Turn-Based Tactics Archrebel: Tactics - A reincarnation of the classic Rebelstar.

[Saduj]

Looks good. Following on Steam. Good luck!

 

[Ularis Badler]

Looks good. Following on Steam. Good luck!

Thanks! I appreciate the support.

 

[Ularis Badler]

I know some people are interested in knowing how things work on the inside, so, I've put together a video showing how CPU-controlled units work in Archrebel.
The video shows hundreds of rays being fired towards enemy units from the surrounding tiles of the unit taking action in order to find the best place to move, shoot, or take cover.

 

[Ularis Badler]

This is one exciting video for me as it shows, for the first time, Archrebel with sound effects! This is still a work in progress with many sound layers missing.

 

[mediocrepoet]

That's pretty cool. I like how it has sort of a classic Ultima aesthetic but with modern touches like the sound and units splashing in the water.

 

[Ularis Badler]

That's pretty cool. I like how it has sort of a classic Ultima aesthetic but with modern touches like the sound and units splashing in the water.

Thanks for the praise! I usually see retro-styled games featuring also retro sound and there's nothing wrong with it but I think having a realistic approach boosts immersion. I believe that sound is truly important, more than GFX, but this is due to my nature of being very sensitive to sound.

 

[CyberWhale]

That's pretty cool. I like how it has sort of a classic Ultima aesthetic but with modern touches like the sound and units splashing in the water.

Thanks for the praise! I usually see retro-styled games featuring also retro sound and there's nothing wrong with it but I think having a realistic approach boosts immersion. I believe that sound is truly important, more than GFX, but this is due to my nature of being very sensitive to sound.

Non-existing and shitty sound effects/music is one of the main reasons why I'm unable to play really old PC games. Don't have such a revulsion towards old console games, because they are above and beyond whatever PC games of the same era were offering (in SFX department at least).

P.S. you also use the limited color scheme quite well, so there are no completely black/empty spaces from what I can see - staying true to the inspirations but improving upon it at the same time is definitely something to applaud you for. Reminds me of Skald in that way.

 

[Ularis Badler]

P.S. you also use the limited color scheme quite well, so there are no completely black/empty spaces from what I can see - staying true to the inspirations but improving upon it at the same time is definitely something to applaud you for. Reminds me of Skald in that way.

It's always cool having someone that really understands the concept behind Archrebel's visual artwork. Having no empty black spaces was something that I decided against right from the beginning. I mean, there is really no need for that with the current hardware, even though Archrebel's artwork remains simplistic and nostalgic; some things you simply can avoid and improve upon. Cheers.

 

[udm]

I am so glad to see the emphasis on good sounds and music. Too many devs ignore the importance of audio, but the truth is, audio plays a huge role in driving home certain emotions, making the other receiver feel immersed. Radio theatres always have a fond place in my heart because of how well they spark that imagination without even showing you a single image. Some movies (Alien, Road Warrior) and games (Fallout, Jagged Alliance 2) wouldn't even have felt the same had the sound fx and music not been on-point.

 

[agris]

hey Ularis Badler , I don't know when you did this but the combatant tokens being covered with orbs during firing does a great job of addressing that dissonance in sprite facing and attacking projectiles' vectors.

cheers!

 

[Ularis Badler]

hey Ularis Badler , I don't know when you did this but the combatant tokens being covered with orbs during firing does a great job of addressing that dissonance in sprite facing and attacking projectiles' vectors.
cheers!

Hey! I did mention that in our previous discussion about units turning into circles prior to shooting, perhaps I should have emphasized it a bit more. This feature has been implemented since the early ages of development. I'm glad that you think that it somehow mitigates the problem. Cheers!

 

[Ularis Badler]

I really would like to hear your feedback on the following subject: 'Accessing enemy information' via mechanics.

I'm thinking of having particular mechanics concerning revealing information about enemy units. Traditionally, in turn-based games, you usually hover with the mouse or click on an enemy unit to display a popup containing information about it. What I'm thinking is having a sort of scanning tool that would be required to analyze enemy units so you could access their stats. The AP cost would be minimum, and the information on the target would be static until you scan it again. You would have information telling you which attributes or skills or wounds are outdated/have been changed so you could judge if it is worth scanning the target again or that soon.

Do you find some strategic value here or do you think it would be just annoying?

Thanks a bunch for considering providing insight on this subject!

 

[7h30n]

I really would like to hear your feedback on the following subject: 'Accessing enemy information' via mechanics.

