#toronto game dev

[coleyplays]

Ice Ball ended up winning 1st place out of 20 games submitted to the Tournament of Champions for Sheridan Fall Sprint Week 2016! I’m so proud of my team, Banana Squid! <3  Play it for free here: https://coleycaverley.itch.io/ice-ball

[vonpixel]

THE BIG IDEA UPDATE

UMT - Untititled Tactical Mech RPG - devlog 04

So lots of stuff clicked over the past week. These devlogs will now start to have a bit more structure to them. Today is the big idea update.

The Game

UMT is a game about asymmetrical & politically grey warfare on a distant planet far in humanities future. It will be a love letter to hard sci fi & tactical turn based mech combat. Game-play wise, something between the modern XCom & older Front Mission games with a deeper combat experience. 

The second part of the game will be the campaign & meta game elements. It will feature a main campaign with a central story + a series of other mini campaigns that will effect things in the main game. The game will tell a story of a conflict spanning an entire planet over a long period of time from different view points.

Players will be able to have stable of pilots & mechs to choose from. Pilots build in skill and experience becoming better fighters, or better at certain things. Pilot stats will increase over the course of 6 levels. Each pilot will also have a web of skills they can learn. This skill web will be the same for all pilots allowing for a maximum number of combinations. 

Mechs will come is different sizes, shapes and forms. Each mech will have series of slots available based on its frame that can be customized. 

The frame of the mech will provide the base stats such as movement speed, run speed, health (spread out over different locations) and slots for weapons. 

Mechs will also have slots for sub systems. These will come in a few different sub categories for different slots on the frame. Auxiliary systems will be things like sensors, scanners, jammers, damage control, additional engine power. The auxiliary systems will take up most of main sub system slots on a mechs frame.

The other main sub system will be the mechs CPU. The CPU is the brain of the mech. With out it, it becomes dead and motionless and in need of major repair.  Advanced CPUs will be full on AI systems giving the player an additional action point to use. That AP could also be used to remotely control a drone, or an empty Mech / Vehicle. Other CPU's might remotely manage targeting allowing for multiple missile lock ons.

The Prototype

So.

Moving forward.

The goal is to have a completed prototype by late spring. The prototype's goal will be to mostly feature complete relative to the combat portion of the game. 

Prototype Feature Goals

- UNITS [units are pilots + mechs together with fully functional customizable slots and skills. The prototype will allow the player to customize 4 mechs before the round starts in a beta UI.]

-ANIMATION [mech units be fully animated with walk cycles, firing animations, damage states plus a number of different idle states while the unit isn't active.]

-VFX [a small stable of effects for weapons firing, projecticles launching from units & animation controllers for them.]

-GAME RULES [a mostly feature complete combat system that deals with the pilots, mechs, skills and items. Player actions wich will track action points spent and deal with the rules and triggers to the main game will live here mostly. The prototype should have a fully functioning range of player actions such as moving, running, firing a weapon, using a skill, going into overwatch mode, hunkering down behind cover, using an item, firing indirect (grenades, missile barrages) and finally suppression. 

-META GAME TRACKING [pilot XP, name, customizations, skills and mech persistence. The prototype will feature a tiny 3 mission story campaign as a sort of proof of concept for the overal game.]

-SAVE GAME & OPTIONS [the basic structure of pc like options built in. quick save, quick load, save game, resolution, minor graphical things.]

State of the game

A lot of the pre production art stuff is figured out. We are using qubicle for everything at the moment as we can develop a look very rapidly with it and have it in get into Unity in an efficient way.

We are using the excellent Tile Based Map & Nav from the asset store as a base. Right now Im working on hooking playmaker into it with a set of custom actions. Work on that is moving along, I find it best to build an action when I need it.

The main game will be built with Play Maker + maybe NGUI for the most part. Other systems will be built in later.  I've started to abstract build some of the FSM systems starting with a system that determines whose turn it is, and what the player is currently doing. Basic action points can be spent right for moving and running. There is also a bare bones system in place for handling passing combat rules around to objects in the game world.

Moving forward ill be doing more playmaker stuff and will document closer how I build the custom actions into this game.

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeers