Slaves of Magic - tactical turn-based RPG inspired by XCOM and Guild Wars

[Darth Canoli]

You probably want to push your idea forward but why wouldn't you go for a traditional TB system with AP (Action Points) with an initiative bar?

It would allow you to add your delayed actions or actions delaying the enemy just like voidspire tactics/Horizon's Gate do but would be way more intuitive and easier to manage for the player.

 

[sipibaki]

You probably want to push your idea forward but why wouldn't you go for a traditional TB system with AP (Action Points) with an initiative bar?

It would allow you to add your delayed actions or actions delaying the enemy just like voidspire tactics/Horizon's Gate do but would be way more intuitive and easier to manage for the player.

You probably want to push your idea forward but why wouldn't you go for a traditional TB system with AP (Action Points) with an initiative bar?

It would allow you to add your delayed actions or actions delaying the enemy just like voidspire tactics/Horizon's Gate do but would be way more intuitive and easier to manage for the player.

I was thinking along this line when I started designing the game (though I was thinking more of Final Fantasy Tactic, but the basic of the combat system seems quite similar to the games you mentioned). Basically, the system is working like those, with one big difference, nearly no action happens instantaneously. This solved a number of issues I had with the traditional system. As I mentioned before, the core idea was that I wanted a system where movement should be important for an agile fighter, and to generally make melee combat more interesting than people going into melee range and then just attack each other.

The problems I had for starters is that if actions happen instantaneously, then if the big guy with a two-handed hammer starts to attack, there is no counterplay available for the agility guy (expect to be not in range, which is a tall order for someone who needs to do damage in melee). I wanted a way to interrupt and be able to use movement as a defense. Another issue is which I find a bit illogical, that if I wanted to implement a big slow attack, the attack itself would actually not be slow (as it happens instantly), the recovery time would be slow (which means actually the next skill was slowed).

In case of interruptions, while it is possible to delay a unit in a game with initiative bar, but you don't really know what is exactly you delay. It is again, just lengthening of the recovery time of a unit, not really an interruption. It is more of a Guild Wars concept, but I kinda like it and wanted to preserve it. With knowing what is the exact skill you interrupt, the interrupting skills can behave very differently (think like the coward's bane skill in the demo, which only interrupts a moving unit, but that unit will be in addition knocked down). A big design space is important for me as the game will have 100+ skills to work with, and this can make interruption a lot more interesting, than just generic lengthening of the recovery time.

Then there is the case of movement. If you can instantly move multiple tiles, you actually open a big can of problems. Of course, the traditional turn-based system has quite a few ways they tried to solve these, but they were kinda incompatible with my core idea. I already mentioned it a few posts back for example, in the very simple case when you have one melee guy who is protecting someone, no matter if he is closer to the protected unit, an attacker can just simply go pass him (as he cannot have a reaction to what others are doing outside its turn). Of course, a typical way to solve it is to give units zone of control so that it is not that easy, but in this case, the unit is basically block everything around himself then which is again, could be a problem. Of course, I'm sure we can have another subrule which could solve this problem too, but actually, in this regard, I feel making the movement just more atomic, and having every action actually take time solves these kinds of problems very naturally. And as movement can be broken up to as little steps as every tile, it can be appropriately costed, making movement a lot more attractive option even in combat.

In reality, Slaves of Magic only has 1 core idea which is unusual. Otherwise, it is nearly identical for a tradition TB system with initiative bar. Every action takes time to resolve. Which includes movement, and I think this solves a lot of problems more elegantly actually without any extra rules. It does mean you have to think about your actions a bit differently than traditionally though yes.

I absolutely agree with you that using a more traditional system would be easier to manage for a new player. But I don't think this is because the system is inherently harder to use, just the player is not familiar with it. Even this demo from our live playtests (albeit with only a few people so very small sample), after about an hour or two of playing, the players did not felt that it was any harder to control than a traditional turn-based game. As I said, some even said it was faster to get to the action. But it definitely did took some time to learn yes, but then the question becomes, should we not try to design unconventional systems from time to time? It is a risk of course, but I feel it solves a lot of traditional problems rather elegantly, and if the rough demo could have been learned pretty well in an hour or two, there might be a playable system under some more polishing.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The games i mentioned work just like this with some action taking time, so when it's your turn, you choose your action which might might be instantaneous or not, if it's not, the action takes a spot in the initiative queue, actually, you can see its place in the initiative queue when you select it, which is quite nice.



