State of the Game - To Battle (Patreon)

Evening all, it's time for another monthly status update! This past month I both got quite a bit done, and also not as much as I'd originally hoped. I spent pretty much the full month working on the space combat encounters without getting to the other types, but a lot of that was due to adding in various bits and pieces of functionality I hadn't originally planned for. (A few days were also lost to PC issues, as I mentioned before.) The good news is, my combat system is now fully functional! Rather than post screenshots this month, I've instead attached a few videos I screencapped over the past week to show how the combat flows. Video 1 is a few days older than video 2, which is a few days old itself, but they should give a decent idea of the current state of things. As usual, the disclaimers about this being early 'Programmer GUI' still apply.

Battle Test Video 1 

Battle Test Video 2 

One more thing I'll probably add before the playable demo, besides graphics, is a bit of a tutorial or help mode, but allow me to spell out exactly what is happening in these videos:

1. First, the 'battlefield' is displayed with the stations of the enemy ship (or a collection of training drones, in this case) on the top, and the bridge stations of the player ship shown on the bottom. Both ships have hull points and shields points, of which shields regenerate a certain amount each turn.

2. The player has the option to set the Action each station will perform once they're charged up. The Tutorial Ship only has a single action option for each station, but more advanced ships will have more, and I anticipate the Seduction encounters will have multiple options from the start. More advanced ships will also have more stations in general.

3. On each turn, the player or enemy chooses to play one Command, like a hand of cards where the 'deck' is all of the traits of your bridge crew members. Each trait has different effects in combat - many of them apply a station powerup based on a particular crewmember's stats, but some can also debuff enemy stations, and there are a few other more complicated action types which are currently either partially implemented or still planned, such as various victory reward bonuses. If the player's hand is empty, they can choose to spend their turn requesting more advice from the bridge crew.

4. On each turn, every station charges up, and every station which reaches full charge automatically 'fires' (or heals, or whatever other task that station performs). There are a few effects which may prevent this - for example, commands which allow you to implement even more commands before your turn concludes, or debuffs which prevent your stations from charging.

5. When a ship's hull points hit zero, they lose. I currently anticipate losing to be a 'forced to retreat' state rather than a game over, and it will certainly be the case for the training area.

I am currently working on a bit of sequencing work - fitting the combat encounter into the flow of the introduction sequence and writing up the scenes which will lead into the ground combat encounter, but I anticipate beginning on that functionality very soon. Ground combat will work very much the same, except that each member of your away team will have their own health, and instead of station actions, actions may be defined by the type of equipment you currently have available for your crew. In the introduction sequence, that equipment will consist of your fists. The seduction encounters will be a bit of a different beast, though similar in many ways, and I'll put off talking about those for another day.

In addition to all of that code work, I have also begun to warm up the art machine a bit. Some reference material has been produced for crew designs, and work has now begun on the first portraits for the starter playable races. With six starter races there is a lot of portrait work that will need to be done, and if we even get most of the way through that set by time the demo is ready I'll be happy. For my part my focus for the coming month will continue to be on encounter mechanics. Fortunately these, along with the procedural romance scenes to follow, will probably be the most code-intensive parts of the game, and features should come along a bit speedier once these are complete.

The last order of business I suppose is to report on the results of the poll! The winners appear to be the Harians and the Seeders, so a bit of a mix between old and new faces. It will still be some months before I get to seriously writing out the plotlines for these two, but I am looking forward to getting back into the writing side of things eventually.

That about wraps things up for tonight, so I'll see you in a few weeks, and don't forget to check out the Overseer's Edition in the Lunar New Year sales on Steam and itch!