New San Francisco marches on
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supple crow
supple basalt
Looks rad so far! Is your intent to expand upon the original game or is your end goal to simply port it into Godot for Godot experience?
soft stump
I remember stumbling across the original game on Itch a while back and it looked really fun and polished. Glad to hear that development continues!
azure musk
Been watching the port since the start and it's great to see all the progress so far!
junior coral
The leafy pigs are so darn cute! π
wind cosmos
Ooh this kinda feels a bit like Into the Breach, just in terms of visual feedback. Or maybe there's some other game that came before Into the breach that has the same style of visual feedback. Either way it looks very satisfying!
junior coral
I really like the way the characters gray out after you've moved/attacked with them - It makes it really clear who has moved and who still needs to move!
neon yew
Next I need to work on some win/loss conditions so your game doesn't go on infinitely
daring crow
Kieran you are too powerful. It's been so cool to see you expand your gamedev skillset! You are goals β€οΈ
daring crow
I would love to know your secret when it comes to productivity. I've been kicking around a game idea but life keeps getting in the way haha
daring crow
I love this, that's very insightful!
I'm having to give myself some grace because a lot of things in my life are changing, which makes it hard to make time for creativity. But once things settle down, watch out! I'm gonna make SO MANY THINGS
Thank you for sharing!
dreamy meadow
Man, was just catching up on all the progress here, it's looking great! Just noticed the green rim lighting on the characters when they zap the plants, such a nice detail!
minor beacon
Rule of thumb - never have uncommitted changes on your machine unless you're willing to redo them if something goes bad xD
+1, came here for game updates and found this self reflection, how great is that? In my own experience it will usually take longer than it could have if I worked more regularly, but usually it turns out that the things I end up doing stick around rather than being trashed. So that's the other benefit of giving yourself more space and time, if possible.
I love the progress made here. All those small animations builds up to much greater player satisfaction, so keep them coming!
glad dove
bit late to the party, but I adore the eggplant chicken! are the sheep cauliflower?
glad dove
I love cheggen! it's kind of a silly name but really fun
junior coral
Wow, lotta this going around, but I, too, came here to check in on your progress after being heads down for a while, and I'm loving all of it! I might have said this before, but you've done a good job of making events (Moving, attacking, healing, etc) so clear and easy to read at first glance. Nice work!
sand holly
Sprite animations are such a blast to draw! Hate to admit it because I love my characters, but doing the death/defeat sprites are some of the most fun. These sprites look great, I can hear a "plop" noise when I look at the face-down one π
azure musk
Progress continues! I like the existing turn banner
minor beacon
One thing I noticed is that it's not clear from UX that the character had two actions available. Especially with the first one, because the healing skill had no valid target it was grayed out, and became full color only when you moved next to the plant - this could confuse players potentially, as they saw the action not available and thus become surprised when it does become available after move.
Many tactical games let you select the skill that has no target so that you can visually realize that there are indeed no targets, instead of preemptively marking the action as not available.
*no valid target
minor beacon
Yeah, I'm just letting you know what my first impression was, and I did play a bunch of turn based rpgs like that, final fantasy tactics comes from top of mind.
I think the other thing is that usually in those games using a skill or performing the attack ends the turn - which I believe is not what you want to be the case.
So I'd consider gerouping then in such a way, that if you perform one action from the group, that group is no longer available
In this sample so far it would be probably move and heal/attack as the two groups
And yet those other games do have skills separate from attack, but then again the players are taught that once they perform one of those, the turn for that character ends
Alternative from Gloomhaven, where you have the top and the bottom parts of the skill cards you selected for a turn, so you can do them in any order you want - but that is equivalent to putting the heal/attack into one "part" of the card, while the move is the other part
Alternative to the alternative, have some sort of visual indication that a given group of actions have been used - eg red dot for attack/heal and green for for move - one you perform the corresponding action the dot goes gray or something
That way the players have at glance view into who still can perform actions
minor beacon
I realized it was a wall of text, so apologies for that. I just like this type of games, that's all! And keep up the progress updates, love seeing how it gets better every time! π And happy to help of course, glad you found those insightful.
fathom kiln
New San Francisco marches on
Whatβs the chance I can peek at your web based engine???
supple crow
The game engine for my tactics rpgs is proprietary, but I've made a bunch of other web games on the same tech stack that I've open-sourced on Github!
https://github.com/ehgoodenough
A good example would be Enchiridion: https://github.com/ehgoodenough/enchiridion
minor beacon
I LOVE THIS! π
soft stump
Looks great! Though I can't decide whether I prefer that the cost be shown from left to right or right to left. The rightmost one blinking kinda bothers me and I think its because other games use the left, but IDK
minor beacon
Looks great! Though I can't decide whether I prefer that the cost be shown from ...
wait, to me it actually read natural the way it is in the video - can you give an example of a game that does it left to right?
I'm thinking about those as a "progress bar" that is being depleted
soft stump
I looked up some XCOM 2 images and I found an image that shows a soldier with one AP left has the left AP grayed out and the right one still blue. Gotta zoom in to see it though.
Look for the chevrons under the health bar of the selected soldier
Sorry I'm away from my computer or I could try to get a better picture
soft stump
Didn't mean to prematurely nitpick though, it still looks very good
minor beacon
I don't think Kieran or I thought it's nitpicking at all - it is a pretty good feedback, and I was more surprised that I haven't seen the reverse in the games I played, but that's probably of my limited samples of games played haha xD (believe it or not, I never played XCOM!)
junior coral
This is fantastic! I love how clear it makes things, even before going through a tutorial or anything like that. Nicely done!
junior coral
I love risk/reward mechanics like this! I'm a bit confused though - I thought the goal was to defeat all the enemies. Is there something else that triggers the end of a level? I'm also curious about how you pick them up - Do you just have to move through them, or does it take an action?