There isn't such delayed action in the video (it's quite early and delayed action are mostly higher level spells/skills) but you can see how some defensive action get a spot in the timeline so you know when they end.

As for the delayed actions, you can see the numbers in the initiative bar, that's when they act and if you delay someone, its number will increase and he might be pushed further away if someone behind has a lower number.

 

[sipibaki]

The games i mentioned work just like this with some action taking time, so when it's your turn, you choose your action which might might be instantaneous or not, if it's not, the action takes a spot in the initiative queue, actually, you can see its place in the initiative queue when you select it, which is quite nice.



There isn't such delayed action in the video (it's quite early and delayed action are mostly higher level spells/skills) but you can see how some defensive action get a spot in the timeline so you know when they end.

As for the delayed actions, you can see the numbers in the initiative bar, that's when they act and if you delay someone, its number will increase and he might be pushed further away if someone behind has a lower number.

Yes, I checked the game, and as far as I understand this is fundamentally the same system that was used in Final Fantasy Tactic. The spells were actions that were delayed in FFT, otherwise, the melee skills were not and it used an initiative system. This was the start of my design as well and there is literary one difference that nearly all skills are delayed including movement. That is literally the system under the hood. Slaves of Magic time unit is basically a different name for the initiative, just the initiative number can be seen on the character HUD itself next to their health and stamina, so you don't even have to check the timeline when you are interested in the exact number (it can be added to the timeline as well, just in practice, when I was interested about someone's exact initiative, I wanted to see it on the character itself, I found it a lot more convenient, but again, this is easy to include). Every time a character initiative reaches 0 its action fires, and then he can choose another action. If I understand correctly, that you liked the idea of delayed skills in Voidspire Tactics, then the only significant difference to that in Slaves of Magic is the delayed movement instead of instant movement.

And as I said previously, this one change, to make every action delayed, solved a lot of my design problems, one of which in addition to the ones I already mentioned is that it makes traveling on the map a lot faster when there are no enemies, and I feel exploration would be a lot more tedious in the original system like Voidspire Tactics. Games like these usually use very small combat maps FFT is no exception, rightly so to avoid this problem. The delayed turn-based version speeds this up nicely and enabled me to use a bigger map with a bit of exploration without the tedium while keeping the same system.

And by the way the initiative bar is already working the same way as in Voidspire Tactics as well, when you choose a skill it will show you your new place in the initiative order, and with your second click you can confirm or cancel. Highlighting units which are selected are nice, I just preferred to see the actual initiative number on the character itself so that I do not have to check the initiative bar as well, still no harm in implementing highlighting as well.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Maps are not that small in these games but sure, the action is mostly focused in a smaller area so it's nowhere near the UFO experience like you're probably aiming to.

Well, you obviously need a lot of feedback from as many players as possible, maybe steam will provide that.

And maybe i'll grow fond of your system after you worked further on it.

Good luck anyway.

 

[sipibaki]

Maps are not that small in these games but sure, the action is mostly focused in a smaller area so it's nowhere near the UFO experience like you're probably aiming to.

Well, you obviously need a lot of feedback from as many players as possible, maybe steam will provide that.

And maybe i'll grow fond of your system after you worked further on it.

Good luck anyway.

Thank you! I can understand if it is not your cup of tea, plus as I said it definitely takes a bit of time to get used to it. Maybe after it is more polished, and have some proper explanation implemented inside the game .

One last thing I want to quickly just clarify from the system for completeness sake and for anyone reading it later on. You mentioned previously that I'm picked the real time layer of UFO apocalypse, and added a turn-based element to it with pause. I quickly agreed to this notion that yes, it does feel like that a bit, and I called pseudo-real time. And the way animations are done, it does look real-time as well, but actually, that was just a happy little accident and it is only visual.

