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[Rayblon]

Hey all. Just wishing everyone a happy 4th of July, and happy monday for anyone that doesn't celebrate it.

Feel free to talk about any plans for today, or how your day went tonight.

Personally, I'm just gonna laze around as per usual. I find it more enjoyable to live vicariously, myself.

[pspeed]

Happy Independence Day.

I ended up finding myself with 5 days off in a row and then promptly got sick.  :-/

[Rayblon]

Happy Independence Day.

I ended up finding myself with 5 days off in a row and then promptly got sick.  :-/

You never seem to catch a break, do you? Well, here's to hoping you get better before with some days to spare.

[pspeed]

Happy Independence Day.

I ended up finding myself with 5 days off in a row and then promptly got sick.  :-/

You never seem to catch a break, do you? Well, here's to hoping you get better before with some days to spare.

I go back to work tomorrow... still sick.  It's not the kind of sick I can miss work on account of, though... just a bad chest cold by now.  Means no matter what I'll be dealing with this for another week at least.

Yeah, "never catching a break" is why I don't even bother to make plans these days.  I did get to finish playing Uncharted 4 at least... so there is that.  (And finally finished watching Full Metal Alchemist and the follow-on Conqueror of Shamballa with my son.)

[Rayblon]

I go back to work tomorrow... still sick.  It's not the kind of sick I can miss work on account of, though... just a bad chest cold by now.  Means no matter what I'll be dealing with this for another week at least.

Yeah, "never catching a break" is why I don't even bother to make plans these days.  I did get to finish playing Uncharted 4 at least... so there is that.  (And finally finished watching Full Metal Alchemist and the follow-on Conqueror of Shamballa with my son.)

Man, that's rough. At least you managed to put a silver lining on your weekend. I guess you probably have to do that alot, all considered. Either way, FMA and Uncharted 4 is gud tim.

FMA is probably one of the best animes I've ever seen, for a long runner. If you haven't already, I suggest watching Steins;Gate, Psycho Pass, or Parasyte. They're all pretty deep, sometimes violent shows that really get you thinking and stick with you, while also being fairly short(They're  all <20 episodes iirc). Durarara is pretty cool too.

So, how's the family doing? Anything of note relating to E-Space, Mythruna, the networking engine, etc?

[pspeed]

So, how's the family doing? Anything of note relating to E-Space, Mythruna, the networking engine, etc?

Family is ok.  Wife has to start chemo again.

Nothing new on Mythruna though I have a strong itch there.

The SimEthereal networking engine is being used in an MMO game that is in closed alpha or closed beta or something.  He hammers it pretty hard and it's surviving.  Has found a few bugs for me and so on... completely validating my having open sourced it.  Should be pretty solid by the time I get around to integrating it into Mythruna.

I also have a little side project that I developed in 30 minute increments here and there.  I'll maybe post a sample build when I have it to the point I want others to play it.  (Really just a packaging issue now.)

Here are some screen shot sequences... all just ugly placeholder art right now.
http://imgur.com/a/NoCBu

Basically, if chess, minesweeper, and battleship all ate a pack of D&D trading cards and had a baby... it would be this.  Kind of.

Right now it's just single player but the idea would be to match up folks for multiplayer.  F2P sort of monetization strategy maybe.

I wasn't even sure the game mechanic would be interesting so I built the prototype in little bits here and there.  There are a couple folks I want to collaborate with on the graphics when I turn it into something prettier.

[Rayblon]

I also have a little side project that I developed in 30 minute increments here and there.  I'll maybe post a sample build when I have it to the point I want others to play it.  (Really just a packaging issue now.)

Here are some screen shot sequences... all just ugly placeholder art right now.
http://imgur.com/a/NoCBu

Basically, if chess, minesweeper, and battleship all ate a pack of D&D trading cards and had a baby... it would be this.  Kind of.

Right now it's just single player but the idea would be to match up folks for multiplayer.  F2P sort of monetization strategy maybe.

