Where-the-hell-have-I-been Update

So yeah. Work.

It's kinda unfortunate I enjoy my job. I'm finally out of training, and actually working on projects and such. I didn't think it was possible for me to sit down and jump right into "the zone," emerging only after eight hours of intense development. I would forget to go home if I didn't stop myself after eight hours.

I suppose it's good for my work life, but it means I don't want to come home and sit in front of my computer. Last weekend was also shot, as I had to fly to Grand Rapids for work. I was actually going to go in yesterday until I realized I'd already put in 50 hours this week.

I do think that things will calm down this week. Unfortunatly hitting a roadblock is doubly devastating for my game development, just because I have to re-aquaint myself with everything and such. At this rate, I don't know when I'll finish. This year would be nice?

Weekens Update

Too much real work, not enough game development. If I could just drop 12 good hours on it, I'd be done with the animations.

That's really all I have to say, maybe I'll get a little further with what's left of the evening.

The Squire

Every young man wants to grow up to be a knight at some point. Most don't make it past being a squire.

So this is the squire. He's a knight in training, and he and the bard make up your starting crew. He's a well rounded attacker, if a bit fragile.

• He doesn't have the power of grown warrior, but he is still trained with his sword. His first attack is just a basic slash.
• His second attack is to gather up his courage. This gives him an attack buff.
• His third attack is to flee in the face of danger, it gives him a little health, and a speed boost (which unlike some other speed boosts, can be used immediately.)
• The final move is one common to many warriors. Take a second to gather his bearings and recover. This heals him for a fair bit.

Between being able to run away and heal effectivly, he's not a bad fighter to keep with you through the game. Bit on the weak side, but he makes up for that with the flee ability.

I don't have anymore lore or anything. I wanted to profile one of the crazier classes, but I forgot till the last minute and need to do the reverse images for all the classes I was thinking of covering.

Attack animations are going very smoothly. Actually better than expected. Real work means I want to come home and not program, so I've put in very little time. That's ok though, because I'm flying through the attacks. I'm not halfway done, but finishing the animations this weekend is a distinct possiblity.

Below the cut, some short thoughts on difficulty.

Weekly Update

I don't feel like I've accomplished much, but I think I've spent quite a bit of time working on the game. I've been debugging the attacks I do have, adding in the summons, and recording sound effects. I've cut a few more attacks that I didn't think added anything, and now that I'm looking at it, I don't think the animations will take more than the next two weeks, provided I just work on them. Knowing my work habits, I'll get distracted and work on level art instead. While there are a lot of attacks, a lot of them are similar to other attacks. This definitely makes my life easier. We'll see.

No screenshots this week, nothing really new and notable. I've got an idea for a new title screen, but I want to get it finished before posting. Need to finalize a title before I can do that.

Unfortunately, work is back to ramping up again, so I become less productive on my game. I end up spending the same amount of time, I just end up accomplishing very little.

I would spend an hour writing something about something unrelated to my game, but I'd rather get some animations in. I really want to get this game done.

The Witch Docta

So this week, we have the Witch Doctor.

He does an bit of voodoo, and knows a bit about medicine. I tried to avoid the dedicated healer roles in the game. I've never liked the tank / healer / dps trichotomy [wow, turns out I didn't make that word up... go me?]. It always struck me as a bit limiting and confining on a broad strategic level. You still could play the game that way, but you probably won't win fights quick enough to get the unlock.

The witch doctor is probably the closest class to a dedicated healer in the game. I'd have to check, but I think he's the only class with two heals in his moveset.

• The witch doctor carries around a staff, he can whirl it around and hit everyone around him. He's not the strongest, and you probably wouldn't really want him surrounded, but if he happens to be...
• He can cast a hex. This hits the enemy with a random condition.
  
• He can apply a healing balm to someone next to him. This is cheap and effective healing.
• The other heal is a healing prayer, this heals all of your allies in a certain area. Not so cheap healing.
  

Originally he was designed with more focus on the voodoo aspects - he had a summonable voodoo doll. I had cut the Surgeon, which was another somewhat dedicated healer, and I was trying to cut down on summons where possible, so he lost his voodoo doll and gained the healing balm.

Below the cut, I spend too long talking about some very minor design decisions.