The game core is basically a traditional turn-based system with initiative, as Voidspire Tactic, with the added idea that almost every action, including movement, is delayed. The reason why it looks real-time because I included that animations in which order doesn't really matter, can be played simultaneously. Just like in Firaxis XCOM, if you move one soldier, and that does not reveal new enemies, you don't have to wait for its animation to finish, you can move another soldier while the other is still moving, giving you the "illusion" of things happening simultaneously. I implemented it because I wanted to respect the player time as much as possible, and as a side effect, at first glance, it does look like a real-time system, which I find is a kinda cool effect (heck, if I really want to double down on the coolness of the effect, I could include a replay system which replays your already finished mission in this pseudo-real-time). But it's real goal is to speed things up.

When I first showed the prototype to people way back and got feedback that it feels like a real-time system I was first actually kinda surprised because of course, I knew that there is nothing real-time under the hood. But yeah, after trying to see with the players eye for a bit discussing it with them, I completely understood the notion that especially at first glance, it can be easily mistaken as a real-time system, and seeing movement animations going simultaneously reinforces the notion.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I certainly don't want to tell you what your game is or isn't, just how it feels to play it.
Some people claim RTwP games works as Turn-Based, i say good for them but i would rather have it the other way around or just TB with TB as core concept.

Also, for me User Interface is the first choke point, if i have to wrestle with it to get what i want (here a decent formation in a few clicks), i'll just lose interest.

Then, i'll focus on the gameplay and some other important aspects like sound effects (for me), quest design,etc.

I didn't get through the first choke point for now.

 

[sipibaki]

I certainly don't want to tell you what your game is or isn't, just how it feels to play it.
Some people claim RTwP games works as Turn-Based, i say good for them but i would rather have it the other way around or just TB with TB as core concept.

Also, for me User Interface is the first choke point, if i have to wrestle with it to get what i want (here a decent formation in a few clicks), i'll just lose interest.

Then, i'll focus on the gameplay and some other important aspects like sound effects (for me), quest design,etc.

I didn't get through the first choke point for now.

All right, fair enough .

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1424010/view/3044964485174597944

Devlog #5 Our plans for 2021.
We would like to share what you can expect from Slaves of Magic in 2021!

Spoiler

Devlog #5 Our plans for 2021.

We were a bit silent after releasing the alpha combat demo, partly due to the holidays, and partly because we were listening to the feedback, and we were thinking about the best way forward for Slaves of Magic.

If I want to summarize the feedback we received, I think the biggest problem was the fiddliness and complexity of the delayed turn-based system, which turned off a lot of players. In addition, the initial version did not have a tutorial to explain the more intricate details which compounded the problem I think.

So, I went back to the drawing board and asked myself the following question. Can I reduce the complexity of the game, without losing my design goal? I believe that complexity is something the designer pays when he/she wants to reach certain design goals, and if it is possible to reach those goals with less complexity, then that is great. My primary goal which I wanted to reach is that I wanted to avoid turn-based melee combat which devolves into 2 characters standing next to each other and just statically attacking each other. The delayed turn-based system I think succeeds at this goal, as you have ample chances to have a reaction to what others are doing, and you can freely move, even when you are engaged with somebody. This plus some good bonuses for flanking meant that agility based fighters have a very different feel to them, then strength based ones. The real question is, can I design another system, which retains what I like about this system, while simultaneously reducing the complexity of it?

There is truth in the saying that if you feel stuck, try to take a break. We gave ourselves 2 weeks when we forbid ourselves to work on the game. At that time, while playing board games with my friends, the answer to the previous question hit me out of the blue. While I'm not quite ready to tell you the details about it (I want to test a few things first), know that I'm hard at work to implement it into the demo, and I'm super excited about it! It will be using a traditional turn-based structure, so it will be a lot more intuitive, reducing unnecessary complexity, but with a twist which still let me archive my initial goal.

Of course, this means we will need to update the visuals and UI as well to fit the new gameplay system, and while we are at it why not experiment with a new art style as well. You can see a few examples of that below:

So in conclusion, you can expect a big rework for the alpha combat demo in a few months. After we are finished with that, we will turn our attention to work on the campaign map, and all the systems in it. Our plan is to finish a prototype of that by the end of the year. And while we are working on that, we will continue doing devlogs in our indiedb page to keep you updated on our progress!

