Vapourware Zodiac Legion - X-COM and dungeons

[Excidium II]

The color choices are very pleasing to the eye.

 

[Galdred]

You can make stretch goals for those!

Also, another way for environmental variety is to introduce some fixed night maps, with just a dark palette and maybe some fixed-static lights.

For night, the plan is to just add a layer of night blue, and have light sprites on the night blue layer (it works currently, but we have no light sources that would make sense outdoor. I have yet to come up with a good way to represent moonlight).

Day version of the outdoor test mission :

Night version of the same place :

The current plan is to have mostly graphic stuff as KS stretch goal, because they won't push development time into the stratosphere.
So they would be :
1) Sieges, and more environments
2) Mounted Combat and more animations
3) Large monsters

The color choices are very pleasing to the eye.

Thanks I hope you won't find the game pretty banal!

 

[Mazisky]

You can make stretch goals for those!

Also, another way for environmental variety is to introduce some fixed night maps, with just a dark palette and maybe some fixed-static lights.

For night, the plan is to just add a layer of night blue, and have light sprites on the night blue layer (it works currently, but we have no light sources that would make sense outdoor. I have yet to come up with a good way to represent moonlight).

Day version of the outdoor test mission :

Night version of the same place :

The current plan is to have mostly graphic stuff as KS stretch goal, because they won't push development time into the stratosphere.
So they would be :
1) Sieges, and more environments
2) Mounted Combat and more animations
3) Large monsters

The color choices are very pleasing to the eye.

Thanks I hope you won't find the game pretty banal!

That's perfect!!!! For moonlight question i suggest to just simulate reflections on water tiles (sort of white irregular lines).

Valery Kim can maybe add some one-tile space stuff like a campfire for static lights!

Keep on with the good work ))

 

[Galdred]

That's perfect!!!! For moonlight question i suggest to just simulate reflections on water tiles (sort of white irregular lines).

Valery Kim can maybe add some one-tile space stuff like a campfire for static lights!

Keep on with the good work ))

Indeed, a campfire would definitely be needed, especially now that Ben drew some tents to burn.
I am still undecided about what to do regarding water animation. I would like to animate water in particles to get a flowing river, but it will be hard to do well.
For still water, some specular reflection effects will work indeed.

Concerning the development progress, the UI is now a bit more functional, with skill buttons and skills working as planned (currently, we only have healing, activating item/opening door and chests, and other flavour of hitting someone with a weapon).
I need to add conditions (like stun, focused, poisoned...), and passive abilities that do not just grant a stat boost (like regeneration), rework LoS calculations (they are pretty slow now, which might not be too good for the AI), and the basis of the combat system will all be there.
Then I will work on the AI and the mission themselves (to allow multiple victory conditions, triggers for traps and reinforcements, setup parameters...).

 

[Galdred]

So, about the rule system. Things have changed a little since last time:
dice rolls will be made with 32 * 32 sided dice.
Each dice that rolls skill level or lower will be counted a success.
The reason for this is that it gives the following property: average = skill, so it is relatively easy to know the average difficulty you can beat.
It also is consistent for opposing roll among all the skill levels (ie if A has a skill of S, and B of S+2, A will win around 25% of the time regardless of S).
And it has the same range for all skill levels (ie everyone can score between 0 and 32), so your peasant can still score a critical hit against your dragon. It is just pretty unlikely to happen.
It has made things much easier to balance for me so far.

The usual skill/stat levels go from 1 to 10.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Will the physical collector's edition include these non-euclidean dice?

 

[Galdred]

I first wanted to have 13 13 sided dice for the zodiac signs but it didn't work for a skill range of 1-10.
The 32 sided dice also work better for s board game:
We will provide 4 sided and 8 sided dice of 32 different colours for the boardgame adaptation so that you can roll them physically.
But 32 colors will be hard to do if we what to be color blind friendly.

 

[zeitgeist]

We will provide 4 sided and 8 sided dice of 32 different colours for the boardgame adaptation so that you can roll them physically.
But 32 colors will be hard to do if we what to be color blind friendly.

If this is a thing that will exist, why not make the in-game characters look slightly more "physical" by putting them onto actual miniature bases, like the ones board game miniatures tend to be placed on? See Battle Brothers for an example that doesn't work that well because the characters have no legs to stand on. It could look a lot better than the hoops, you could perhaps even replicate the terrain under them on the upper side of the base, and incorporate the counter that's currently below the characters into the rim.

 

[Galdred]

We will provide 4 sided and 8 sided dice of 32 different colours for the boardgame adaptation so that you can roll them physically.
But 32 colors will be hard to do if we what to be color blind friendly.

If this is a thing that will exist, why not make the in-game characters look slightly more "physical" by putting them onto actual miniature bases, like the ones board game miniatures tend to be placed on? See Battle Brothers for an example that doesn't work that well because the characters have no legs to stand on. It could look a lot better than the hoops, you could perhaps even replicate the terrain under them on the upper side of the base, and incorporate the counter that's currently below the characters into the rim.

