MechCorp v1.2.0 (More Content)

Remember when I talk about taking a break from MechCorp in my last post? Well I kind of lied. I change my mind a few days after the post. In my defense, I did have 2 weeks break prior to that post. Now remember when I talk about doing a major update with MechCorp in the last post? Well I'm here to make good of that talk. Behold, MechCorp 1.2.0, is now live on steam. Thanks for all the groundwork I've been laying down since the first release, this had taken a lot less time than I anticipated.

In this 'major' update, I have added a bunch of optional game modes. They are like the 'second wave' options in X-Com: enemies unknown, a set of rules and modifier that can be turned on to change the base game. Some of them change the game in a dramatic fashion. Just for a taste, here are some of them:

• Red Fog: Unit will suffer attack and defend penalty in proportional to damage sustained
• Long Voyage: Resupply between contracts has been disabled
• High Stake: Unit destroyed in a battle cannot be salvaged

Other new additions in this update include more crew perks but I'm not going to spoil them. You will just have to play the game to discover them. And of course there are fixes and small changes here and there based on the feedback I've been given. Finally, and probably not as important as the game itself, cloud saving is now being supported.

That is all for now. The next thing in the pipeline will be Grid Defense.

Ancient Frontier

So this is a project that I've had the privilege of working on, and hopefully still be working on it until the release, Ancient Frontier. Taken straight from the official description, "Ancient Frontier is a cinematic turn-based strategy PC game with RPG elements set in the far future. You command the fleet with combat inspired by games like XCOM, Master of Orion or Age of Wonders. Players will explore, conquer, pillage, or liberate the frontiers of space. Take control of massive fleets of capital ships and support craft as you play through multiple campaigns."

It's not my project obviously. I'm just working on it on a free-lance basis, coding and giving some input to the design. Anyway that's beside the point, I'm making this post to let you know that the studio has just started a kick-starter campaign for the project. Please check it out and pledge some support if you like what you see. 

Link - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/81834518/ancient-frontier

Thanks for reading!

Demon Rise - A game made using TBTK

I just have to make a post about this. Apparently this beauty, which is built using a modified TBTK, has been released on AppStore and I have missed it until now. I can't comment on the gameplay as I don't have a working iOS device to play this on. The dev says he plans to release it on Android so here's hoping.

Ignore the fact that I've never play it, it looks gorgeous. Look at it.

Being involved in the development (to a certain extent) of something like this does makes me proud. Very proud indeed. If you have an iPhone or iPad, go download it - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/demons-rise/id951205464?ls=1&mt=8

MechCorp Update (28th April 2014) - Tactics

This is a milestone and I've been wanting to make this post. Let me just start by saying the project has comes along way, after many iteration of UI design and mechanic change. The game is finally at its alpha state, looking like.. a game.

Obviously the core concept doesn't change. It's still very FTL-ish, with squad based tactics and progression a la XCom. What I've done in the past 2 months is establish the base premises of the game and redesign the UI to match that game. My take? Game design and UI design are tough!

Anyway, given what I've done so far, I like to talk about the tactical aspect of the squad. It's by far, the most demanding elements of the gameplay in term of design.

From the get go, I wanted a fast pace turn based battle, as opposed to XCom where you really have to take time to decide a move. For that, the emphasise should be less about the player decision on the field but to the composition of the squad and the general tactical layout before the battle. So the grid which the battle take place has been simplified and shrunk greatly. There's no cover system and fog-of-war. It's all about the hostile unit composition and how best to minimize the their damage output while maximize ours.

There's damage type to consider, energy weapon deals energy damage will be absorb by shield. Ordinance based weapons deal kinetic damage that by-pass shield and damage the hull directly, but they have limited ammunition. Shield will recharged over each round so wearing down the shield doesn't make any difference unless you get to the hull.

Then we have the mech's class. There are 3 type of mechs: Assault, Support and Tactical. In a nutshell, their are tank, healer and dps. Assault mech has active shield system and is more capable of soaking up damage. Support mech can repair friendly unit and provide buff/debuff. Tactical mech, while less armoured and has low mobility, is capable of dealing aoe damage from long range. Each mech class has a signature ability or two which reflect their tactical role. For instance, assault mech can detonate a EM blast that damage all surrounding unit with a chance to cripple them for a round. Support mech can link up it's targeting with adjacent friendly unit, granting a bonus in attack.