 

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1424010/view/3044964485174597944

Thank you for linking our devlog! I thought I should wait till the rework of the alpha demo is done to post here again, but if people are interested, I will gladly post our progress here as well. I start with our new devlog, which still sadly not include too much information about the new combat system, as I'm still hard at work prototyping it. Instead, this post is about a few quality of life and visual communication improvements which will be included in the rework. (Warning, a lot of gifs are included!)

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1424010/announcements/detail/3043841119356375225

Spoiler

Devlog #6 Communications through visuals

Hey everyone! The new gameplay still needs a bit of time in the oven before I'm comfortable sharing details about it. But I did not want to leave you without any information about our progress, so I thought I should make a post about a lot of small improvements we made in our visual communication and overall quality. Those who follow us on Twitter have already seen most of it, so if you are interested in smaller more frequent updates, feel free to follow us there as well!

We definitely cut a few corners in our initial alpha release because we wanted it to be done before the Steam Christmas sale. After we decided that we want to rework the alpha combat demo, we thought that we should definitely take the time to polish it up as well. One of those cut features was the ability to zoom in and out. It took a while to get it right, as it is not as trivial to do with a tilemap as I first thought, but I'm very happy with the results, check it out:

Another thing that got a lot of our attention is the timeline. I thought it is one of the most important UI element, as its job is to convey the turn order of the units, which the player will check constantly while making decisions. So we took some time to redesign it, and give it a nice animation so that the players can always understand how the turn order is changing. In addition, you can notice a spoiler about the new combat system in the gif. The game will have 2 phases in a turn, and you can see the phase change animation (Can you guess what are the roles of the 2 phases?)

In addition, to make the timeline even more understandable, we linked the information on the timeline to the units on the map visually and vice versa. If you hover over on the profile picture, the corresponding unit will be highlighted, and if you hover over a unit on the map, the corresponding profile picture on the timeline will be highlighted.

The movement got a big visual update as well. As the new combat system will be turn-based, you can see the normal and double movement range of your units.

Plus a small quality change with the movement, when your units escape from the map, they don't just vanish, but properly move off the map as seen here:

Another small quality of life update is that the captive has a new body pose, and animation when you manage to release him from captivity:

And to end on a strong note, I started to utilize the video card as well to create a better dynamic fog of war effect. While again, this is mostly just quality of life change, and will still receive some tweaks, but I think it improves the general feel of the game a lot. Check it out:

So that's it for today's devlog, and hopefully, in the next one, I can finally talk about the upcoming changes to the combat system in detail! See you next time!

 

[Citizen]

♂Slaves♂ of Magic?

 

[sipibaki]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1424010/announcements/detail/3031458760839865952

Devlog #7 The new combat system

The time has come, when I can finally talk about the core of the new combat system!

Spoiler

A quick recap for those who don't know, the new patch we are working on for the alpha combat demo will feature a completely reworked combat system. The problem with the old system was in short that it was too complex to use, even though it archived my design goal of heightening the importance of positioning in melee combat, even after the characters are in melee range. In designing the new combat system, I tried to emulate the same feeling, within a traditional turn-based framework.

The big problem, which makes positioning not that relevant after the characters meet in melee in a traditional turn-based game is I feel that the opposition has no chance to have any kind of reaction to it. A character can usually move and attack in the same turn. If you try to separate the two, (so for example, a character can only attack, or can only move in its turn, but not both) then the attack after the movement needs to be at least twice as good, otherwise, it's better just to not move and attack twice. Then there are AP systems, where you can decide how much AP you spend on moving, and how much you spend on attacking, which lessens the problem but does not solve it. The player is still incentivized to stay put and use as much AP as possible to use attacks or other skills. In a nutshell, movement competes with actions that cause damage in these systems.

So, the problem is given. I wanted a turn-based combat system, where characters can do actions and where movement does not compete with other skills and there is a chance to have a reaction to movement. My solution? I split a turn into 2 phases. A movement phase, and an attack phase. This is not unheard of in tabletop gaming. Maybe the most notable example would be the X-wing miniature game. But in digital turn-based games, I have not really seen this kind of system used (of course if you are aware of games with similar systems, please share them in the comments!). But what happens in these phases exactly?