Weekend Update

Very successful week. I have something to show for it too, which is even better. I built all of the characters attacks out, with a few exceptions. This means that all the attacks function and the AI can handle them. I still need to do all the summons, and I suspect I will have to do some tweaking for the AI, but it's an important milestone none the less. I built a blank map to test the characters and their attacks and took a screenshot.

They didn't quite all fit in one screen, but there you are. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess who's who. I won't put out a complete character list, so until you unlock them in game, use your imagination.

Secondly I did up about half the world map. I had no plan to do this during the week, but I was in the neighborhood so to speak. I've got about half the map done-ish. Here's a second gratuitous screenshot.

So that was my week. Next week I need to finally put the summons in. This requires some AI modification and some other tweaks. I've known exactly what I needed to do for some time, but have essentially been to lazy to actually do. It isn't even that much work. Secondly this week I have to test all those attacks I added. Once that's out of the way (or I get bored) I should start in on the battlefields.

So those were the interesting bits, after the cut, I talk about why I'm writing this.

The Bounty Hunter

So here we have the Bounty Hunter. The bounty hunter usually only gets paid for bringing someone in alive, so he's good at disabling and weakening his quarry. He usually has to chase his prey for long distances; this means that he has to be prepared for anything that comes his way, and he has quite a bit of endurance. Let's take a look at his tool bag:

• His trusty pistol is never far from his side. It's his standby attack.
• He also carries a knife. Each stab of the knife may not be very damaging, but it's a very quick attack.
  
• Knowing he needs to catch his quarry alive, he throws out a net, tangling up his quarry and stopping them from moving.
• Always prepared, the bounty hunter always carries a flask of hearty stout. He can drink it himself, or toss some to a friend. It heals for a bit, and keeps healing him for a while.
  

He's a pretty sturdy unit, and has a fair bit of MP for endurance. His attacks are probably two of the weakest in game, but in the end, he'll still be standing.

After the jump: I complain about blogger, and talk about a quick design change that has a significant effect on gameplay (and you probably won't notice).

week update

All 50 classes are illustrated! I should put them all in a single image and let folks guess who's who, but that would take a while, and I have better things to do, like write a long uninteresting rant about the indie games tab. Anyway, they're illustrated, and that's good. Hopefully I can make some progress on animations this week.

That's it really, everything after the jump is just a long series of rants that probably won't make sense.

brb, Texas

This next week is pretty much shot, I'm working weird hours in Texas. This means travelling, working weird hours, and stumbling back home somehow. I expect to accomplish very little until the weekend. Good news though. I only have six characters left to illustrate!

If you haven't noticed, I'm only doing two still images for each character. I'm only one man, and pixel art eats free time. Each character has a front side and a back side, and the images are flipped as needed. Basically I have six front sides left. Luckily the back sides go a lot quicker, I have 12 so far, and they took much less time. For the initial drawing, I have to do some research and get an idea for the character, and then translate that into a character that is unique and identifiable. I don't have to do the research and play with colors for the backs, all I have to do is continue the style I already created. Easier, if a bit mindless.

While I can go in any order, I've been working through the characters in order. I'll finish the last 6, then do all the back images. Put the resources in the game, add in the character stats, name, etc. Then I'll work on giving all the characters their attack set. Along the way I'll have to create art for the summons. (I'll find out as I go, but it looks like I have 11 summons to make. In terms of technical art quality, none of them should pose a major challenge, though I still haven't decided how to approach a few.)

Meet the Bard

As opposed to accomplishing nothing since the weekend, I've actually done quite well. I think I've only got 9 or so more classes to illustrate! Almost forgot to write this up, so it's a bit short.

Anyway, this is the bard. As you might expect from the fantasy archetypes, he plays his instrument and sings great songs of heroes and all that stuff. He's probably the most stereotypical character. He's unlocked from the beginning. His attacks:

• He isn't much of a fighter, but he does carry a little knife. It's more of a last resort, or eeking out that last point of damage sort of thing.
• The bard knows when to get out of a fight, he can flee, which gives him a speed boost, and cures any status effects he might be suffering.
• He's can carry a tune, but he really only knows two songs. The first is a cleansing song. It cures any status effects anyone nearby might have.
• The second tune is a rousing chorus, which heals nearby friends a bit.

