Hail Wanderers!
As has (sadly) become the case, a very short update this week. I've finished up working on the characters and the basic outline for the narrative of WLNA with one of the lead designers this week, and with that squared away (and by request of the QA testers) I'm going to be starting work on a codex for the game. I'm super excited about this, because I think flavor text and context text have become two of my stronger points when it comes to game narrative, so it will be a lot of fun to work in that area for WLNA, and I hope to be able to bring some more of the crazy setting we've been building to life in the game. Now, the codex entries aren't going to be massive, just the basics of how the building is used followed by a paragraph at most of flavor text, but I still think that it can be fun to have that sort of reference both for gameplay and narrative reasons. Item descriptions can be used to great effect to build the world or just create some fun context for the players, and I hope to be able to do something similar with the codex texts. I'll, of course, post the results up here as I work on them.
Until next time!
Guardian Soul
Showing posts with label We Love Nuclear Armageddon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label We Love Nuclear Armageddon. Show all posts
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Update 3/22/2015
Hail Wanderers!
Short update, as per normal (sadly). I'm just posing the finalized versions of the faction powers, as those are all in/going to be in for tomorrow, and I've been spending most of my time working on them and on the faction leaders (but that will be for another post once we start getting the dialogue for them written out). Anyway, here are the powers as they stand now.
Short update, as per normal (sadly). I'm just posing the finalized versions of the faction powers, as those are all in/going to be in for tomorrow, and I've been spending most of my time working on them and on the faction leaders (but that will be for another post once we start getting the dialogue for them written out). Anyway, here are the powers as they stand now.
The Most Equal Collective (Vodka!)
Drill: Drill launches off the planet. Travels very fast.
Ignores planet collision IF it hits an empty spot. Ignores explosions, still
destroyed by shields and physical entities (nukes). Ergo, it is possible to
shoot it through an explosion (to open an empty spot on the planet for it to
drill through) but if it collides with a nuke, it will be destroyed. It deals
collision damage, so it has a 1x1 explosion.
Uranium: Launch the tower like a nuke (slightly faster?)
Tower is destroyed by shields. If the tower hits the planet, it sticks to the
planet (does NOT block or destroy buildings!) If the crashed tower is hit by
something else, it causes a much larger than normal explosion. Consumes the
tower. Possibly degrades over time? Explosion gets smaller as the uranium leaks
out? Have to plan to use it fast?
The Glorious Imperialist Federation (ist?)
Drill: Charges for 2 turns, stopping chromium generation for
the duration. Fires railgun rounds for 1 turns after fully charged, destroying
all buildings it hits but not penetrating shields.
Uranium: Charges for 2 turns, then shoots a dirty bomb,
irradiating a large part of the area it hits.
The Other Others
Drill: Charges for two turns, stopping production. Launches
two EMP bolts with a 2x2 explosion, both along the same path, one fast one
slower. OR launches one BIG EMP bolt at a medium speed. Bolts are nixed by
shields. Go through explosions???
Uranium: Launches itself into space. Creates a small field
that causes the first projectile to
travel through it to have an increased explosion radius.
Until next time!
GuardianSoul
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Update 2/23/2015
Hail Wanderers!
Short update again this week.
The team's wonderful lead programmer has implemented the blue faction upgrades! So I've been logging time testing them out to see how they play in real matches, and I must say they are (so far) playing quite nicely. We did some tweaking during the team meeting this week, and we also made some changes to how the red faction upgrades work. Take a look below!
The main focus to the changes we've made to the red faction is to make them more aggressive overall, and also to cut down on the number of new interactions that need to be coded into the game. Having a radiation cloud hang around in space is nice in theory, but it doesn't make the game flow any better. Leaving a bomb on the other planet on the other hand...well...at the very least, it will make a nice explosion. Furthermore, that bomb can combo nicely with the blue chromium drill upgrade, which will allow for a quick one two shot for a nice payoff, but only in single player mode where the large payoff for the action is less of an issue. Lastly, having the bomb degrade over time holds with the 'use it or lose it' style to all the upgrades. We don't want the player to be able to stockpile things, either in resources or in how they use the upgrades, so having the bomb strength decay if not used in the following turn should force the players to be more proactive and think ahead more than just letting them pepper the planet with bombs and then nuke them all at once.