A turn starts with the movement phase. At the beginning of the turn, every character will calculate their initiative by using their base value (which is modified by the armor for example) plus a random number. This will decide the order in which they will act this turn. In the movement phase, the character with the lowest initiative will move first, then the next lowest, etc. Why the lowest one moves first you ask? Because the advantage of a higher initiative is not that you move sooner. It is that you have the ability to only need to move after you saw the movement of the slower units. You have better information on the game state when you decide your move in this case.

Now, quick-thinking readers could already see a problem if this would be all. If there would be no engagement rule, then that would mean a higher initiative unit could just simply move away from close range of a lower initiative unit after that moved. So there is an engagement rule. Check out this gif:

A melee unit has 3 tiles which are engagement tiles. The tile which it looks towards counts as full engagement. And the other 2 as partial engagement. If you start your movement phase not engaged, the only rule you need to know is that if you move into one, you can't move further. On the other hand, if you start inside a partial engagement, you can only move 1 tile, see below:

If you start inside a full engagement tile, you can only move into tiles which the engaged unit has control over (so the partial tiles). This guarantees that you cannot move out of a melee attack (at least, not without using a skill like dodge for example ). See below:

After everyone is finished with their movement phase, comes the attack phase. In this phase, the character with the highest initiative can act first, then the next highest, etc. So this phase is pretty standard. After everyone is finished, a new turn begins.

This is the core of the new battle system. To be honest, I'm very happy that in the end, we decided to do this remake, as in-house we feel the system is very fun to play. We are working hard to finish all our planned improvements for the release of the patch so that you can try it out as well!

 

[ADL]

Usually I'm not into these types of games but namedropping Guild Wars 1 got me intrigued.

 

[Darth Canoli]

sipibaki Consider me intrigued, i'm eagerly waiting for your next demo.

 

[sipibaki]

Usually I'm not into these types of games but namedropping Guild Wars 1 got me intrigued.

I'm happy that you are interested! Just know that what inspired me the most from Guild Wars 1 is the skill system, the way you create builds to your character. In Slaves of Magic you will have control over not just your own character build, but your whole party constantly. Kinda like a full team of AI heroes in Guild Wars 1. Just thanks to the turn-based nature of the game compared to the real-time in Guild Wars you will be able to precisely control your whole party. So that is the core aspect that is inspired by Guild Wars, not every aspect of it.

sipibaki Consider me intrigued, i'm eagerly waiting for your next demo.

And I will be very interested in hearing your opinion when the patch is out!

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[sipibaki]

The combat rework patch is out, and we did a new trailer for the alpha demo which better represent the current state of the game:



Just a small recap of what was changed:
- A new combat system which core is traditional-turn-based. The twist is that a turn consists of 2 phases, a movement phase, and a combat phase. My primary goal was to make positioning constantly important in melee combat, not just at the beginning of a fight.
- A lot of quality of life changes to make it easier to understand, like a reworked character sheet, ability to zoom out, button to cycle through all seen enemies, etc.
- Graphical overhaul with a new style, and added a lot more animations for UI and characters (like walking animations).

If you have time, give it a go, and tell me what you think about the changes!

 

[just]

i've read it slavs of magic and now im dissapointed thats not the title

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

-Done with new demo. Won easier map, game cashed on harder one after I got the hostage out of map.
-Movement system is more conventional now. Initiative based, blue/yellow outlay to show how far you can move and still act. FFT/Fell Seal/Warbanners style choosing of facing after moving.
-Players unit have much more distinctive look. In demo player gets 3 shieldmen, 2 swordsmen for flanking and one leader/bowman.

-Flanking is hugely important, attacking from behind has 95& cht while on the front you'll get about 30%-40% change against a shield user.
-Game also seem to encourage the use of skills that bypass enemy defense, there are some very heavily armoured enemies about.
-Enemy reinforcements seem to come less often as in previous demo (or I might just been lucky that I didn't run into every possible patrol).
-Combat log would still be nice to have. That said you can now right click on units to see their stats and active effects.

-All in all combat may shape out to be interesting enough for me, but much will depend on how campaign portions give it much needed context.

