(L-R: L.T(with autorifle), rifle grunt, launcher grunt, lasrifle grunt, sentry drone, robo gunner and some angry lookin’ robo missile-launcher thing.)

Today I’ve been tying up a few loose ends, fixing a crash caused by missile troops getting caught in their own backwash and implementing a (currently very) rudimentary camera system for tracking active enemy units as well as following projectiles as they move offscreen. Oh, and I finally got around to implementing the ammo system.

Lt.Avon there, no doubt happy he can now run out of rounds at catastrophically inopportune moments.

It’s a pretty simple system, in that everyone has infinite clips. Basically I wanted the tension of running out of rounds without the book-keeping of wondering who’s got how many clips left.

Which is a large part of the design ethos, really. Streamlining turn-based strategy to the core essence of why I love it so much. Now, I like a bit of Silent Storm, but sometimes I find myself wanting something more pick-up-and-play. Like when I don’t have a couple of hours free to ponder on stances, movement modes, facings and so on. And no Panzerkleins, obviously : p

That’s pretty much what I’m aiming for. Something Rebelstar had that it’s successors lost along the way. But still with enough meat on it for a fun blast of an evening.

Anyway, on we go. Things are shaping up pretty nicely at this point, with only overwatch/op fire missing from the core features. Currently the test mission can play to completion with the rest of the rules all working away, albeit with some pig-stupid AI. Which is what we’ll be dealing with next…

Still, good news this time. There’s a new project on the way, and I’m already close to some kind of releasable demo after a couple of weeks work. It’s called Strike Force Nova, and currently looks a little something like this:

As you might have figured out from the screen, it’s a turn-based tactical game a la X-Com/Laser Squad. This one’s a fairly ‘clean’ design, drawing mostly from tactical Grandaddy Rebelstar, with a few twists.

I’ve currently got a bit to go before a release-worthy demo, but a lot of the work’s already in place at this point. Just need to finish off the interface and brush up the enemy AI a touch. Oh, and lay out a few missions. Expect some form of demo pretty soon.

Goldbox project has been put on the back-burner while I work on something a teeny bit more low-key, in the hope of finishing something to at least the demo stage. Progress has been pretty rapid, expect to hear more pretty sharpish.

The Exploration view, in standard-issue First-Person style. Do note that short of some basic blocking out for collision detection purposes, none of the background graphics are in any way final. They’re not even started really.

The garbage at the bottom-right is your usual debug info/variable tracking stuff, which I always like to have close to hand when testing anything. The interface is starting to take shape, but there will certainly be further heavy edits there to come. Note the tabbed menus to the top right. Still need a ‘danger level’ indicator for random encounters (similar to Etrian Odyssey, for those who’ve played that) and a few more things. One detail I like – the character portraits that fade to skulls as the player’s health drops. Hardly original, but I like the effect.

The rank ordering system may get ditched entirely, as that’s a hangover from the other combat system and isn’t quite as useful anymore. Probably just simpler to let the player deploy as they like when an encounter’s triggered.

And the Tactical view, zoomed in close to get a better idea of the character detail. Pretty much all of the images are placeholders at the moment, but you get the idea. Note that all the characters are slight edits on the same hastily-scribbled sprite. Feel the quality!

As I mentioned before, it is very early days yet, but it’s certainly satisfying to see the pieces finally starting to come together. It won’t be much longer until there’s the bones of an entire engine in there, and then I can finally have some real fun.

Well, work continues apace on the new RPG. Still early days at the moment, but not so early that there won’t be an alpha test release in the near future. I’d like to get something out there for people to really get their teeth into, so that’s the current goal. Not entirely sure on the ETA yet, but with any luck I should have something worthwhile to show this side of xmas.

I’ll also be keeping the blog updated with developments and screenshots from the current work in progress, so be sure and stay tuned for the latest developments, as they develop.

In case you’re wondering how all that other, older content got here, it’s just some stuff I relocated from my older blog. Thought it might be of some interest to have everything leading up to the current project on here, for completeness’ sake if nothing else.

(Hindsight is a wonderful thing – 2009 Edition

Better it may have been, but that was the end of the line for the Etna engine. Shocking coding practices and good old-fashioned newbie mistakes made sure that editing this further was like balancing a tower of cards while constantly swapping out the cards at the bottom.

Still, a lot of lessons were learned, and it put me in good stead to have a proper go “one of these days”, which turned out to be late into 2009, when I once again got the bug and decided to have a stab at my own game. And the story continues…)

Today’s moral: Don’t be afraid to get back to the drawing board when you need to.

Yeah, I know, same old folly. Upstart indie dev wannabe on their first project, dives in feet first and ends up arse over tit. I was so taken with my concept that I figured I’d just batter out a quick engine while I worked on graphics, special rules and everything. Bad idea. I got about this far…

…Before realising how obvious a shambles things were in already. That’s after two days’ work on a complete mishmash of ideas. The JRPG-style ’squashed perspective’ wasn’t helping simplify things much either. Obviously, a rethink was in order.

Which led to this prototype, bashed out in the last two days:

Now we’re getting somewhere. Cleaner code, abstract graphics (time enough for the proper ones later) and a flexible, much more moddable ruleset. It’s all wrapped up in a vastly more functional engine, and all in the same time it took to half-write shonky engine v1.

Current status

Just need to polish the base engine a little more, then maybe I’ll begin implementing some of the special game-specific stuff, specifically the card system. I’m currently thinking of a three-card system, with one fate and two skill cards for each unit, with maybe a special extra card for squad leaders. Or maybe not, I’m constantly hovering on that one.

As for the engine itself, It’ll probably get some extra special tweaking for project 1. Gone is the old pixel-art concept for now, I decided I should probably play more to my strengths. I’ve been thinking of giant, hand-drawn sprites mixed with a panning, zooming camera (to hit that detail) and a little parallax for flavour. The simple, solid nature of the ruleset should let me go a little wild on the fancy stuff like that, without worrying about other little things coming undone. And I’ll probably go back to the forced perspective style, it should keep things fairly pretty without the headache of isometric animation in the mix.

So, the story so far – I’ve decided to keep an online development diary, to chart the progress of my various little projects. Some may perservere, most will almost definitely fail miserably, and maybe somewhere in the whole mess we’ll get a couple of playable games. Here’s hoping anyway.