The Bard is rather unashamedly a support class, as you might expect. He doesn't exactly hold up too well in combat, but he can get out of tight spots and his songs are incredibly useful. For a while he won't seem too important, since he's lousy in the smaller, early fights, but when the fights open up to four or more, he really shines. There are very few classes that can heal, and I think fewer that can effectivly remove status effects. He can do both well.

Weekend Update

Lame. I have a rather large amount of stuff to do at work, and just have not been in any mood to work on the game all week. I did create two more characters, maybe I'll finish another one tonight.

Lame.

I really wish I eventually could support myself developing indie games. I developed a list of game ideas over the years, and I finally went through and looked at it. I've got 37 ideas, 23 I still like (I started the list > 4 years ago), and 16 I think are realistic for me to create on my own.

I would love to work for myself. I could set my own schedule, and work on basically whatever I wanted. I'd love to have a second project to switch to when I feel like a change of pace. I have to say it would be awesome to be able to do this all day, and then have to force myself away to play video games, head out on the town, or watch TV. Full time I could probably release 3 games in a year, and have more free time than I do now.

My real job, while nice by all measures, just isn't what I'd really love to be doing. This game has to be pretty successful for me to justify quitting to "explore my passions," but XBLIG sales are generally depressingly low. Quick math, it would take ~30,000 sales to make me consider going full time. Extrapolating from XNA sales figures, I'm expecting ~262. So yeah, probably better learn to love my day job.

Ahh well, a man owns nothing if not his own dreams.

Phoning it in

Shit just got real at work, and will probably remain real for two-three weeks. Until then, I'll be doing what I can. Ran out of time to finish the Metalurgist, so I'll cover a character I finished a while ago, and never covered.

Meet the Berserker

This guy is a bit fragile like the monk. Perhaps if he wore some actual armor, he might survive a little longer. Unlike the monk, The Berserker isn't just a glass cannon. He is best getting into a tight grouping of enemies and hitting several at a time. He's one of the fastest characters, and can easily make himself faster.

• His first attack is a common attack, take a wide slice with his sword. This hits up to three guy in front of him.
• His second attack whirls the sword around, hitting everyone nearby.
• He can get himself angry. He pushes through the pain and gets an attack buff. Effectivly it heals him and gives an attack bonus.
• He can sprint. This gives him a speed boost.
  

You might think that like a berserker he should use his speed to charge in and hit before the opponent is ready. Usually this is not the best idea. He's fragile, and without any support it's a pointless suicide run. (Found that out by experience, seemed like a good idea at the time.) It turns out that a good strategy with him is to position himself where he can hit multiple enemies. When they turn on him, sprint out and recover for bit.

(Post) Weekend Update

I forgot to do a lot of things yesterday, and figured I'd make up the lateness with screen shots tonight. Unfortunately for my game, real work is getting a bit more involved than it used to be, and I find I don't want to spend all my free time programming and doing painstaking pixel art. Funny that. Anyway, expect to see gratuitous screenshots sprinkled ahead (if you didn't already notice).



I realized this week, that my development schedule for the rest of this game is very free-form. If I made a Gantt chart, it would be very tall, and there would be very few dependencies. I have to create and program the attacks before I can work on the associated animation, and the main menu and world map have to wait until I have all the battles in place, but other than that, I can really go in any order. I think a more useful way of tracking my own progress will be in how many levels are made, and how far along various characters are.



Battles complete: 4
Characters (mostly) Drawn: 24
Characters in game, with working attacks: 13
Characters fully animated: 5
Total attacks coded: 39



That list doesn't look as good as I hoped, but I think this will be a good way to track progress at least. As I progress, adding new characters and maps *should* get easier.



Eventually I'll write the victory screen, I swear. I also have to write in a whole bunch of help text. Well, I don't have to, but the game would suffer greatly without some description of what some attacks do (hell, I forget what some of them do). Writing the text won't take too terribly long, writing the code to display it with some sort of navigation menu and testing will probably take longer.

The Historian

I was hoping I would have a summoner done, and I do, so today I talk about the Historian. Yes, the Historian. All the classes up until now have been somewhat sensible, and this one seems to come out of left field. As odd as this sounds, he's a better example of what I'm trying to go for. He's themed interestingly, and isn't someone you see in other games.

