Game Update
We finally think we figured out the character ghosting problem. Often we would move characters in and out of the toy box and or delete them. We would then save the game and after returning those deleted characters would return due to corrupt save data.
Interestingly, the issue wasn’t anything in our new functionality of deleting characters which is what I had originally thought was the issue. The issue was the way we created a relationship on the toy box area and the buttons for the troops inside it. There was a toggle group on the toy box for the buttons which would not allow multiple buttons to read as pressed at the same time. We broke this when we added scrolling functionality.
In order to add scrolling functionality we needed to add a new invisible panel for all the character buttons in the toy box. This wouldn’t be an issue but the script for the button toggle group was a level higher. This means that the parent for the buttons was in the location.
Ultimately, this meant we had to place a toggle group on the invisible scrolling panel, and go back into the script in order to change the child referencing to a level lower than it was originally. For now this seems to have fixed the issue, but more testing is necessary. It’s possible that this will crop up again, and it might have been a multi-faceted problem that I’m unaware of.
The good news is that this means the only thing standing in the way of early release on Steam will be getting the key art right. Quite a relief overall. I’m still trying to squeeze in some sort of consumable item system for the game before early release as I see an issue with troops that have to much or to little alignment that the player wants to push into certain class archetypes.
Personal Update
I continue to improve my office to make the area more conducive for getting work done. I need to start streaming again, but I won’t feel comfortable to do that until I have the proper back drop. Still it’s a lot nice to sit in front of my computer now which means a lot.
I have to go out of town next week which might make it a little difficult to get some things complete. Then again I should probably take advantage of this time to put a build on my laptop and play it, then document all the issues. There’s still a lot of balancing that needs to get done.
For the past couple weeks I’ve been chatting with a great girl that I feel fits with my lifestyle and understands my needs really well. She really impressed me this past weekend when she spent her own money to take time to fly in just to spend time with me and get to know me. She’s even braving a hurricane that’s close by. I can’t say that I’ve been impressed like this in quite a while. She’s really good at making me feel comfortable and encouraging me. I have high hopes that we can keep moving forward with the relationship.
The World of Six Aspects
I’m going to start a new segment this week to talk a little about the world of “Six Aspects” as it’s a good idea to bring people in on my general ideas when creating this world. I might write some short stories in this section which could become part of the game. For now these are a lot of ideas and so I would stress that they be taken with a grain of salt as they are subject to change. For now I don’t have a definitive cannon for the world. I’m primarily doing some exploring.
First I think I should focus on the Aspects themselves. There is some confusion from people I talk to about this and so I’d like to clear this up here. The format for this will be a question and answer one. The Aspects are Earth, Lightning, Fire, Wind, Water, and Ice.
Question - “Why not just make them elements?
The Aspects are supposed to represent 6 different parts to a mono-theistic society. Each Aspect is one part of god, and represents a part of gods personality. The Aspects create a hexagon in which Aspects that are directly across from each other are opposed while Aspects that are to the immediate left and right are allied.
Earth - vitality
Lightning - unpredictability
Fire - intensity
Air - liberation
Water - invigoration
Ice - fortification
Individuals in the world will primarily focus their religious practices on one of gods Aspects which causes problems as those people will disagree with each other. It’s supposed to mirror the world we live in with different parts of religion arguing with each other over differences. It would be nice to create a situation in which the player as the commander of the troops needs to bring opposing viewpoints together in order to become victorious. This idea was first birthed in my RPG Maker game “Constantine”. It has room to grow quite a bit.
Also aren’t the Aspects Ice, and Water basically the same?
They have a lot of similarities which helped inform my decision to put them next to each other on the Aspect Hexagon. I feel that I can make them different enough to ensure they don’t have a ton of overlap.
Why include Lightning, seems like an odd choice?
Lightning is very interesting as the way I think about it is as if it was plasma. It’s somewhere between being solid and liquid which makes it different than fire. Lightning also has a close relationship to earth as it’s part of the requirement for its existence which made it a good fit for me.
Are there unbelievers in this world?
Absolutely, there are plenty of people that prefer to look to science or their own strength instead of submitting to a higher power.
Which Aspects are good and which ones are evil?
Elements are not good or bad. It’s how the user that’s aligned to them chooses to use them that decides that. We relate that to an alignment stat on troops. Zero represents an evil troop and one hundred represents a good troop. For now it’s difficult to make troops become evil on purpose. Still working on balancing this system. I’m considering reducing alignment of troops as they fight with opposing troops in the same squad. This would make for some interesting troop combinations.
How to the Aspects relate to the troops in the game?
Troops in the game have a primary aspect assigned to them. This aspect impacts how they fight on different terrain, and also might increase or decrease incoming damage depending on the match up of the spell being used against them. A fireball will deal less damage to a troop with a fire aspect, and more damage to a troop with an ice aspect. For now there is no way to shift a troops aspect but we may open this up in the future. For now if the player wants a squad to all have matching aspects they will have to move them around and use the recruit (duplicate) option as this will make a copy of a troop with all of their stats in tact.
What kind of other things have you considered doing with the Aspects system?
I’ve thought about matching it up with some sort of Zodiac as each Aspect could account for 2 Zodiac symbols. I’ve also considered restricting classes to specific Aspects. At some point I want to have more troops that fly and have something to do with ice aspects. Those feel like the most neglected right now. I’ve also thought about having god be a 7th element and explaining that somehow. In this way the people of the world would have access to 6 Aspects but only god would have access to 7. This would mirror the idea of mans imperfect nature and gods perfect nature in a Biblical sense.
I also considered creating some sort of situation in which players would play as the rebel faction that’s taking down some sort of empire and then swap roles to play as the empire to get perspective. I’m a big fan of stories that show you two sides of the story. I want my enemies to have some depth, and this could be a great way to do it. It feels like it would be really hard to implement and do well however.