Lancer Tactics

[void hearth]

Does Vlad say it applies damage before the attack? I don't remember

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah

[void hearth]

Oh then it'd cancel the whole thing

Since an AOE is one "attack" that hits multiple people

[alpine sorrel]

Oh right, attack vs attack rolls

[final onyx]

Oh Olive, while you're here

I just wanna pass along some feedback from some folks if that's okay

[alpine sorrel]

Sure!

The demo is being burnt to the ground and started over

[final onyx]

Some people asked if there could be some kinda recommended fire team for the mechs

Since sometimes they felt like they lost due to making the wrong choice at game start

But also like, what would be the ideal one for each mission is gonna be nebulous I can see

But I thought it worth just proposing the idea

[alpine sorrel]

my best tip is that Swallowtail is MVP against berserkers, throw on a lock on and never consume it for perma shred

[final onyx]

Yup seems like it

But just wanted to throw the idea out there, no pressure 🙂

[alpine sorrel]

Failing that, ram them before shooting

[kind dove]

sorry to muddy the waters on this (and interrupt the new convo) but the FAQ actually outlines that in general, "attack" can generally be interpreted to mean "attack roll", with the exceptions being that bonus damage halves against multiple targets in the same "attack" & things that trigger like the Nelson's Skirmisher trait only trigger once even if you're attacking multiple targets

[alpine sorrel]

The campaign mode by default I think will have story mode npcs pre-built so you're only charged with doing one build (with the option to bring in more of your characters if you want)

[alpine sorrel]

So you think the other aoe attacks could resolve?

[kind dove]

yeah, I think so. the grunt can just say "yeah im gonna hit the spiky guy last"

[void hearth]

Yeah honestly that's not at all how I'd run it

So I guess the question really is a question after all!

[kind dove]

I definitely might be wrong, lol. Just my understanding

[alpine sorrel]

Here's the worst-case event handling tree that I've been sketching out and making the system to accomodate

[kind dove]

pretty clean all things considered lol

[void hearth]

what the...?

I'm too tired to parse that lol

[kind dove]

thank you for your work 🙏

[alpine sorrel]

I've been saying the words depth- and breadth-first a lot recently

It doesn't make total sense, not completely internally consistent with what units have what abilities. Just what could possibly happen

[glad lotus]

You're a hero, lol

[deft rapids]

i agree with Lost tbh, if you proc shrike armor, it should pop the grunt before the aoe comes out

[glad lotus]

Me too, fwiw. I think you could argue that any other attack rolls could still hit and apply on-attack/on-hit effects, but shrike armour should pop the grunt and prevent all damage steps. (Which is slightly weird, but hey.)

[void hearth]

Like if shrike applied after the attack everything else would go through, but I can't think of a logical scenario for "I die before my attack happens but I still get to flamethrower the other 2 dudes", y'know?

[glad lotus]

(Letting the Vlad prevent all of the attacks in total is cooler for the Vlad player, which would generally be a good thing.)

[deft rapids]

yeah, i think the "first" of shrike armor would resolve before the semi-simultaneous attacks of the aoe

[kind dove]

All very true
AOEs are in weird brain space for me so I kinda just didn't worry about the narrative implications lol
Seems there's a pretty solid consensus which is good

[glad lotus]

In general, all of the attack-triggered effects would need to resolve before you start applying damage and triggering on-damage effects, so I don't think there's a version where the popped grunt still gets to do damage to everyone. Unless they have a special on-attack or on-hit effect that automatically applies damage.

[void hearth]

NPC optional that lets them shoot you even if they die :V

[deft rapids]

"The [NPC]'s actions are always on the top of the stack"

[alpine sorrel]

Which is tricky because like I I have to go and check for all possible triggered things on all targets before resolving any of them

[toxic badge]

Don't you have to do that quite a bit anyways with all the reactions floating around? mirage blip & gorgon's kit and all that? 🤔

[ripe radish]

I will point out that having things that normally can happen in any order of the players choice happen in a set order can be detrimental. For example, both the movement from FABI and the extra attacks from executioner happen after an attack, and the order can matter a lot, but both can be used in either order for different effects.

same with a bunch of end of your turn effects

[alpine sorrel]

It's a lot easier for stuff that triggers afterwards because I can kind of just throw them on the stack to be resolved later. Anything that happens before and can end up cancelling sibling events is thornier

I think I'm likely going to not let the player order stuff because it's a UI and pacing nightmare

This ain't trying to be mtg

[minor trench]

How about situations like MC where it'd be beneficial to have Knockback before damage, to get the target separated from an ally?

Or will damage and effects be calculated simultaneously?

[alpine sorrel]

oh yikes, yeah, that's pretty important. I was going to just say that knockback always happens after the damage. hmm.

I don't know how we'd let the player choose though

without bogging things down in the 90% of cases where it doesn't matter

[sullen berry]

At the end of the day, I applaud your willingness to try and make the game as close to tabletop as possible, but at least for me, having the game have it's own little quirks like event resolution .... this weird and hard to explain, but I think having those differences is important to make the game it's own experience? Having a few weird rules makee it stand out in a good way in my opinion

[minor trench]

Maybe a toggle? Like an advanced mode for those who cares and those who don't?

Since Knockback itself is also meant to be optional too, no?

[alpine sorrel]

imo "add an option to enable this" is a design swamp for anything that's not accessibility related. You get all of the difficulty of programming it both ways plus needing to check what mode you're in, with the limited benefit of almost nobody changing it from the default mode

[glad lotus]

Yeah, those kinds of solutions are more complex to write, not less. It theoretically improves UX, but that's debatable.

[minor trench]

Mmm.

Fair enough

It's really tricky in the case of MC because it affects their Ram

[naive yacht]

You know it didn't even occur to me to ask, but will there be a color blind mode or will the game have enough metrics of discernment to not rely solely on color for anything

[minor trench]

And affects their ability to deal with a pair of enemies close to each other

I think in general Knockback before damage works well as long as Knockback itself can be toggled off.

[alpine sorrel]

the second one, that's an issue I pay a lot of attention to in design phase.

[alpine sorrel]

yeah doing knockback before damage seems better if we have to choose one or the other? like I'm trying to think of when you'd want the opposite

plus that's how into the breach does it

[naive yacht]

I actually very much appreciate that as a colorblind person, I never need everything to be adjusted color wise if there are other distinctions i can use to differentiate

so thanks for that

[minor trench]

Yeah I think that's the simplest solution along with a tiny KB on/off button somewhere.

But I'm not sure if KB will be mandatory or nah.

[alpine sorrel]

the way to skip knockback will be to just cancel/X instead of choosing one of the tiles, just like how it works in the demo

[minor trench]

Perfect

[flint portal]

Maybe its too much to program but it could just be a choice of what resolves first for players and a set order for npcs

[alpine sorrel]

I think I'm close to calling player choice a loss to simplify programming + improve pacing + do less UI. Another corner filed off for the sake of the adaptation.

[flint portal]

fair !

does that mean knockback won't be a choice ?

(since its may so its all or nothing)

[tepid temple]

She said you can cancel out of it like in the demo

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah it's just the ordering of events that I'm gonna automate

[alpine sorrel]

Draft map of the current engine for game data. I'm in the "I'm a genius" phase of development. Very pleased with how it separates :

• state into lightweight containers in the middle row,
• stateless functions with the bulk of gameplay logic the top row,
• and the "view" nodes that have the nuts and bolts of what you can actually see and interact with in the bottom row.

Looking forward to the inevitable "oh no" phase

[naive yacht]

https://tenor.com/view/look-at-this-graph-nickelback-gif-12683147

[alpine sorrel]

I'm doing another batch of manually verifying pilot names, and I just wanna take a minute to shout out these real ones

A bunch of food-ish ones next to each other, I wonder if they were coordinated

also got two unrelated "from accounting" callsigns

[warm magnet]

can you hard code in that dave and isaac will always be teamed up

[alpine sorrel]

I'll put a note in the file to take a shot at that! I'm already grouping Squads, so it shouldn't be too much trouble to do this too

[torn kite]

Sometimes, someone from accounting just gotta pilot a giant robot.

Just to settle some numbers.

[minor trench]

Balance the debits and credits of enemies until enemies reach 0.

[warm magnet]

Battle cry: "Get depreciated!"

[remote forge]

in the current build, is there a way to switch the pilot's mechs up? I know I can change their loadouts

like if I wanted to give Granny her Everest back again instead of the BB?

[alpine sorrel]

Nope!

[alpine sorrel]

Do you want to end up with a Caliban? Because this is how you end up with a Caliban.

[forest obsidian]

Worked out real well for John Deere

[remote forge]

ah gotcha

[stable loom]

Olive, thanks for writing all the blog posts about your work, both the Kickstarter aspects and the technical/coding ones. I love getting a behind the scenes view into these types of things, and learning how different people approach different problems.

Your approach comes across as methodical, data-driven, and is written with a desire for laypeople to be able to understand.

So thanks again, you are awesome. Can't wait for the game to come out. 😄

[livid fractal]

Hey Olive! I'm reading through the Kickstarter update now. I see you noted

If we're going to be spending the next ~2-3 years on this...
I was under the impression you had given yourself a 1 year timelimit for the sake of your own sanity. Di d I misunderstand something or have you made a timeline adjustment that you feel comfortable with?

[fickle pecan]

I think that's for the full time year which doesn't start immediately?

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah, exactly. Sounds like I should make a timeline/roadmap/something for the next update

we have the base promises of the campaign (the "bones": main engine, a handful of frames) aimed at sept 2024, then all the stretch goals after that.

[livid fractal]

Ah, that makes sense! I just saw the timeline update and was concerned, haha

[alpine sorrel]

The year-long timer starts once we pick up doing stretch goals

[livid fractal]

(To be clear, concerned for your team's mental and physical stress, not like... project delivery concerns, lol)

Ah! Okay, that makes a lot more sense!

[alpine sorrel]

Though technically I think the way it's going to play out is that I'm going to slowly burn through that funding throughout the whole development. It allows me to switch from "2 wks day job // 1 wk LT" to "1 wk day job // 2 wks lancer"

so increased part time for 3 years instead of one full-time chunk at the end

Re: mental health, our team has a clear project pillar of "push deadlines instead of crunching; no game is worth having a bad time in the making". So the dates may change as we proceed. I'll communicate those changes as clearly as possible when they happen.

[livid fractal]

I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and kindness you're putting into this development!

[alpine sorrel]

ty! ^^

[naive yacht]

AAA projects take notes lol

[torn kite]

Hopefully things go smoothly!

[alpine sorrel]

we're under different financial pressures, getting paid up front and having a small scope means we can have the luxury of not feeling the need to crunch

not saying it's justified for AAA

[naive yacht]

Oh absolutely, and I know this isn't a stage for wider scale gripes, but I think there's an argument to be made on the publisher/ industry side around prioritizing employees over strict or unrealistic deadlines.

Not that I could successfully and persuasively MAKE that argument to the wider industry mind

But if I'm wishing, I can wish big

[raw thunder]

So my brother wants to learn programming

Any tips on where he should start?

[stuck falcon]

That's a very big question

What kind of programming?