Until next time!
Guardian Soul
Short update again this week.
The team's wonderful lead programmer has implemented the blue faction upgrades! So I've been logging time testing them out to see how they play in real matches, and I must say they are (so far) playing quite nicely. We did some tweaking during the team meeting this week, and we also made some changes to how the red faction upgrades work. Take a look below!
The Most Equal Collective (Vodka!)
Drill: Drill launches off the planet. Travels very fast.
Ignores planet collision IF it hits an empty spot. Ignores explosions, still
destroyed by shields and physical entities (nukes). Ergo, it is possible to
shoot it through an explosion (to open an empty spot on the planet for it to
drill through) but if it collides with a nuke, it will be destroyed. It deals
collision damage, so it has a 1x1 explosion.
Uranium: Launch the tower like a nuke (slightly faster?)
Tower is destroyed by shields. If the tower hits the planet, it sticks to the
planet (does NOT block or destroy buildings!) If the crashed tower is hit by
something else, it causes a much larger than normal explosion. Consumes the
tower. Possibly degrades over time? Explosion gets smaller as the uranium leaks
out? Have to plan to use it fast?
The Glorious Imperialist Federation (ist?)
Drill: Charges for 2 turns, stopping chromium generation for
the duration. Fires railgun rounds for 1 turns after fully charged, destroying
all buildings it hits but not penetrating shields.
Uranium: Charges for 2 turns, then shoots a dirty
bomb, irradiating a large part of the area it hits.The main focus to the changes we've made to the red faction is to make them more aggressive overall, and also to cut down on the number of new interactions that need to be coded into the game. Having a radiation cloud hang around in space is nice in theory, but it doesn't make the game flow any better. Leaving a bomb on the other planet on the other hand...well...at the very least, it will make a nice explosion. Furthermore, that bomb can combo nicely with the blue chromium drill upgrade, which will allow for a quick one two shot for a nice payoff, but only in single player mode where the large payoff for the action is less of an issue. Lastly, having the bomb degrade over time holds with the 'use it or lose it' style to all the upgrades. We don't want the player to be able to stockpile things, either in resources or in how they use the upgrades, so having the bomb strength decay if not used in the following turn should force the players to be more proactive and think ahead more than just letting them pepper the planet with bombs and then nuke them all at once.
Until next time!
Guardian Soul
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Update 2/15/2015
Hail Wanderers!
Most of this week was spent balancing the build some more, helping to refine the active abilities for the resource towers, and then doing some digging into trying to determine what sorts of playstyles players use in WLNA.
It seems like there are three basic styles: steamroller, turtle, and blitz. Within each style there are several variations, and I'm reasonably sure there are more styles in play, but it will take close observation of more QA sessions to really get into them. For now, I'll just give a short synopsis of each style.
Steamroller: This style of player builds up resources early game and focuses a little on defense, eventually shifting to massive barrage style attacks later in the game. There are a few different styles for the barrages, from massive missile strikes over one turn to a continual barrage of smaller missile groups over each rotation. Steamroller is easier to stop early game, where they are focusing more on resources, but gets hard to counter if left to run rampant until late game. They are easily countered, or at least hamstrung, by blitz players as their resource towers are vulnerable early game, but they can overwhelm turtles late game, or just dominate the late game in general.
Turtle: This style of play focuses on shield towers. It is stronger early game and can be hard to break late game as well, but at the same time it seems hard to actually win a game using this style. This is a style of play that I think we want to discourage, because while defensive play is certainly a part of WLNA, the main part of the gameplay is the Armageddon part of WLNA, so we want to encourage more of an active and aggressive playstyle. Turtles seem to be overwhelmed later in the game by steamrollers as they can't keep up with the nuke spam, but they trump blitz early game as an early blitz won't be big enough to pop multiple shield towers at once.