And there's mech modification. Each mechs can be fitted with different modules to boost certain stats. Defensive modules to offer more protection for Tactical mech, offensive modules to boost a support mech fire power, etc. There's even a chance that you can add extra ability to a mech by using modules. An assault mech that can repair itself maybe?!

Well I think there's a lot about setting up a squad that can handle various enemy/situation in a battle imo. Hopefully that plays well in game. I'll probably talk about some other aspect about the game in another post.

Progress, and going away for a bit...

Still working on MechCorp obviously. While I'm trying to find some place holder icons. I've come across something rather wonderful - http://game-icons.net/. It's a huge collection of free, game-ready icons. I urge you to go check it out if you ever need some for your project.

By the way, I in the process of making what I can from the what I got. From the collection I downloaded, I pick what I can use and process them a bit to fit the purpose. I simply give it some light color and add some glow effect. It's simplistic at best but I think it's pretty good for what it's. Trying to put them into the game and things has started to look better already. Still, it's a long way to go. Here's what I got so far:

 

I've also start working on another interesting addition, a tech tree. Well, not exactly a tech tree as all the progression is linear. So it's just upgradeable I guess. Dont really plan for any corss-dependency between each branch. I have to say tho, it's pretty good to be able to work on a UI that is tied to a specific design. As oppose to the perk menu in TBTK and TDTK where I've to keep things open and generic. With the new icons in, it's certainly nice to look at.

Finally, a public annoucement that I'm hitting the road again and will be continuing so for the next 2 weeks. So please forgive me if I'm a bit slow in responding to email and stuff.

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.

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...

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.

TurnBased-ToolKit (TBTK) v1.0 now released

Finally, after much delay, TurnBased-ToolKit is now released. Yea, I know, not exactly a creative name but it's in tune with TowerDefense-ToolKit. Still, I'm excited to make this announcement. I'm not going to repeat posting things that I have posted, so please just check out the main page for the various link, demo, feature list, screen shots, etc.

I would consider this as an early release. It's no where near where I vision it when I first started. I still have tons of idea to try and develop. And that is exactly what I plan to do in coming weeks. Speaking of adding features, perk system, better AI, cover system immediately springs to mind. Cover system is definitely gonna be an interesting things to try. Cant wait...

Too bad I still have a week worth of part time job to go through. It has been especially bad during this last, final 3 weeks. Such is the nature of research project or indeed game project. I wish I could just screw it, just work for the hour which I have been paid. Well, remind me not to get into stuff like this anymore... 

Sorry for the rant. The point is, I will try to find as much time as I can to work on the next update. Hopefull I can do enough improvement/addition to make the next update by early next month. This is the is going to be the next TDTK. I'm going to keep on developing and support it as best I can. Hope this is interesting enough for certain people... who will then buy it so I have money to pay for the food! Please forgive my honesty there but it's kind of the truth. Many thanks in advance!  :D

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.

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...

Turn-Based Tactic Game Update#4

A rather disappointing week I'm afraid. I haven't done as much as I hope for. So I'm going to say up front, no webplayer update this week, again.

Now we get that out of the way, I can talk about what have been done this week for the project. The notable things that I've been working on is the addition of different turn-based mechanic. So there are 4 different modes that will be supported. They are:

• FactionBased - Each faction takes turn to move all unit in control. The All unit can be moved within the round. example: x-com, civilization
• FactionBasedSingleUnit - Each faction takes turn to move. Only one unit can be moved within the turn. example: worms series
• UnitBasedRoundCap - Each unit take turn to move regardless of the faction. The unit with the highest speed get to move first. Each unit get to move only once per round. example: king's bounty
• UnitBasedNoCap - Each unit take turn to move regardless of the faction. The unit with the higest speed get to move first. There are no round in this mode. Unit with much higher speed will get to move much more than slower unit. It's semi-realtime-ish.