[raw thunder]

Videogame programming

[untold prairie]

I guess step one is for him to figure out which language he wants to use. This particular project is being coded in Godot but I understand Unity is also fairly popular.

[fathom saffron]

Unity is C#
Minecraft is Java
Roblox uses Lua

Lots of choices, ask him what he wants to do

[naive yacht]

might also do to pick one and start small and work with it. Learning how to learn to code can be pretty useful in general

and if you establish good habits, you can probably have an easier time learning others

[void hornet]

Honestly if he wants to do game dev
I'd say a course in the basics of programming first
What's is a for, what is an if, how to do the basics, followed by a course for Godot or unity to dive into game dev

For starting out he should pick an engine and stick with it, so he's not bogged down by learning the difference and adapting to new engines

I'd personally push hard for Godot
Godot is neat, it's open source and community driven

Unity has shit management and unreal 5 while technically amazing, is a bit too much for starting in imo

[mild jay]

I think I’d second that. I started with Unity myself, but that was many bad corporate decisions ago, when it was still kinda the indie game engine. Godot seems to be going on very good directions

[void hornet]

Unity is very capable and good
It's just the corporate behind it is really not capable and not good

[alpine sorrel]

Agree. Though if you're just starting, I think modding existing games is a great way to start. You can get big playable effects out of small bits of work, plus you learn the shape of what a complete game engine looks like.

I learned a ton by modding the original star wars battlefront in high school

[void hornet]

Oh true
Modding scenes are really big these days!

[alpine sorrel]

Dunno much about modding Roblox or Minecraft but that's probably where I'd start today

[mild jay]

Oh yeah, many games with mod support will teach you some basic concepts, Warcraft 3 taught me a lot

[void hornet]

Just don't get into Roblox game dev for the money

It fucking sucks

[naive yacht]

you know

i should take this to my big bro, he got his degree in game dev and he had a lot of passion, but like mental health and inability to really get into the industry took a lot out of him. I wonder if he can get some wind in his sails if he worked to get into modding somehow, or managing a mod team

he's currently doing software QA cause game QA didn't pay quite as much

[final onyx]

Are you my younger brother? /s

[naive yacht]

hahaha

i think he lets a number of issues block him from getting into it at a smaller scale

but i think personal projects would prolly be good for em

[glad lotus]

The whole Roblox ecosystem is designed to be a predatory money printer, it's a bit scary.

[raw thunder]

Thank you for all the answers

[nova nebula]

Also: random people on YouTube can have amazing tutorials for things. Sometimes their English is... Not great, but damn if they don't code good. Really helped me on my little side projects like making a card game

[void hornet]

Oh ye there's YouTube tutorials for any kind of project these days

[broken lily]

Genuinely enjoying hearing people gregariously explain their thought processes and methods even if they struggle with a secondary language.

(plus the marked improvement over time because people don't give them shit in comments or offer language pointers)

[rain cipher]

This seems really smart to my uninformed eyes 😄 it looks a lot like a Model View Controller setup I've heard tale of from app dev, was that an inspiration?

[alpine sorrel]

Good eye! It wasn't explicitly a goal. I only realized that I had layers once I started making this map of the engine and noticed that stuff was kind of in one of three categories. The organizing principle I was operating under was "make resources that are easy to save". By pulling all state out of nodes and what would become the stateless top layer the three tiers kind of organically happened.

So I was probably influenced subconsciously, but it's more of a case of convergent evolution based on similar separation of concern principles.

[rain cipher]

Neat!

[alpine sorrel]

Nothing is shareable yet, but today we've been prototyping maps w/ elevation ++ just got a first draft of a character portrait from our artist and I'm SO buzzed about making this game.

[alpine sorrel]

Awww yis

I like how the sides of the stacks also make subtle trans flags

[deft rapids]

those stickers look killer

[little jetty]

love to see it

[broken lily]

surely.

[nova nebula]

Ooooh, bigger than I was imagining. Rad

[alpine sorrel]

I had to make the height of the HA one the same as the height of the circular sockets, which made the whole rectangle quite large. Then this trans one just matches that bc it'd be weird to have different rectangle sizes. Funny how design decisions ripple out like that.

[tepid temple]

Rectangular tiles feels like eldritch knowledge not meant for man to know

[void hearth]

I will say!

the IPS-N sticker is both my favorite of the bunch, and the glossy run really makes the colors pop more in the picture

so I would very much like to get both please!

[alpine sorrel]

Sending them out as bonus oopsies seems like the safest bet to get them off my hands, so that's how I'm leaning as well!

[alpine sorrel]

Haha I had a similar reaction when Mark first pitched them to me. It's absurd. But makes SO much sense for this game.

I think we'll be able to get a cool sense of depth with them for free as well since mechs+objects can slightly overlap the tile above them.

[tepid temple]

I'm just wondering how diagonals are gonna look with them

[void hearth]

I'm not sure what the benefit of rectangular over square is, tbh?

[frigid shale]

The backer update gave some examples of how rectangle was beneficial for the project

[alpine sorrel]

The big one is being able to show both the horizontal and vertical on the same basis; it doesn't bias towards horizontal ranges on a rectangular screen (since with square tiles you can see up/down less far)

[void hearth]

ah, ok, the screen shape thing makes sense

[tepid temple]

Huh. Never knew square tiling on a rectangular screen would create a deficit on one axis

[void hearth]

Oh hey, one question that the rectangle overlapping raises

How are you doing size 1/2 tokens?

[tepid temple]

They're just size 1 tokens but visibly scaled vertically

[void hearth]

Are they like, visually smaller than size 1? Would there be a worry about a bigger mech "in front" of them making them hard to see?

[tepid temple]

Behold, a size 1/2 token

[alpine sorrel]

Readability is something that we're thinking a lot about. Size half mechs aren't too different than size one mechs. I don't have a good reference image on hand but yeah we're gonna be careful about overlap.

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah! It's not usually something you have to think about because the hardware is a constraint that usually you can design the game around. When the max range of an ability is like five tiles, there's enough screen space on a rectangular screen to see the whole area. But since Lancer is already designed, we have to do the reverse and warp the UI to accommodate its massive ability range.

I haven't been able to find a single other 2D tactics game where you can shoot something 20 spaces away.

Also I suspect lot of the genre conventions were established on the gameboy (e.g. the gameboy fire emblem) which had a square screen so didn't have this problem.

[tepid temple]

You forming strong but obscure opinions on decisions modern FE games should take?

[alpine sorrel]

lemme blow your mind real quick

you see this

going 3d cheats and turns squares into other shapes

[glad lotus]

This bothers me in the back of my head in so many games, thank you for recognizing it. ❤️

[tepid temple]

Is the goal total parity or just something less lopsided? Because I count 11 squares on the X axis there and 14 on the Y. Though I imagine total 100% parity across a bunch different monitor sizes isn't possible without silly hacks though...

[alpine sorrel]

less lopsided

pothing's nerfect

[tepid temple]

Honestly think spoonerisms are the closest thing to perfection

[minor trench]

I really like the update, thanks for that!

[minor trench]

I'm surprised that's something to think about- I always thought it'd be just like VTT where you can just move/zoom the screen around while targetting?

[alpine sorrel]

oh for sure

[mild jay]

Oh is the perspective shifting to an angle similar to that screenshot?

[alpine sorrel]

but a design lesson I've taken to heart is to not take "oh, the user can take this action to reveal information on the screen that's otherwise hidden" as a freebie

it's always better, if possible, to simply show the hidden information

and scrolling around the map and changing camera angles to understand what's going on is interface busywork that is good to avoid when possible

[mild jay]

Sorry I might have been skimming and misunderstood what you mean by using rectangles

I am trying to multitask (I am failing)

[alpine sorrel]

oh I guess a screenshot of what we're talking about isn't actually in this thread yet

the visual style for elevation was partially inspired by @tender furnace's excellent pseudo-isometric maps btw, you can check their work out here: https://cakeisgreat.itch.io/cakes-quality-lancer-hex-maps

[minor trench]

That's more clear, thanks!

It also seems like it's good for having visual separation from the shadows to indicate flight too.

[alpine sorrel]

started drafting the dialogue tool today

[mild jay]

That tool’s lookin sharp

[alpine sorrel]

Our approach has been "olive drafts a skeleton together with the default styles and later mark will design it so it's pretty", and this is only stage 1 of that.

[sullen berry]

excited for the progress 😄 and very glad you're getting a dialogue tool going. Every step is an important one

[sand goblet]

oh sick that looks really cool

it's late for me so my brain is too fried to remember, did you say that these tools would be available to end users?

[alpine sorrel]

Yep! This'll all be part of the mission/map editor a la age of empires/warcraft.

We're also thinking about how to make a campaign editor to string missions together but I don't have a good idea of what that'll look like yet

[tepid temple]

How's sharing missions/maps/campaigns with other players gonna work?

[alpine sorrel]

Ideally, missions will be just a single file you can pass around. Any kind of in-game mario-maker/battlenet avenue for sharing is currently Out Of Scope.

(it may get more complicated once modding & custom game content enters the fray... still not 100% sure how we're gonna handle mods)

The ideal is that campaigns will also be a single file, but that's at best aspirational atm.

Oh and I guess until we implement our own map editor, there may also be Tiled maps mixed in there somewhere.

I'm really jazzed about making these tools and seeing what people do with them

[mild jay]

I used to spend a lot of time in the wc3 campaign editor when I was in high school, so this description is tapping directly into my nostalgia

[little jetty]

Discord where people share missions will probably pop up organically, I imagine

[alpine sorrel]

I suspect so too. I know I should make a dedicated server for LT like all the cool indies do, but I really don't want to sign up for that much community management. Riding on the mods' coattails here is like the perfect situation for how many CM spoons I have.

[tepid temple]

Don't worry, the red team is used to doing unpaid labor :P

[alpine sorrel]

I'm super grateful for them!

[tender furnace]

oh hey that's mine! Awesome to see that people are getting use out of it ❤️

[tender furnace]

I took a lot of my inspiration from Advanced wars, tactics ogre, Super Robot Wars, and SD Gundam G Generation.

A lot of these old school strategy games had some really creative art direction to differentiate between heights without going full on isometric (tactics ogre excluded).

[alpine sorrel]

Well you have my thanks for doing that research 🙂 we were struggling with how to show elevation without obscuring the tiles above and without seeming too straight-topdown-flat, and then your maps came along with the perfect perspective solution.

I don't think we're going to be able to manage multi-tiered elevation due to the awkwardness of necessary down-space they require when it's a south-facing vertical wall, but we're planning on putting objects and junk on tall stuff to make it seem taller/more inaccessible.

[tender furnace]

yeah unfortunately complex elevated structures are just out of reach for 2D; it would look too confusing.

I think that's why a lot of these older games didn't differentiate between discrete elevation levels. They handled elevation (in general) in the following ways: being at higher elevations (on buildings and mountains/flying) provided the equivalent of "hard cover", and provided a bonus to defense. If elevation did have to come into play, often it was just a binary toggle between high and low elevation- you were either at higher elevation, or not. Lastly, a whacky solution you see in the SD Gundam G generation games is to literally have a "sky" map layer where flying units do battle.

anyways I look forward to seeing what choices you guys make to adapt this tabletop game.