Blitz: This style of play focuses on nuking early and often, with the intent of getting a swift win before the opponent can build up defenses. This style of play is great early game, and can really set an opponent back, but it handicaps the player for the late game if the opponent can defend against the early attacks and build up enough of their economy. This, along with steamroller, are the two main styles we want to encourage, so hopefully the active abilities for the towers will give more flexibility to both styles. Blitz players counter steamrollers if they can cripple them early game, or pull an early win, but they can be blocked by turtles if they don't place nukes carefully.
I'm sure more styles will emerge as we introduce the active towers, and though we want to focus on the aggressive styles, hopefully we can help and aggressive turtle style to emerge, but that seems to be what we have for now. As I said above, more observation of QA testing will reveal more.
Until next time.
Guardian Soul
Most of this week was spent balancing the build some more, helping to refine the active abilities for the resource towers, and then doing some digging into trying to determine what sorts of playstyles players use in WLNA.
It seems like there are three basic styles: steamroller, turtle, and blitz. Within each style there are several variations, and I'm reasonably sure there are more styles in play, but it will take close observation of more QA sessions to really get into them. For now, I'll just give a short synopsis of each style.
Steamroller: This style of player builds up resources early game and focuses a little on defense, eventually shifting to massive barrage style attacks later in the game. There are a few different styles for the barrages, from massive missile strikes over one turn to a continual barrage of smaller missile groups over each rotation. Steamroller is easier to stop early game, where they are focusing more on resources, but gets hard to counter if left to run rampant until late game. They are easily countered, or at least hamstrung, by blitz players as their resource towers are vulnerable early game, but they can overwhelm turtles late game, or just dominate the late game in general.
Turtle: This style of play focuses on shield towers. It is stronger early game and can be hard to break late game as well, but at the same time it seems hard to actually win a game using this style. This is a style of play that I think we want to discourage, because while defensive play is certainly a part of WLNA, the main part of the gameplay is the Armageddon part of WLNA, so we want to encourage more of an active and aggressive playstyle. Turtles seem to be overwhelmed later in the game by steamrollers as they can't keep up with the nuke spam, but they trump blitz early game as an early blitz won't be big enough to pop multiple shield towers at once.
Blitz: This style of play focuses on nuking early and often, with the intent of getting a swift win before the opponent can build up defenses. This style of play is great early game, and can really set an opponent back, but it handicaps the player for the late game if the opponent can defend against the early attacks and build up enough of their economy. This, along with steamroller, are the two main styles we want to encourage, so hopefully the active abilities for the towers will give more flexibility to both styles. Blitz players counter steamrollers if they can cripple them early game, or pull an early win, but they can be blocked by turtles if they don't place nukes carefully.
I'm sure more styles will emerge as we introduce the active towers, and though we want to focus on the aggressive styles, hopefully we can help and aggressive turtle style to emerge, but that seems to be what we have for now. As I said above, more observation of QA testing will reveal more.
Until next time.
Guardian Soul
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Update 2/8/2015
Hail Wanderers!
This week mostly focused on refining the balance changes to the game and various other design decisions. The balance update was what I was most focused on though, and it will be the subject of tonight's post.
Right now the economy details for each tower look like this:
I shifted the values to be lower across the board, which helped with both problems, but there was still the lingering issue of complexity. I want the players to be able to easily assess what type of resource tower they need, especially when the towers get the active abilities, and focus more on placement and other strategic considerations over number crunching resource values. Especially with the fast pace and the time limit on each turn, time spent managing the economy is irritatingly spent time that would be better used in trying to blow the other player's planet up. With this in mind, I moved to my most recent set of balance changes:
Here all the resource costs are reduced, as with the other revision, but they are also streamlined to only require one type of resource for each action. Building and upgrading costs chromium, and deploying and overcharging costs uranium. This makes it very simple for the player to know what they want to do as part of their overall strategy. We tested this version of the balance changes during a team meeting this week and it was very well received. It made the game much faster and simpler to get into the thick of things, and it also allowed the players to focus more on their overall strategy rather than worrying about what combination of resources they needed. There are still some concerns that need to be addressed, upgrading shields may end up costing uranium for one and the active abilities need to be assigned costs in some cases, but on the whole this balance version felt much better and, provided nobody breaks it in testing this week, should see only slight changes from here on out.
