Vapourware Zodiac Legion - X-COM and dungeons

[laclongquan]

I dont know they just ignore entirely the concept of "fantasy XCOM". Seriously.

The biggest hurdle I can see is the weapon customization. But that should be changeable to medieval weapons with magical buffs, or various type of maintainances/force addition of that age.
+ poison on weapon, which require apothecary and high level warrior/quartermaster (so they can manage the various poison supply and applications)
+ effectiveness based on durability, which can be changed by smiths in charge of maintainance.

 

[Galdred]

Thank you all for your answers, it was very uplifting after the cold reception I got from professionals of the sector...
I will publish a poll result breakdown soon.

Now today question is simpler :
Which effect do you prefer?




I will rework the effects in one of them and drop the other one.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Te second

 

[Ninjerk]

Definitely the second. Question: are those effects drawn with respect to viewing plane or the projection?

 

[Darth Roxor]

yah, second is better

 

[Galdred]

Definitely the second. Question: are those effects drawn with respect to viewing plane or the projection?

Actually, these effects rely on 2 animated sprites, and the particle effect generator of moai.
The second is a bit tweaked so that the fire only goes through the hexes adjacent to the target, so it more or less respect the projection (I used a ballpark value of 0.75 for the size ratio, between X axis and Y axis, which is not the correct one).
I didn't do that for the first one.


ok, revision 2b is up now : the center explosion was recentered, and the radius was lowered to make it obvious the guy to the SW was not hit by the blast.
I will try a range 2 version later tonight.

 

[Galdred]

I dont know they just ignore entirely the concept of "fantasy XCOM". Seriously.

The biggest hurdle I can see is the weapon customization. But that should be changeable to medieval weapons with magical buffs, or various type of maintainances/force addition of that age.
+ poison on weapon, which require apothecary and high level warrior/quartermaster (so they can manage the various poison supply and applications)
+ effectiveness based on durability, which can be changed by smiths in charge of maintainance.

I forgot to answer, but that is a very good point :
it can be hard to make weapons different enough in a medieval settings indeed, but Battle Brothers managed to do that quite well.

The weapons in game are :
bec de corbin(1h) : highest 1h piercing value
flail(1h) : reduces enemy shield effectiveness
hallberd(2h) : grants attack support bonus to adjacent allies
sword (1h/2h) : highest defence bonus
axe (1h/2h) : highest attack bonus
hammer(1h/2h) : attack + piercing bonus
club (1h) -> peasant grade weapon, or improvised weapon
scepter (1h) -> magic stuff, worse than the club in melee
bow
throwing axe

They will also have some boni for special actions (feint, counter attack, melee overwatch...)

On top of that, they can be enchanted with one of the 4 elements (water = cold, air = lightning, earth = acid, fire), or poison, death (vorpal equivalent), lifeleech.
Chanbara+ effects (knockback, sweep, reach...) will be achieved with magic too (roughly : reach = air, knockback = earth, sweep = water, terrain destruction = fire, and yes, fire pierces through stone, as plasma is a subset of fire).

 

[Galdred]

What do you think of the new UI?

It is displaying : Unit level, hitpoints, movement points, and offense points.
Do you find it clear enough?
What about the cases where some MP have been spent?

 

[Ninjerk]

Hard to say without seeing before-and-after states.

EDIT: We need a gif of an action being performed.

 

[Galdred]

But these are only still mockups for now
I was wondering whether it would be worth pushing them or whether we should take a different direction.

 

[Ninjerk]

I think what's confusing me is the blue tick-mark bar and the sword icons. What are they meant to represent?

 

[Galdred]

the number under the skull is the threat level. The colored bar with a number on top is the HP bar (the numbers will usually be much lower). The bottom elements are the number of movement points left, and the attack actions left.

 

[Ninjerk]

And the color of the bar corresponds to what team they're on? At first I thought red was HP, yellow was MP, and blue was OP. I think no matter what you should make the MP more distinctly countable--right now the little bars visually communicate as a rectangle (whereas an element like, say, D:OS AP are represented as a series of circles/orbs that do not suggest a larger shape the way that these little pips do).

 

[Galdred]

And the color of the bar corresponds to what team they're on? At first I thought red was HP, yellow was MP, and blue was OP. I think no matter what you should make the MP more distinctly countable--right now the little bars visually communicate as a rectangle (whereas an element like, say, D:OS AP are represented as a series of circles/orbs that do not suggest a larger shape the way that these little pips do).

Indeed, the colors indicate the team.
Regarding MP, it is tricky. You have a good point, and they are hardly countable, but when they were represented as numbers, it was harder to see at a glance who had moved a little, who had finished moving, and who still had not moved at all :

In this version, the number under the skull is the level, the red bar is the HP, the number next to the arrow is the move, and the one next to the sword is the attacks. But then, it is very hard to see who has moved at a glance.
having distinct 'pips' for move points would work best indeed, but I think it would take too much space, and the main information it should convey is whether someone has played his turn or not. Once you select a character, you can see his movement range in white: Wouldn't adding movement pips on top of the selected character action bar (the bar is not done yet, it will contain the active skill icons, and contextual buttons, like opening a door) be enough to convey this information?

 

[Ninjerk]

Did you forget to finish that sentence? I don't know what you're asking. I like the above version less because now there's only relative HP information instead of absolute, but I'm guessing you're trying to keep this bar pretty condensed. Are you doing anything around the character's feet? Ie. selection circles, etc.

 

[Galdred]

Thanks, I completed the sentence. I am not sure about the feet yet : I used to have the circles around the feet be dimmed to show a character had moved but it was not clear enough and it did not give enough info (about whether the character had partially moved or not). I think I will just use them to highlight the current character.

 

[Ninjerk]

I think some kind of pips over the bar would do it. I was asking about that because I thought you could make the movement points sort of circular beneath the character (e.g. segmented circle maybe with more "weight" towards the part that is closest to the player view, weight as in line weight). Somewhat tangentially, you have a lot of space below the character--why are they so high up in the hex?

 

[Galdred]

I think it wouldn't work too well to split the infos in 2 (half above and half under the character), as it would make it harder to get everything at a single time. What if we made the purple rectangles wider for lower movement capacity? MV usually would be 4-6.
Regarding the character location in hex, the mockup was based on a previous build. They are now placed as in the fireball gifs.

 

[Ninjerk]

If they looked more like squares it could work, but don't shade the top and bottom of them (ie. suggesting a horizontal cylinder).

 

[Galdred]

If they looked more like squares it could work, but don't shade the top and bottom of them (ie. suggesting a horizontal cylinder).

Like the Hitpoints in the older UI?

 

[Ninjerk]

I don't remember the older UI, but I'm just guessing if the pips were 1.5x or 2x as big (are they single-pixel width?) they'd communicate better as individual units. On the other hand, spacing them out a little bit more could have the same effect.

 

[Galdred]

I was talking about this one :

It used to be : rectangles for HP, bright circle if action was not taken, and dimmed one if the character moved.
But I changed the system to Move Points + Attack points (mostly, 3-5 move point and 1 action point, that will usually be an attack), so I had to change the display too.
The level indicator is also necessary, because telling threat level just from the armors did not work at all.

 

[Ninjerk]

Those don't look bad.

 

[Galdred]

Thank you for your input. Is this one more readable (the one from last line) ?

On a totally unrelated note, I have written a short blog entry about starting out and protoyping for Zodiac Legion.

 

[Ninjerk]

It is much, much better.