 

[sipibaki]

-Done with new demo. Won easier map, game cashed on harder one after I got the hostage out of map.
-Movement system is more conventional now. Initiative based, blue/yellow outlay to show how far you can move and still act. FFT/Fell Seal/Warbanners style choosing of facing after moving.
-Players unit have much more distinctive look. In demo player gets 3 shieldmen, 2 swordsmen for flanking and one leader/bowman.

-Flanking is hugely important, attacking from behind has 95& cht while on the front you'll get about 30%-40% change against a shield user.
-Game also seem to encourage the use of skills that bypass enemy defense, there are some very heavily armoured enemies about.
-Enemy reinforcements seem to come less often as in previous demo (or I might just been lucky that I didn't run into every possible patrol).
-Combat log would still be nice to have. That said you can now right click on units to see their stats and active effects.

-All in all combat may shape out to be interesting enough for me, but much will depend on how campaign portions give it much needed context.

Thank you for giving it a go and giving us your detailed opinion once again! Your general description of the changes is spot on, so I have nothing to add to that. I still wanted to keep flanking as a very important mechanic, especially against units with shields. For stability, I'm going to go and give it another stress test to try and find what caused your crash.

About the reinforcement rate, while it is hard to directly compare it to the old one, but generally I gave a bit more time for the player before it kicks in, but it ramps up a bit faster after that.

While I agree about the combat log in general and I will add it at some point down the line, but for now, I concentrated on trying to present as much information as I can in a more visual way. It would be interesting for me for example what was you felt that you wanted to check for in the combat log? Maybe it is something I can communicate not just with the combat log but some other ways as well.

And you are absolutely right that in itself it really needs context, but I'm glad to hear that you feel that the core of the combat systems seems interesting enough. I really wanted to make sure the basics are in place before building on it.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I don't have much time right now to playtest but i launched the harder map and played the first encounter.

I can't get over the X-COM + Guildwars inspirations.
A Classless system doesn't fit the bill.
With your engine & art direction, you won't attract the dumb masses/MMO players so you should rather go full autist/grognards, meaning deep combat mechanism and character development (and a class system) and if you can pull some good base development mechanism, it's alright as well, if you can't just don't bother with it, it'll just drag you down.

About the demo

• You should add a sound options, the music is way too loud for now, if i missed it, my bad.
• The reinforcements or enemy spawning is just weird, somewhat, i can't shake the feeling your inspiration comes more from NuXCOM than UFO defense/UFO: Enemy Unknown.
• I know it's just a demo but as the art direction is everything but appealing, a little efforts on sound effects would be nice.
• If you can afford it, some original fatalities would work too, like a 2H axeman splitting his foe into two and the classic beheading.
• Combat is better but it takes a couple of seconds to see which unit is playing, even with the arrow.
• Close combat lock (i know some units have special skills to move) seems like a good/bad idea, i'm not sure yet but it looks like archers are fucked as soon as they're engaged in close combat.

My personal opinion about UFO in a medieval settings

• Overwatch should be an option for both ranged and close combat units*
• It'd work way better with a 2D engine with limited animation but destructible environment (at least partially, like cutting down a small tree with an axe or destroying a wooden wall with an axe or a hammer.

*For Close combat units, a full round overwatch could allow a unit to retain half its movement (or 1/3 1/4 AP worth of movement) to run toward an enemy and hack it into pieces (only one action + eventually and Attack of opportunity if the system allows it).

I'll test it further in a couple of days/weeks.

 

[Cryomancer]

Looks good but when I saw "cooldowns", lost my interest...

 

[Darth Canoli]

Looks good but when I saw "cooldowns", lost my interest...

I didn't notice any cooldown so far
Using some skills drains your stamina, for the offensive units, it's 2 skill use with the starting stamina pool until your use a attack draining your opponent stamina (or just regenerating yours i'm not sure)

 

[sipibaki]

Looks good but when I saw "cooldowns", lost my interest...

There are cooldowns, but as Darth said, not all skills have those. There are skills which are stamina dependent (most combat skill) there are skills which are cooldown dependent (leadership skills mostly in the demo), and there are skills which are both (magic in the demo, only the mage uses them ). You will have ways to handle both (for example, endurance skills will be mostly about getting back stamina, while intelligence skills will be mostly about reducing cooldown). I feel that having both cooldown and stamina system helps to make more distinct skills. If cooldowns are a deal-breaker for you I'm sorry.