It is something that would only make sense if the game is popular (for some reason, dungeon crawlers are now much more popular on board games than on computer, so the competition is really fierce), so I don't think it is worth planning for an eventual board game adaptation at this stage.
If it gets turned into a board game later, many things will be revamped to fit the medium, but we are far from there now. I also think having game stands would ruin the immersion for the PC game, so I prefer having animated characters.

 

[zeitgeist]

If it gets turned into a board game later, many things will be revamped to fit the medium, but we are far from there now. I also think having game stands would ruin the immersion for the PC game, so I prefer having animated characters.

I have somehow forgotten about the animations on the first few pages, now I looked at them again and I see that the characters can in fact step out of their hexes while attacking, which obviously wouldn't go with that anyway.

 

[Galdred]

If it gets turned into a board game later, many things will be revamped to fit the medium, but we are far from there now. I also think having game stands would ruin the immersion for the PC game, so I prefer having animated characters.

I have somehow forgotten about the animations on the first few pages, now I looked at them again and I see that the characters can in fact step out of their hexes while attacking, which obviously wouldn't go with that anyway.

We will probably use miniature stands on the strategic map, though. Something like this:

 

[Galdred]

32 sided dice might not be regular, but the shape sure has potential:

 

[ushas]

FWIW, the C in Zodiac looks like an uncial T to me. (Image below.)

Spoiler

Yeah, I a kind of imagined it as T at first ...


How would one read this?

Edit: Forgot to add, that this rat is joining the club digging your environmental art.

 

[Mustawd]

I have yet to come up with a good way to represent moonlight

What about general ambient light from fireflies and shit. Other than that, maybe try a halo of light around each character like Xenonauts?

 

[Galdred]

Thanks, it seems to convey darkness pretty well indeed.

FWIW, the C in Zodiac looks like an uncial T to me. (Image below.)

Spoiler

Yeah, I a kind of imagined it as T at first ...


How would one read this?

Spoiler

Edit: Forgot to add, that this rat is joining the club digging your environmental art.

Thanks!
Odiace? Odiate ? Oniate? It is not very clear indeed...

 

[ushas]

Seems only rats are misreading P there.

 

[Lyre Mors]

This looks like it could be so amazing, Galdred! How has it been coming along? Any plans for Early Access on steam?

 

[Jack Dandy]

This looks pretty damn fantastic.

 

[Galdred]

Thank you for your support!
I am working on the AI right now.
Nothing fancy yet, only pathfinding and attacking a random character in range.
The skills and debilitating conditions are in, we just need to add content.
Some work is badly needed on the UI, as it it still kind of messy, but we are getting there.
We will probably kickstart mid January.
EA could work too, but at least, a KS would only be binding if it is successful, while a botched EA would also be binding.

Here are some title screen candidates:

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Mazisky]

Wow, that dungeon looks really cool! nice atmosphere and assets!! Also, game seems a lot more polished than the first screens. WHy don't you post other screenshots about the game, maybe in other environments?

 

[Galdred]

One of the current problems is that we only have two tilesets yet: green pastures and dungeon.
I would like to add cities + fortress, and add snow to the outdoor tile, but that will have to wait for more funding

 

[Mazisky]

One of the current problems is that we only have two tilesets yet: green pastures and dungeon.
I would like to add cities + fortress, and add snow to the outdoor tile, but that will have to wait for more funding

Seems reasonable, stretch goals for more environments seems to way to go

 

[Galdred]

Wow, that dungeon looks really cool! nice atmosphere and assets!! Also, game seems a lot more polished than the first screens. WHy don't you post other screenshots about the game, maybe in other environments?

Actually, the lights have been photoshoped, but I will rework them in game so that they have the same look.
The underground river tileset is still a work in progress too, but it should make it into the levels soon.
Note that the engine shadows are better than in the photoshop (as we use transform of the characters instead of a simple blob shadow).
They just don't care much about lights.

 

[Galdred]

I am really bad at updating stuff (and even more so at building a community...).
Most of the game system has been implemented (more or less crudely), and two levels are fully playable, but the AI is really dumb right now, and the lack of ranged attacks and special powers (some have been implemented to test the system, but that's about it), make the strategies pretty dull (ie try to hack your way through each chokepoint if you are the player, or try to camp each chokepoint for the AI).
So I am working on adding more variety to the combat, and making the AI less reliant on being told exactly what to do: I plan on mixing old AI techniques (search trees, weighted random actions) with new ones (machine learning) to build the AI, but it will take quite some time (and there are a lot of other micro issues to tackle).

 

[Mazisky]

I am really bad at updating stuff (and even more so at building a community...)..

Creating a turn-based tactic pc game is enough to build a community