[tepid temple]

I know that the Advance Wars games for the DS had a sky layer. 3 guesses as to why they went that route

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah I think we're gonna do something similar with the binary toggle.

lol and I guess there's always the dwarf fortress solution of being able to page through slices of elevation with directly z-adjacent layers being shown faintly

[vast sundial]

Yo why haven't I checked out this channel yet.

[torn kite]

oh boy down that path lies madness, using z-levels like that hahaha

Ultimately, probably just like ICON does it: are you flying, y/n, great, you're higher, same for height, yeah.

[minor trench]

That's very disappointing to hear, to be frank. I loved playing with the verticality of Lancer. Can't you just stick on like a number in a corner to indicate elevation?

[minor trench]

Oh, I like this solution if that's what needs to be done to maintain the verticality.

Because frankly if elevation is binary, what's the plan for approaching the different sizes, LoS blocking, and so on?

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah, I understand that some folks may want a 100% tabletop sim, but we gotta balance that with what makes sense for the adaptation and what we have resources for. We tried a lot of different methods for making multiple levels of elevation readable but ultimately it'd be an interface nightmare (for comparison, the dwarf fortress steam release has a whole team of artists and programmers mostly JUST making the new interface) and significantly expands the scope of what the entire engine needs to accommodate.

The best balance we find that we're currently aiming for (this might change) is to have high ground be elevation 4, ramps up negate the climbing cost but still take extra movement for height, objects have size as normal, and calculate LOS from there. Flying units always see everything + can always be seen.

The primary function of elevation as a mapmaker is to break up and control line of sight between zones, and size 4 is enough to do that for most situations.

[sullen berry]

I will say this for myself: I do absolutely hope as a backer it's just a good tactics game and gives me the same front mission vibes the demo already gave. nothing more. nothing less. I don't need tabletop specific rules if it catches both a lancer vibe and tactical games of old vibe (but obviously better cause some of those old games were grindy)

[rain cipher]

I think that approach covers like 99% of reasonable cases anyway. If you go any further it is possible to make maps that feel very restrictive due to all the climbing lol. I feel like if you want to truly represent full verticality you'd need to go to 3D, which is an entirely new ball game.

With those limitations though, there won't be support for interior maps right? Unfortunate but understandable

[alpine sorrel]

oh huh I hadn't really considered interior maps honestly. All of our planned tilesets are outdoors.

But I don't think it'd be too hard to set up? just a terrain type that blocks all movement and los.

I'll add it to my hairbrained-ideas list

[frigid shale]

Yeah, agreed that impassible walls would be a helpful feature

[minor trench]

Restrictive terrain is def part of what I look for, as I make use of elevations and objects to try to control the flow of the map and encourage mobility tools.

[nova nebula]

Overhangs might be important considerations too. Bridge ambushes, stairwell fights, and whatnot

[alpine sorrel]

overhangs are the nightmare interface problem I was referring to lol

No stacked units

on that note, I honestly have no idea how we're gonna do mule harness

or like the goblin CP

[frigid shale]

Grab the MULE and now your movement mirrors the target?

[alpine sorrel]

orchisification

[frigid shale]

dunno if that helps with size/cover related issues though

[tepid temple]

I'm not sure if I've ever heard of anyone playing with overhangs lol

[glad lotus]

I played with building interiors/rooves on Foundry once. It was kind of a nightmare tbh, lol.

[sullen berry]

so I've done this before, but what it ends up being is this kind of double map. Keep in mind not, in video games but tabletop. Where I have the outside then I have each floor of the bulding or whatever I want on the edge of the map as a mini map

[rain cipher]

I've made and played a map with a bridge that spanned the whole level with holes in it. For ease of use I just said the players could traverse under the bridge but not end their turn there (unless they were in a hole haha)

[alpine sorrel]

"your mechs are solar powered, you have to stand where you can see the sky"

[neat wolf]

it turns out nuclear reactor meltdowns are bad for the environment so we have switched you to a greener form of combat power

[warm magnet]

the ultimate CQB technique - holding your hand over the enemy's solar panels, like putting your thumb over the top of those little solar calculators and watching the LCD screen fade out

[deft rapids]

Finally, we have figured out how to strangle mechs

[naive yacht]

Infantryman's primer to defeating a mech: "Bring a large blanket. Also pull their plug out of the outlet"

[crisp pelican]

That would work on an Evangelion

Any maps onboard ships? Those could easily be big enough to count as outdoors, with boxes and bulkheads for terrain features

(I may just want to recreate the intended canon use-case of the Caliban…(and yes I know Caliban isn’t guaranteed in since it’s not core book))

[alpine sorrel]

We're not planning on it, but that's what the map editor will be for. The bottleneck is getting a tileset of the right dimensions

[nova nebula]

Aaaah ok. I need to work on my reading comprehension lol

[alpine sorrel]

Np I only kinda vaguely gestured at it!

[naive yacht]

the issue of literally having something under something else is real

[hollow oracle]

couldn't find it anywhere so apologies if this has already been asked, but are we likely to get destructible terrain?

[alpine sorrel]

100%

possibly even destructible elevation, we're going to experiment with like letting a fully charged sherman carve a new canyon

(another benefit of only having one layer of elevation is it makes that feasible instead of having a ton of edge cases)

[hollow oracle]

oh hell yeah, love that shit. Did you reckon you'll be putting in all the noncore stuff like Zheng? Would love to careen around the map destroying everything

[alpine sorrel]

We'd like to but our primary focus is the core book first. If there's an opportunity to easily grab something noncore as a pick-me-up we might, but No Promises™

[primal pivot]

i know it's probably much too early to be truly considering this, but are any considerations being made for mod support in the future?

i'd be nice to be able to mod in homebrew content

[obtuse aurora]

I went to check on the kickstarter for this and I see this badge. I need it ;w;

[alpine sorrel]

New devlog is up, this time ft. a meme + a buncha diagrams about how we're doing event resolution: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wickworks/lancer-tactics/posts/3878231

[tepid temple]

Enjoy your vacation!

[sand goblet]

I'm actually super impressed that you're going through the whole reaction stack, that's a horrible morass. Are any other reactions getting the Brace treatment (which is a great idea)?

[final onyx]

The reaction system did seem to be the hardest thing to get working well in Videogame form

So good to see it tackled

[gilded rivet]

Can I get the demo??

Nvm
Found it

[gilded rivet]

I just thought about something

If you're hoping to turn this into also a VTT so actual constructed campaigns of lancer could be played with it.

Maybe you could also implement the ability for voice clips to be put in the game. That way a GM could basically do voice recordings ahead of the sessions.

[wraith cradle]

I think Olive has stated that turning this into a VTT is outside the scope of the project.

[alpine sorrel]

It really is a tough nut to crack! I played some BG3 this weekend though and was impressed with how they handled it. They did one of the things that we've been considering where you open a menu, see a list of all your possible reactions, and are able to toggle them between "automatically", "ask me every time", and "never".

I haven't played enough to get a good sense of how it'll end up working ingame, but 5e is a little less reaction-heavy than lancer so "ask me every time" is less of a big swing

[naive yacht]

i feel like this is useful also from a PBP perspective incidentally

[torn kite]

It was a lot more of a pain in a game like BG1 and BG2, because it was pseudo-real time, it had a lot of settings to 'okay pause and tell me when someone's casting a thing, or is ready to take commands, or took damage,' etc.

[naive yacht]

for different reasons

[neat wolf]

i saw a comment that said something along the lines of a damage threshold, for when you dont get structured but still take a big hit and want the option to brace from that

[naive yacht]

#always brace

extra actions? Not in this house

[alpine sorrel]

"yeah I like in 5e how you only have one action basically, I think lancer should be more like that"

for real though it's so hard to go back to 5e and not have the option to overcharge

[alpine sorrel]

oh? how so?

[void hearth]

People PBP Lancer?

[naive yacht]

Because of the potential long delay between call an response, it can be very easy for a member or involved party to miss an opportunity to respond with a reaction they qualify to use. By having a reaction specifically noted to be always on, the player in question need not maintain vigilance to be allowed to get the reaction out before the turn or action resolves

[naive yacht]

yeah, though I'm not PBPing lancer atm, there are more than a few who do or have tried. I think Flandre over in GM-corner runs exclusively so

[void hearth]

I know I tried, but it died super hard before we even finished the initial arrival in town, so I'm surprised that people actually have success with that

[alpine sorrel]

Not so far! Abilities with similar triggers like Expose Singularity absolutely is a "ask every time" situation + it'll be a lot less common, so I'm happy leaving it as-is.

[neat wolf]

something like Interdiction Point might be annoying

[alpine sorrel]

ohhh that's a good point. hm. It's still an uncommon case (have the system + it's charged) and I can't think of a good way besides "ask every time" though. I'm open to ideas.

Oh wait sysyphus

sisyphus

that's gonna be a Problem

oh no

💀

brb gonna go see how the new BG3 handles their divination wizard specialists, it's the exact same mechanic and problem

[void hearth]

The way the system pauses, is that a visible thing if it doesn't throw a pop-up for "brace y/n"?

Cause my first thought was literally having a button for Sisyphus that you can click within a 1-2 second window of "attack being rolled" or something

(apologies if that's super dumb, I'm not a computer game design person)

[alpine sorrel]

Not dumb! We thought about something like that for brace; have it auto-skip if you don't press a button in time.

[neat wolf]

something like that sounds like it might be able to work, like a little 2 or 3 second countdown to sisyphus the roll

[alpine sorrel]

But here we'd have to put that pause on EVERY roll to give the player time and can't do anything while we're waiting in case we gotta roll it back, so even with that we've dramatically lengthened combat

• it can't be the only solution because what are essentially quicktime events are major accessibility concerns

[neat wolf]

true, maybe you could change in preferences to only bring up the prompt on specific kinds of rolls?

[alpine sorrel]

maybe, that's back to the bg3 solution. If it's the only thing in the game with a menu like that, it feels like overkill.

[deft rapids]

Could you set it to be like, Sisyphus lets you designate specific characters to use each result on?

So you only get prompts on that turn

[alpine sorrel]

Maybe we could be smart about it like only prompt IF e.g. a hostile action hit AND we have a roll banked that would make it miss

[alpine sorrel]

that's another good way to maybe narrow it down, I like it

so like a hostile action succeeded or an allied action failed

[neat wolf]

so like if you sisyphus a 2 and an enemy attacks, you would get a prompt to replace it, but if you get like a 14, you wouldnt?

[alpine sorrel]

yes exactly

it makes it slightly less flexible, but that's the tradeoff we're making for all of these tweaks

maybe also if it could turn an ally hit into a crit, or stop an enemy crit

[neat wolf]

i shudder to imagine how the average gorgon party would look like from a programming perspective

[torn kite]

Oh, hou, yeah reactions are a bit of a challenge to do without being clogged down.

[minor trench]

Being pendantic here, I run live text sessions, not PbP.

[naive yacht]

no no thats an appropriate correction, my apologies

[minor trench]

Thanks for pointing it out. I know that we do have some PbP channels on this server going on

Eranziel runs one I think?

