Time for another update!

First up, I wanted to thank 'Andre La Barre' for giving a +1 almost every one of my Battlesuit posts on Google Plus. Really appreciate it man.

Not a heck of a lot in the way of direct progress on the game, today was the monthly Auckland Game Developer's Meetup so I got an opportunity to evangelise the game there. A couple of really talented Artists expressed interest, so hopefully we'll have some more team members on the project soon.

Most of the changes made on the project tonight were directly in response to feedback from the meeting. First up, Josh pointed out that it wasn't easy to gauge the Mech's attack range (specifically, he couldn't see why he couldn't attack with the SHINOBI unit he had chosen at the start of the game, since it was too far away to target any particular enemy Mech). So I added a simple range circle. It's not pretty but it'll do for now.

Secondly, Jonathan from Grinding Gear Games (someone admittedly much more familiar with the ins-and-outs of turn based strategy than I am!) gave some useful advice, such as making it so that units forfeit the rest of their move points when they fire. I've done that now and I definitely think it adds more of an element of risk to the game (since it's harder to retreat from a failed attack etc).

Finally, I did some tweaking to the percentage mechanics. In particular I made it so that the random "dice rolls" of an attack were based on a variable both from the Mech and Pilot (some of them were Pilot or Mech only, which negated some of the uniqueness of the Unit's Pilot-Mech combo). I think it subjectively feels a bit more "balanced" and a bit more intense, though I think there's still too much chance involved as many of the strikes hover around a 50% hit rate (And it might feel as though you're just flipping a coin).

Amongst other things, I might arbitrarily inflate the percentages (so a 51% would end up being closer to 60%, and a 49% chance would end up being closer to 40% etc) so that gameplay relies more on tactics and less on randomness.

Play it on my dropbox.

The game actually has some gameplay now!

The gameplay is still extremely coarse though. The AI is lobotomized, there's no balance, a lot of mechanics that could make the game more challenging interesting aren't present yet, there's only one scenerio etc etc, but at least it's something that technically meets the criteria of what a 'game' is.

HOW TO PLAY

Each turn, you can move your Units a certain distance and Attack if there are enemies in Range. If you're directly next to an enemy you'll carry out a "melee" attack, otherwise you'll carry out a "ranged" attack. When you're done, click the STOP SIGN to end your turn.

When you've selected a Unit, all of the attackable enemies will state two numbers. The left number is the percentage of a successful hit at that range, the right number is the amount of damage left after the hit if it's successful (the right number will just read 'KILL' if the enemy is damaged enough for one more strike  to finish it off).

WHAT THE STATS MEAN

• HP: Health Points a Mecha has left
• Speed: Maximum distance a Mecha can travel
• Range: Maximum distance a Mecha can attack from
• Damage: The amount of damage a successful ranged attack will do
• Melee: The amount of damage a successful melee attack will do
• Aim: Pilot's ability to carry out a ranged attack
• Fencing: Pilot's ability to carry out a melee attack
• Defence: Pilot's ability to defend from a ranged or melee attack

HINTS

• A Mech's defense is lowered per each time it's attacked per turn (whether or not it was a successful attack).
• Take your unit close enough to attack, fire, and then retreat.
• Certain units, such as the SHINOBI, excel at Melee attacking, so get these ones adjacent to the enemy.

Play it on my dropbox.

It's started!

Just a rudimentary Tile Editor to start with, including some temporary rough/stolen tiles. You can actually use this to edit the "level", just not save anything (Pressing S will give you a JSON description of the level though).

Not much more to say. Daily builds of the game will be available on my dropbox.

Only a couple of days left before NaGaDeMo starts! Things are about to get hectic again. I'm not going to give up entirely on entertainment over the month, but I'll make sure what I indulge in is "research" for the project (namely, Giant Robot Animes and Turn Based Strategy games - I've already started playing People's General again), and I will need to cut all other luxuries to a bare minimum. If I'm not doing paid work or anything else that absolutely needs to be done, I should be working on the project.

Starting to organise bit of a local meetup for fellow NaGaDeMo-ers somewhere in central Auckland, so we can have bit of a jam as it rolls around to Midnight, June 1st. Other than that not much to report, I'm still toiling away on the plans etc. Things are starting to come clearer as the start date approaches, I'm glad I had bit of an opportunity to plan things out before diving into it this time.