 

(No, the one on the right is not the historian. The character on the right is a ghost)

So the historian is a scholar dedicated to the study of history and the very nature of time. He studies time closely enough to learn a little time magic. Here's his moveset:

• His first move is to manipulate one person's time stream, effectively aging them rapidly. Not much mind you, but enough for them to feel like their heart skipped three beats. It does a little bit of damage and weakens the target, for a little longer than normal.
• The second and third moves are closely related. He can create a time bubble to slow down everyone in a rather large area.
• Alternatively, he can speed everyone up. Both moves have a bit of range, and affect a rather large area.
• The final move is to summon an anchient ghost. He can summon more than one, but it takes his entire turn and a fair bit of magic.

So, he's a summoner, he can create a new character on the fly. There are a number of these guys slated, with various types of summons and different rules on when/how they can summon a new creature. Some can only have one summon in battle at a time, others can only have one of each type they can summon. There are very small number that can summon creatures repeatedly. The summoned creature fights for his master, but is not directly controlled by the player. They have only one move, and are not as strong nor as durable as normal characters.

So there's the historian. I think I want to put a book in his hand, I think I'll do that before I do a final release. Next week, I'll pick another "out-there" character class. I'm thinking the Metalurgist or the Inquisitor. Until then you can try to imagine what they'll look like / what they can do.

3 Day Weekend Update

I completely ignored my list of stuff to do, and just worked on whatever I felt like all week. I worked primarily on new art - new characters and new terrain. I also created the battle maps for the first 4 levels. This week I'll post some screenshots of the new maps and some of the characters.

The rest of this week is mostly code-based enhancements.

Plan for the week:
Summon support (I have to do this tommorrow so I can introduce one of the summoners)
Victory and failure screens
Unlocks

Game saves
With whatever time is left, start filling in the map, one battle and one character at a time.


It occurs to me that after these enhancements, the game will be functionally complete. The only things left to do will be content creation, some miscellaneous cleanup, and multiplayer.

Aside, in which I talk myself out of extra features:
I'm actually tempted to leave out multiplayer for the sake of getting to market sooner. Indie games are exploding at the moment, and we're finally seeing some REAL gems. This release season is suprisingly lacking in traditional games. All this means is the little man in the business suit on my shoulder is telling me that it's ok to strip some features for the sake of releasing sooner. I know the indie games release procedure takes a few weeks, and I know I won't be finished before November 1st at this rate. I am SORELY tempted to cut multiplayer, and strip out a few character classes. If the game is sucecssful, I could then make a second release with extra features (local multiplayer, challenge maps, and online multiplayer).

On the other hand, the code is already flexible enough to do local multiplayer with some ease. I mean the game is not exactly a model of a party game - diving into the game without spending significant time with single player is difficult; combat is slow and turn based; it's not exactly riveting for onlookers. I don't know of too many remotely similar games offering local multiplayer. The closet I can think of are some portable games, and some traditional strategy games. But with the portable games, both players have invested in the system and know to play, and most strategy games have simple and forgiving enough mechanics and few enough units to make it easy to pick up. I place a lot of stock on character selection and you need to really know who's available and what they can do. If you pick without that knowledge, it will be a very one sided fight.

The game would benifit from online multiplayer, no doubt, but that requires a significant amount of time to create and debug.When I started, the little man in the business suit on my shoulder determined the risks were not worth it. I told myself before I started that if the game was successful enough for me to afford a second 360 for testing, I would definitly create an online version. So like ~400 sales at 80 MS points.

I think I just talked myself out of local multiplayer support...

Meet the Legionnaire

I have my domain again! The name had grown on me, I was rather annoyed at the possibility of changing.

This week I want to talk about the Legionnaire. The Legionnaire is a front line soldier, he's one of the sturdiest units in the game and he hits hard.

• He can attack with his spear. His spear gives him reach and lets him hit two people at the same time. It is one of the more damaging attacks in the game.
• Shield Wall can offer a defensive bonus to all of his nearby friends. Unlike just defending, the skill he uses lasts longer than a single turn.
• He can throw a spear at range. Not as deadly as his spear is at close range, but still a useful tool to hit anyone that tries to flee.
• The final attack is Spear Dance. This hits everyone who got too close, for about as much damage as the throwing spear.