[naive yacht]

i know im considering doing the "Always on" "ask me" its on me to trigger" thing for my Starfinder PbP

[glad lotus]

Momentum is the biggest hurdle with PBP. I'm so incredibly happy my game is still running, I found a great group to run for. I'm deeply aware that isn't the typical experience, though.

[glad lotus]

Yes, I do. 😉

[alpine sorrel]

An art test I'm excited about!

We're experimenting with slightly offsetting units who are standing on elevation upwards

can see with the two assaults

turns out it's really hard to make cliffs look tall while not warping the underlying grid somehow

[deft rapids]

I'm quite enjoying the blue vlads as well

But the elevation offset is working quite well!

[minor trench]

That looks great!

[alpine sorrel]

the old version was like — you're expecting me to believe that the vlad here doesn't have line of sight to the assault?

I mean, I guess, but it's deffo poking its head over the lip

[little jetty]

Is the wall supposed to be height 2? If it's a height 1 wall you have los right?

[minor trench]

Still kinda looks like the Assault in the hole can peek over and Vlad with the offset

[alpine sorrel]

Ah, walls are gonna count as size 3

for gameplay reasons

[minor trench]

It looks like height 1 wall at a glance since it's same height as the tokens

[little jetty]

Oh wow okay

[alpine sorrel]

and there's only so much we can do visually to sell that without moving to full 3D

or isometric where you're covering up entire tiles behind the thing

[minor trench]

When targeting, will there be any indication of a character is LoS again? I forgot if you've already done or talked about that.

[alpine sorrel]

yeah 100%

[minor trench]

Good enough.

[alpine sorrel]

which I think will do a lot to sell it as well

[little jetty]

Size 3 is going to be interesting

[minor trench]

How are the size 1 cover visually atm with this?

[sand goblet]

remind me is climbing walls a thing in LT

[alpine sorrel]

we haven't done much work on that yet, but they'll be on the order of the rocks you see scattered around

[alpine sorrel]

yep, the kobold forced our hand. without climbing, blocking off tiles is crazy strong. (also death's head mag clamps I guess)

and doing some kind of janky solution for that is harder than Just Doing Climbing

with elevation being size 3, it'll take 6 move to get up a wall. We're currently still deciding whether ramps should take 3 move (elevation 3, no difficulty climbing) or just 1.

[minor trench]

Personally I like 3 for the ramp to make the walls really feel daunting to climb in base raiding missions.

[alpine sorrel]

that's how I'm leaning too

[minor trench]

Gotta have a reason to encourage people to take the open door

[sand goblet]

the nice thing about size 3 walls is that basically you can just use them as convincing buildings with nothing but a visual tweak

[minor trench]

"yes take this obvious choke point especially if you didn't bring your RBJJ"

[little jetty]

I imagine 3 move for ramps probably feels really bad. 6 move for climbing is nearly impossible for many

But flying is a good solution to those I guess? Especially since they work as status rather than keeping track of height

[alpine sorrel]

yeah we'll experiment with how it feels

[sand goblet]

or the various systems that make climbing easier, there are more than you'd think

[little jetty]

Death's Head comes to mind, what else are there?

Huh Lancaster cable can be used like that too?

[sand goblet]

off the top of my head, Reinforced Cabling, Cable Winch, Mag Clamps, Multi-Gear

[little jetty]

Does destroying a height 3 wall section take 10 or 30 damage?

[sand goblet]

ooh. good question

[little jetty]

I mean I guess ultimately the answer is "up to the table" but like, what would be the better answer for LT is what I'm asking ig

[alpine sorrel]

I think we're gonna do 30

though that's heavy experiment-to-find-what-feels-good territory

[little jetty]

I was looking at Lancaster 3 plasma torch so that's why I was asking

[sand goblet]

RIP juggernaut users

[alpine sorrel]

I could see doing like 20 and adding different levels of armor for different types of cliff/building

[little jetty]

I think "it's invulnerable except by certain talents/weapons/systems" is not the worst solution, even though definitely not how Lancer works by default

[flint portal]

do you plan on having like, impassible walls of some kind as well ?

[alpine sorrel]

Hopefully! We haven't done any work on that front, but if we ever want to enable indoor maps that'll be a must

Or even just like "this is a mountain, you can't go on it"

to enable hard chokepoints

[flint portal]

nice

[alpine sorrel]

I'll actually throw that on my todo list now so I don't forget

[void hearth]

you could try making walls semi-transparent?

[deft rapids]

"See that mountain? You can't go there."

[void hearth]

like when a character token is behind a wall it's set to like, 60% opacity or has some other filter applied to indicate "yeah, you the player can see this, but that's because the player can see through walls"

that would let you make walls not look like they're, well, 1/3 of the size they actually occupy

[sullen berry]

I know this might be late but you can think of it as going 3 up diagonally, which, is how my own home games work unless the ramp is automated.

[rain cipher]

Yeah, faded+outline characters would let you have walls that reflect their actual height while not obscuring gameplay. The issue I see is with things that aren't characters behind these high walls, like other terrain - you probably can't outline those as well or else things would likely become unreadable. I guess the answer is just don't put anything important behind them?

[digital maple]

A weirder option would be to have walls cast shadows, with shadow length as an indicator of terrain height. Though I also imagine shadows could be complicated to implement.

[sand goblet]

I'm sure Olive will come up with a good solution whatever she decides :3

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah, you've started to get at here why outlines aren't a sufficient solution. There's a lot of info we need to put on a tile besides the presence of a unit - movement and range indicators are the big ones. Having elevated tiles stacked on top of others turns all that into an unreasonable jumble. Also since the tops of the tiles are standable, suddenly you can't even click the behind-tiles because the elevated tiles are in the way.

Games that do the outline thing that I've seen usually have it so the top of the building or whatever isn't a playable space, are isometric so you can rotate the camera, or include a mode that let you move up and down in what your active z space is

The last option is the only one that would fit LT but is a fairly major UI flow swing that we want to avoid if we can get away with semi-symbolic walls that always leave at least half of the tile behind them visible

[alpine sorrel]

I like this a lot actually! I don't think it's a strong enough indicator to completely rely on but can work in conjunction with other stuff to help sell the height

[alpine sorrel]

Working on line of sight calculations this morning. My data debug text printout accidentally ended up looking like a classic roguelike.

[deft rapids]

go EAST

[alpine sorrel]

That will trigger IMPENDING THREAT from ARCHER. Confirm? y/n

[deft rapids]

Y

[mild jay]

They understood too well that structure is a resource

[deft rapids]

Hahaha holy shit olive

How are the actual calculations going?

[alpine sorrel]

I'm able to re-use most of the code from the demo, so a lot faster than I expected! The wrinkle is that adding elevation means I gotta do it for a bunch of z-levels as well.

This doc is a godsend of a resource in thinking through things: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WlIgTu2dd70T6pHwXYYSIgGdlueQx42AX_A56pbJQH4/edit#heading=h.g5cpludfnmtv

[void hearth]

oh damn that's really handy

[frigid shale]

double checks whew yup I already had that guide added to the #resource-hub-archive database, super useful

[alpine sorrel]

whoa, here's an interesting thought. A somewhat naive system for z-sight (each layer shoots out rays only horizontally, there's no "see down over something") makes it so you can only see up/down elevated tiles along their edge. This makes elevation kind of its own battlefield where elevated tiles can all see each other as islands across the full map + you can pop out along an edge, shoot down, then retreat back to safety.

The alternative I think would end up being something closer to "if you're elevated, you can see pretty much the whole map and the whole map can see you"

[void hearth]

I mean that's kind of how it is in most games of lancer proper I've played, but making it horizontal only seems more interesting with LTactics

(and might also help with that whole "walls look shorter than they are" thing)

[smoky glacier]

I'd genuinely enjoy it if that printout was an option in-game
That's a really cool way to display the information

[alpine sorrel]

it is a cool effect, huh. I dunno if there's a good place for that kind of info anywhere in the UI, but I'll keep it in my pocket

here's the "elevation sees down, ground level sees all elevation" version

[stuck falcon]

does this mean @marsh coyote is getting a consultant credit

:P

[alpine sorrel]

I mean I'm down, credit is free. How/would you like to be credited Perijove? 🙂

[stuck falcon]

(i was like three quarters joking)

[alpine sorrel]

I already have a section for reference resources e.g. line of sight // cone tile calculations, so it'd be easy if he's interested. I like tracking the pre-existing work that makes this possible.

[torn kite]

This reminds me on how original X-COM did line of sight and ballistic calculations.

[glad lotus]

ASCII Lancer Tactics when?

(/s)

[torn kite]

Not an ASCII lancer tactic but I've been kinda having thoughts of making an experiment of a dungeon crawler lancer render, to see how that'd look like.

[alpine sorrel]

I think that'd be sick, I wanna see more lancer video games besides LT

nothing's stopping anyone (apart from the normal impossibility of game dev)

[torn kite]

Yeah, right now the thought is 'make a blender render and experiment with look', coding such a thing is another thing entierly for me.

[alpine sorrel]

wait what's a blender render, what would an ASCII blender render even look like

oh I misunderstood I think

not ASCII

[torn kite]

Oh, just means make a 3D set of graphics and a mock up of a dungeon crawler for Lancer.
altought an ASCII-themed render would be rad.

[sweet zinc]

okay unironically the ASKII version would be perfectly playable

[alpine sorrel]

It's not as simple as you might think. It's possible to fit a lot more information on each graphical tile than can really be represented with a symbol, which means it needs to go into menus, which means you'd need to page around the map to see what's what instead of just looking. There's a reason the graphical version of dwarf fortress was such a big swing.

[torn kite]

in the ASCII version, you often had to stop and look at a tile with the cursor to see what was going on in there.

Less so in the graphic version.

[alpine sorrel]

Quick informal poll: if you're stepping down a size 3 cliff, what would you want the default behavior to be?
: costs 1 move, take fall damage. No way to safely climb down.
: costs 6 move (3 elevation x2 for half climb speed). If you want to jump down and potentially take damage, you have to use an explicit jump action (this is how BG3 does it).

[tepid temple]

I don’t remember, are the standard jumping rules gonna be there?

I think those might be the most forgotten standard actions in the game

[deft rapids]

option 3 would be that it takes 2 move to lower yourself one space and then drop, taking no damage because lancer fall damage only increments in multiples of 3

[alpine sorrel]

They were on the planned list but pretty low priority until this cliff thing came up

[void hearth]

Unironically Izaak's option 3 seems like the one you'd most often see in play

[little jetty]

I think it makes intuitive sense to have moving down cost less than moving up

But also makes walking down slope worse than jumping off a cliff which is kinda silly

[mild jay]

That’s effectively making dropping cost only one more space than moving horizontally yeah?

[void hearth]

Yeah

[little jetty]

Does slope movement cost 3 at the moment?

[glad lotus]

I mean... that holds true in real-life too. Jumping off a ledge is going to get you to the ground faster than going down a ramp.

[little jetty]

I was thinking that makes the slope less strategically valuable, but I think it can also be just another way to make high ground more valuable since you can leave wherever you want, but if you're trying to climb up, you basically have to go through the choke point, which is cool!

