Capesong Development Update #3
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Combat Overhaul
Last time, I said that I needed to focus on combat legibility and on nailing down the underlying math. So I spent a lot of time the past month or two trying to figure out what wasn't feeling right, and after an almost-total overhaul of the combat system, Capesong is finally taking shape the way I originally intended. The big problem I was having was that even when I knew all the rules, I still couldn't figure out why different numbers were happening. That was a major problem when the game's whole premise is supposed to be that reading and countering your opponent should beat just having more powerful stats. My first instinct was that it was a tuning problem, so I spent a good chunk of time messing with the values of different powers. When that didn't make any difference, I started to think it must be a board problem, so I started trying to think up alternatives. I came up with a few different ideas for grid-like systems where you'd lay your powers down to take territory. The one I liked the most was inspired by a DAW. Basically a mixing board. Both fighters would place chips onto a single shared space that read left-to-right and up-and-down across multiple tracks, carrying the damage across the wires that lay in between the chips. These were cool ideas, and they were fun to sketch out, but ultimately I realized that they were moving things in the wrong direction. I like logic puzzles... a lot... but claiming space on a board and bidding on cells was feeling less and less like a combat game about buildcrafting superheroes. I'll probably keep the idea on the backburner for my next game though! Eventually, it occurred to me that the problem was the 'middleman'. From the very first designs for Capesong, I'd had it where power A would drop a substrate into a shared pool and power B would read that substrate two turns later. Power C might modify that pool in a different way. By the time damage was being dealt, the pool had been swirled around a bunch of different ways, and the results that came out were impossible to trace. I realized that a chain of powers that gets translated through a muddy pool of multipliers and damage sieves is totally unsatisfying for the player. This led to the current system I'm now building towards. Even in it's raw form, it's feeling awesome during playtesting (finally!) This new timeline-based model is built around chains of powers. Instead of rock-paper-scissors, there are ten ticks per round. You place four powers onto the timeline, arranging them strategically. Wind-ups can take multiple ticks. Blocks can last for multiple ticks. Powers laid in the right place can read and react to your own powers or to your enemy's. Both sides still commit double-blind, then the timelines are revealed and the playback phase occurs. The big difference is that now, every power has a base effect plus exactly ONE arrow, and the arrow has to be something that can be explained quickly and in simple terms. "Their attack on this tick lands 25% weaker," "Your next darkness power does 1.5x damage," "If plasma is on the field, this power fires twice". This has made each round finally start to feel like a fight in action, and it's made the replays start to feel more like a story unfolding rather than just a random damage number that appears at the end. Other math changes have involved simplifying the effects of affinity scaling and balancing with the goal of rewarding experimentation rather than specialization.
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Sprites and Animation
The other half of the month was spent on the visuals, and I'm really feeling happy with the progress I've been able to make. Every basic action in the game now has hand-pixeled art, wired up and playing in the sprite windows. That's 21 clips for both male and female, with three costume options each and six or seven hair options, plus optional cape and mask, assembled by the paper doll system. My favorite bits are the defense/take hit animations, which have different variations for dodging, getting grazed, getting smacked hard, losing the round, etc. I'm also pretty proud of the flight animations, including the different ones for landing safely vs getting knocked out of the sky. Effects too. I practiced making bolts and beams and blasts, muzzle flashes, impact bursts. And I'm going to spend the next months making individual ones for the different elements. Plus screen shake and other effects. All of that feeds the replay, which now plays the correct animations along with the powers as the round resolves. I'm not a trained artist, but I feel like the game looks 10x better than it did just two months ago.
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Trailer and Capsule Art Possibly the most important update (as far as getting eyes on the WIP and hopefully beginning to generate some interest) is the new trailer and capsule art that I'll be posting along with this update. The trailer uses music I'd written a while ago in my previous life as a composer and sound designer. This was a track meant for a project that never got off the ground, and I realized it would be a perfect fit for Capesong. Video editing is not a skill I have (yet), but I managed to clip together enough pieces to make a 40-second thing that hopefully gives a decent first impression. The capsule art was made by the incredibly talented Felipe Poveda (https://www.deviantart.com/felipepoveda) who was prompt, professional, and extremely talented. I am super happy with his work and strongly recommend him for commissions or if you're a gamedev looking to have capsule art made up. I think he captured the vibe I was looking for perfectly.
_ What's next The powers and effects need to be rebuilt to fit the new system, and the run loop needs enemy scaling and the right kind of promote-or-die tension. Many of the new power chips need new artwork, and there is still no audio in the game yet. The Global Defenders mode - where you actually DO something with your squad of five heroes - hasn't even begun to take shape yet either. But I imagine the next month or two is mainly going to be spent tightening up the powers to make the strategy side of the gameplay rock solid, and then working to figure out how best to do scaling and the shard shop to balance growth vs limitations for the types and amount of powers you can own. Thanks for following along!