where abilities duration doesnt work correctly when using turn-mode that isnt round based

TBTK v1.0.4 is now released!

I'm so happy to announce that the latest TBTK is now live on AssetStore. Now with this latest release, all the "incoming" features listed when the kit is first released is now done. Honestly It's a great relief for me personally. Now I can ease my foot on the paddle a bit and perhaps find more time doing other things I'm interested. But knowing the way I work, it's certain that at some point in the future I'll pick it up again.

So about the update, first there's the perk system which has been coming long time. Almost every stats on unit can be modified via the perk system. But I have to say it's not the most comprehensive aspect of the toolkit yet. There's still a lot of things that can be added, more dynamic things like gain certain bonus after certain event. But I feel like going there could mean adding a lot more work so I'm going to leave it for now. Needless to say, the system can be used either as a self-contained progression within a single level or a persistent progress across a campaign.

The other addition is the hotseat multiplayer support. There's some limitation yet of course. For instance the unit selection scene doesn't really support this yet. But I doubt anyone who build a hotseat multiplayer game would wants to use the default unit selection scene. What I've done instead is add the code support to assign multiple player unit selection which should work automatically with the game play scene. In short, you build your own unit selection scene, assign unit selected by each player via an API and that's that. Otherwise, the hotseat can be a self-contained level with randomised or preset unit.

I've also add a few abilities following user request. There's Spawn Unit, Teleport and Change Enemy Faction. This should spice things up a bit. So if you have got TBTK, go have fun! If not, buy it, I promise it's worth it. :)

Change log for TBTK v1.0.4:
addition/change

• add perk system
• add “hotseat” multi-player support
• add new ability (spawn unit, teleport)
• icons can be removed in once assigned to reduce build size
• grid generation in editor is significantly faster now.
• get rid of warning message for NGUI for unity 4.0 and up
• code improvement here and there.

bug fixes

• fix a bug with GridManager faction setting and unit generation
• fix some bugs with unit-abilities

Edit: A small update (v1.0.4f2) for bug fixing has been released on 5December2013

TurnBased-ToolKit (TBTK) v1.0.3 is now released

Feels like I've fell off the grid for a long long time. For I have not posted anything at all for quite a while. So many things had happened for the past few weeks and plenty is still happening.

Anyway it's not my life story I'm want to talk about. This is in fact a quick status update and quick announcement. So status update, I'm alive and working... hard... And that's about it.

Now we get that out of the way. I like to announce that TBTK v1.0.3 has gone live on AssetStore as off yesterday. I think I've done sufficient bug testing on my own. Hopefully all the nasty one has been filtered. So the big shinny new features are in this update are square grid support. With this, I have covered most of the coming soon features I stated when I first release the toolkit.  Of course, along with square grid, I have also added a lot of stuff such as new turnMode, more option to setup a level, unit abilities and lots of bug fixes. It's a lot of small things that when put together, make lots of difference. The summarized change log is as follow:

TBTK Version Change – 1.0.3
additions/changes

• TBTK tab on the top panel has been moved to 'Tools/SongGameDev/TBTK'
• added support fro square grid
• added new turn mode (SingleUnitRealTime & SingleUnitRealTimeNoRound), similar to SingleUnitPerTurn but faster unit get to move more in a round than slower one.
• separated grid generation and unit generation
• added point budget based unit generation
• UnitAbility can now trigger other unit abilities, enable abilities with different target area, effect, etc.
• UnitAbility can now fail/miss
• damage effect on UnitAbility now has damageType associate with it.
• and other minor tweaks.

bug fixes

• fix bug with unit placement
• fix various bugs with the UnitAbility
• fix volume bug with AudioManager
• fix bug with multiple shootObjects
• fix bug when randomize level breaks the game on iOS 
• and more...

Status Update (going afk)

So yes, you have seen it. SquareGrid for TBTK. It is a thing now, a work in progress that is. I just manage to get it working, just, like a few hours ago. It still need a lot of testing so as much as I want to update it now, it will have to wait. The last thing I want to have is another bug fest like the first release of v1.0.1. I'm going to take time to test it a bit and make sure most of the things are working. So this will be the major addition for v.1.0.3. Of course, there are many other small changes/tweaks/addition as well. Some of them might not be small at all. At the rate this is going, the next update is shaping up to be as big as the last one.

Unfortunately this is the end of the 'good news' for my AssetStore customer. I've just took a job that no doubt will consumed all the time I have in the this month. Let's just say it's an unfinished business from the past and I hope this time it goes well. I really want to get this settled once and for all. Anyway, the point is I won't be having too much time on my hand to work on any major update.

It also doesn't help that I got lots of travelling to do this month, for various reasons. On that note, I'll be away starting from this Saturday until next Thursday. Not sure if I'll have access to Internet so if I'm not responding to your email, please be patient.

TurnBased-ToolKit (TBTK) v1.0.2 is now released

Finally, after the bug ridden mess that is v1.0 and v1.0.1, v1.0.2 is finally on AssetStore. And boy oh boy the list of addition and bug fix are huge!