I don't use a lot of elevation in my games but that's more because it's a pain to implement it in VTT than because it is strategically uninteresting. They definitely are!

[marsh coyote]

No credit needed, I was mostly assembling accumulated community wisdom. Just continue to be a pillar of the community!

I'm mostly just happy people are finding the document useful.

[alpine sorrel]

So many of our discussions about cliffs have ended up going "...wait, how does this work RAW again? let's check the guide"

[stable loom]

Oh man does this remind me of Nethack and some of the early ASCII graphic MUDs.

[rain cipher]

Just had a read of the guide and at the end was reminded of firing AoEs at vertical angles 🙃 I remember seeing a very detailed chart for what shapes are made on the ground if you fire a Plasma Thrower at different angles while flying (important for pretending to be a dragon)

[worldly violet]

the classic "this plasma thrower is now a blast 3 weapon" move. Quite nasty.

[gilded rivet]

playing it now
How many Talents and Licenses can we take when editing loadout?

[alpine sorrel]

I stg I heard the zelda chest sound when I opened this. Literally a box full of shiny treasure coins 🪙

Dragon brain happy

[warm magnet]

reward fulfillment cancelled, must lounge on pile of coins

[neat wolf]

flip em

[sullen berry]

Ooh cool

[final onyx]

Do you own a scrooge mcduck figure?

[alpine sorrel]

Nay

[little jetty]

Horuscrooge McDogfriend

[robust garnet]

I wonder if olive needs any more gameplay artists.

[alpine sorrel]

At the moment we have things covered.

[alpine sorrel]

Example of how useful ramps are; it's easier to run around a bit to get to a ramp than brute force your way up the cliff.

[little jetty]

That's very cool

[final onyx]

Pythagoras shaking right now

[broken lily]

Good.

[little jetty]

Pythagoras would have joined horus if he was around in 5016u

[void hearth]

Ancient Greek Chuck Norris would have been an HA guy all the way

[little jetty]

Am I mixing up historical figures or did Pythagoras have a math cult

[void hearth]

he did yes

[mild jay]

Pythagoras isn’t allowed to return to my table ever again

[little jetty]

3+4 is 7 dammit

[void hearth]

A fragment from Aristotle records that, when a deadly snake bit Pythagoras, he bit it back and killed it.

ancient greek chuck norris

[little jetty]

In ancient greece, the human bites the snake!

Also this is clearly a reference to the fact that he is smiting the enemies of the godhead

[primal pivot]

would this also know to account for hazardous effects? like what if it would be faster to climb the ramp, but that path would pass through a zone that does damage? would the pathfinding avoid that?

[alpine sorrel]

Good question! We haven't added hazardous ground effects yet, but it's likely that we'll just crib from BG3 and not avoid hazardous terrain for players by default, but put indicators along the path that those moves would be ouchie tiles. Up to the player to find an alternate path. For AI we'll have to do extra so grunts don't hurtle themselves into vlad caltrops.

just finished linking up a basic AI to use actions, game's basically done

[little jetty]

There it is folks, expect the game to start shipping tomorrow (joke)

[deft rapids]

I don't know how bg3 did it because I don't pay attention and take avoidable damage but I liked the way XCOM 2 did terrain indicators

They pop up an icon of what the damage is both where you take it and at the end of your motion track so you can see at a glance that you're running through fire, then find where the fire is and route around it

[alpine sorrel]

that's a good reference, I'll take a look at that, thanks 🙂

[gilded rivet]

So what exactly is the main focus of your most recent implementations?

Are you like trying to set up missions for the campaign or still fiddling with the intricate movement mechanics??

[alpine sorrel]

It's still all engine work for the most of the rest of this year; the first beta early next year will probably just be map editor + instant action. Missions and fleshing out the content come after we have the foundations solid.

[gilded rivet]

Cool and rad

[tired aurora]

If this project success, I can see myself use this as DM tool fr XD. This is awesome

[little jetty]

yeah some people mentioned thinking of using it as like a quick test to judge the strength of a comp

[sullen berry]

it's always nice to see the progress on this game. Go little indie game go.

[ripe radish]

How will NPC transparency work? If a hive as motile swarms, will the swarms just move or will the player be shown the ability and how/why its triggering?

or if the player gets abjured, how will they know what that means?

[alpine sorrel]

Great question, we're still working that out. Probably a combination of tools depending on what fits:

• At minimum one something gets used or if you've scanned it, the exact mechanics will probably be available in some kind of npc character sheet.
• For "hey you really need to know how this works" like with abjure it might be an info popup that you just OK through.
• We're also planning on a combat log with a record and additional details.
• tooltips are going to do a lot of heavy lifting, and you'll be able to see the rules of ongoing effects by hovering their icons.

But sometimes game flow might mean we want to just do something without much fuss — BG3 which we're taking a lot of cues from does this all the time.

The demo really struggles with not telling the player why berserkers get resistance to damage & how to make them vulnerable. Figuring out which combination of these tools to solve that will be a bit of trial and error.

[minor trench]

Anything like a fillable NPC and feature compendium that gets filled as you encounter them and the features get used?

[alpine sorrel]

Haha we've been calling it a lancer Pokedex in our discussions. It's pretty low on our priority list so I don't know if we'll get to it, but it's there.

One decision that would need to be made is if it's a Pokedex for like a lancer character or if it's just linked to that installation/account and never resets?

It's also a little weird to have a map editor with all the npc stats for available right next to a compendium which treats it like a mystery

[next rock]

Tbf In BG3 npcs do just hurtle themselves into cloud of daggers.

[torn kite]

'you have to find an assault with missile tubes before getting the full achivement!'

[little jetty]

oh god could you imagine if the optionals were random and you had an achievement for finding everything

[worldly violet]

enjoy your 100 hour journey of randomly generating Veterans to find all their weird quirks

[little jetty]

flashback to grinding warframe missions for that 1% drop rate

[naive yacht]

well, generally they have a baseline knowledge that a cloud of dagger looks dangerous, even if they don't know the exact damage output or mechanical mechanisms with which it delivers damage

the ai in baldurs gate i mean

they don't actually know if it can move or inflicts additional effects, but they pretty clearly understand that they don't want to get hit by it

[alpine sorrel]

time to have .1% of enemies spawn as some kind of ~shiny~ variant

[ripe radish]

Can't wait to breed my NPCs with a ditto to double my shiny odds.

[naive yacht]

What!? The Raleigh is Evolving...

Congratulations! Your Raleigh evolved into a...
Zheng!

( the evolution needs the Full Metal Jacket Stone to happen )

[mild jay]

You can just catch a wild Zheng but it’s better to train it up from a Raleigh by fighting lots of pirates. Helps with the ev training and you can get more moves

[ripe radish]

remember to evolve it after ll3, as it can only learn UNCLE as a Raleigh, but keeps it after evolution.

[gaunt jungle]

I used my Zheng to get DD288 as an egg move on my Caliban. The little ones grow up so fast.

[lone cliff]

what engine was this going to be made in again?

also im late but the ramp/wall stuff is super neat!

[fresh dagger]

iirc from the Kickstarter it's being made in Godot 4

concerned about the Unity debacle, huh?

[lone cliff]

yeah was curious lol

godot supremacy

[alpine sorrel]

Yep I'm feeling somewhat vindicated for being an open source engine hipster

[alpine sorrel]

just remembered that I specifically called out defending against this sort of thing in the risks & challenges section at the bottom of campaign. tbh I didn't expect that to become relevant so quickly

[naive yacht]

the prophecy foretold come true!

[tepid temple]

Independent of dodging that bullet, has Godot been treating you well?

[alpine sorrel]

Oh 100%. I love it so much. I'm coming from a "build the engine from scratch" background and this is so so much better than that. We have a good flow to make UI quickly, the bus pattern makes managing scope easy, and I can't say enough good things about await

Also I'm writing unit tests for a game project for the first time and it makes changing things very safe

I'll probably post a diagram of the LT engine again soon, it's grown quite a bit

[lone cliff]

[mild jay]

Is that you Apollo? What are you doing with that gift of prophecy?

[deft rapids]

[torn kite]

It kinda wanna makes me wanna grab the Godot humble bundle thingie.

[rain cipher]

might be worth a look but I saw someone on another server say this about it

@torn kite

[torn kite]

hoffff

That's grim.

Will probably skip on it then.

[rain cipher]

On the plus side there's heaps of other solid tutorials being posted now due to Circumstances 😄

[torn kite]

Ooh, found any good suggestions?

[rain cipher]

Nope! Since programming doesn't interest me I haven't been paying attention to specifics, sorry 😅 Just the chatter I heard on The Street (Twitter)

[rain cipher]

Although, would you mind speaking about your UI flow at some point? It would be cool to hear how Godot's implementation is in proper production.

[alpine sorrel]

I dunno how interesting it'd be if you're not interested in programming, but the overall summary is that we're using a rerender pattern inspired by how React does it. The UI components are mostly inert and don't have any every-loop-do-something code; instead, whenever something in the data is changed they call a bus resource that the UI is listening to which causes the UI to change depending on the new data. The makes it so the data and the UI don't actually know about each other except through this defined limited set of functions on the bus.

I could probably do a post on it at some point 🤔 I guess doing show-and-tell for godot patterns is topical right now.

[pastel flax]

Huh...

Never considered you could do that

[tepid temple]

I'll admit I don't know how interesting it'd be without that knowledge of programming, but at the same time I do think you have a captive audience that'll devour every breadcrumb you give us!

[alpine sorrel]

New update posted with a buncha progress gifs: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wickworks/lancer-tactics/posts/3912390

[sand goblet]

(I for one would love to read this. Your posts are really engaging and informative)

[worldly violet]

Been loving the updates. Your rate of progress has been really impressive, and well documented.

[hollow oracle]

Are there any plans for prepared actions to be implemented? I felt their absence in bg3, but totally get why they didn't add them, they're kinda weird and open-ended.

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah zero chance of prepared actions for us as well for that reason

[tepid temple]

Yeah I don't think the game's missing anything for it

[alpine sorrel]

I also realized we passed Lancer Tactics' one-year birthday in August! I started the demo as a short project to learn Godot last summer while visiting a friend in the UK and just saw him again in my apparently yearly visit to Europe. Shocking to me both how quickly that time passed and also how much bigger it has become since then.

[lone cliff]

plug me in as someone who's enjoying these dives into the game design and code! Definitely would love to reference it if i ever get my plans for a nuXcom-style tactics game off the ground :)

[mild jay]

I think anyone interested in diving into godot would find any insight from an active project engaging, and there’s an even larger pool of people like that than there was a couple weeks ago

[fossil schooner]

Phew thank god I saw this

almost missed my survey

[alpine sorrel]

Yay, I'm glad you got it!

[fossil schooner]

yuh

[broken lily]

So here's some good news for Godot.

https://twitter.com/Terraria_Logic/status/1704227519027651016

Terraria🌳 (@Terraria_Logic)

Likes

87897

Retweets

17686

Twitter · Sep 19, 2023, 8:14 PM

[lethal leaf]

I am very interested in this game.

