Current Checklist [B2]

Woah, already! Yes. Build 2, time to get underway. Lets get this game as fun as we can, as quick as we can.

BUILD 2 CHECKLIST

Items colored Green are done, Items colored Red have yet to be done. Notice how much shorter this is than the first checklist – that’s because the basic engine’s all done (for battles, at least!).

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Cavalry – Cavalry are essentially horseback fighters – the game supports any kind of mount though (no flight yet) so you can have them ride a dinosaur or whatever in your mod. But in the main game this will be horses. Cavalry will be able to move using the AP of the mount, but attack using its own AP. UPDATE: Done! Without the speed bonuses they aren’t that great, but they are a blessing for archers that can now run away while reloading instead of choosing to do one or the other on foot.

New HUD and control scheme – Instead of that giant clunky bar on the left side of your screen, the new HUD will be a small window that pops up when you select a unit. No more clicking Move or Attack to do what they indicate, now just click an empty piece of land to move the selected guy there. Attacking will work the same way – this makes less work for the player. The new HUD will give the stats of the selected unit and allow the player to select spells. Update: this is almost done – we’re just fixing up some of the little leftover bugs from the implementation and then we will update this to finished. UPDATE2: done! Now the movement system is REALLY nice and easy! The hud is tiny and non-cluttering, and the only time you ever really need to click it is to end your turn!

Adjustable Resolution - People with 30″ monitors want to play in crazy imax mode without it getting choppy going to fullscreen? We’ll have a custom resolution option in the settings that lets you see the screen at the size you want. Widescreen included! UPDATE: DONE! Playing in widescreen is awesome, I love how much of the game I can see. I wonder how this will look on multiple monitors…

Re-Done Collision - The only major glitch of the first build, we’ll be trying to re-do the collision system so people don’t get stuck on stuff/eachother. UPDATE: Done! It was actually the AI’s pathfinding system and the knockback system that were doing these errors. We have them all fixed now!

AI improvements – One of the larger undertakings of this build, we’re making the ai better. Ai will be modular in the respect that units from any team can be set to AI, and units from your team can be easily grouped into formations and be given orders as a whole such as attacks on the side of an enemy formation, holding a position, etc. UPDATE: Ai formation grouping from your team is being moved to build 3. UPDATE2: Done, the new pathfinding uses the A* algorithm, which means they don’t get lost or stuck! AI vs. AI wars work too!

General Battle System Revamping – There will be multiple teams available and we’ll make the AI compatible – so now we should be able to do 3v3 and 4v4, 1v2 etc. battles. Not to mention that any of them can be set to players or AI, so you can make a cool screensaver with the AI fighting people or play your friends in hotseat! UPDATE: Done, baby! Now we can have as many players, AI, and sides composed of multiple teams as we want. Hotseat multiplayer included!

Speed Bonuses - Like the angle bonus seen in build 1, units that moved the most towards their enemy since the last turn will do more damage. Now cavalry charges can kick some serious butt – speed bonuses from the huge 800 AP (estimate) move of the horse go into the attack from the rider as he flies past. UPDATE: Done! Speed bonuses are really cool, they dramatically change the strategy of the battle. Calvary are scary, and so are spearwalls! LESS JOYFUL UPDATE: Even though these are done, we’ve disabled them from the vanilla game. It’s an unnecessary feature that complicates the combat a bit too much. But you can turn it on in your settings with the flick of a 0 to a 1!

GFX Revamp – Even though the online community was split between the game looking good and looking bad, I personally agree with the “looking bad” people. It is partly because I’m sort of a perfectionist on the look of my games (but I don’t usually end up doing much about the look, I always just know it could look better) – We’re going to standardize and fix the graphics. Right now, soldiers and items are pixelled, where the landscape is done in photoshop. We’re going to make everything pixelled so the game looks better in a stylistic approach, even though it will take way longer to pixel everything (especially those trees, oh no!)

-and that’s it for now. If we come up with something, we’ll add more. Feel free to suggest! Remember, build 2 is only going to be the COMPLETED battle system – no world map and inventory stuff yet. UPDATE: Due to the new release schedule, the second half of completing the battle system is moved to build 3. The world map and inventory stuff will come in build 4 and beyond.