I don't have much time right now to playtest but i launched the harder map and played the first encounter.

I can't get over the X-COM + Guildwars inspirations.
A Classless system doesn't fit the bill.
With your engine & art direction, you won't attract the dumb masses/MMO players so you should rather go full autist/grognards, meaning deep combat mechanism and character development (and a class system) and if you can pull some good base development mechanism, it's alright as well, if you can't just don't bother with it, it'll just drag you down.

About the demo

• You should add a sound options, the music is way too loud for now, if i missed it, my bad.
• The reinforcements or enemy spawning is just weird, somewhat, i can't shake the feeling your inspiration comes more from NuXCOM than UFO defense/UFO: Enemy Unknown.
• I know it's just a demo but as the art direction is everything but appealing, a little efforts on sound effects would be nice.
• If you can afford it, some original fatalities would work too, like a 2H axeman splitting his foe into two and the classic beheading.
• Combat is better but it takes a couple of seconds to see which unit is playing, even with the arrow.
• Close combat lock (i know some units have special skills to move) seems like a good/bad idea, i'm not sure yet but it looks like archers are fucked as soon as they're engaged in close combat.

My personal opinion about UFO in a medieval settings

• Overwatch should be an option for both ranged and close combat units*
• It'd work way better with a 2D engine with limited animation but destructible environment (at least partially, like cutting down a small tree with an axe or destroying a wooden wall with an axe or a hammer.

*For Close combat units, a full round overwatch could allow a unit to retain half its movement (or 1/3 1/4 AP worth of movement) to run toward an enemy and hack it into pieces (only one action + eventually and Attack of opportunity if the system allows it).

I'll test it further in a couple of days/weeks.

Respectfully, I disagree that the skill system of Guild Wars 1 is for the dumb masses//MMO players. For one, I think classless systems are better for deep character development, not the other way around. Classes restrict character builds, not expand them. Take magic the gathering as a classless example. You can put any type of card in your deck, it gives an immense amount of combinations to create builds. But of course, not all builds all equally viable which for 1 gives us "full autist guys" pleasure trying to find new viable builds, and 2 the "dumb masses" problems as they can create incredibly dumb decks without proper understanding. This was one of the reasons why Guild Wars 2 went with a dumbed-down system where they removed the secondary class so you cannot freely mix skills from other classes and locked skills to weapons (basically creating like 4 skillsets which you can choose from and that's it). To make sure the players can't make completely useless builds. The other is that they felt this way it is a lot easier to balance. (For completeness, Guild Wars 1 had classes as well, but they only did 2 things. All had one primary attribute (think a family of skills), which could only be used when it is your primary class, and it decided your armor, otherwise, you could do everything from your secondary class, so it was incredibly flexible).

So in short, I think this kind of system can provide (arguably did provide in the case of Guild Wars 1) very deep character-building what I personally consider a lot deeper than what is in the new X-COM games for example. But I think it makes more sense to wait with this discussion when you saw character building in action. For now, let me just say that the direction is definitely to go deep with the character-building aspect of it, and I don't think that has to include a class system in the traditional sense.

About the demo section:
- There is a setting in the options where you can set the volume.
- Reinforcement spawning is there for 2 reasons. 1 is simply to avoid turtling, 2 I think it is thematic that a guerilla operation has to be a hit and run. I didn't want to make a hard time limit like in XCOM 2, where if the time is up you instantly lose, but more of a soft limit, with a natural explanation for losing. Thematically the game will do have more to do with the guerilla resistance situation presented in XCOM 2 than what the original UFO defense/UFO Enemy Unkown did.
- We try to improve things as much as we can and can afford.
- Dead animations are definitely in the plans.
- Glad to hear combat is better, noted that you still founded it hard to find the current unit. If I have some idea how to improve it further I will do so.
- Archers are fucked as soon as they are engaged in close combat 1 vs 1. But if it is not 1 vs 1 there are a lot of ways to rescue them from this situation.