Obviously I fixed all of the know bugs in the new update. Or so I hope. I've spent quite a lot of time play testing. Now to the new features:

First there's the cover system and fog-of-war system I've been talking about. It's what you expect it to be. They are two independent game element so you can choose to enable both, either or none of them in any given scene. When fog-of-war is enabled, player cannot see what beyond the range of sight of the target. When cover system is enabled, unit will be harder to hit when hiding beyond cover. It's a similar system with the one in XCom so there are two type of covers, half and full. More cover gives the unit more bonus against the attack. And they are directional as well. When working along with fog-of-war system, unit behind a wall of full cover will be invisible.

A test scene in demo using both fog-of-war and cover system. The AI unit will be invisible when they are beyond player's unit sight or behind walls of cover. The small minimap on top is to gives an indication of where in the AI unit.

The cover objects can be placed manually into the grid via the new GridPainter (yes, that is overhauled as well). And yes, you can make your own cover object using custom mesh

Then there's the AI, I've to recode it almost from scratch to fit the new cover and fog-of-war system. So now not only it obeys the rule in accordance of the fog-of-war and cover system rules in a scene, it also have some unpredictability when in a simple, basic scene. I've also add a small option to set the basic behaviour of AI to either passive (wont move until hostile appeared) or active (actively move around seeking target). Having said that, it's still some what basic if I'm honest.

Another big change is the turn system. The old system completely. Now instead of one TurnMode setting, there's TurnMode and MoveOrder. Turn Mode determine the turn basic turn logic

like which faction turn is it, when is a new round, etc. The options are:

• FactionAllUnitPerTurn - Each faction take turn to move all its unit in each round
• FactionSingleUnitPerTurnSingle - Each faction take turn to move a single unit in each round
• FactionSingleUnitPerTurnAll - Each faction take turn to move a single unit in each turn. The round is completed when all unit has moved
• SingleUnitPerTurn - All units (regardless of faction) take turn to move according to the individual unit stats. The round is completed when all units has moved. MoveOrder has no effect on this setting

MoveOrder determine which unit get to move first within a faction and if unit switching is allowed. The options are: 

• Free - Randomise move order for the unit. Unit switching is enabled
• FixedRandom - Randomise move order for the unit. Unit switching is disabled
• FixedStatsBased - Arrange the move order based on individual unit stats. Unit switching is not allowed

So combined these two there are 10 possible type of settings available. That should cover a lot of ground.

And I think that's about all that excites me enough to talk about. For the rest, please read the change log bellow or explore it yourself. :)

Version Change – 1.0.2f5 (13 September 2013)

     addition/change

• added XCom style cover system
• added fog of war
• added support for a all AI faction scene (no player faction)
• Total Revamp of TurnMode and MoveOrder. More variant are now supported.
• Better AI
• Added more target area for unit-abilities (line, cone)
• Editor interface change and renaming some of the unit stats.
• tweak the aiming of the range attack visually so a hit look like a hit and a missed look like a missed
• tweak the trajectory of projectile shootObject so it's more robust
• Many tweaks across the whole framework

     bug fixes

• lots of bug fix with regarding turn transition and logic
• fix bug with unit placement
• fix bug hit sound and hit animation is played even an attack is missed
• projectile shootObject max shootAngle limit is now increase to 75
• fix bug where projectile shootObject sometime bounce off or overshoot from the target
• and tons of other bugs.

More Updates

So I've been working day and night updating all the packages, especially TBTK. Here's what happened:

A new update of InputTouches has gone live on AssetStore. It's very a minor update. The only notable addition would be the tap multiTap event filter. Anyway, here's the full list of the changes:

• Add option for multi-tap filter. Remove any prior tap event with lesser tap-count before the final tap event in a multiTap event.
• A tap can now go on (being held down) for as long as needed
• Added missing information to the documentation - pinch and rotate info
• DragDetector_AndroidFix.cs has been merge into DragDetector.cs

An update of TDTK has also gone live on AssetStore. It's a hot-fix for several bugs I missed or accidentally introduce when working on the last update. Again, the full list of changes:

• fix bug for tower aiming in separated barrel mode
• fix bug with path-indicator when paused
• fix timeScale issue when loading a new scene when paused
• fix bug with dragNdrop build scheme where it stop working if a DragNDrop process is cancelled

Finally the big one, TBTK, which has effectively consumed my life for the past few days. I must say it's a big relief for me that the next update is almost done. If everything goes well, I should be able to submit by today. I hope this update would fix most of the issues in the last update, which was abysmal consider the bugs it has. I have put an extra effort bug-testing for this one. 

Apart from the bugs fix, I've added fog-of-war and XCom style cover system. This should be very interesting. Also I've restructured the TurnMode setting from ground up. The new system should cover more ground and have much more flexibility. I'll talk more about it when it's finally released. For now, here's a screen shot of the test-scene I'm working on:

Updates Updates Updates...

Finally, all the latest update of PathFinder, TDTK and TBTK is now up on AssetStore.

The current iteration of TBTK is still very buggy at the moment so I wouldnt bother too much about it until the next update.