This week mostly focused on refining the balance changes to the game and various other design decisions. The balance update was what I was most focused on though, and it will be the subject of tonight's post.
Right now the economy details for each tower look like this:
| Tower Name | Cost to build | Cost to produce | Chromium Produced |
| Command Center | Null | Null | 4Cr |
| Uranium Tower | 3Cr | Null | Null |
| Chromium Tower | 3Cr | Null | 1Cr |
| Shell Tower | 5Cr 2Ur | 4Ur | Null |
| Nuke Silo | 7Cr 3Ur | 3Cr 2Ur | Null |
| Uranium Produced | Overcharge Produced | Cost to overcharge |
| 3Ur | Null | Null |
| 1Ur | 1Ur | 2Ur |
| Null | 1Cr | 2Ur |
| Null | Null | Null |
| Null | Null | Null |
| Cost to upgrade | Upgraded Cr | Upgraded Ur |
| Null | Null | Null |
| 2Cr 3Ur | Null | 1Ur |
| 3Cr 3 Ur | 1Cr | Null |
| 5Cr 3Ur | Null | Null |
| 5Cr 4 Ur | Null | Null |
The cost for all the towers is a little on the high side considering how much each tower produces and, more of an area of concern for me, there are many actions (specifically upgrading towers) that require combinations of resources. The former makes the game slower and the latter makes it more complex to manage, neither of which we want for the game. My earlier balance idea went like this:
| Tower Name | Cost to build | Cost to produce | Chromium Produced |
| Command Center | Null | Null | 3Cr |
| Uranium Tower | 2Cr | Null | Null |
| Chromium Tower | 2Cr | Null | 1Cr |
| Shell Tower | 6Cr | 2Cr | Null |
| Nuke Silo | 4Cr 2Ur | 2Ur | Null |
| Uranium Produced | Overcharge Produced | Cost to overcharge |
| 2Ur | Null | Null |
| 1Ur | 1Ur | 2Ur |
| Null | 1Cr | 2Ur |
| Null | Null | Null |
| Null | Null | Null |
| Cost to upgrade | Upgraded Cr | Upgraded Ur |
| Null | Null | Null |
| 1Cr 1Ur | Null | 1Ur |
| 1Cr 1Ur | 1Cr | Null |
| 3Cr 1Ur | Null | Null |
| 3Cr 1Ur | Null | Null |
I shifted the values to be lower across the board, which helped with both problems, but there was still the lingering issue of complexity. I want the players to be able to easily assess what type of resource tower they need, especially when the towers get the active abilities, and focus more on placement and other strategic considerations over number crunching resource values. Especially with the fast pace and the time limit on each turn, time spent managing the economy is irritatingly spent time that would be better used in trying to blow the other player's planet up. With this in mind, I moved to my most recent set of balance changes:
| Tower Name | Cost to build | Cost to produce | Chromium Produced |
| Command Center | Null | Null | 3Cr |
| Uranium Tower | 2Cr | Null | Null |
| Chromium Tower | 2Cr | Null | 1Cr |
| Shell Tower | 6Cr | 2Cr | Null |
| Nuke Silo | 6Cr | 3Ur | Null |
| Uranium Produced | Overcharge Produced | Cost to overcharge |
| 2Ur | Null | Null |
| 1Ur | 1Ur | 2Ur |
| Null | 1Cr | 2Ur |
| Null | Null | Null |
| Null | Null | Null |
| Cost to upgrade | Upgraded Cr | Upgraded Ur |
| Null | Null | Null |
| 2Cr | Null | 1Ur |
| 2Cr | 1Cr | Null |
| 4Cr | Null | Null |
| 4Cr | Null | Null |
Here all the resource costs are reduced, as with the other revision, but they are also streamlined to only require one type of resource for each action. Building and upgrading costs chromium, and deploying and overcharging costs uranium. This makes it very simple for the player to know what they want to do as part of their overall strategy. We tested this version of the balance changes during a team meeting this week and it was very well received. It made the game much faster and simpler to get into the thick of things, and it also allowed the players to focus more on their overall strategy rather than worrying about what combination of resources they needed. There are still some concerns that need to be addressed, upgrading shields may end up costing uranium for one and the active abilities need to be assigned costs in some cases, but on the whole this balance version felt much better and, provided nobody breaks it in testing this week, should see only slight changes from here on out.