Sorry for the lack of example, I guess my lacking of experience in turn-based tactic game shows there. I hope my explanation makes up for it. If not, just wait for the webplayer demo. Reading that, you might have probably learn by now that there are facility for multiple faction. However I must say there are no plan for multiplayer just yet. But multiple AI faction is certainly an option now. 

And that's that for this week. Thanks for reading!

No just kidding, apart from the multi-faction and addition of turn mode, the persistent unit system has been done as well. User will have the option to use persistent player unit or preset unit for each scene. Say in a campaign where player will be able to bring their unit to the next level, exception can be done to certain level that a set of pre-determined unit will be used. There are option to tweak the rules for unit's ap as well. To use it for movement/attack or not and so on. So all in all, there are plenty of option that can change the mechanic of the game. Which is nice to experiment on different game design, and of course, this is shaping up to be a pretty decent framework.

Finally, I've also added in game action cam. Something like those action cam in x-com. It's pretty cool I think. But it still need quite a bit of work to be honest.

The good news is, I'll have more time to work on this project this week. So hopefully I've go more to show next week.

Turn-Based Tactic Game Update#3

It's has been a fairly productive week. However there's nothing much to be shown. From the end user point at least (so no webplayer update this week, sorry). Thing is continue from the work I've done last week for the unit ability, I've been focusing on getting a full on customisable unit ability system working. That I'm afraid has killed many many millions of my brain cell and taken many many hours of my time in the week. But the consolation is I manage to get it working to some extent. It's not fully done but it's almost there. Just many fine details left that need sorting out. In some way, it works more or less like the ability/perk system in TDTK. However it's a lot more complicated because of the nature of the turn-based tile mechanic. The abilities can be very different from one to another. ie. some need targeting, some don't, some direct at the unit, some direct at the tile, some shoot, some don't, aoe and what not. In short, it's a bit of a nightmare. It just shows that I still have much to learn.

I've also improve the tile editing by a great deal. By adding in the facility to directly edit the tile using scene view. Basically the same thing every other tile-based editing tool use. The editor now allow changing the state of individual tile, as well as placement of unit and collectible item on the map. Following video shows just that.

Speaking of which, a small addition to the gameplay, there's now collectible on the map. These collectible would grant various bonus/buff/debuff when triggered. I haven't got the chance to really make a few examples yet but it's there. For now, there's just a basic one which heal the triggering unit.

Finally, a unit selection screen has also been added. Like every other addition this week. It's unpolished yet, just functional. For that reason, I'm not going to show it. But perhaps you can see where the base game is going at this point. So you get to select the units that you want and take them to battle. You have a limited budget so you cant take too many units. You earn points for your unit selection for the next battle and so on. I'm still working on the aspect of persistent unit through out battle. Basically very generic system like every other game. I can only say this is the case for the time being.

I guess most of this week progress are good for the project if I want to make a toolkit out of it. Something I have in mind if I'm honest. But frankly it's a bit of a chore compare to to some other thing I have in mind. I can only hope I can quickly get it done and move on.

Oh yes, just for research purpose, I've got myself king's bounty. I'm going to play it for a bit and try to get some inspiration. Let's hope I'm not going to get myself hooked.

Turn-Based Tactic Game Update#2

Another weekend passed so here's another update. I'm intend to make weekly update for and post for this project. Let's see how long I can keep this up.

So as you can probably see I've add a few more polish touches to the UI. It's mostly just there to aid the gameplay. Also I've added a few unit abilities. Basically here's the addition:

• UI polish
• Unit abilities:
• AimShot (increase attack and critical chance for 1 round)
• RapidShot (gain additional attack for 1 round)
• Fortify (increase defend bonus in certain tile temporarily)
• MassRepair (heal all friendly)
• Barrage (aoe attack an area)
• StasisField (prevent a unit from moving/attacking)
• and other little minute details.

The unit abilities works like this. Each unit gain 1 'AP' at each turn. Each ability will cost certain 'AP' to use. Just try the new webplayer build and find out what's new. It's an early build and the game is not exactly balance but any feedback/comments is much appreciated.