[alpine sorrel]

At about 1800/2000 envelopes + parcels packed, finishing off the special cases tomorrow.

[tepid temple]

You ever had to deal with physical rewards at this scale before?

[alpine sorrel]

Nay! My last campaign was 1/10 the size

[broken lily]

That's dizzying, damn.

[worldly mountain]

Question, is it known how it will be sent? I just realized there may be shipping issues depending on what method is used to send it, US postal service would definitely work, not sure if any other method would yet so i figured i should ask and see if thats been decided already

[worldly mountain]

@alpine sorrel sorry for the ping just hoping to get an answer so i can try and set something up for whatever option you end up using

[alpine sorrel]

USPS

[worldly mountain]

Thank you so much for the reply!

[nova nebula]

Thank you for not using DHL 🙏 lmao

[shut horizon]

My set arrived! Perks of just being the next town over. It all looks fantastic! 😄

[alpine sorrel]

Ah cool, that was fast! Faster than I could even write the "packages are away" post!

There was one address that was literally only ten blocks away, I could have saved a stamp and delivered it by hand.

[little jetty]

should have added "hand delivery" as a tier and use that as an excuse to go on a vacation

(~90% joking)

[nova nebula]

Had that happen once when I ordered a grow lamp on eBay. Just walked outside and it was sitting by my door without postage lol

[worldly violet]

The funding pledges are coming from inside the house

[final onyx]

aw ye

too true

[sullen berry]

wooo!

[crisp rover]

wooo!

[sweet zinc]

time to set a clock on this for filling out that survey in '31 then

[alpine sorrel]

Maybe I should have mentioned: That Backer Missed The Boat And Will Not Be Receiving Anything

[warm magnet]

Except infamy

[alpine sorrel]

true

[sweet zinc]

hmmm

[naive yacht]

i got concerned that i didn't do it after reading these

scrambled to find the survey

turns out i just completely forgot i already did

[void hearth]

Debating whether to put the stickers on my new computer case or leave them pristine

[alpine sorrel]

Once you put a single one on, it's all over. they will continue to slowly manifest until the case is a solid mass of vinyl

[pastel flax]

A sticker needs to be used

An unused sticked has failed in it's purpose to be stick'd

[frigid shale]

My previously pristine Thinkpad is about to become lancerified

[tepid temple]

I was never one for stickers on my laptop

College was an isolating experience in that one very specific way

[frigid shale]

I had one MTG Boros sticker on the back of my old laptop that stayed there until I got rid of the laptop haha

[torn kite]

I wonder if someone still have an unresolved survey for Broken Age

[alpine sorrel]

I just realized that I hadn't actually put any on my own devices. Just threw everyone's favorite gabbing doblin on my previously-somewhat-minimalistically-adorned laptop.

[deft rapids]

Ah but if I don't use it I never put it in the wrong place and lock myself out of the golden ending

[shrewd anvil]

The hardest part is going to be deciding between which stickers are for my computer and which are for my metal water bottle

[little jetty]

water themed sticker goes on the water container

[untold prairie]

Drink Deep and Descend Rehydrate

[small coyote]

The dabbing gobbo trans flag is going to get put on the most trans piece of technology I own: a KORG MS-20 synthesizer

[alpine sorrel]

Hearing about a someday-far-future lancer 2e is giving me foreboding visions of a gamedev career being basically a remora following massif press around making tactics adaptations of their/Tom's TTRPGs forever. I don't know if their future licenses will allow for that or if that's even the life I wanna live (I fully plan on returning to my neurobiology games) but I think there's at least a few alternate-universe timelines where that's how it pans out. Hrm.

No sense in putting the cart before the horse, I guess.

[tepid temple]

That's so far out I think you have time to process your feelings several times over thankfully

[alpine sorrel]

ye

[pastel flax]

I think you're under no obligation to keep making adaptions of the funny mech game

hahah

who knows, you might be sick of the sight of lancer by the end of it

[tepid temple]

You could always just try making the neurobiology games you want but with a thin coat of giant robots for marketing purposes. I'm sure that's equally fulfilling.

Myelin sheathes are meant to hold big swords, right?

[naive yacht]

it does seem like the far future 2e is like, multiple years out

based on what he said

[tepid temple]

7 years he said offhand

[naive yacht]

migs has to not be in wotc's contract yet

[flint portal]

No worries on that front, we're in the same boat with the mod team lol

"how do we even adapt for a lancer 2e server organization wise"

before we reminded ourselves that like, that's like

years in the future at least

tbh

[alpine sorrel]

who knows if discord will even still be a thing by then

[tepid temple]

The Icon edition wars are a grim prelude to the Lancer edition wars

[frigid shale]

Pathfinder Kingmaker (digital edition) is still PF1E at least

If that brings you some form of comfort haha

[flint portal]

god don't remind me

[alpine sorrel]

the perils of public playtests

[frigid shale]

Icon hasn’t even released yet and it has edition wars??

[tepid temple]

Well it's moreso that people compare it to Lancer I would say

[flint portal]

There's already people who dislike the newer versions as being "lancerified"

[torn kite]

what does that even mean

[flint portal]

I wish I was creative enough to make that up lol

beats me

[tepid temple]

Game's gone downhill since they added Crimson Weapon

[flint portal]

hey olive when are you making an icon tactics game ?/s

[alpine sorrel]

I've thought about it!!

I think I could reuse a lot of this engine I'm building for LT

[flint portal]

honestly considering you're doing Lancer Tactics in squares the change might not even take a lot

yeah

[naive yacht]

I dont want to be mean to this sentiment but like.. come on folks. really?

[alpine sorrel]

which is why I think I'm having these foreboding visions

[flint portal]

simply give every attack the reliable tag and you got icon, obviously

/s

[alpine sorrel]

Like, look at Larian. They spent years building up both the design solved problems and literal engine for ttrpg adaptations which is what gave them the leverage to pull off such a huge win with BG3

[flint portal]

So I know its not comparable, but i've been basically using a very heavily edited and customized version of the lancer foundry system to run Icon and it works, surprisingly

[alpine sorrel]

I feel like I'd be somewhat of a fool leaving that on the table if I already have 80% of an Icon engine once LT wraps up

and from there it's all downhill to other massif games

[torn kite]

GUN: The Video game

[alpine sorrel]

trapped on this path of relatively easy next steps

[tepid temple]

It's a beautiful thing to do what's creatively fulfilling to you, regardless of whether or not it's what'll make you the most money. With that established, there's also no shame in getting the bag.

[flint portal]

honestly yeah

hey if you ever need a person to design Icon maps i'll just put my name out there 😎

[neat wolf]

depending on how flexible LT is there might just be someone out there to wrangle it into an icon thing themselves via modding

[naive yacht]

Long sigh as the check cashes through a wire transfer xD

[alpine sorrel]

<suffering from success>

[naive yacht]

Local Game Designer weighed down be the burden of success. More at 6:00

[alpine sorrel]

We're putting a lot of work into making the map+mission editor for LT as powerful as possible, I honestly think that's where the long-term lifeblood of the game is gonna be. The story missions and stuff are great for setting the vibe of what people can expect, but giving folks creative control is just always the best recipe for longevity

[neat wolf]

within a week someones ported all of dustgrave into the game

[alpine sorrel]

oh

oh jeeze

it hadn't even occurred to me to think about ports of published modules

neat

[flint portal]

oh yeah that's be really neat

I think

[stuck falcon]

Has much thought been given to how narrative sections/cutscenes will be handled in tactics? I know the demo had some scripted sequences in it, not sure what a mission briefing might look like for example

[tepid temple]

Honestly some part of me interested in learning coding just so that I can make the stuff I want in LT rather than having to depend on what others produce

[alpine sorrel]

mostly vague sketches and mood boards. I'm going to sit down with our writers in the coming months to really hash out what the design requirements will be. We're looking at games with between-mission downtimes like Heaven Will Be Mine and Banner Saga for inspiration — likely probably a glorified menu with cutscenes/text logs/intel/build customization.

[stuck falcon]

maybe some visual novel inspiration

[alpine sorrel]

I don't think we're going to do much if anything in the way of branching stories. My favorite smoke/mirror on that front is from games like Coming Out Simulator where you make a choice and then like ten minutes later a character comments on that choice. It makes the world feel responsive without actually having to do multiple paths.

Still also thinking about how to handle failure. My preference is to allow you to fail missions and still proceed, just like in published modules

[flint portal]

Glup Shitto will remember that

[naive yacht]

would Citizen Sleeper maybe also be something to draw from? Apologies for offering up unsolicited ideas; but it occured to me as a possible use of like Lancer Clocks in an interesting way

[alpine sorrel]

but that'll take some narrative work to make it feel right, so need to speak to our writers

[naive yacht]

I still don't know what glup shitto is

[flint portal]

its a fake star wars character, i believe the original tweet was making fun of how weird and niche the names in star wars were and how fans tend to remember very specific ones

[naive yacht]

ahhhh ok i like this

this is good

ty

i am now in the know on this meme

[alpine sorrel]

yeah exactly actually! I suspect clocks will be the solution; not having a clock in the right state due to mission failures just leads to different narrative circumstances

but not different enough to derail the whole thing

[stuck falcon]

I need to replay citizen sleeper

actually no, i first need to play disco elysium

[naive yacht]

i need to FINISH a single disco elysium playthrough

i have it on switch

[mild jay]

In a bit late responding but I toyed around with prototyping an icon thing and that feels like a good estimate. Interrupts were one of the biggest challenges and what you’ve talked about for handling that in lancer seems like it’d work great for icon too

[tepid temple]

Is that smoke and mirrors? I think "you can seen full blown mutually exclusive versions of the game" is a high bar for "your decisions matter," even that's what some people ask for. As far as I'm concerned, the game acknowledging that I made a choice previously is what makes it real.