Until next time,
Guardian Soul
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Update 2/1/2015
Hail Wanderers!
Not exactly an update, but the afformentioned plans for the faction upgrades. Enjoy!
Not exactly an update, but the afformentioned plans for the faction upgrades. Enjoy!
The Most Equal Collective (Vodka!)
Drill: Launch the drill through the opponent planet.
Straight firing line. 3 turn travel time. Consumes drill.
Uranium: Launch the tower against nukes. Destroys nukes in a
large area. Leaves behind the cloud for 1 turn. Consumes the tower.
Nuke: Shoots a nuke for 2 path points, which then breaks
into 3 mini nukes. OR the nuke stops, and allows the player to plot out the remaining
1-2 points for the three mini nukes. Each mini nuke only has a 1x1 explosion.
Shield: Smaller overall shield, but creates two mini shields
as well, one on either side. The mini shields refresh when the main one does,
but it still costs the normal amount to recharge shields no matter how many are
up or down.
The Glorious Colonialist Imperialist Federation (ist?)
Drill: Charges for 3 turns, stopping chromium generation for
the duration. Fires railgun rounds for 2 turns after fully charged, destroying
all buildings it hits but not penetrating shields. One shot per round.
Uranium: Charges for 2 turns, then shoots a swarm of
mini-mini nukes at the planet. Nukes deal no damage, but irradiate tiles.
Nuke: Slow, weaker nuke, but has a wide shield in front that
takes a hit to destroy, at which point the nuke gets a speed boost.
Shield: Charges for a turn, retracting shield as it does,
and then deploys as a point defense tower. Can fire 2-3 short range linear
cannon shots in the next turn. Redeploys as a shield tower the turn after.
The Other Other (hello??)
Drill: Swaps places with any other drill.
Uranium: Swaps places with any other uranium reactor.
Nuke: Slower movement overall, but it teleports through the
second half of each path node. Smaller explosion, doesn’t teleport through
shields.
Shield: Can deploy the shield to any other space on the
planet. Shield is still destroyed if the parent tower is blown up.
The Greenie Weenies (or something more serious)
Drill: Shoots a beam of red energy that charges plant nukes.
Makes the nuke grow a lining of thorns that explode out in a larger burst when
exploded. Don’t destroy buildings, but will blow up other nukes that they hit
and pop shields.
Uranium: Shoots a beam of green energy that charges plant
nukes. Makes the nuke grow a slime pod. The pod bursts on hit, leaving a
radiation cloud behind for a few turns, which irradiates tiles it comes into
contact with (the cloud doesn’t move).
Nuke: Weaker nuke (1x1) very small particle trail that
destroys/destabilizes other nukes. Shoots two nukes at once?
Shield: Shoots a beam of blue energy that charges plant
nukes. Gives the nukes a shield (a coating of sap) that allows them to soak up
one hit.
Until next time!
Guardian Soul
Friday, January 23, 2015
Update 1/23/2015
Hail Wanderers!