The Legionnaire is not exactly the most versatile of classes, but he's sturdy and a good damage dealer. His biggest weaknesses are that he is very slow, and does not manage buffs or status effects very well. His Shield Wall skill really helps survivability, but if you get him stuck or slowed, he's in trouble.

Currently, the Legionnaire is the second recruit-able class. I'd used the starter classes in other situations, usually in larger groups with other classes, and thought they were quite good, and I thought the Legionnaire was underpowered. The first time I tried the Legionnaire battle I failed horribly. I had to scale it back, the two starter classes just couldn't handle a pair of Legionnaire's.

Next week: I have no idea who to introduce. I want to cover either one of the casters, or one of the summoners. It'll be a suprise for the both of us.

Oops

Looks like my domain name expired. I don't know entirely how this works, but it looks like a domain squatter grabbed it. We'll see how this works out. Maybe I'll have to scramble to make up a new name. I can only express my feelings in an emote :(

In other news, don't set your contact info for your web host to go to an email account you don't check regularly.

One Week Off

Impromptu decision monday to take the week off, forgot to post. Resuming next week.

Weekend Update

Accomplished:
World map (needs to be really tested)
Character selection screen (needs work, but functional)
Some behind the scenes stuff to manage battles
Game loading (may need more debug)
Three new characters added, several more drawn
Basically, I'm about where I wanted to be, slightly short, but close

I set some lofty goals that I secretly thought weren't obtainable, but managed to finish.

I sat down and finally plotted out the world map on paper, and selected all the characters I wanted to use out of my idea pool. I'm sitting at 59 right now, but definitely subject to change. I then went through the ones I want to use and sort of specced out what I want their attacks to be. This makes it much easier to add characters.

I'm getting better with the art style. At first my designs were very simple (see the pirate), but they've gotten steadily more detailed, and I really think they look good. It makes me want to go back and revise some early designs, but I don't think I really should re-invest that time for now. It's really hard to make some of the classes look better.

There's a lot of polish to be done, and nothing happens when you win or lose. That leads into this weeks plan...

ToDo:
Victory and failure screens
Saving games
I really need to focus on the characters and animations after this. I've got half a dozen needing to be put in and animated, and I'd like to make some more.
After that, I'll try to start in on the terrain, as that will be another time sink.

Meet the Pirate

Oops, forgot to post yesterday.

So this week, we're taking a look at the Pirate. Very different from the monk, the pirate is a bit sturdier, and a bit more self-reliant.

• His first attack is just a simple sword slash. A number of other units share this attack. It's sort of a baseline attack.
• His other offensive option is to take out his pistol and fire off a round. He's got a pretty good range, but it takes a fair bit of MP.
• He can always take a swig of his rum. This gives him a little health, and the warm feeling will heal him for a while.
• The final option the pirate has is he can take a handful of his gun powder and throw it in the air. He ignites the powder in the air to create quite a flash and a bang. This blinds everyone around.

The pirate has a bit more health, and a bit more MP than the monk. Same speed as the monk. The pirate is a pretty versatile character. He usually sits back and takes pot shots with his pistol until the enemies get close. Then he closes and goes at them with his sword. If he finds he's surrounded, he can use his flash powder to either escape or even the odds. He can also be aggressive with the flash powder, charging in to blind the enemy. Like any good pirate, this one knows when to run away. Fleeing and taking a swig of rum to recover is always an option.

Next week I'll be looking at the stalwart legionnaire.

Tubes Made of You

Tactics Demo 1
Uploaded by juxipolo. - Click for more console and PC gaming videos.

So I said I would upload a video of gameplay, and I have. I just filmed a whole round vs an AI. Hopefully it'll give you maybe a little sense of how the game plays.

Some notes:

• The games for windows live thing at the start is asking me to sign in, which I couldn't be bothered.
• Animations are running at half speed at the moment. Architecture should have decoupled the draw and update for attack animations, but apparently, I did not. It's a quick fix, but I didn't notice till after I started recording. Just imagine all of the attack animations running at double speed.
• The health bars and symbols is from me hitting RB for more info.
• If you watch closely, you'll notice some of the animations are bugged (the flash powder is especially bad). Haven't fixed all of them yet.
• It doesn't end when I eliminate the opponent, have that turned off presently.

