Hello Underflowers!
So last time I had laid out some goals. I wanted to give a retrospective on them.
Retrospective Goals
- Footrope: Finish up the turn-based switch over and start designing and implementing the deception mechanic.
This ended up being a lot of work. So the turn-based gameplay isn’t fully in. I’ve had to technically redesign the navigation stem because I was using a navmesh before but instead I wanted a cell based movement system for turn-based gameplay. I’ll be using the AStar class in Godot to create cells to traverse between tilemaps. The AStar will be anchored to each character so we’ll need to update it’s offsets after it’s finished moving through that path.
For details on the deception mechanic check out the Idea Jam: Footrope section below.
- Tachyon: Come up with additional routes after you play through once.
I’ve found that I want to keep a canonical route and perhaps add in some sort timeline formatting to help people understand the full concept of the game. As for direct additional routes I’ve came up with a few key stories I want to tell and I am looking at who I want the player to pose as in them.
- Finish and release a write up introducing the above two projects, Footrope and Tachyon.
We released the article and you can see it here!
I feel pretty good about knocking this out of the park. I felt that elevator pitches and gameplay videos were the best way to convey the games easily and within the early state of them. It helps me understand how to direct the pitches and hone the underlying elements. Additionally it gives me the skill set to better communicate what the games I make are aiming to be.
Additionally, you will note it says two projects but the update included three. This is clearly because I wasn’t going to show Kessler just yet but I figured even the games I didn’t feel strongly for should be shown a bit. I do plan on writing an article about what I liked, disliked and learned from each of these. Going back to each of these games made me realize I still really enjoy them all but there are some I enjoy way more.
Idea Jam: Footrope
Wrapping up Footrope has been more difficult than the others. I’m trying to get the easiest parts of the core idea for each of these projects prototyped while still presenting what makes them unique. The switch from real time to turn based for combat has been difficult but overall I think it will make the game feel unique. The biggest difficulty I had is getting all the pathing to work together in a real-time environment. A character needs to move taking exactly the right amount of movement points to traverse a path. I have a plan which requires the use of the Godot AStar class but have been also trying to focus on the second part of last update’s tasks.
Deception mechanics! As a pirate your goal is to make profit. If you can gain riches and crew without taking any losses then why wouldn’t you do it? It’s all about putting your target in a compromised position. CGP Grey explains it much better in How to be a pirate but the gist is that you want to wave friendly flags at a far, get in close and give the opposition a chance to simply give up the riches on board.
So how I plan for it to work is that you need to pick up the target ship’s maritime broadcast, this will tell you what “flag” they are flying. You can match their broadcast and deceive them. Letting you get within boarding range and then dropping the deception in order to coax surrender out of the target ship.
Semimonthly Goals Overview
Brief
So for this next sprint I am going to put down Footrope, not for good, it still really interests me and I’ve gotten a lot done on it only after a month. I wanted to work on Tachyon more and switch over to polishing up the replay-ability and add in a bit of the struggles of time travel. Lastly, this sprint runs into another project’s milestone, so I will be focusing on that more so this sprint than anything else.
Goal(s)
- Tachyon allow the player to start uncovering alternative timelines.
Thanks,
Michael Brune