Also, random off-the-cuff idea: It could be interesting if bug parts that aren't picked up do something - Spawn in more bugs (eg, they're attracted by the decay in some way), create an unmoveable spot, explode into an AoE around them (Which could also damage enemies, creating some interesting tactical choices), etc. Maybe different bugs drop different parts that do different things!
junior coral
Oh, cool. "Push your luck" mechanics like that are great, and it sounds like this would double as a "set your own difficulty" mechanic. I'd highly recommend allowing the player to keep some of their spoils (eg, half of each, or Stardew Valley-style randomized losses), as players tend to get upset when they lose everything (Even if it's their fault π ).
minor beacon
it probably also depends how much effort it takes to gather the lost things again - if it's a matter of doing another quick mission, then it would be probably OK to lose whatever loot you have collected so far in the mission, since you were not able to successfully finish it. but if it's permadeath of your character... that's for those who like hardcore difficulty levels xD
as a side idea to the losing the resources when you lose the battle - a twist to this could be that the battleground is more polluted the next time you visit, with some extra destructible obstacles or maybe those parts that you didn't collect become extra monsters at the start of the next mission on the same "area" π
minor beacon
Can I suggest playing with the speed of the hover animation? If this gets triggered by a fast playing person, how does it unravel? I'm expecting that you can select the action before it expands, but would be interesting to see how someone familiar with the game is playing it, as they would no longer need those hover animations so to speak, they already know what those things do.
soft stump
I like how it looks! I can't tell is this would happen from the gif, but my only concern would be the same actions like move or attack showing up in different places on each unit based on how many they have, forcing you to search every time. My intuition is that I would prefer some actions in a locked position, even if they are not evenly spaced with the others, than actions constantly moving around, but I'd definitely want to play with it.
junior coral
This is looking great! I like how clear the enabled/disabled actions are.
I agree with what AndroidOverlord said. I'd suggest having fixed positions and just not drawing (Or darkening) the ones that are unavailable, if at all possible.
minor beacon
I missed the part about different placement for different characters part
I think if the character does not e.g. have a normal attack or magical attack or certain skill type - it does make sense to not display that option
if it is normally available, but not in current state (e.g. the character has been stunned), graying it out also makes sense to me
I'm thinking about keyboard / controller support - if the radial menu is like in the video above, I'm not sure how I would navigate it through arrows or DPad / joystick π
and I think it does make sense to think about that at this stage, assuming that the game will be at some point supporting those methods of input
I think you can get away with modifying them per character type, but the options I'd expect to be selectable with directional key presses -> maybe you could consider having it support 8 possible directions instead of having the e..g 5 menu options spread out evenly on the circle?
although even with even spread on the cricle of 5 options you could support directionals - up arrow, up right/left, down right/left -> it might just not be the most natural way for interacting with a game, when the left/right/down arrow by themselves are not being used
Also: π
azure musk
It's also super valuable to be able to easily demo on a steam deck, in which case controller support becomes basically mandatory
minor beacon
Ooo nice! π₯Ή
supple basalt
Looks great π
How're you doing the color changes of the tiles? a color overlay filter?
soft stump
Looks nice!
neon yew
I'm sure there is a more procedural way to do this, but for the moment I was mainly testing what that transition would look like and if the colors/values I chose would read as "night"
supple basalt
It looks super smooth and nice, all the effort shows!
I tried toying with the idea of daylight orange moonlit blue using shaders in my project but it was very difficult to come up with a procedural solution that worked with any & every color. Lotta times color overlays or color screening just doesn't cut it imo
Day for night shots as a baseline foundation is a good idea though, I didn't think of that
There might be a post processing solution instead of a shader solution there
Excellent stuff, thanks for sharing π
minor beacon
Random idea: what if the enemies start glowing at night? Like the red spots on the creatures could turn into bright red gem-like things π€
minor beacon
SHEEEEEEEP! π (also, would be cool to see all the creates you have so far in the game, I just saw the piggie in that video that I have missed in the past somehow)
minor beacon
Thank you!!!
junior coral
Very cool to see the progress all in one video like this!
wind cosmos
So cute!!
minor beacon
so... is it popping the seeds out or pooping the seeds out? π€ͺ
azure musk
Popping da poop
junior coral
I know you can't ship this, but I love it so much π
minor beacon
SFX work well, but the music to me sounds a bit too platform game fast paced π like you want that for boss fights, but even then it's usually less arcade'y
minor beacon
I know, it was more on the vibe of the said music, and regardless you can always go against my subjective opinion, I'm not gonna be mad about it and still play the game for the sheep creature. And pooping.
Definitely the pooping! π
alpine fiber
is your movement pathing done via A*?
alpine fiber
yeah I assume you plan to have that battle level to have more obstacles/changes over time
TIL Godot has it built in
supple basalt
Do you have plans to present this at a show and tell or any upcoming event? I'd like to play it when/if it's ready
supple basalt
I'll be there! I'm excited to try it out π
alpine fiber
crude temple
I'm just kinda lurking here but I'm gonna come out the woodwork to say this project brings me a lot of joy
alpine fiber
worse case, can be saved for next show and tell π
supple basalt
Bro I've been doing late nights the last few nights on my project as well, and there's still more to add. We're in it together haha
I'll make my own show and tell page/thread after this event probably
junior coral
Whoa, that home base scene is so pretty! π π
Seriously though, this is looking great! I just implemented a transition manager in my game and I think I like yours better π
alpine fiber
looking great!