soldiersorrowful - Tumblr blog

[soldiersorrowful]

the absolutely lovely devs over at strollart just released this video; watch it! i've been a fan of these guys for a while now, definitely consider checking out below the stone if you haven't already! it's a good game!

[soldiersorrowful]

fashionably late

well, i may have missed the entire month of december, and i may be releasing this on the last day of the month, but dammit i'm not going two months without an update! ...that said, i wish i had something more substantial to show, ha... a lot of my work done from last update til now has been getting some of the internal settings implemented. i have been absolutely fighting godot's input system, and it's got hands. honestly, i have enough to make a whole separate post about it. but you didn't come here to see me whine; you came to see what's new, so let's dive right in!

in previous updates, you may have seen the pawns all instantiated in the top left corner. now, your pawns are sent out from your respective base. you even get to see them in their charming little bench area, ain't that cute?

the rest are all about menus! as i've stated, i'm perpetually in a state of "let's get something playable so i can figure out what works and what doesn't from a gameplay perspective". an important part of this is making sure i have good menus that accommodate setting up different aspects of the game on the fly. these range from your run of the mill settings every good game should have to setting up matches and teams (teambuilder in the works!) and that's all! really! like i said, wish i had more to show. hopefully the next update is less sporadic this time? until next time!

[soldiersorrowful]

smorgasbord

hey, i managed to put out a november update! better late than never, i suppose. there's not a really big theme to this one, just some of the neat little additions i've managed to throw in between holidays and college so i thought tumblr allowed video embeds through a link, but i guess they don't. could be wrong, please let me know! next time i'll just use gifs. in the meantime, please click the video links and pretend that they're embedded, yeah?

for starters, there are different, suspiciously chess piece shaped unit types. as i edge closer and closer to getting an actual match playable from start to finish, i needed more diversity in unit roles. hence, chess! for the record, i'm not very good at chess, haha... the other thing is the super neat super cool unit stats screen! still unfinished but it displays enough info right now for me to be satisfied with it. please look forward to even more unit info, wow!

turn passing, alongside the animation, has been implemented. it wouldn't be fair if you only got to play, right?

attacks now show more info, such as health, stamina, and damage dealt. there's even a fancy damage indicator (thank you Label3D nodes)

finally, probably the biggest new addition, base tagging has been implemented! with this, a wincon has been established, and a game can theoretically be played from start to finish! i imagine the next bit of updates will be showcasing stuff like more polish, new attacks, and whatever else that isn't currently coming to mind. until next time!

[soldiersorrowful]

traversing through the points

hey whaddaya know, i'm actually following up on something this time!

relatively minor yet important addition; traversal points! you get a various amount each turn, dictates how many cells your team can move. different cells have different tp costs, as shown in the monitor in the top right. finally, context! you'll have to wait for what a RISK is though... while this wasn't hard to implement, the new unit rotation that you can see was (only because me and trigonometry dont go well together at all) . i swear i tried like three different things before finally getting something to work i hope you all don't mind the next few updates being sparse and... lackluster? a lot of the progress now is just gonna be under the hood prep for actually getting something playable, please understand... until next time!

[soldiersorrowful]

tag, you're it!

so i spent some time working on a mechanic that didnt really need implementation right now, but i did it anyways. oh well!

as shown, you can "tag" other units and navigate towards them. i plan for this to have various effects, the main one being ball passing. i am also planning on being able to tag individual cells to have greater control over pathfinding (if you want to get technical, the astar pathfinding will always return shortest path between two points, and sometimes that isnt desirable) also, ignore the counter in the top left; spoilers for next post i have planned until next time!

[soldiersorrowful]

retreat!

in a previous blogpost, i mentioned that items were next to be implemented. well, my apologies to die hard fans of items, but this isn't what this post is about rather, this post is about cowering in fear! wait, maybe not cowering in fear. uhh... strategic cowering? what i mean to say is, retreating is implemented!

if you didn't catch the gameplan post (pls read ty), a unit will retreat when it's health reaches zero. you can also manually select a unit to retreat when you know when to fold 'em. it's like dying, but less painful! ...although getting smacked with a baseball still hurts x_x until next time!