Personal opinion section:
- I think overwatch is not really necessary, as basically having faster initiative serves the same goal. If you are faster than your opponent you will be able to catch him/her after he moved. Or shot if you are ranged. This is one of the perks of being fast. If you want to overwatch in the traditional sense, try using a skill that increases initiative. In the demo the swordman has such skill and he can delay his move with it. Very useful against the mage when he has the sand barrier up for example.
- Destructible environment is something we definitely thought about, though we were focused on destroying walls. It is on the list we would like to add if all the essentials are there.

By the way, I want to thank you for giving so much of your time trying out the demo now a second time and writing down your detailed opinion! I enjoy these debates plus it provides context on your feedback.

 

[sipibaki]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1442610/announcements/detail/2997690007633010177

Devlog#8 Campaign map design goals

I'm going over the design principles by which we are creating the campaign, and where we are now in the development of it.

Spoiler

Devlog #8 Campaign map design goals


Hello everyone, I know I'm a "bit" late with this devlog, but I wanted to write this only when I have something to show for. Briefly about the combat demo before moving on to the campaign, while it has a lot of things it still needs in terms of polish, but we are satisfied with the core combat system in it. I think we finally reached a system we can build upon gameplay-wise so thanks to everyone who gave it a go and helped to reach this point!

So now that we are happy with the core combat system it is time to work on the campaign. In this devlog I want to share what will be the core design principles. Plus showing off the rudimentary 3D engine which we use for the campaign map because why not .

Design goals:
After a lot of thinking (and binning countless ideas), I realized that I need to define what experience I want to give to the player and go from there. This is the feeling of building a deck for example in Magic the gathering or character in Guild Wars 1. In addition, I want players to have to adapt to the constantly changing enemies while they gather more and more ways to tweak their team as the game progresses. In addition, I have a secondary goal, which is that I want the player to feel they are fighting against something, and not just getting random missions from the game. I want my campaign design to emphasize these 2 points.

Starting point:
The basic structure of the map is very simple. There are 6 different sized regions, with 16 territories in total. Every territory belongs to a region and will have a loyalty rating (0-5) which represents how much the given territory supports the resistance. Your resistance income will depend on this value. The resistance will be able to build a spy network in a territory, which will improve the income of the region, plus will uncover any mission that the enemy is conducting in this region while it is up (more on this later). In addition, there will be a base-building component, research, smithy, barrack. So far very similar to the XCOM reboot.

The invaders:
One big difference is the way the invaders work. As I said in the beginning, I want the player to feel like they are fighting against somebody. So, what if not the players but the invaders have goals (called agendas) which they need to reach to win the game? These agendas will be things like building a base at a certain territory or have a whole region with 0 loyalty to the resistance, things like that. Semi-long goals, which the AI will be going to pursue, and the players have to realize what is the goal and stop it from happening in a given timeframe. The player loses the campaign if the AI manages to fulfill X amount of agendas (X can depend on the difficulty level for example).

Another idea that reinforces this feeling of playing against someone is the idea that the invaders themselves will have a type of income that depends on how successful they are in conducting their missions. This income can be used to create harder/more missions or upgrade their troops, or maybe fulfill an agenda of theirs. Successful players can slow down their income by sabotaging their missions in the tactical portion of the game.

There is a third point that will be important, namely how dangerous the AI thinks of the resistance. If the player fails a lot, they will not take the resistance seriously, and it might be more greedy, doing more missions with fewer troops defending them. Or if the player is playing well, then it would prioritize upgrading its units more, finding and destroying spy networks in territories, do fewer, but more heavily guarded missions, etc. My hope is that this mechanic while being immersive will help to smooth out the difficulty curve as well, giving a chance for a come back after a big loss and giving a bigger challenge if the player starts to snowball.

The visuals:
In addition to working on the design of the campaign map, we wanted to further improve the visual fidelity of the game. So we started to implement more and more shader effects on the video card to create a more dynamic visual experience and to make it feel a little bit more modern. Part of this is the rudimentary 3D engine that I created for the campaign map to create a bit of depth to the map.

In addition to that, we have a day/night cycle with moving trees and lighting effects on cities.

These gif's are not perfect as it was hard to stay within the size limit. If you want to see these effects in better quality, check out our Twitter here where I periodically show them off in video format.

So that's it for today's dev diary. Hopefully, now that we have a clear design philosophy and goal for the campaign map, I will be able to share our progress on it more frequently so stay tuned for more!