Shorter update this week. Most of what I've been working on has focused around the unique upgrades that each faction will have in WLNA. The idea is to give each building a 'vanilla' upgrade path that simply improves the original building, and to also allow the player to pick a faction path that has more of a unique bonus.
I'm trying to focus these faction upgrades around active abilities, as opposed to a more passive bonus. The idea is to introduce a sort of risk/reward aspect to each upgrade, and give the player more gameplay options and tactical options (along with cool things to do during each match) that don't deviate from the core concept of WLNA. With that in mind, most of the unique upgrades I've designed so far revolve around spending some resource (either by stopping the building's production for a time, or even consuming the building itself) to get a larger, short term effect that can tip the balance one way or another. So far the abilities have been mostly offensive in nature, which I think I may stick to. Earlier in WLNA's production, there was a significant defensive building that could be constructed, but its use bogged down gameplay and made matches drag on too long. During last semester, the offending building was removed. I think that WLNA benefits more from having more offensive options rather than defensive ones, and I think that having a short, but chaotic and action packed match, would be much more satisfying and closer to the intended experience than a longer one.
Anyway, I'll post the list of upgrades up here once it is finished.
Until then!
Guardian Soul
Shorter update this week. Most of what I've been working on has focused around the unique upgrades that each faction will have in WLNA. The idea is to give each building a 'vanilla' upgrade path that simply improves the original building, and to also allow the player to pick a faction path that has more of a unique bonus.
I'm trying to focus these faction upgrades around active abilities, as opposed to a more passive bonus. The idea is to introduce a sort of risk/reward aspect to each upgrade, and give the player more gameplay options and tactical options (along with cool things to do during each match) that don't deviate from the core concept of WLNA. With that in mind, most of the unique upgrades I've designed so far revolve around spending some resource (either by stopping the building's production for a time, or even consuming the building itself) to get a larger, short term effect that can tip the balance one way or another. So far the abilities have been mostly offensive in nature, which I think I may stick to. Earlier in WLNA's production, there was a significant defensive building that could be constructed, but its use bogged down gameplay and made matches drag on too long. During last semester, the offending building was removed. I think that WLNA benefits more from having more offensive options rather than defensive ones, and I think that having a short, but chaotic and action packed match, would be much more satisfying and closer to the intended experience than a longer one.
Anyway, I'll post the list of upgrades up here once it is finished.
Until then!
Guardian Soul
Friday, January 16, 2015
Update 1/16/2015
Hail Wanderers!
A new year, a new semester, and in my case at least, a new team! I'm very grateful to the wonderful people at Neveryear Games and look forward to working with them on We Love Nuclear Armageddon. I will be taking the role of the main systems designer, working alongside the narrative designer and reporting to our lead designer and producer throughout the semester. Primarily I'll be working on adding faction specific upgrades for all of the buildings currently in the game, but I'll also be doing some work on the narrative and, at least for the short term, working on a re-balance for the economy in the game.
Right now, the game's economy is balanced. It works well, and all the various costs of creating buildings, nukes, and activating shields, along with overcharging towers, all work very well. The economy runs off an interesting system were it is impossible to stockpile resources. Instead, the player has a max value for the two resources (uranium and chromium) that they generate each level. Because of this the player is encouraged to use as much resources as possible in their turn, as any left over resources won't carry over to the next turn. The system works very well, and that's not the area that I'm going to be looking at for balance. What I want to do is to try and streamline the economy some. Right now, many of the buildings and the nukes use a combination of the two resources, so it can be hard to figure out how many buildings that produce each resource the player should build. This issue is compounded by the immense importance the game places on the position of buildings on the player's planet (the planets rotate, and both shields and nukes work based on an area of effect, so it is important to keep in mind what is next to what) and the fast pace of gameplay. It would be ideal for the selection process of a building to be as simple as possible so that the player can focus more thought onto the placement of the building or other tactical and strategic decisions. Ideally, I would like to have chromium be a sort of defensive resource (used to build buildings and power shields) and then have uranium be a more offensive resource (used to build nukes and overcharge towers). I'll probably keep it that nukes require both resources to build, but I'll experiment on a few iterations of the offensive/defensive split over the next few days and see where it leads me.
