High Ground Devlog #7 - Spell Attacks
I didn’t quite realize how much I had done this week until it came to writing about it all, so this one might end up being long again! Oops.
Since the start of this project I’ve had this really cool idea of showing the health of buildings on the hex they’re placed on, as an outline. I wasn’t quite sure how It would work, but I knew I needed it. It turns out, a simple world space canvas with a hexagonal image on it looks really good! With some fading color to show when it’s at a dangerously low health, I get this really effective result :
Physical Buttons + Main Menu
I never had a set idea for the main menu of this game. Originally, I wanted an actual virtual board game box which the player had to wrestle open in order to play the game. This idea quickly grew out of scope. I wouldn’t have been able to create the box art required, and also the unreliability of the Unity physics system with that sort of mechanic would probably ruin the experience.
I knew I didn’t want to have more than one scene in the game, as scene transitions in VR can be disorienting. So, I’ve since chosen the style you can see in the video below. Pillars rise up from beneath the clouds which holds the buttons for quitting and restarting the game.
Up until now I’ve been using capsules as units and rectangles and swords, and it was about time I updated them. I took inspiration from classic board game pieces, and the addition of the swords and medieval style helmets looks really good! I got some footage of combat to show it off in full action!
The spells system was a big part of the final project, some way for the user to jump in during the attack phase and prevent an enemy from destroying your gem! This also marks the final mechanic to be added to the project, so everything from now is refinement, balancing, bug fixes and new models.
The spells available to the player are :
Regular Attack (Deal damage to all units on a hex, or teleport down and point at a particular one to deal damage to just that one)
Slow Down Units (Slow down that specific group of units. This WILL slow them down in battle too, but for now only works with movement)
Speed Up Units (Speeds up the unit, this is more helpful to zap your own units with as it will mean they are faster in battle, however you could also use it if an enemy is being too slow)
All of the attacks, as you can see in the video, work in both top down and FPS view, with the angle of the laser changing for more intuitive inputs.
Next week I’m going to be spending a lot of time reviewing the enemies ‘intelligence’. This will mean the enemies become better at navigating around a player’s traps. I’ve also noticed that a lot of players testing end up reaching level 6-ish and by that point they have a completely impenetrable defence. So, to combat this, I’m going to look deeper into creating aggressive enemies that will go and create new paths, and possibly avoid the paths that players create.
