Combat: Putting the pieces together (Patreon)

Hello everyone! Resident griffon here!

Today, I'm going to show you all the final important bits of the HUD for the combat stages of Hereafter, as well as some of the technical development that has come along since the last showing!

First, let us start with probably the single most important display of information: Health!

Going along with the magical themes of Hereafter. What better way to display character health and energy than having a crystal ball house the portrait, and vibrant crimson and emerald gems! As Derulio and co take damage, the crystal will shift to appear cracked and dim to represent the severity of the situation you find yourself in. So be careful!

But there's more regarding health and combat!

Your enemy’s health! Of course, when it comes to attacks, it's important to know exactly how much damage an ability is projected to do against the targeted foe. So, strategize well!

Next up is what houses all aforementioned abilities and more:

A little magic mirror! A handy little accessory crafted by Derulio that can be used to scroll through the different abilities and items for each character. Of course, the details about trajectory and the value of power versus uses is best experienced for yourselves during the Combat Demo!

The last little important tidbit I want to show off to you regarding combat UI elements is a little addition to the turn order animations.

I like it! A little graphic to make it super clear which character is starting their turn.

I think it's best if some of these things are seen in action.

Errorstream has been super hard at work putting all of this together with his own form of magic! There is a bit more here than what I have explicitly revealed. Obviously, some portraits, UI elements, and interactions aren't final, but I think seeing it moving really helps put the vision together.

Video

Let's unpack this. First off, this specific video is the demo for the implementation of camera focusing. This allows you to drag and rotate the map but will flick back to the selected character. This also shows the rotation of 2D characters on a 3D map. The whole crew has been super hard at work on just how to implement this and make it work well. Textures of the ground aren't final, but this shows a rough way how even 2D characters directly next to raised terrain will interact.

Information about the selected characters is shown, where a bestiary of sorts can reveal information and give some facts about certain creatures. There's a critical element of combat that is shown in this informational window, as well as in some other places...But I think that deserves a post all on its own.

A massive amount of development done by the team has been done to get to the point in this video. While of course some refinement will still need to be done before reaching the full combat demo, this small demonstration really shows what we have been revealing to you all coming together!

I'm excited! Week after week more and more the world of Hereafter comes to life. I hope you all are just as excited!

That's what I have to share for this month. Once again, thank you all so much for supporting our project, and until next time!

~ DongDiagram

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