Devlog 40 - Combat QoL (Patreon)

Hey everyone, it has been a while since we did any real work on our combat system, so it's about time we put some elbow grease into it.

We thought it would be interesting for you to have a pick on how things are progressing these past two weeks. For now we focused out efforts on Quality of Life and UI improvements. Just keep in mind that everything we show here is a work in progress and might evolve in the future.

Initially the combat was only meant to be played in separate instances without Fog of War or big obstacles. When we later decided to implement it directly in the game world with the Cult update, the FoW was still only able to handle one character. And so we added multiple characters support:

Then see characters and select their limbs through walls:

Highlight the characters on which the skill can be executed this turn, taking into account if we have enough action points to move in range and perform the skill.

We added a skills wheel! So it is now possible to select a target and execute a skill with a single click (hold mouse down on the target), instead of having to click on the skill and then click on the target (or the opposite).

A little portrait animation to show the current character more clearly:

First attempt at showing the characters movement range. The range of the current character under the mouse is also displayed.

Similar but a lot more subtle and with animations (looks better in game):

We can move while seeing the maximum movement range of the selected enemy:

Now we can show the range of the selected skill. The red area is the range of the skill from this position, and the white is up to where the character can move this turn and still be able to execute the skill (not the easiest to see in a tiny gif):

Here we are experimenting with the enemies cells effects (with placeholders). The stripes are meant to be reactions executed immediately when we enter or leave the cell (in this case the bandit will attack immediately). And the skulls are delayed actions, strong attacks that will be executed next turn if the player doesn't move.

This shows the case where several delayed actions are overlapping on the same cells. Trying to keep the combat grid readable is somewhat tricky due to everything that is going on, so we need to be careful.

And of course everything need to be visible behind obstacles:

We made a little cell selection animation:

And to finish, a way to tell which health bar is associated to which limb:

This is all for now! We have a lot more improvements in mind, be it quality of life like here or gameplay / combat mechanics which you will notice in the next update.

Of course while I am working on this, the rest of our team are keeping themselves busy with the next update content, drawing, writing, animating and other unspeakable things.

Thank you for reading, and here is a treat for you who made it this far: link. (We don't want the fast scrollers to notice).

Have a good day!