I wasn't even sure the game mechanic would be interesting so I built the prototype in little bits here and there.  There are a couple folks I want to collaborate with on the graphics when I turn it into something prettier.

Disclaimer: I'm not really one for chess-type games or board game like things, or even card games nowadays, so this might be completely off-base for the target demographic. It should also be noted that I only spent like 30 seconds researching D&D cards, too.

So, what I think I'm seeing is a battlefield on a chessboard, with a fog of war of sorts when enemy units are blocking spaces. I assume that the different units would be drawn from a deck that each player has built, and that different classes would have precise paradigms for attack, like the arrows for hunters and close combat for militia or whatever. With the placeholders, it uh... doesn't look exciting unless you have alot of imagination. Of course, I'm saying that in acknowledgement of games like Hearthstone and such that reward the simple act of placing a card with dazzling feedback.

The concept as you've presented it seems mostly novel from my rather narrow view of things, and like pretty much everything you come up with, it seems like fun. I've not seen many card games that make their units mobile, which always irked me... so that's good.


Ideas and analysis of future development begin below, possibly with some false presumptions about your intent with the game. I'm not sure if you like this stuff or not so i just do it anyway.

If you stick to manifesting everything as cards, It might be a touch confusing depending on the implementation; again though, that could just be me, and the scalability of a flat playing field lets you move to a mobile platform more easily. Making sure that actions have impact aesthetically is probably the most important though.

I thought that maybe you could have the board be a landscape, with the cards manifesting as their actual creatures/items/structures. More intensive to develop, but it'd be a somewhat unique take on a card game, and would make it feel more like a war/unit management game, which might be more approachable to some people. I guess that art direction would be kinda like the 3D take on Ethereal Space though; something that should probably come later, if it comes at all. It'd be neat if maybe both manifestations existed at some point and you could alternate between them or something so you could just see the cards duke it out or the actions actually play out on a battlefield, or switch to card mode when you want to manage your units but switch to field mode during attacks.

[pspeed]

The real game will be 3D someday.  I'm just trying to work out the mechanics and the pieces.

The original intent was to make it based on a card deck but cards are kind of done to death... so I think troop types in general are fine.  I call them "pieces".

The basic premise is that you place the pieces along the bottom that will move into the board at the end of the turn.  Both players place their pieces (other player can't see) then click "End Turn"... which is really "begin turn" but let's not quibble.  If there are pieces already on the board and those pieces can perform actions then the player can select those too before clicking "end turn".

Any pieces on the board already try to move forward.  If they can't because another piece is in the way then they will melee attack that piece.  All actions are performed before anything moves.  So melee attacks, arrow attacks, etc... all run.  Then everyone moves forward into a blank space.

From the internal game's perspective, it's a simple "submit my moves, get the results" sort of system.  From the player's perspective, I animate all of this stuff.  So the effect markers come flying out of their heads and so on then they all slide to their new positions.  Eventually this will be 3D animated waking/attacking stuff.

The key bit to me is having to plan your moves in advance with what you currently know about the other player's pieces.  You have imperfect information and a limited amount of resources that you can play.  For example, with these limited set of troop types, playing the one wizard you have could be a crucial game winning or game losing proposition.  You have information at your disposal, though.  For example, you can see what resources the other player used when placing their pieces... so you can accurately predict at least which row the other player's wizard is on even if you don't know which column.  You can probe with arrows (thus potentially giving away where your archer is) to find which pieces are protected by the wizard's magic shield... and so on.

Right now the single player game is pretty basic.  The AI just picks between some random board templates and then just randomly performs the piece actions against random targets.  But that's basically enough to see what strategies might succeed or fail.  You can pretty much always win against the AI if you know what you are doing but it's not necessarily trivial to do so.

