So last weekend I started prototyping and working on my next game.
I've planned out a bit on paper how turn based tactics is meant to play out, and now started prototyping as well as learning how to draw in isometric. Which has been quite the challenge. I've been trying to learn from the sprites in Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. But it's proving challenging to represent the detail in 1 bit. So I started trying to make a more abstract tree which appears a little better. Learning a lot!
Here is a progress shot:
Going to start working on the turns and combat tomorrow, so we'll see if we can make something fun!
I decided to jump my tile size up to 48 pixels to zoom in a bit and also give me a bunch of extra pixels to draw with and add more detail, this should hopefully help with visual clarity. This mean re-doing all the tiles.
I've started blocking in the gameplay, with movement, turns, and using the turn menu.
Yeah I released my first playdate game at the end of last month! Some of the tooling I did there has helped get this project off the ground faster. However, there is still a lot to do!
The main set of work was to write a set of navmesh, and pathfinding tools to make checks to see if a tile is 'walkable' or to stop units from being able to jump up block heights more than half a tile.
This took quite a while as I needed to write some of my own data structures to make this work, a dynamic array, and a queue. I wanted these two data-structures to use my custom allocators. Because of the dynamic nature of building this navigation data, I wanted the ability to manage the memory and make sure it wouldn't fragment the default generic allocator in the playdate sdk.
Right now I generate the navigation data and path every frame. However, that's a bit overkill and only needs to be regenerated at the start of a units turn.
Back to work after the holiday break! But I managed to squeeze some time in while visiting the in-laws. I prototyped the main menu.
As well as started working towards fixing the sorting when drawing in isometric.
Up until this point, I've sort have been cheating, very specifically avoiding in gifs and images showing situations where sprites would break draw order. Like moving behind a tile at a higher z depth.
It's still not perfect, but unit, objects and tiles correctly sort. But game elements like highlights or the cursor do not sort. (I hate how this looks with the highlights drawing over the top of units.)
I'm testing over the next day if I can fix this once and for all. Otherwise, I'm going to fallback to making situations where the player can't accidentally break sorting through design rather than technology.
Good news I've fixed the sorting problem. It's significantly more expensive to render the level now. However, it's good enough for now that I can move forward without worrying too much about performance.
(Not pictured in the gif, but I also fixed the weird offset on the trees/shrubs)
I've also put together the dialogue & expressions system so I can play dialogue sequences between characters to help aid in the narrative. This is just test dialogue.
I'm taking some time to focus on the art side, because I need to polish up a few scenes to get a better idea about how long this is going to take to make and what I need to cut from the final game.
Only a small update here today. It's been a while since I posted. I've done a massive art pass over the game. There are a few levels now, more characters, sprites for the characters.
I've been working on AI but they're still not particularly smart. They just move toward the nearest opponent and try to attack. Which I might keep some variant of for the 'Easy' difficulty. But for higher challenge, they should make smarter moves and plan a little bit ahead.
The game flow is mostly working. Currently, I've been building a simple tutorial that runs through the basics of the combat. Not that it's overly complex
Progress has been a little slower lately! But we're holding steady.
Some more work has been happening for the menus to round out the parts that make this a whole game. (rather than just the immediate gameplay)
Systems for missions and dialogue has been set up so now characters can have conversations, a very critical point, as this is largely a story game.
Most of my time lately has been fixing edge cases in rendering, building out the story, and adding more abilities and weapons for the units.
I added a 'bond' system which when doing your party management, units 'give' bonus stats to the members on their left and right in the team lineup. Things like increased speed(affects turn order), more accuracy,(affects partially blocked line of sight damage), increased move distance, or more efficient use of water.
(WORK IN PROGRESS)
Still a fair amount of work to do before it's ready. Running some playtests this week with a few people to see what is confusing and/or boring and trying to improve that. So my next focus is on getting a light tutorial built into the game. ASAP.
This last fortnight I've been getting the guts of the game together and addressing feedback from some playtests with friends and family.
Largely there is still a lack of information about each unit's stats, abilities, health, power, range, etc. So that's going to be my focus over the next week.
While running these playtests I've been working on a couple of new things. First of all the main menus have received a spruce up.
There is still some more things to do here. the main menu buttons don't follow the same style as all my other buttons, ( it's missing an arrow to indicate the selected button.)
Additionally, unit's now have a chance to dodge incoming attacks from the front (and a slight chance from the side), However, you can never dodge attacks to the back.
So facing direction is now very important in where you leave your units. At the end of a unit's turn you now select their facing direction. Putting your back to a wall or ally, could improve your chances of survival.
If I get time in the next weeks or so, I'm hoping to revisit the party screen (see above post) and get each party members stats visible, show the bond skills affecting other members and make it clear when you're moving a unit's order in the party, or changing their weapon/ability.