[naive yacht]

Its smoke and mirrors in that its a lot like a theatrical technique

the game isn't like literally reacting to you

but it is acknowledging a choice you made through a computer rube goldberg machine

[flint portal]

unironically also in Icon it would probably be a lot less intensive

considering its reduced a lot of the reaction type stuff especially on the GM's end

[mild jay]

It was actually easier on the npc end anyway since the game doesn’t need to pause things for player input

But there’s also not as much like overwatch/brace that just everyone has access to

[alpine sorrel]

I will say, based on the single Icon battle I've played in, the big challenge I see for adapting the system is that each character seems to be a lot more mechanically asymmetrical than in Lancer. I had zero idea what any of my allies were doing or how their abilities worked. Making a single-player version of that would mean the player would have to be able to learn and play all of those at once.

and teaching the game is as always the single hardest universal problem in game design

[naive yacht]

maaaaan, olive.... maaaaaan i wish my players undrestood what my other players were doing sometimes. Try as I might, even at ll9, they play like they're isolated, individual pods

sadcowboyemoji

[mild jay]

Yeah. That might actually get partially remedied by the next versions having very simple starter classes but it’ll probably still be something very important to think about

[fickle pecan]

Icon is quite successful at giving each participant about the same amount of overhead which means that player jobs are similar in complexity to running multiple foes which is cool and good but makes running multiple jobs yourself very overwhelming haha

[tepid temple]

As opposed to me, the quarterback-

[alpine sorrel]

do they also have that problem at ll0/1? lancer definitely also struggles with this, but I think the everest is a good shot at starting everyone on a similar playing field

[naive yacht]

They did, in truth, though there are a number of contributing factors; from homebrew supplements, to changing of players and so on; its not ALL on them at all I should say. Though I do think that their native inclinations tend to not be cooperative, but very silo'd

They don't often communicate build intent or goals to each other pre-game, and just flounder it out during the combat

which, in all fairness, works for them

because im not seeking to go hard on that exactly

[flint portal]

Icon is weird

because I think a lot of the complexity of each class is like

very frontloaded

like in lancer you can tweak your lich every LL to the point where people wouldn't really be able to know what it does exactly ever

in Icon you grow slower (usually)

so its actually a lot easier for folks to know what you can do if given a bit of time

[alpine sorrel]

interesting

[naive yacht]

Its honestly not that bad, just took the opportunity to whinge a lil cause I'd hoped by ll9 they'd have like developed a better idea of each others capabilities and goals and gotten more planned synergy instead of circumstantial synergy

[alpine sorrel]

sounds like it's time for the anime episode where there's a challenge that they fail because of lack of teamwork and then they do a buncha teambuilding exercises and come back and beat it

https://evangelion.fandom.com/wiki/Episode:09

[sweet zinc]

not the DDR machine again...

[sand goblet]

honestly if you give us the tools I'll do it myself

[little jetty]

if you can give us modding tools I'm sure people will be happy to make it

I thought that was the intention when you mentioned modding some time ago

[little jetty]

👀 coming out simulator mentioned
it's such a cute game

[frigid shale]

My brain immediately went to porting my own module upon reading that lolololol. Maybe I’ll port it to LT one day haha

[naive yacht]

ooo the second wave of "you should have an LCP for your module"

is the "You should have a LT package for your module"

[frigid shale]

(At this point I’m just hoping for CompCon to allow for encounter porting lol)

[tepid temple]

Is the game going to have narrative tools the same way it has encounter tools?

[pastel flax]

"Alright gang you're going to full combo Night of Nights before you leave the sim."

[worldly violet]

Okay wait, this has probably been asked, will there be the tools for full mission/campaign builder so that strings of custom scenes can be put together?

[alpine sorrel]

that's the plan

The dream is to have the shipped campaigns made 100% with the ingame editors

[sweet zinc]

tbh that would be really nice for people like me who can write but have trouble with using CSS tags

[alpine sorrel]

I mean I can't promise needing zero technical skills; even with an ingame tool, logic can get pretty gnarly. here's the current trigger editor, for example.

but writing cutscenes and setting up standard sitreps should be not be too difficult

[sweet zinc]

That's perfectly workable for someone of my (very low) technical skill level

(by which I mean "my coworker @void hearth has free reign to make typewriter jokes" levels of low)

[worldly violet]

Mint

[mild jay]

Ooh wow the coins have a nice weight to them

They don’t go flying when I flip them so it’s easy to catch

Well, it, I only have the one

But I assume others are the same

[shut horizon]

Yeah, they're super fun to play with

[weak hemlock]

Look what i got today! They are all gorgeous!

[forest obsidian]

Got my stickers today too! The James Webb Telescope Stamp was a nice touch @alpine sorrel thank you.

[alpine sorrel]

I was very excited to see that as an option! My friend who went to pick up the stamps said they felt bad they had to ask the employee to go in the back to get enough sheets for us but that it was 100% worth it. They might be my favorite stamp design I've ever used.

[forest obsidian]

lol, that makes it even better that it was a specific choice instead of luck. 😄

[fickle pecan]

ooh I'll make sure to save that

[shrewd anvil]

got my stickers! obviously Drink Deep and Descend is going on my water bottle. gotta figure out where to put the rest

[mild jay]

I never know where to put them, yet still i desire them

Problem is I don’t have a lot of day to day accessories that they’d be good on. No laptop, and I only take a water bottle with me for traveling

Oh maybe reactor stress on a switch

[shrewd anvil]

I recommend getting a metal water bottle, if only for showing off stickers

[pastel flax]

oh that's a good idea dev

[warped flume]

My metal water bottles stickers peel like a mf after like 2months so maybe get like a plastic film to cover the stickers or smth 😅. Or maybe theres a water bottle out there with a plastic case thing to show off stickers but protect them from my apparently destructive greese

Also I just noticed i have double the ispn stickers
I got the 3 person pack on Kickstarter and had 6 ispn stickers but the normal 3 of the other ones and 3 coins
That normal?

[alpine sorrel]

yeah, I made an ordering mistake and ordered the shiny ones so panicked and re-ordered them as matte to match the rest. it was only after laying them all out together that I realized that the shiny ones would have been absolutely fine alone. Since I needed to get them all off my hands, everyone got both versions

or as my friend put it:

[pastel flax]

Who is Harrison Armory

[neat wolf]

whats HA

[tepid temple]

HA HA

[shrewd anvil]

I was wondering why there were 2 ipsn but no HA round stickers

Not complaining. IPSN is my favorite one so it works out

[boreal dust]

Stickers arrived!

[sullen berry]

mine says shipped, so I must be patient

[shy spruce]

gonna put the reactor stress one on my pc tower when they get here

[void hearth]

Same

[fickle pecan]

got my stickers in the uk!

[final onyx]

Got mine in the UK to

Now where to put them

Tbh I'm not much of a sticker person

[nova nebula]

Is it sacrilegious to put a sticker on a violin? Lol

[fickle pecan]

https://tenor.com/view/sacrilegious-twosetviolin-eddy-chen-gif-19156578

[worldly violet]

Be the heretic you want to see in the world (acoustic quality post application not guaranteed)

[forest obsidian]

I mostly treat the few stickers I like like I treat my video game health potions.

I end up with 312 of them because I keep saying "but if I use it now I won't have it later when I really need it"

[tepid temple]

What's the final boss of stickers?

[alpine sorrel]

gravestone?

[pastel flax]

Final Boss of Stickers is Sticker Printer

[shy spruce]

yeah, you either get good at a very specific weapon against it (cutting board) or pay-to-win (pay someone else to make it or get even more specific printer/paper where you won't have to cut)

[flint portal]

Whenever I get these stickers

i'm gonna put them on my laptop

they will have the honor of being right next to Lady Love Dies and Sam Day Break and other Paradise Killer characters

[deft rapids]

Bumper stickers

[frigid shale]

Got my stickers! Now to pick an appropriate place for them on my laptop and assorted paraphernalia

[deft rapids]

Stickers arrived! They will join all my other stickers on my desk, unstuck for the moment

Very nice quality.

[frigid shale]

Is this a #mech-hangar question?

[grim locust]

..I'm so stupid lmao

There we go
Sorry about that lol

[frigid shale]

All good!

[fossil schooner]

anyone got any suggestions for where to put the stickers

they look great but am sad i can only place it once

[final onyx]

Forehead

Most folks do PC cases / laptops though

[pastel flax]

Notebooks

I love notebook stickers

[fossil schooner]

neat

[sullen berry]

i put the Stress is a Resource on the back of my switch

[frigid shale]

My laptop is much more colorful now 😌

[alpine sorrel]

oo that's a great spread

I was wondering how folks would handle the lack of 4-circle symmetry

[fiery bear]

Acquire C O I N

(The stickers are rad but what I truly craved was the coin)

[wraith cradle]

Time to drink deep.

[mild jay]

The coin is real good

Fantastic coin

[naive yacht]

got my stickers last night i think, havent opened them yet

feels like less chance of losing them if i keep them in the envelope for now

[flint portal]

haven't gotten mine yet haha

[nova nebula]

Fridges could be a good spot. You could even use a magnet to be able to rearrange them in the future

Or other large magnetic surfaces if no fridge

[fossil schooner]

live with my parents unfort, don't wanna clutter up the fridge

I think my PC honestly

[nova nebula]

Fair

[broken lily]

друг

[alpine sorrel]

This week is a day job week for me but I'm struggling to stay focused on it; all I wanna do is make this dang game. Why do video games take so long to make.

[naive yacht]

chat gpt, please make an entire video game thx

[broken lily]

Single programmer woes.

[naive yacht]

"Don't worry friends, I've spent the last six months programming a version of myself to program the game. Problem is, they've started working on a program of themselves to program the game..." scifi comedy story vibes

[novel ivy]

Aw yeah

[alpine sorrel]

these sticker loot posts are watering my crops

[neat wolf]

are people still freaking out over the double ipsn

[deft rapids]

Do you want me to? I can try

[tepid temple]

Lore accurate (one of them is Northstar and the other Interplanetary Shipping)

[alpine sorrel]

I wouldn't say anyone ever freaked out. More just a bit of "was this intentional" confusion

[tired aurora]

Harrison turning in his grave rn

[worn tiger]

put the HORUS one on my water bottle, still figuring out where i'll put the others

[tepid temple]

That's some commitment, welding a coin to your bottle

[little jetty]

somebody is drinking deep

[crisp rover]

put the IPS-N one on the box this arrived in

[nova nebula]

Ooooh, put the ipsn one on my bike maybe

The SSC one on some open toe shoes even

[broken lily]

Thanks from the Netherlands, I can only imagine how far some of those packages and envelopes have gone.

[gaunt jungle]

Admittedly I forgot the reactor stress one featured the HA logo and forgot about the accidental gloss IPSN sticker
So my first thought when I opened the envelope and sorted out the circular stickers was "Oh no I got double IPSN rather than HA oh noes"

[nova nebula]

Father, when will my stickers come home from the war? Looks wistfully out of the window at a matte painting of the prairies

[west stirrup]

I also thought I got a second ips-n sticker on accident. Went here to check actually lmao

[naive yacht]

they control interstellar shipping

must have slipped it in there

[subtle canyon]

Mine stickey rewards have arrived in my beloved Éire.
I will now be forced to decide what to stick them all to 😔

[mild jay]

Oh yeah I never posted my sticker loot pic. Here you go Olive

I just want to say again how satisfying the coin is to flip

[worn tiger]

It's so good

[torn kite]

Always flip it for invisibility 50/50s!

[alpine sorrel]

I'm still lowkey anxious that the coin is heavy enough that it'll crater someone's table when flipped. 😅

[ripe radish]

Someone flips it from the Empire State Building, the shockwave can be felt in Detroit

[worn tiger]

Good news: it hasn't dented my (wood) desk any of the times I flipped it too hard and fucked up the catch

So it's probably fine

[minor trench]

Still waiting for my package!

Excited to see whe it'll come.

[alpine sorrel]

Tomorrow morning I'm sending out a second batch of special cases/fell through the cracks (aka non-US $10 tiers)/filled out the survey late/Australian post straight-up destroyed the parcel.

[shy spruce]

i will gladly wait a fair while, under the assumption someone in the postal pipeline got their state abbreviations wrong, wouldn't be the first time i've had mail detour to arizona.

[sullen berry]

and I got both of my stickers! woot!