Eventually there will be more piece types.  Right now there are:
Peasants: cost 1 gold, have only 1 hp and no armor.  Attack for only 1 point of damage.
Conscripts: cost 2 gold, 1 wood, 1 leather.  Have 1 hp and 1 pt armor.  Attack for 1 point of damage.  Basically peasants with armor.
Spearman: cost 2 gold, 1 wood, 1 leather, 1 steal.  Have 1 hp and 1 pt armor.  Melee attack for 1 point of damage.  If supplied by a squire can also throw spears.
Archer: cost 3 gold, 2 wood, 1 leather.  Have 1 hp and no armor.  Can perform ranged attacks up to 4 times.  Right now they also melee attack for 1 pt but I will change that to be 0 pts if they've used all of their arrows.
Squire: cost 3 gold, 2 wood, 1 steal.  1 hp, no armor.  They hold three spears and can supply them to any spearman in adjacent squares.  Attack for 1 pt of melee damage.
Wizard: cost 2 gold and 9 mana.  1 hp but has magic armor that it provides to adjacent spaces.  Can cast magic missile which does 1 pt of magic damage and bypasses armor.  Can also cast fire ball which uses many mana points but does several turns of damage to the target.  Can also cast fire rain which does 1 point of damage to each troop in a 3x3 area (uses all 9 mana pts, though)

These pieces were the minimum I created to play with different pairing strategies.  There will be other piece types in the future but these worked all of the different area/adjacency mechanics that I needed to test.  For example, if I want to add a druid class that provides extra health to its neighbors then the code for that is basically already there.

Other piece types might be oversized... where they are seen regardless of fog of war, having extra HP, but also block any ranged attacks to pieces behind them.

The current piece array is also a good base for tweaking balance and fixing issues.  For example, right now spearman do 2 pts of melee attack which means he can wipe out a wizard in one blow... which shouldn't be the case really.  Eventually I will fix the wizard to absorb whatever damage he still has mana for, for himself.  1 mana point of protection at a time is the most he can provide his neighbors.  But for now it can be kind of an interesting strategy to try an get an alive spearman in the right column if you've already placed your wizard poorly.


Oh, I forgot to mention... the 'win' condition is getting a piece off the other side of the board.

[pspeed]

And I'm pretty sure that the 'meta-game' will be an overworld view where you place things to mine resources and whatever and click different areas to engage different kinds of battles.  Provides a little customization for people who like to decorate (think My Singing Monsters) while giving a nice base for time-collapse ($) or just carefully managing the resources you spend in battles or optimizing your gameplay to earn more resources back.  (Eventually you will salvage some resources from the pieces you kill.)

[Rayblon]

Ah. So, how will you be monetizing the game, do you think? If you're not going to be offering gameplay affecting content, I figure there could be 'skins' for units, like outfits or if you add ballistas or trebuchets, gilding/silver for the metal. Potentially, there could be 'races' or factions that you could buy to change your appearance. Or maybe the field could be aesthetically changed depending on some field-transmogrification as troops progress(Imagine the field becoming burned and filled with fiery fissures as an army with a fire transmog progresses!).

Have you potentially looked at different game modes? I can foresee a last-man-standing type mode playing pretty differently from the reach the other side deal.

Additionally, what are your thoughts on randomizing the terrain or creating 'maps' of sorts that alter gameplay? I.E. One map my have a river that slows progress, another has a chasm that requires you to cross a bridge or build one, etc.


And uh... Maybe it'd be best to finish the game with the frog first... Or e-space, or that muddy rogue game.

[pspeed]

Ah. So, how will you be monetizing the game, do you think? If you're not going to be offering gameplay affecting content, I figure there could be 'skins' for units, like outfits or if you add ballistas or trebuchets, gilding/silver for the metal. Potentially, there could be 'races' or factions that you could buy to change your appearance. Or maybe the field could be aesthetically changed depending on some field-transmogrification as troops progress(Imagine the field becoming burned and filled with fiery fissures as an army with a fire transmog progresses!).

Have you potentially looked at different game modes? I can foresee a last-man-standing type mode playing pretty differently from the reach the other side deal.