Next would be PathFinder. It's not really a big update, unless you like to use it for a vertical axis. Before this it use to only support xz-plane (horizontal) grid generation. So basically I've added grid-generation for xy-plane (vertical) following some user request. The next thing on the list would be to add serialization to the grid so it no longer need to be generated everytime the scene start. Still not sure how effective that is going to be in reducing load time, or how straight forward it's going to be implementing it. But we'll see when we get there. So the change log of the latest PathFinder is as follow:

PathFinder Version Change – 1.1.2

• Added support for vertical grid (XY-plane)
• Fix the inconsistency in the example scenes.
• Fix bug where Agrid graph doesnt work if erode is set to zero

Finally, TDTK. The latest update fix a bunch of stuff with editors and the more recently added game play mechanic. The most notable addition would be the addition of the modular tile set to the package as well as the example scene. The updated demo is looking awesome after this small addition along with some lighting. I must urge you to check it out, just look at these screen shots!

However please note that the dsitributed package is export via Unity3.5 so it hasn't got the lighting treatment in the demo. Finally, here's the full list of the change/fix in latest update.

TDTK Version Change – 2.2.4
addition/change

• Icon can now be deleted before building to reduce build size (for NGUI only)
• Added modular tile set to the package, applied to the demo scene.
• Input for Ability system has been changed (right/left click has been swapped).
• Added mobile support for abilityManager
• Added mobile support for drag and drop building scheme
• Tower position during drag and drop phase will now 'sticked' to the cursor, as opposed to the last valid position.
• Change how overlay is assigned in the editors.
• Add option for pre-calculated hit result upon shoot, to prevent tower for firing redundant shot
• (configure in GameControl)

bug fix

• fix bug with spawn editor where generate wave in finite mode gives error
• fix bug where ability armor reduction on creep doesn't work
• fix bug where creating a new scene doesn't work with only 1 resource
• get rid of the warning sign in Unity4.0 and up
• fix bug where path-indicator does not point in the right direction in Unity4.0 and up
• fix bug where DamageTable is not taken into account for shield
• fix bug where shield pierce doesn't work

*For TDTK user,  please note that the dsitributed package is export via Unity3.5 so the example scene hasn't got the lighting treatment as shown in the demo. If you wish to have that, please let me know and I'll send you a copy of the package from Unity4.2.

Status Update (So much stuff!!)

It's been a very hectic week. And I just realised I haven't make any post in some time. The good news is I've been very busy updating all the package on AssetStore. Everything has been updated, and I do mean everything! I submitted the a hot fix for TBTK last week (looking to submit another by the end of next week. Then there's the latest TDTK, submitted a few days ago. PathFinder after that. And I'm about to submit an small update for InputTouches later today.

And boy I'm excited for the next demo of TDTK. I've finally took the plunge and downloaded and installed Unity4. God know how long since I last update my Unity. I'm still using 3.5 by the way. Anyhow just for demo purpose, I port TDTK to Unity4 and redecorate all the demo scene. And I was almost blown away by what I manage to achieve. I'm hoping you feel the same when I finally update the demo, when the AssetStore update is approved. Here's a glimpse of how it looks like:

It looks a lot more better in the actual game, when things are alive and moving

I've also make another simple demo in collaboration with another AssetStore publisher 3DForge. Here's the link to the webplayer:

>> TDTK_FantasyTD_WebDemo <<

Basically I used the 3DForge tower pack for the towers and the free skeleton pack for the creep. The rest are either unity standard asset or unity terrain asset. Not too shabby eh?

But that all is not what kept me busy for the most part. What really kept me busy, is TBTK. Who would have thought a simple turn based framework can be so much work? And the amount of bug I've introduce doesn't help either. I've been working on this babe almost day and night for the past 5 days. I could really use a break. Anyway I hope the new addition are worth it. For of war and cover system will be available in the coming update. I'm still working on the AI at the moment. I have a feeling that AI improvement will be a never ending task following the addition of the cover and fog of war system. I've also been doing some major overhauling to the turn mode setting. You bet the new system is going to cover a lot of ground. 

Finally I like to apologise to all the TBTK user for all the bugs. I'm trying my best to fix them all. Too bad the AssetStore approval process is a bit slow atm. Not entirely sure why but I bet Unite has something to do with it.

Anyway, that's all for the quickie update. I shall make new post about individual package as the new update submission is approved.

TBTK First Update Released, Mobile support Included!

So it's happening earlier than I expected. TBTK v1.0.1 is now live on AssetStore. If you havent know already, mobile support is now included.

Rather than describe what I did in a lengthy and whinny sentences, I'll just put down the change log. They are as follow:

Version Change – v1.0.1
addition/change

• optimization for mobile device
• added touch input support for mobile device.
• added support for camera control via touch
• more comment and clean up has been added to the code
• change the way attack animation delay works, delay duration can now be specified manually
• point reward will no longer shown up when game end in non-persistant data mode
• added optional minimum attack range for range unit

bug fixes

• fix UI bug where ability tooltip not display correctly
• fix bug where AI unit wont pick up collectible
• fix bug where miss chance is mis-calculated and limited at 5%
• fix bug where AP bonus on tile doesnt apply to unit