[soldiersorrowful]

gameplan

so i've shown off progress, that's cool! what's not cool, however, is that i haven't explained *how* the game even works! it would be beneficial for you, the reader; and me, the developer; to both understand the gameplay in order to explain future progress more easily. matter of fact, i was typing up a post to showcase a new mechanic only to realize it made no sense to anyone except me! so fair warning; this will be a bit of a crude and shallow explanation. if something doesn't make sense, reach out! enough of the formalities though, let's dig in!

we'll start off by explaining exactly what you're seeing right now -there are two sets of six units, one for the player (blue) and one for the opponent (red). each unit has a health and stamina value, as well as a spread of statistics and movesets (the last two are beyond the scope of this introduction; just know they exist!). -these units are currently resting on their respective benches. the bench is where units that are currently not on the field stay. benched units regain small amounts of health and stamina per turn, as well as some other bonuses depending on the unit's build (once again, out of scope) -the green square is the map, which contains four bases. if a unit tags a base (that is not of their respective color), they will obtain a base ball (no, not a baseball; there's a clear distinction!)

your objective is to have a unit tag all three bases successfully and return to your home base to win. from the diagram above, a unit is sent from the bench to the purple base, netting them a purple base ball. this continues until all three base balls are obtained, and the unit tags home to secure the victory. (of note, bases can be tagged in any order, not just the standard baseball order) base balls themselves can also be used to power up actions or can be thrown to other units, creating strategic opportunities.

with this explained, let's walk through two turns of simplified gameplay. i'm going first, with my opponent going second. i have no units on the field, so i send one out from the bench. i then boldly move this unit to the yellow base in order to secure the yellow base ball. an aura of smugness radiating from me, i end my turn.

it's now my opponent's turn. likewise, they send out a unit from the bench, but go directly to the middle of the map. are they planning to strike?

oh no, i was right! my opponent's unit directly attacks my unit, and- bigger oh no!- it was a critical hit, depleting my unit's health to zero and forcing it to retreat! units that are retreating return to the bench and drop any base balls they are currently holding. dammit! i'll have to rethink my gameplan!

...scenery chewing aside, i hope this serves as a basic introduction to the tactics side of things! to shed some light on the conceptual phase of development, this project started out as a joke about how the battle them in persona 4 golden sounded like it would fit in some hype scene in a baseball anime. i didn't let the joke go, and ideas started formulating in my head, and, well, here we are! obviously, the setting came first, so i had no clue how to adapt a baseball style gameplay in a way that seemed fun and interesting. after much trial and error, i came up with a tactics baseball fusion after getting a bit too into dnd haha. we're still taking baby steps though; things are subject to change! hopefully, i can get good feedback from players when i have a suitable demo ready? well, this post was longer than usual, ha... if you made it this far, thanks for reading! it means a lot! until next time!

[soldiersorrowful]

still breathing

been a while since the last update; it's been a pretty crazy past few weeks. fall sem of college started, and i caught covid after successfully avoiding it for three years. aside from some general fatigue, i feel a lot better, meaning i can pump out more progress i've been spending a lot of time ruminating on finding a visual style to stick with, and it's a large reason i haven't posted anything substantial lately (aside from the above). it's been an incredibly weird, experimental past few days working on this project, and i hope to have more to show soon for now, here's a quick pic of the new visuals

as i said, there'll be more to show soon. hopefully. until next time!

[soldiersorrowful]

aaaand we got actions! another major hurdle of the tactics implementation cleared, and i'm pretty proud of how it turned out! it's set up internally to be able to add new types of actions as painlessly as possible, so expect more wacky and silly actions to be showcased there's obviously some more info with this system to divulge (what's that strange, baseball glove shaped icon?), but it'd be better to talk about further down the line next up are items, which should derive from the action system fairly easily. until next time!

[soldiersorrowful]

my internet's back, so here's a quick progress update! lot of work being done internally for the action system, now tackling the ui so i can tie it all together. this would be the action info screen whenever you'd select one of the actions on your list. i was initially going to do both together before it got cluttered enough to the point that it'd have to be separate. that aside, thoughts? i'm thinking there's something off with it, but i can't exactly pinpoint it. also, the monitor *is* scaled a little bit, and will scale when selecting actions for the sake of readability

[soldiersorrowful]

Came here from Twitter so might as well plug the game I made that I have pinned there too.

It's free, play it please.

[soldiersorrowful]

finished up summer finals last monday so i'm back on the grind! unfortunately, my internet's currently out and i've been subsisting on a hotspot like some sort of wild animal (this is also why the upload quality sucks) i've been getting some systems in place regarding statistics and actions and whatnot, so expect more posts about that next. in the meantime, here's some neat little bars! macgyvered bits and pieces of shader code to get the effect right (i'm not good at coding shaders)

[soldiersorrowful]

should go ahead and mention that the art shown are assets! i am *not* an artist in the slightest attributions for what's been shown (as well as other stuff) can be found here: https://pastebin.com/YQ6BwZ20

[soldiersorrowful]

pretty much all i have to show for now! i'd post more but it's literally everything encapsulated in this video but less lol

this is the most recent progress i've made, showcasing the tactics gameplay

[soldiersorrowful]

aaaand here's a fairly crude level editor i created for map making, dunno if i'd include something like this in the final release

[soldiersorrowful]

this is the most recent progress i've made, showcasing the tactics gameplay

[soldiersorrowful]

ui for when a new turn begins