[cold timber]

Triple-pack before I send these off to the ones that chipped in with me

[alpine sorrel]

eyyy nice

😊

[shut horizon]

Oh, right, never posted mine, also for a Squad:

[alpine sorrel]

Noticing a pattern in the squads where the recipient opens their coin and leaves the other two in the bubble wrap

just sent out a batch:

• 17 late-survey-filler-outers
• 7 special cases (free tiers for project contributors /// packages already marked as lost/destroyed/address changed)
• 10 international grunts
• about 10 envelopes that came back because they didn't have postage. either we missed them or the stamp came off. I re-stamped and redelivered.

Also 5 have come back as undeliverable. One had no address; either the label came off or we missed addressing it. I've reached out to the backers on KS to get their new address.

[nova nebula]

Finally came iiiiiin. I'll be slapping one of the IPSN onto my bike. I'm not sure about the rest yet

I do wanna say, these prints are really good. Dablin looking pastel sweet

[alpine sorrel]

I also loved the quality of the stickers — done by Sticker Ninja in portland. The vistaprint postcard came out darker than I'd like. I ran out of time to do a proof run beforehand.

[nova nebula]

i wonder if it's illegal to put stickers up around parliament

[shut horizon]

Only polite to leave them unopened for the squad!

...Plus it reduces temptations...

[broken lily]

Olive's fields are well watered I see.

[spring epoch]

Would it be on brand to cut the Horus sticker for jacking in? = D

[alpine sorrel]

do it! hack em up!

[spring epoch]

= D

I don't have enough room for all these 💔 rest on the bass then ❤️

[alpine sorrel]

I'm also waiting for the day that someone cuts out the HA circle in order to have four circular stickers, for each of the manufacturers

[spring epoch]

Super super super proud addition

Reactor stress goin' straight to my constantly overheated laptop

[shy spruce]

holy shit, nice

[naive yacht]

dang, your package came with a whole bass too? (this is a joke)

opens pocket sized letter

entire bass covered in lancer stickers falls out

[spring epoch]

drops it

[naive yacht]

xD

[spring epoch]

(This is my dumpster flea market off-brand guitar, rest of the stickers go on the bass)

This machine destroyes Mountain Goats songs (by playing them badly)

[little jetty]

1/round apply Shredded to target bass

[crisp pelican]

I’m thinking about where I should stick my stickers….wall of a bar bathroom?

[shy spruce]

if i was more game-savvy i'd sit here and figure out a mic sounders conversion, just because making all his bardic stuff A Little Bit Fucked Up could be fun

[vague fractal]

so I just learned about this and played the tutorial and I'm so into this as a whole, only one small issue- is the game supposed to close if I try to play recon or holdout?

[alpine sorrel]

Nah that sounds like a big bug. Which platform is it? Web/PC/Mac? I'm not doing more updates for the demo as I'm working on a new full version so I can't fix it, but would still like to know for future reference.

[vague fractal]

PC, windows 10

for some reason it. didn't happen this time around

[alpine sorrel]

Huh weird

[worldly violet]

Just in time for my cross country roadtrip!

[torn kite]

drink deep

[shut horizon]

Thanks for the hydration reminder, I needed that

[alpine sorrel]

drink deep and descend then ascend then coast downhill for a bit and then ascend again before finally descending to the sea

[tepid temple]

Getting Toby Fox to do the music just so that a track can be named Drink Deep and [S] Descend

[sand goblet]

I'm going feral seeing everyone else's photos

[hollow oracle]

same lol

[sand goblet]

yay stickers :3

[shy spruce]

eyyy, now I'm in the cool kids' club

[worn tiger]

one of us one of us

[alpine sorrel]

👏 stress 👏 your 👏 PC 👏

[neat wolf]

i love everyone converging to the reactor stress one going on their pc

[worn tiger]

i mean where else would it go

[shy spruce]

funny coincidence, i was working on some art stuff yesterday, and being a little sloppy with my keyboard shortcuts, accidentally selected all in my art folder, didn't think to deselect, and then when i went to drag something else in to open it, i, uh. tried to open 500+ files at once in clip studio,,,

[worn tiger]

that's what we in the business call an overcharge

Lemme add my laptop to the collection

[cold timber]

Got my first sticker placed :3

[shy spruce]

yeee, nice

[lusty quiver]

I got mine, but I'm having trouble getting the horus one off of the backing

[lusty quiver]

Gottem!

[broken lily]

That GM screen looking pretty fucken metal.

[lusty quiver]

Thanks, it has pockets!

[broken lily]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1074477301623955547/1136433809051627591/e908a6cc7140254967d8b334344890721.png

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah lol they're all pretty tricky to peel I think.

[final onyx]

I'm worried I'm gonna rip it D:

[lusty quiver]

I used a magic card in sleeve to get the layers separated enough to just pull them apart, if that's of any use to you

[shy spruce]

i just kept at brushing my thumb over it and going around the edge until i found a spot that started to separate

[final onyx]

I'm half tempted to stick it on my work PC and hope it survives when they take it off me

[rain cipher]

Reporting that stickers have made it all the way to New Zealand safe and sound 🙂

[north horizon]

i do have to ask, is there any plans for mech/character customisation?

[alpine sorrel]

Mechs are a huge can of worms that we've so far made no plans for customizing beyond recolors. That may change as we pin down what we're doing for that.
Characters are a big yes; it's what I've actually spent this whole week working on. This preview here is fresh off the presses.

(assuming your question was about aesthetic customization; there'll be full mechanics customization aka a mini COMPCON ingame)

[shy spruce]

👀

[little jetty]

No plans for comp/con imports, I imagine? It's probably more pain than it's worth but I am curious since compcon was mentioned

[pastel flax]

Do you mind if i ask how many hairstyles you're planning on adding?

[alpine sorrel]

I'd have to ask Carpenter, I don't know offhand. I think more than a specific number, aiming for beyond getting a broad range of styles and types of hair.

[worldly violet]

Adding the xcom blowout would be funny.

[alpine sorrel]

you've found another secret stretch goal 😉 we're using a lot of compcon's gear IDs under the hood, which leaves it in the realm of "technically possible maybe" and that's where it's probably going to stay for many years

[little jetty]

idk if it's a common concern but i have heard that a lot of character creators don't have a lot of Black hairstyles

like I'm not black so i feel like it's not my place to say "please add those" but idk, sharing what I've heard

[alpine sorrel]

yeah that's a big one on our radar

[tepid temple]

Well I can't speak to Black hair styles, but I'm gonna take this opportunity to say as a tan skin person a lot of character creators suck at brown skin tones, and I fully trust that a conscious effort for inclusivity will be made with LT

[shy spruce]

i'm just pleased with what i see out of the haircolor maker already

if i had a nickel for every picrew i tried that was terrified of color saturation i could have gone up two pledge levels,

[little jetty]

can't wait for when this comes out and #lancer-general gets slowmoded 😌 (genuine)

[nova nebula]

I honestly hadn't even thought of a character creator

[sand goblet]

honestly pretty sick. I thought we'd have some pregens and maybe a portrait upload if we were lucky, you're spoiling us!

[alpine sorrel]

and if we miss the mark on stuff I'll be very grateful to get any feedback about it once we have the demo!

[pastel flax]

this was what i was thinking of yeah

a podcast host i listen to talks about how easy it is to make him in various character creators sometimes

[gilded rivet]

As a black male
Curly hair
Poofy
Afro
Dreadlocks
Please

[void hearth]

ngl dreadlocks are like, the one hairstyle I see that looks consistently decent in video game hair options?

though that may just say something about how hard it is for a lot of games to make good hair...

[broken lily]

Often yeah. But it's also like, you often get one flavour of such styles when kinky and coily hair can be worn in so many ways too.

[tired aurora]

The best solution to this is to make it easily editable. So if someone wants custom pilot portrait, they can just import it in

Same with Mech

If there's an option to import retrograde assets in. Then I don't think any native mech customisation need to exist

[lethal leaf]

I'd prefer native mech customization.

[tired aurora]

I mean, as in aesthetically. Mechanical should be tackled by the game itself

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah Carpenter and I have discussed at length whether to enable player uploads of their portrait/mech graphics. Enabling uploads has several issues:

• it releases our control of the overall aesthetic experience; players just as likely to upload a vector-art illustration as a pixel-art one. This will clash with the rest of the game's art and style.
• it means we can't depend on the assets being set sizes, which means we have to handle resizing them... and there's not a way to do this nicely for various zooms when you don't know if you're working with pixel art or illustration. So again we'd be adding and option that would be guaranteed to make the game look worse.
• we're doing a lot of work to make sure the board is as readable as possible, and that sometimes means simplifying mechs down to more abstract/blocky shapes so you can tell what's what while zoomed out. Retrograde, which most people would use, is beautiful but very detailed which makes it not work at that scale.

Mods, in whatever form they'll eventually take, are free to ignore these points and do whatever they want, but opening up this avenue for vanilla rots our ability to set an aesthetic immersive baseline. That'd be fine if we were making a VTT, but we're leaning more towards making a cohesive game experience.

[little jetty]

modding 👀

love the sample image haha, great illustration of your point

[tepid temple]

The bitcrushed retrograde mini speaks to me on a spiritual level

[worn tiger]

crunchy

[deft rapids]

When I step on something wet with socks on

[north horizon]

it was about both looks and function and YESSSSSS!

also [spoilers for wallflower] ||will egregorian players be included? possibly unlocked after completeing a wallflower campaing ingame?||

[wraith cradle]

||As far as I'm aware, a whole Wallflower campaign is outside the scope of the project.||

[little jetty]

any module implementation is probably a mod territory

[neat wolf]

afaik current LTs scope is just its conflict in the DLS so i doubt lore content from other modules/expansions will be included at launch

[north horizon]

probs as a dlc

[deft rapids]

I mean, lancer tactics is also not an official Massif press product and thus I don't know if they'd be allowed to sell official Massif press modules like that either

[alpine sorrel]

This thread has got me thinking about how to handle NHPs in LT. #lancer-general message

I see the problem as this: how do you show NHPs as characters when a player's primary interaction with them is as game mechanics? It's straight-up ludonarrative D. The story says: these are people. The mechanics say: these are abilities you get during level up.

Tabletop games can address this by assigning them more narrative interactions and having the player+DM collab on integrating them into the story. LT as a video game can't be that flexible. So what to do?

Two examples come to mind that I could crib from:

• familiars in DND. They're in the same position re: being class-linked abilities. They have a baseline "entity" presence by being their own tokens on the battlemap/turn order list.
• Companion Call abilities in Hades. They're introduced as characters through dialogue first and eventually become abilities you can call in with a button press. They show up, say a line, do their thing, and disappear. This works well because you get to know them first as people before mechanics and have ongoing relationships with them outside of the ability... but the way they do that is more dev-resource-intensive than we have available. We could copy this approach only if we can find a cheaper way to have these out-of-combat interactions.

[tepid temple]

Well my first thought is "Give them a little line when they do their thing"

Which is a small thing, but you can never underestimate the weight of a small thing for conveying something, yeah?

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah that's the Hades approach mentioned, but without an existing relationship that just kinda paints over the problem

[pastel flax]

Are you doing a full campaign, i cannot recall properly.