I'm thinking of having particular mechanics concerning revealing information about enemy units. Traditionally, in turn-based games, you usually hover with the mouse or click on an enemy unit to display a popup containing information about it. What I'm thinking is having a sort of scanning tool that would be required to analyze enemy units so you could access their stats. The AP cost would be minimum, and the information on the target would be static until you scan it again. You would have information telling you which attributes or skills or wounds are outdated/have been changed so you could judge if it is worth scanning the target again or that soon.

Do you find some strategic value here or do you think it would be just annoying?

Thanks a bunch for considering providing insight on this subject!

Original X-Com had the "Mind Probe" item which did the similar thing, but I think I only used it couple of times across all my playthroughs...
My initial instinct is "this idea is great", but as shown in the previous sentence it comes as "this idea has no use". Now why that is the case with X-Com? I think the reason is that typically you can one or two shot an enemy so there's no need to check the exact vitals. Conversely, armor and cover are done quite intuitively in X-Com. Enemies obstructed by things are obviously in some form of cover (and the game doesn't even have "cover" stat), so you don't need an "inspection tool" for that, while armor does have a stat. But again, typically armor in front is stronger than the one at the back or sides, and coupled with the previously mentioned "one or two shot to kill" makes inspecting the stat not so useful. The only useful thing I can think of is determining the enemy rank (if I wanted to capture a particular enemy) or checking TUs to see if the enemy can make a reaction shot.

Sorry, I'm not of much help, but perhaps you can improve on X-Com's implementation...

 

[Ularis Badler]

Original X-Com had the "Mind Probe" item which did the similar thing, but I think I only used it couple of times across all my playthroughs...
My initial instinct is "this idea is great", but as shown in the previous sentence it comes as "this idea has no use". Now why that is the case with X-Com? I think the reason is that typically you can one or two shot an enemy so there's no need to check the exact vitals. Conversely, armor and cover are done quite intuitively in X-Com. Enemies obstructed by things are obviously in some form of cover (and the game doesn't even have "cover" stat), so you don't need an "inspection tool" for that, while armor does have a stat. But again, typically armor in front is stronger than the one at the back or sides, and coupled with the previously mentioned "one or two shot to kill" makes inspecting the stat not so useful. The only useful thing I can think of is determining the enemy rank (if I wanted to capture a particular enemy) or checking TUs to see if the enemy can make a reaction shot.

Sorry, I'm not of much help, but perhaps you can improve on X-Com's implementation...

Not at all! I think you tackled some interesting points, like how useful it actually gets for combat mechanics that can 1-2 shot enemies. In Archrebel, it can definitely take more than 2 shots to kill opponents, especially when the energy shield is active and when standard weapons are used on large armored droids. What I'm trying to figure out at this point is if I should use the analyze option whenever I want to update the stats of units or if it should automatically update for some turns, or if it will update the target's states forever, the latter probably could turn that analyzing the ability to nearly useless, or at least making it not so important.

I anticipate that the usefulness of the analysis is mostly to collect HP data and what kind of wounds the target has.

 

[udm]

Fallout also has the Awareness perk which helps you assess a target's hp and other stats.

I certainly think it should just go beyond telling you the basic stats of a unit, as that would make it useless after a couple of uses. I think it would be most useful as a tool if it's usage allows the player to make a better informed choice of fight or flight, to reduce uncertainty at the cost of a few APs. In order to accomplish this, the game mechanics should allow for:
- the traded APs to be inconsequential enough in a life or death situation, but not too insignificant that the user can just happily use them every time.
- for such situations to be able to occur for a significant number of times, yet without being too widespread that the player has to keep falling back on the tool.

I don't know how lethal shots are to the player and enemy in Archrebel, but in X-Com, I hardly used the Mind Probe since everything is deadly and I would rather use the TU to fire a couple of shots.

 

[Ularis Badler]

Fallout also has the Awareness perk which helps you assess a target's hp and other stats.

I certainly think it should just go beyond telling you the basic stats of a unit, as that would make it useless after a couple of uses. I think it would be most useful as a tool if it's usage allows the player to make a better informed choice of fight or flight, to reduce uncertainty at the cost of a few APs. In order to accomplish this, the game mechanics should allow for:
- the traded APs to be inconsequential enough in a life or death situation, but not too insignificant that the user can just happily use them every time.
- for such situations to be able to occur for a significant number of times, yet without being too widespread that the player has to keep falling back on the tool.

I don't know how lethal shots are to the player and enemy in Archrebel, but in X-Com, I hardly used the Mind Probe since everything is deadly and I would rather use the TU to fire a couple of shots.

Thanks for providing insight. You describe exactly how I envision it to be. I want it to be something that may provide an additional layer of interaction and tactical value and not something decisive to win battles. The feature is there more for support. The analysis is mostly used to scan for variable data, like HP, stamina, and last but not least, the type of wounds units may have. Static data will be revealed with a single scan, but if you want to keep track of variable data, you will need to scan it multiple times. I reckon that higher-grade scanners could provide the ability to update data for multiple turns instead of just one.