>> WebPlayer Link <<

'A' to autoplace unit

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

hold spacebar to show all units' HP

'Escape' to deselect unit & cancel ability

If I'm honest, not a great deal has been added from the looks of things on the surface. True is I spend quite a lot of time working on the base framework of unit ability. I'm tyring to make something like the ability/perk system in TDTK. But It's proven to be quite tricky so far due to the diverse nature of the ability in a typical turn-based tactical game. Barrage and StasisField in particular has killed many of my poor brain cell. I've to use hack here and there to make things work at this stage.

The code has been restructured a lot as well. I'm trying to give it the facility and flexibility to modding. Make life easier for me to mod and build the actual game eventually when I'm happy with the base framework. If these elements works out well enough, I might consider releasing it to AssetStore as a toolkit.

Turn-Based Tactic Game First Prototype

I think I've found my new favourite project. I've tons of idea how can I make this into an interesting game. It all started when I first getting my hand dirty on a hex-tile generator and a turn based system to match. It has pretty much spun out of control from there, in a good way. I find myself spending all my free time tinkering with it. So this is the early prototype in all it's glory.

As you can see, I've managed to spend more time on the earlier prototype I was working on. I manage to polish it up a little bit more, and get the AI to work. It's looking pretty decent at this point, according to a very satisfied developer. I won't lie, I'm immensely pleased about it.

However the gameplay is still a bit dry. Basically the player can only move and attack the enemies. There's a hit/miss/critical chance mechanic and that's about it.  There's no synergy between the unit, no unit or tactical ability or special attack, nothing. It will be very interesting to see how I can spice it up. And oh boy, I can't tell you how I looking forward to do just that.

The AI is also very basic this point. Each unit will just look for the nearest hostile target and move to attack it. But with currently limited gameplay, it's quite convincing none the less. If you fancy to give it a go, here's the webplayer (The game is very very basic at this point, you have been warned):

>> TurnBased Battle WebPlayer link <<

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

All the asset in this demo are made by myself. Except the explosion effect and the skybox. The explosion effect are part of the standard unity example asset for Shuriken ParticleSystem. The skybox is from AssetStore. The platforms are my latest asset creation, it's actually a tile set for mix and match. The texturing is still a bit under-worked at this point. I'll see if I can do more about it. I'll shed more details about it later.

It's quite unoptimised at this point, at least in graphical term. The tile are individual mesh and they have taken quite a lot of drawcall for some reason, probably due to the shader I'm using. The total drawcall hovers between 100 to 200 in run time after I run the combine mesh script on all the static environment object. It's fairly reasonable for PC I guess but not so much for mobile. Not really sure until I test it out, perhaps it will run just fine. So more thing to work on.

All in all, not bad for a less than a week work, ignoring the fact that all most of the 3D asset was made earlier. Did I say I'm very pleased with it?

Weekend Break. Sort of...

Finally a weekend where I'm not tied down to any things. So here's what happen, I took the weekend off anything that I've been working on a regular basis lately and try something new. And this is what I've made in the past 2 days.

Obviously it's a simple top down - turn based - combat system with a hex based grid. It's a rather complete prototype with basically all the gameplay feature for such system in place, pre-start unit placement, unit selection, identification of various tile to selected unit (walkable, unwalkable, hostile, friendly), unit movement/attack, information display, turn-system, etc. Unfortunately I didn't quite manage to get the AI to work yet. Otherwise it would have been a nice little game.

The grid can be generated procedurally along with the walkable and unwalkable tile. The size and area of the grid can be adjusted naturally. And AI unit can be pre-placed in the grid generation phase. I was going toward a direction where I can go for procedural generated level. The different level layout in those image, took me only seconds.

Of course, there are still plenty of rough spot that I can work on, even as a prototype. Such as AI (obviously), better placement of AI unit, more intuitive way to setup level in unity editor (currently it's quite a pain to hand place unit). I would love to further develop this can see what I can come out with. But the main focus now is the AI. as soon as I get the AI working, I'll gladly put out a little game of this.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it. This is the first time I try to take on a turn-based strategy game. It has been a great fun!