Adding Interactive Objects As part of the out-of-combat work, last week was somewhat sluggish and filled with non-dev occupations, but still managed to make a few interesting additions and progresses. For example added interactive elements, which will have various purposes like triggering doors, mechanisms and many more. One is for now a mystic "Power Stone", which can be activated, often actin…
Surprisingly lot happened during last week in and out of the core game dev. Short updates below... Dedicated Gate Project Website Opened Lucky find (like with epic loot ːsteamhappyː) was that the domain gate-project.com was still free to be taken. As emergency action, all work was temporarily set on hold to get it up and running with basic info. Just as the Steam store page, it will be from now…
Better animations, better UI, better combat There were improvements on all fronts at a surprising pace - must have to do with the new workflow since last month, pays really off. The UI keeps improving to levels, where it can be considered as robust enough for proper usage. Feeling for the core game loop of going out on missions keeps getting better, too, via SFX and VFX improvements. And ultima…
Focus on out-of-combat experience In the HQ there is a lot to do. One of that is to plan your missions in terms of setting the next destination, selecting and equipping your team properly. Unlike last weeks combat features, it is a very UI-heavy and often not visually popping topic, but it is needed nevertheless.
More Units On The Field Without Chaos "Perfectly balanced, as all things should be" - at least that's the goal, and we're on good terms with it. Got to make sure, that scaling up the combats with more units, abilities and so on does not hurt first and foremost the fun, but also overall balance, performance and so on. In this regard, the updates for this week were a success. We're now on good te…
Starting with small scale mission maps and setups to make sure, the overall game flow is cohesive and feels right. Already for micro-sized mission maps, the experience has to feel on spot - and it does. It just took the previous weeks' general tweaks and reworks, consuming several articles, video tutorials and more on game design theory, applying it to a first proper micro-mission map. The resu…
Full Internal Unit Behavior Rework It was a large task, which was tried to be avoided with "the old system still works - wonky - but works". But it kept breaking, being sometimes unpredictable and hard to debug, so it had to go. A full revamp of the way, how units behave and act, took 3 days (which actually is nothing compared to the current and future benefits). Only during dev of the new Beha…
Stop to drift away It's too easy to get carried away during gamedev a la "let's improve this on the way" or "got a new idea, will immediately implement it, will be quick". Stopping that and will focus on a more planned, disciplined way. That also helps to keep updates more frequent in all directions: new features, bugfixes, something to show. Hopes are, that this will speed things up significan…
Continuous work regarding feeling, pacing and performance A bit less "visual" updates happened, as the focus was more towards gameplay and feeling. That means, reaction times of the units, general behaviour improvements and fixing performance issues, which were all in the way of a nice, smooth and consistent experience. As a small test, 100 units were simultaneously running around, sensing each…
The combat-tests were great, and focused on improving not only the feeling and responsiveness of the units, but also ironed out bugs and fully reworked a key element: the unit sensor system. Questions (and answers) from the play-test - Is the combat engaging and fun? - Definitely engaging! The cover mechanics work, strategy, positioning is key to win... However, we want to improve on the active…
Currently working on a playable small combat-orientated test arena. It is meant for a basic check of feeling and performance at this stage of the development. Questions, which this playtest shall answer are: - Is the combat engaging and fun? - Is it fluent, stable and properly working? - Is it performant?
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