Some examples for its utilization:
- If you learn that the Assault Droid you were shooting at has now the legs damaged, perhaps now you can attempt to reposition your units for closer shots since the Assault Droid won't be able to move farther out to shoot at you;
- You scan an enemy unit and you discover its nearly destroyed, perhaps now you can use light weapons to finish it off saving ammo from heavier weaponry.
- Perhaps you just reposition a unit but it still has enough AP to perform analysis; It's not something you planned but that you can take advantage of.

 

[udm]

Yeah then that's an item I'd definitely find handy, and would probably lug it along with one of my guys. This sort of implementation works best with multi-layered systems, and Archrebel definitely sounds like it's got it.

 

[Ularis Badler]

This video shows some weather effects and the Assault droid with voice acknowledgments, which should be something that I will apply to every unit.

 

[Alienman]

Just wondering if there will be any wound effects? Like a smoking droid, trashed human look etc. So you at a glance can tell who is about to die.

 

[Ularis Badler]

Just wondering if there will be any wound effects? Like a smoking droid, trashed human look etc. So you at a glance can tell who is about to die.

Yeah! Once all mechanics are in place, I will definitely add those sorts of details. I'm not sure if will create sprites specifically for wounded variants because I would need to create at least one for each type of weapon for humans. But I can add smoke and occasional sparks for droids and perhaps blood drops for humans. Regardless, you already have symbols that tell you how wounded the unit is - the heart symbol on units goes from yellow to orange and flashes red when nearly destroyed.

 

[Galdred]

I really would like to hear your feedback on the following subject: 'Accessing enemy information' via mechanics.

I'm thinking of having particular mechanics concerning revealing information about enemy units. Traditionally, in turn-based games, you usually hover with the mouse or click on an enemy unit to display a popup containing information about it. What I'm thinking is having a sort of scanning tool that would be required to analyze enemy units so you could access their stats. The AP cost would be minimum, and the information on the target would be static until you scan it again. You would have information telling you which attributes or skills or wounds are outdated/have been changed so you could judge if it is worth scanning the target again or that soon.

Do you find some strategic value here or do you think it would be just annoying?

Thanks a bunch for considering providing insight on this subject!

It is very different, but the scanning tool in Chaos Gate would display the positions of all nearby enemies on a "blip screen". So it makes it closer from the motion scanner than a tool to display information, but it was quite useful, as it gave the exact location (as in, you could count the graduations on the blips and know where the opponents were).

Spoiler

You could also have equipment that would passively give stats of enemies within a given radius (or make it an officer skill).
Or combine it with a bonus to critical hits (as it could tell your soldiers which parts of the armor is damaged).

 

[Ularis Badler]

It is very different, but the scanning tool in Chaos Gate would display the positions of all nearby enemies on a "blip screen". So it makes it closer from the motion scanner than a tool to display information, but it was quite useful, as it gave the exact location (as in, you could count the graduations on the blips and know where the opponents were).

You could also have equipment that would passively give stats of enemies within a given radius (or make it an officer skill).
Or combine it with a bonus to critical hits (as it could tell your soldiers which parts of the armor is damaged).

Those are good suggestions! As for scanning enemies, I will actually have something similar to the X-Com; you throw a probe-like grenade that will reveal the terrain in a given radius. Cheers!

 

[Ularis Badler]

Throughout my experimentation with shaders, I came up with some fog and cloud shadows visual effects. The cloud shadows do appear later on the video, coming from north as I kill some foes in the process.

 

[Ularis Badler]

Looks foggy, which kind of makes it less crispy clean to look at. Also fog should not obscure the interiors? Will there be snow levels and day and night missions? Will the weather affect the combatants in a way?

Yeah, it will be hard to make fog visible while maintining crispyness, which goes against the very nature of the effects of fog. However, the fog strength is not definitive and I will probably have an option to control its strength. I will rely on everyone's feedback for this. I think I could even also a "safe-zone" in the middle of the screen that runs along with the camera. That would prevent the center of the screen of having fog, simulating how reallife works.

About snow leves, that is something I still need to think about it, but there will be a day-night cycle. Also, the game takes place in an alien place that still needs to be transformed.

The weather effects will not be visible inside structures and will impact on units in some way. I'm still deciding on the effects but fog will mostly imapact on visibility range.

Here is a screenie with weather disabled inside bases:

 

[Ularis Badler]

And here is the whole weather system in place. Some other templates may include dust-storm and snow.