Additionally, what are your thoughts on randomizing the terrain or creating 'maps' of sorts that alter gameplay? I.E. One map my have a river that slows progress, another has a chasm that requires you to cross a bridge or build one, etc.

Monetization would be similar to other games where pumping money in would allow you to compress time to a certain extent but otherwise you could grow resources over time.  Certain vanity items would also be available that way.  Mostly I imagine for decorating your lands or castle or whatever.  Things that don't matter but let you take pride in your little kingdom.

Yeah, within the constraints that all pieces (currently) only move forward, I have considered different board obstacles.

Different game modes also.  Like, I have an idea for a treasure hunt game where you have to probe around and explore a maze to find the treasure.  Avoid the traps and so on.  Kind of like the old Hunt the Wumpus game in that you are warned bad things are near but necessarily in which direction.

And uh... Maybe it'd be best to finish the game with the frog first... Or e-space, or that muddy rogue game.

The frog game is still waiting on a dragonfly model that may never come.  E-space is less critical because there is another way better test of the networking library right now (1000s of players) and there was no clear monetization strategy there.  The muddy rogue is still on my plate as that's my test bed for open sourcing parts of Mythruna and writing some basic AI routines.

...but this game is lightweight to work on as there is not much to it but logic.  And for the graphics, I expect to have a team to help.  Also, because it's strictly turn based, it would be easy to adapt it to massively-multiplayer type matchups.  I mean, the whole game logic could be wrapped in some web calls pretty easily then strap whatever client on top... whether 3D or 2D web, tablet, phone, whatever.  Assuming there ends up being a fun game there then it is the shortest route to potential income that I have right now.  And the easiest to do piece-meal.

Never underestimate the difficulty of real-time networked games.  Turn based is super simple in comparison.

[pspeed]

Super secret private download page:
http://www.simsilica.com/death-march/

With basic game play instructions.  Strategy is up to you.

[pspeed]

And some one found a bug already... so there is a new version up.  The proper windows version should end in -3 now.  I'm uploading the 'platform independent' version as I type this.  It will be -2 I think.  Because reasons.

The bug was that you could target an archer to hit anything on the board even if the red highlight didn't show.  (Same with spearman and wizards) They should only be able to hit things in their column.

[Rayblon]

I checked out the game. It seems like going in with a burst of archers after a wave of peasents and using your mage early on will win the game pretty quickly. As it is now, a match takes less than five minutes(though I think it's safe to attribute that to the AI). I think it would be nice if we could have a bit more control over the unit's advancement, though. Watching all my archers hurling themselves at peasents and conscripts, while amusing, isn't really realistic. Realisticness aside, though, I think allowing fine control of unit advancement would expand the tactical aspect of the game.

I know this is a bit early to ask, but would it be possible to implement an offline multiplayer version as a precursor to the online multiplayer? The AI is uh... really something, but the merits of the game would be best evaluated by pitting people against eachother ASAP. As I stated earlier, sort of, certain layouts and strategies seem to work really, really well against the AI. I can't say for certain whether the same would be true for players, but if there's a superior format, that would really narrow down the replay-ability, which is pretty integral to this game's success.

[pspeed]

Edit: oh, and thanks for trying it.  I meant to start with that.

With the current AI (it's not really AI at all... just random actions)... you don't even have to wait for the archers.  Just first row archers, mow everything down in your path.  If the first row is spearman, always obliterate the second row if possible.

Multiplayer is high on my list.  I also have some ideas for actual AI that may be easier in the short term.  The thing is, I had to be able to play it a few times to see what strategies worked well and try to figure out how I'd counter them as the other player.

For example, if we both played second-row archers... we'd both annihilate our archers in the next turn (probably).  I mean, with archers you have two choices at that point... give away your position and kill the second row... or risk getting wiped out.  Just depends on how conservative you want to be.

I want two different versions of the AI: aggressive and conservative.

And while I'm somewhat open to changing it, the 'always march forward' thing was kind of core to the game mechanic.  Originally, I hadn't even planned to let players control the ranged attacks.