Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The Tactical Advantage

Hey guys! This build has some of the most dramatic changes to the game play that we have made so far. The focus has really been on evolving the core game play that occurs with each event. It includes a new tactical mode in which you can pause the game and give commands to your crew. Also, we have added classes to the crew which make them unique for playing different roles during battle. You can play the latest build here...


Just for the sake of bragging, I will show off a beautiful sunset picture that I took while on vacation in Hawaii this week. The early mornings were still free for me to get some indie dev work done.

This was the backdrop for my past 2 weeks of game dev'ing

I am really excited about being able to take tactical command of your crew during a battle. This adds a much more cerebral element to the game in which you can plan out what each crew member should do next in order to survive an encounter. As a result, the interface is now something pretty similar to the game "Dragon Age" where you can give commands to your party as well as take direct control of one of them. While playing the game, press SPACE to pause it. While paused, you can click where you want your crew members to move or attack. Then, press SPACE again to un-pause and they will follow those orders.You can use TAB to switch between which crew member you are controlling at any given time.

Giving tactical orders to your crew

I am trying to decide if I like the blend of tactical and action or if it would be better to remove the direct control aspect and only have tactical control. It could be that the blend will just end up being confusing for players and not actually add any fun. I would be really interested to hear peoples thoughts on this in the comments after they have tried the build. Though, as I mentioned above, the blend did work pretty well in "Dragon Age", so I know it is possible to make it work.

The other main change that is in this build is the addition of classes for each of your crew. Every class has bonuses which change how the class is used best. The bonuses include things such as increased health or faster attack speed with bows. Also, each class has a special ability such as a healing spell or the ability to stun enemies. Ultimately, creating a good complimentary class composition for your crew will be critical to success in the game. Also, finding the right items to compliment each class member will be critical to reaching the full potential of that class.

Browsing through your crew

Along with the class abilities, some items now have actions which are used in a similar way. For instance, there is a spell scroll which can be used to heal crew members just like how the monk can for his ability. Right now there are only a couple items that take advantage of this, but I intend to have unique actions tied to most of the items in the long run.

On a separate note, we have a team update which is that we have found a music composer to join the team. Our composer Riley is going to whipping up some awesome pirate tunes so people can look forward to hearing those in the future! He may also by involved in helping with sound effects and doing some of the coding for the game (depending on how much time he has).

Lastly, I hope everyone enjoys trying out the new build and remember to leave me your feedback on what you think about the tactical game play. The next build is going to include an art drop from Kurt to liven things up and we will be announcing the name of the game very soon. The list of significant changes in the build is below.



---- v0.10 ----
- Add tactical crew control (press space to pause)
- Fixed several bugs around how the crew work
- Player can now control any crew member equally
- Crew now have special abilities which can be used
- Actions can be queued up while in tactical mode
- Items can now have an action attached to them
- Improve item tooltips to be easier to read
- Added a window for browsing your crew
- Lots of UI improvements
- Added game balance framework to help with tweaking the balance in the future
- Add a handful of new items but most of them aren't fully complete yet
- Did an initial balance pass. Much more to come though
- Added Heal area action
- Added Stealth action
- Added Stun area action
- Added Mutli-shot action
- Added Rogue class
- Added Barbarian class
- Added Monk class
- Added Archer class

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