SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

I had a book once "What if the player is female?"

And noticed this when I looked at a file in a folder at work (interesting mental association with filename unrelated to game)

see attached

a thought about the stats - you are using colored cubes. possible use different shapes for each stat - that way anyone with color problems will still see the differences - if there are too many 'cubes' per stat, then globally half all stats amount. so
E.G.
if the stats go from 0 to 10, make them go from 0 to 5 or even 0 to 3. less stats means less to look at and tidier for tiny icons

As you suggested Ive halved the visual appearance of the stats but retained the full figure internally.

Ive also played around with some transitions between overlays.

And given both sides their own deployment image ie:





Also the hover glow over buttons is there now

Additions:

1. Bugfixes and minor glitches fixed.
2. Terrain added: Hills give a bonus to defenders uphill. Magic Circles give additional bonuses to magic users (liches, witches and wizards)
3.  Music added.
4. Transitions added between menus.


Image below shows the hill and the stone circle (magic circle)

Campaign map for single player now.....

Object of game is to drive off the Chaos forces before they eat all your food - as they pillage and loot the countryside.....

Going to add some fires and smoke where battles took place....haven't done that bit yet.....

Note army icons and map are placeholder until I draw some better ones - this was a tech test first to see if I could build it in.

That dude cries for a serif-font (times-new-roman-esque).
Seriously: that font looks "not fitting".

But again: graphics _after_ gameplay.


bye
Ron

There you go....new font: (it uses the browser to render fonts so as long as the font exists on the user's computer it can use it.)

Also working on the map.

There are now quest locations on the map where your heroes, mages and soldiers can acquire training/items/rituals to help them in the battles (the main part of the game).

This is still being fleshed out....at the moment it is very simple.

Also tried hand painting the map.

that last map look very nice Matty

Thanks Adam.

I used a map generator I wrote to get the shape then painted over the top by hand.

Just played a session before work and won the campaign.  Enjoyable little game.  Need to make some adjustments to the game play a little.

Am tossing up whether when a hero visits a dungeon the player should get to play that as a mini game of sorts.

Same goes for when the mage attempts a ritual at a stone circle.

Okay am deciding to have some simple dungeon quests and magical rituals (puzzles of a form) to gain the bonuses that heroes and mages can gain for use in the battles.....

Needed to work out how to calculate isometric positions and back to screen again....simple solving of simultaneous equations (year 8 mathematics) helped:

Isometric Coordinates:

screen x = (w/2) * (1+ x - y)
screen y = (w/4) * (1 + x + y) where x and y are the grid coordinates and w is the width of a tile

back from screen to grid:

iso x = ((sx + 2*sy)/w) - 1

iso y = (2*sy - sx)/w

w = 80 in my case because w is the width of the cell

You will need to parseInt the values as they will come back as floating points.

Haven't tested this thorougly yet...may need to either parseInt or floor the values not sure yet which.


But yeah:

When the user selects a dungeon on the main map that hasn't been explored successfully a small window will open with a cavern/dungeon in isometric view and the hero /knight /mr dong as adam calls him, will have to explore a small dungeon. There will be keys in areas to open doors, and giant spiders which must be avoided (or the dungeon quest is failed). When the treasure is found a magic item of sorts will be available for the player in the next battle for the hero to use....at first I originally had a system where the hero just gains stats..I'm probably going to do something like give him a lightning storm or something to use in the battle. or some other nice feature. The dungeon will be small...a mini game of sorts.. a turn based dungeon..every step the player takes the monsters (giant spiders) will move about the mini dungeon.

When the user selects a magic stone circle on the main map - the mage will have to go to some mystery cloud dream like place and fight against internal/mental/spiritual demons in some kind of puzzle scheme (maybe linking runes to a pattern or something) to gain mastery over a spell to use in the next combat.

Something like that....the dungeon section is partially built...just needed to remind myself how to convert from screen coordinates to iso grid coordinates.

Also - improved the AI of the Chaos player by tweaking a percentage in its 'thinking time'...it now should prefer to act in a certain way more often...which is good. More challenge for the player.

@ thinking time
You should have some kind of "ai switch" for each knight you create. Depending on how the switch was set during creation, the knight reacts.

For TVTower I gave the AI various "characters" (riskyness/generous/...). According to each of their characteristics they decide differently. Some want to save some more money until they think they have enough budget to fulfill a task. Others think they earn enough money until day end to pay the cost and spend more money meanwhile.

Your knights might have "bravity" values defining whether they attack alone or in groups (you might have a "attackchance = pow(bravity, stupidy)" so stupid knights never wait for their collegues :p


bye
Ron

Going to switch off the dungeon crawl aspect but leave the code in.  I'm not happy with how that part plays.

You need a progress indicator somehow that shows that the Chaos forces
are being beaten back and I believe there is a possible option which
may be something like having:

'Chaos ships' in the waters that gradually disappear as each Chaos
army is defeated.  So perhaps there are two icons - a live ship and a
dead ship (burned out with flames/smoke non animated)

The game starts with maxchaosarmies ships in the waters, and gradually
they are destroyed. They stay on screen for a turn after destroying
and then disappear the next turn.

Sounds good.