On The Roadside (Turnbased Strategy inspired by XCOM)

[4aiman]

/me feels an urge to add graphics to this piece of art.

[rmcode]

/me feels an urge to add graphics to this piece of art.

Personally I enjoy the ASCII-styled graphics, but I'll probably add a sprite-based tileset eventually.

[4aiman]

In fact, ASCII-styled graphics is so enjoyable, that it keeps distracting me from the game itself
Hence, the urge

[Positive07]

Keep it ASCII! pretty pleeeeaseeee

[rmcode]

Keep it ASCII! pretty pleeeeaseeee

Haha ASCII is definitely going to stay! Adding an optional tileset would be pretty easy at the moment. But since it is not an important feature it's probably going to take a while before I'll put any work into that direction ... I want to at least have the world map and base related features in the game, because right now I can't really judge how that is going to affect my current graphics setup.

Either way I want to add support for loading texture packs (with different resolutions) from the save directory later on.

On a different note: I added some tweaks to the medical system (so characters should die faster in the next version) and also added a system which allows me to load behavior trees from TGF files. This makes it easier for me to extend the AI and should lead to some improved behavior in one of the upcoming versions (picking up and equipping items is planned for 0.6.0 ... we'll see if I get anything else done for that release).

[Clyybber]

I really dig this. It looks so cool and plays amazing.
btw the github source is down.

[rmcode]

I really dig this. It looks so cool and plays amazing.
btw the github source is down.

Thanks a lot

I closed the source and moved it to a private repo. This doesn't mean i won't open source it at some point in the future, but I feel more comfortable with a closed source currently.

[rmcode]

Here's a small progress update:

- The next version will have a slightly modified inventory system. Container items such as backpacks will increase the carry capacity of a character instead of actually containing the items. The other system just felt too unintuitive.
- New creature type "dog". This is the foundation for more creature variety in future updates and also helped me tweak the body and item systems.
- Items now have tags which will be used to whitelist and blacklist them for certain creatures. So dogs for example have the tag 'creature' and 'humanoid' on their blacklist, which means that dogs will spawn with fur and "bite" weapons instead of shotguns and clothing.

It feels like the engine is coming together more and more and I hope it'll start to feel more like an actual game over the next few months.

Depending on how version 0.6.0 feels I might start working on the base / worldmap part of the game for 0.7.0 (no promises though).

[rmcode]

Published Version 0.6.0.841 on itch.io:

Code: Select all

## Additions
- Added random spawning of items when a world object is destroyed
- Added interaction with inventory of adjacent tiles
- Added automatic opening of container objects if they are the target of a movement path
- Added dogs as the first non-human creatures
- Added a passive AI for the neutral faction
    - The neutral faction now only consists of dogs
    - The neutral faction is ignored by the other factions
- Added AI actions for picking up items
- Added inspection of other characters (clicking on them in interact mode opens their health panel)
- Added damage reduction based on worn armor items
- Added simple gameover screen

## Removals
- Removed automatic camera movement during attacks

## Fixes
- Fixed color code for impassable world objects when aiming
- Fixed potential error where projectiles weren't updated if one of them hit the map borders
- Fixed error where tiles were hit twice if the projectile lost all energy

## Other Changes
- Use an improved algorithm for FOV calculations
- Improve bleeding mechanics
    - Apply bleeding effects directly on a hit instead of waiting till the next round
    - Amount of blood loss is now based on the damage type of the attack
    - Weak body parts will receive higher bleeding damage
- Updated the inventory system
    - Container items such as backpacks now increase a character's carry capacity
    - When the item is unequipped all items that don't fit the inventory will be dropped
- Increased inventory size for tiles
- Updated colors for neutral characters
- Improved the health screen
    - Added better bleeding indicators
    - The character type is now also displayed
- General balancing trying to slowly move towards a good "feel" for the combat
- Changed world objects to not block shots when the character is adjacent to them
    - This only applies to world objects that are small enough
- Changed size of door objects
- Improved balancing for damage values of explosive weapons

[rmcode]

For the next version I decided to start implementing a basic UI which consists of a main menu and an options screen (there currently aren't many options to set, but I'll try to get custom keybindings in there). The design is partially inspired by CDDA's main menu, but I mainly just wanted to go for a clean and simple look.

It's still WIP of course, but this is how it currently looks:



The reason why I'm working on this is, that I need to refactor the way resources and the game world are loaded so I can (re)implement saving and loading. But of course this is also an important step towards the worldmap gameplay, where the game needs to switch between "world" and "battle" maps constantly.