I would have just used youtube, but it has a 10 minute limit. I apologize for how fuzzy it is. I have no idea why, I only imagine when they convert it to flv they downsample a fair bit. Maybe I'll use youtube in the future, just so I can get higher def.

I am impressed with these video websites, I really expected a crappy java app would have to transmogrify my files before I could upload them, but it seems they're quite happy to have gigs of avi shoved down their pipe.

You probably will have no idea what's going on, maybe in the future I'll do commentary on a shorter match. I was thinking about uploading video weekly, but it's such a pain. I think I'll wait a while before posting another video.

[edit] Why is the post date and time set when I create the post, not when I publish? Who thought that was a good idea?
[edit] added embedded video, cuz I'm "hip" and "with it"

Dev Update

I have a gameplay video to post, but have to encode and upload still. Had more trouble than expected, should be up tomorrow.

-----------

So I started doing some testing on the 360. Couple things to note:

Turns out the garbage collector isn't quite as smart as the full .Net GC. The solution for now, manually collect 3 times a second *shudder*. I only have a partial idea why and the performance hit is negligible, but my code is bad and I should feel bad.

Floating point operations, noticeably slower, as are string operations. Luckily some AI optimization stopped this problem before it started. I felt rather silly waiting 10 seconds for the AI to decide it's best option was to just sit there and meditate.

Also true on PC, but render targets are rather difficult to deal with in XNA. In the future, I will not use them again, and will find some other way. I haven't found a better way to do what I wanted. At present, the code is hideous and fragile, but without major architecture revision it won't get any better. There's gotta be a better way. All I want is a simple scrolling list.

-----------

The following may or may not make sense, it's really only so I can track my own progress.

Anyway, progress report:
6 characters are complete (even if some of their animations really need work)
3 more ready, just need to be put in code and animated. 2 need a little work before I can use them
Character selection dialog built, but not used at present (the source of most my coding woes)
Bug fixes and performance improvements in the AI
Technically the multiplayer framework is in, but nothing triggers it and the menus aren't in place
Oh yeah, temporary main menu
New maps, small bridge, and the one in the video, along with some new tiles

Goals for the week:
Basic world map
Character select for campaign
Implement/animate the three new characters, mock up three more
^^ this requires adding support for summons and transforming classes, so prolly this before that
*target* Get one encounter finished, from world map, to character select, to victory and bonus

Meet the Monk

So today we talk about the venerable monk class. This character won't be available too early in the game, but he's a fun class.The monk is quick, but weak, and low on mana. He has to stay away from combat frequently to preserve his health and restore his mana, but once he runs in he is not one to be ignored. Combat Focus gives him an attack bonus for a few turns. Guard Break removes defensive buffs. Paralyze stops enemy movement. Finally, Sudden Blow is a fast damaging attack.

Sudden Blow is not the most damaging attack, but when combined with the attack bonus, and removal of any opposing guard bonuses, he can bring down an enemy very quickly. He may need some time to rest after that, but it won't matter if the opponent is dead.

I'll try to post one of these a week, every Wednesday. Next week, I'll talk about the Pirate. Until then, hopefully I'll figure out video recording and post some gameplay this weekend.

Combat

So, the big focus of the game is the combat system. It's elegant and simple, but has a surprising amount of depth. I think the best way to explain why I think the system is clever is to describe what you can do with it. So I will be posting short descriptions of the various character classes, describe what you can do with them and discuss how they fit in the game. First though, I have to do a quick overview of the combat system.

Each character has three stats, action points (AP), hit points (HP), and mana points (MP).
AP: Action points determine turn order and the actions the character can perform each turn. Each turn, every characters AP is refreshed. The character with the highest AP goes first. Each action uses a certain number of AP. When a character runs out of action points, the next fastest character may go.
HP: Hit points are refreshed at the start of a match. When a character reaches 0 HP, they die (there are no revivals in combat, but no perma-death either)
MP: Almost every action takes some MP. It is refreshed at the start of a match, and can be partially replenished through meditation.

