Hello and welcome, it's been a while. That doesn't mean we haven't been working on things, oh no, just you wait. Last devlog we had a focus on refactoring, and at that point there was still a lot to refactor, thus we had to re-develop all features in the game. However, at this point, that whole process has been finished, and we're back to the same exact game and feeling and quite a bit more, actually! We did not want multiple devlogs in a row that just described refactoring and how we did it, as it becomes quite boring after a while, just to descirbe how we used x or y method. We felt it was best to write the next devlog once we had something more than just refactoring to share. Anyway, enough talking, let's get to the meat of this devlog!
New battle board & interface
One of the major changes that we have made has been to the battle board. Not only did we receive new assets to work with from the artists, we also transitioned into 3D space. The transition into 3D is somewhat limited, and we will be looking at making more elements of the game have more of a 3D feel. In the following illustration you can see how board looks now.
We have a new background, new UI and 3D assets. We now have a camera that looks at the battlefield from a bit of an angle, both making it so that the board takes up less space, but also to give a bit of a perspective. In the following illustration you can see how we achieve this perspective in the game.
With this transition to 3D we had to redo a few things. However, with the improved codebase it ended up being only a few changes in the code, mostly with how it should handle raycasting and the extra dimenstion when it came to positions of units and their animations. You can see how the game is in action in the following video.
Also what you might notice in those illustrations, is the new interface assets, while some are, like the card deck in the bottom-left is still a bit placeholder and crude. Also what you might notice in the deck, is the raven, which indicates you're playing with a deck from the Viking faction.
Speaking of factions, here they are:
Vikings | Franks | Anglo-Saxons |
So what do these factions mean? Well, each faction has a number of unit cards that are directly tied to them. While you can choose exactly how you want to build or use the decks, the general strengths of each left to right are: Strong early-game, mid-game and late-game.
New cards
Along with the new factions, we also added 100+ new cards, most of them having a unique ability as well. Below you see a video scrolling through all the cards.
Something you might notice is that many cards use the same piece of art, this is placeholder. Each card will have unique artwork at a later time. Each faction or card type (Action/History card) has their own placeholder artwork. Speaking of history cards, what are they? On a basic level they are cards that work similarly to action cards, as in they do not have stats and will just activate an abilities, and then be destroyed. History cards have abilities that analyzes the historical attributes of a card.
Deployment zones & action point advantage
We also worked on what we call deployment zones and action point advantage. Deployment zones are areas that units can be deployment on the battlefield. In the current version the deployment zones are the first three rows of tiles from the player.
Also the player/opponent can get an additional action point if they have more units in their opponent's deployment zone, than their opponent has in their own deployment zone.
Main menu & Deck building
Finally, we have also added a main menu and deck building system, showcased in the following video.
In the deck buildiing system you get to compile your own custom deck or edit your starting decks. These decks can then be used in battle. A deck is limited to a minimum of 40 cards and maximum of 60, they can also have a maximum of 250 points. Points are a value we assign to each individual card, that is based on how powerful we consider them to be. More power = higher cost. When creating you can defined the name of the deck, select a faction and which cards to add/remove. The following video showcases this.
Each card also has a limit of 4 duplicates, unless it is the Drengir (Vikings)/Levy (Franks)/Conscript (Anglo-Saxons), each of them also has zero cost, but are weak.
Along with this we actually published an early prototype on Itch.io: https://gamucatex.itch.io/tectonicus Please play it through, join our community on Discord and fill out the survey (Linked on the game page).
And that does it for this time. We have made a lot of progress. Any kind feedback or questions are more than welcome.
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