Vapourware Zodiac Legion - X-COM and dungeons

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I guess I could first release on itch.io to avoid tanking the Steam Score early on, but I don't know the platform very well.

zwanzig_zwoelf

Itch is a nice place. The community is more tolerable since a large chunk of the platform are jam and hobby games.
However, if your die-hard fans buy the game on Itch, their reviews won't matter when it comes to the Steam score, which can potentially fuck you in the ass if you have a very niche audience.

Can't you offer Steam keys to people who bought it on itch, so that they might drop a review on Steam too? (or it might be against itch's ToS, I don't know)

You can (and it's a good practice, in fact there's a good built-in system to claim keys and whatnot), but from what I know, Steam will not take these reviews into account while calculating the score and amount of reviews next to it unless you bought the game via the Steam Store.

 

[Galdred]

After discussing things with my main investor (aka my wife), we decided to keep going the kickstarter route, as it would take less time than getting the game ready for EA, and would help build a community et all, so no itch.io build until then.
Kickstarter target date has been set to October 2019. I will release a demo with a bit more content than the actual build(but only the battlescape), then a trailer for the game.

I also need to borrow some money from my banker before to complete the pre-KS stuff (geoscape related assets, videos, ...).

 

[Circuit the Short]

Good luck men.

 

[Sloul]

Good luck gals.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Galdred This is really important and I want to mention this before you release anywhere. If your game has been approved for release on Steam, then you need to READ THE TERMS OF YOUR STEAM AGREEMENT. I caution you against releasing on another platform first.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Actually, my idea was for the player to play Greek freedom fighters fighting it out against EU forces. But I thought that by this time, Greece might have left the EU, or the Troika could have become more reasonable.

Also, I'm late to the party here, but those lazy Greek communists need to get off their fat lazy Greek communist asses and start working 40-hour weeks until their 60's like everyone else who isn't a fat lazy Greek communist. And then on their way to and from gainful employment they need to chant "Austerity! Austerity! Austerity!" until they really believe in it. And then they need to start paying for things with cash instead of German-backed Euro-denominated promises. If they can't handle that, then let them leave the Eurozone and then they can print drachmas until they're more valuable as toilet paper and kindling than as legal tender. Those lazy fatass Greek pinkos can turn Greece into the Zimbabwe of Europe. Or they can start exercising some fiscal responsibility.

 

[Galdred]

Actually, my idea was for the player to play Greek freedom fighters fighting it out against EU forces. But I thought that by this time, Greece might have left the EU, or the Troika could have become more reasonable.

Also, I'm late to the party here, but those lazy Greek communists need to get off their fat lazy Greek communist asses and start working 40-hour weeks until their 60's like everyone else who isn't a fat lazy Greek communist. And then on their way to and from gainful employment they need to chant "Austerity! Austerity! Austerity!" until they really believe in it. And then they need to start paying for things with cash instead of German-backed Euro-denominated promises. If they can't handle that, then let them leave the Eurozone and then they can print drachmas until they're more valuable as toilet paper and kindling than as legal tender. Those lazy fatass Greek pinkos can turn Greece into the Zimbabwe of Europe. Or they can start exercising some fiscal responsibility.

The euro doesn't work this way:
Internal changes from the less disciplined countries are never enough, because the more disciplined ones' productivity increases faster, which makes the euro rise up faster than the southern countries can keep up with.
What will turn Greece into Zimbabwe is staying in the eurozone.
Granted, they should never have joined in the first place (and could only do so because their politicians used creative national acounting).

 

[Darth Canoli]

Granted, they should never have joined in the first place (and could only do so because their politicians used creative national acounting).

Actually, Goldman & Sachs bank helped them cheat their way in and then sold that info to make loads of money and make the Greek economy dive even further.

 

[Galdred]

Granted, they should never have joined in the first place (and could only do so because their politicians used creative national acounting).

Actually, Goldman & Sachs bank helped them cheat their way in and then sold that info to make loads of money and make the Greek economy dive even further.

Probably because the Greek government didn't check the contract correctly!
Actually, trusting this kind of institutions with what should have been a state secret was not very wise.

 

[Galdred]

I am currently working on environmental destruction, because who don't like breaking walls in dungeons?
I just need a good way to indicate which walls are not destructible (it should be the outer walls only, but they look like the rest currently, as I don't want to turn dungeon exploration into a tunneling affair).

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Galdred]

I cobbled a few props together (from the mini props Valery Kim did, or the existing armor pieces and weapons):

 

[Galdred]

The props in a dungeon. I really should have added a light source, though...

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Can the player also zoom in thus?

 

[Galdred]

Yes, you can zoom in to *2 or *4, and zoom out to 1/2.

 

[Galdred]

Now with a brazier for lighting and heat:

 

[Ninjerk]

Attack it.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Attack it.

"There's nothing to attack."
"I attack the darkness!"

 

[Galdred]

Attack it.

"There's nothing to attack."
"I attack the darkness!"

He could attack the brazier, but I don't have a destruction animation for the objects!

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Attack it.

"There's nothing to attack."
"I attack the darkness!"

He could attack the brazier, but I don't have a destruction animation for the objects!

Is light just visual, or does it have gameplay effect?

 

[Galdred]

Attack it.

"There's nothing to attack."
"I attack the darkness!"

He could attack the brazier, but I don't have a destruction animation for the objects!

Is light just visual, or does it have gameplay effect?

It is just visual for now. I am considering making it affect gameplay, but it is a bit hard to do well UI wise (unless plunging the whole map in the dark).
At the very least, I will give some effect to heat (like + damage from fire when next to a brazier, and - damage from ice).

 

[Galdred]

Wall crushing is in. I need to find a good and free animation, so it will work with an explosive hammer attack and/or an earthquake spell (I guess meteor woudl be fitting too), with a few explosion sprites or camera shake ( but I usually dislike camera shake effects).

I need to make the outer walls of the dungeons not crushable, though, as it leads to degenerate "tactics" (crush the outer wall, go to the objective from outside the dungeon, crush the objective outer wall, profit...).
I just need a few more abilities, some UI cleanup, and the game should be ready for demo.

 

[baud]

Wall crushing is in. I need to find a good and free animation, so it will work with an explosive hammer attack and/or an earthquake spell (I guess meteor woudl be fitting too), with a few explosion sprites or camera shake ( but I usually dislike camera shake effects).

Regarding the shake, instead of the screen, you could shake any props/characters around the new hole. Don't know how good it would look and perhaps the players would think it would affect the characters, leading to some confusion, though

 

[Galdred]

Wall breaching in action. I will probably replace this with a more fitting elemental attack, though, as fire is already useful for a lot of things.

 

[Ninjerk]

What's going to be the cost or drawback to wall-breaching?