In other news, I'm part of the way done with yet another revision of the lore for the dungeon crawler, and intend to add more to the combat system. I want to add different combat states (grappled, etc) that will present different options to the player, with the intent of both making the skills enemies will use more diverse and also presenting more interesting and unique combat scenarios to the player. I'll have more information about that as I continue to work on it.
Finally, (and quickly), I'm taking a creative writing class this semester, so expect to see some short stories and the like appear on the blog from time to time (I'll spare you all the poetry, don't worry). I'll probably have to do some messing around with how I want to present the stories, as the standard blog posts are pretty terrible for presenting long blocks of text, but we'll see how it goes.
Finally finally, I'm going to be working on a portfolio website over the coming semester as well. No real details as of yet, but I'll still maintain the blog as the main source of updates for the projects I'm working on, etc, and use the portfolio to showcase the work that I've done.
There are lots of exciting things happening in the coming months, and I look forward to sharing them here.
As always, until next time,
Guardian Soul
A new year, a new semester, and in my case at least, a new team! I'm very grateful to the wonderful people at Neveryear Games and look forward to working with them on We Love Nuclear Armageddon. I will be taking the role of the main systems designer, working alongside the narrative designer and reporting to our lead designer and producer throughout the semester. Primarily I'll be working on adding faction specific upgrades for all of the buildings currently in the game, but I'll also be doing some work on the narrative and, at least for the short term, working on a re-balance for the economy in the game.
Right now, the game's economy is balanced. It works well, and all the various costs of creating buildings, nukes, and activating shields, along with overcharging towers, all work very well. The economy runs off an interesting system were it is impossible to stockpile resources. Instead, the player has a max value for the two resources (uranium and chromium) that they generate each level. Because of this the player is encouraged to use as much resources as possible in their turn, as any left over resources won't carry over to the next turn. The system works very well, and that's not the area that I'm going to be looking at for balance. What I want to do is to try and streamline the economy some. Right now, many of the buildings and the nukes use a combination of the two resources, so it can be hard to figure out how many buildings that produce each resource the player should build. This issue is compounded by the immense importance the game places on the position of buildings on the player's planet (the planets rotate, and both shields and nukes work based on an area of effect, so it is important to keep in mind what is next to what) and the fast pace of gameplay. It would be ideal for the selection process of a building to be as simple as possible so that the player can focus more thought onto the placement of the building or other tactical and strategic decisions. Ideally, I would like to have chromium be a sort of defensive resource (used to build buildings and power shields) and then have uranium be a more offensive resource (used to build nukes and overcharge towers). I'll probably keep it that nukes require both resources to build, but I'll experiment on a few iterations of the offensive/defensive split over the next few days and see where it leads me.
In other news, I'm part of the way done with yet another revision of the lore for the dungeon crawler, and intend to add more to the combat system. I want to add different combat states (grappled, etc) that will present different options to the player, with the intent of both making the skills enemies will use more diverse and also presenting more interesting and unique combat scenarios to the player. I'll have more information about that as I continue to work on it.
Finally, (and quickly), I'm taking a creative writing class this semester, so expect to see some short stories and the like appear on the blog from time to time (I'll spare you all the poetry, don't worry). I'll probably have to do some messing around with how I want to present the stories, as the standard blog posts are pretty terrible for presenting long blocks of text, but we'll see how it goes.
Finally finally, I'm going to be working on a portfolio website over the coming semester as well. No real details as of yet, but I'll still maintain the blog as the main source of updates for the projects I'm working on, etc, and use the portfolio to showcase the work that I've done.
There are lots of exciting things happening in the coming months, and I look forward to sharing them here.
As always, until next time,
Guardian Soul
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