Characters each have 4 attacks, mostly unique to that character. All characters may also move, mediate, or block. Mediation uses the remaining AP points and converts them to MP. Blocking gives the character a one turn guard buff, which reduces damage.

There are a number of status effects and buffs that may be applied to each character as well. A character can only have one status effect (blinded, weakened, poisoned, etc) and one buff (guarded, healing, faster). A new buff will overwrite an old one, same for status effects.

That's it. That's all there is. Next post, I'm going to take a look at the monk class to give you an idea of how the system actually plays.

New Project

I'm actually pretty well underway into this project. I just never got around to making this blog until now.

So here's the game. It's a strategy game similar in some ways to tactical RPG's like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fallout Tactics. To be honest though, I haven't played either of the games I just mentioned. This game is very much it's own.

RPG stat leveling? No.
Complex inventory management? No.
Interesting story? Only if you though Mario was deep.
Rich characters? Nope.
Strategy? Hell yes!

Players control a company of mercenaries, fighting at various battle stages. At each battle players select a number of their company to fight. Players unlock additional characters if they complete certain side objectives at each battle stage. During battle, characters take turns performing actions, with the eventual goal of eliminating the opposition.

That description could easily describe most SRPG's, so here's where this game differs:

• Characters do not level up, the focus is on the who you bring to battle, not which warrior has the biggest ax.
• Combat is very streamlined. You don't dig through a deep menu tree to cast a spell. This isn't move-attack, move-attack, move-attack, what a character does each turn varies wildly. Your tactical choices will have immediate rammifications, and tactics will have to change often if you are to survive.
• It is turn based, and there is no hard time limit, but it feels fast paced. Combat doesn't feel repetitive, and you have to adjust your strategy every time the AI moves. Some characters will be unlocked for beating stages in a certain amount of time.
• You won't be fighting monsters, and you won't be facing dumb hordes. Enemy teams will almost entirely consist of characters you can recruit. Battles will predominantly be rather fair.
• Tactics are king. The system is simple to learn, but there is a lot of depth in the mix of characters. (I will attempt to explain why the system is so good in future posts, it's hard to talk abstractly about it)
• The AI really shines. In my own tests, the AI doesn't usually win a perfectly fair fight against me, but it is always close. I would have lost a number more if I hadn't have gone first. The AI often suprises me, and has taught me a thing or two about my own creations.

Before each battle, you'll choose who you want to fight for you. Each stage will have a cap on how many may enter from your company. This is where all the strategy comes in. Do you bring in a healer and some muscle? Do you go with a team of fast ranged units and try to out manuver the enemy and whittle their numbers with superior use of the terrain? Do you focus on disabling though status effects and cleaning up with a fragile hard hitter? This isn't a decision you make once - every battle will be very different. There might be three different rounds, and you might well win easily round one, but strugle on the remaining rounds. Not every battle will have the same scale either. Most will range from 3-6 combatants, but the plan is to have a few epic battles (20+) later in the game.

Multiplayer is a large component as well. No plans for online multiplayer, but four players (with or without a mix of AI players) will be able to face off on a number of battlefields of various sizes.

The art style is unique. A picture is worth a thousand words, so:

(click for full screen)

I don't have a good name for it, so for now, I'll just call it Pixel Tactics. It's growing on me as a name, we'll see. I'm creating it for release on Xbox Indie Games using XNA. Hopefully I'll be at point I can release by Christmas, provided I don't get majorly distracted along the way.

To give you a sense of where I am in development (and myself a log) heres a list.
Done:
Combat system and battle engine
AI
Upcoming work:
Map editor (this isn't going in the game, but I'll take this any day over editing maps by hand)
Adding more terrain and some arenas (creating the art assets is the big time sink here)
Character selection
Challenges (these will be quick playable stand alone battles with preset parties)
Future development:
Main menu/title screen
Multiplayer
World map (probably the last thing I do)
More characters (5 are fleshed out for demo, the plan is more than 50, but I'd like to fit in some additional beyond that)
Character balancing
Battle animations (This is a time sink if ever there was one)
More sound effects

First!

lol frist!!!!11

I don't really expect anyone to ever read this, but it will allow me to track my progress on my own development. Perhaps if I create something interesting people will come. I think that's the idea of most blogs anyway.