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UnitOfTime
12-06-2016, 12:00 PM
Thanks for all the positive comments in my last post. Much appreciated.

I finally got my web server hosted with the game running (in a hopefully stable fashion). Please keep in mind this is a very early version of the game so there are a lot of things that still need improving. Part of the reason I'm hosting such an early version is to get feedback, so please leave feedback on the page if you can. There is a public poll on there and also a private feedback block, both are completely anonymous. Thanks! The working title of my game is Stratagem. Notably, it is a fully multiplayer game so you will need someone with you to play against. You could also make two accounts and play against yourself (if you log in on the second account with a different/incognito browser). I'll probably be hanging out in the lobby and am happy to talk and answer any questions.

Play Stratagem (www.vattlabs.com)

A lot of the characters are very similar to the original; however, some have changed. Blocking is also slightly different from the original. When you attack you'll see numbers pop up:

Red: Damge Dealt
Grey: Damage Blocked
Green: Amount Healed

I tried to balance everything as best I can, but let me know if any changes need to be made. Here is an image of the UI layout, it should look familiar :)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56657351/DemoGif/StratagemTutorial_Notated.jpg

I'm working with a lot of technologies which are new to me, so bare with me and read my list of things that could go wrong

The number of players counter at the bottom right hand corner will sometimes show 1 less than the actual number of players online. Sorry about that!
The server may(probably) crash
You may get a security warning, something like: "This connection is not private". What that probably means is that my HTTPS certificate got messed up somehow. Please don't go to the website if you feel unsafe, but please let me know so I can work on fixing it for you. It doesn't mean that my site is malicious, it just means that the encryption key I'm using doesn't match the encryption key that the internet has on record for me. The reason they show this is because someone (bad guy) could position themselves between you and my server, create their own encryption key, and then read all the data that you send over (username, password, your super secret plans to overthrow the government, etc).
Something may break in your match, If you refresh your page then start matchmaking again it will find your old match and you can rejoin the game you were in.

UnitOfTime
12-12-2016, 04:57 PM
Hi All,

Thanks all who have played so far and given me great feedback. Last week I worked on implementing the most requested feature and fixing a few bugs.

Version 0.9.1.0a is now live. However, I messed up the cache headers on the old files, so you may have to "hard refresh" the webpage to get the most up-to-date files. To hard refresh the website, try this:

Go to the stratagem website (https://www.vattlabs.com/)
Hold CTRL and click the refresh button


New features

Set customization (move your troops where you want and press the "save" button to update your custom set)
Enchantress lock is now a win condition (all enemy troops are either dead or paralyzed)
Timeout forfeit (if your opponent stops playing or leaves, you will win after 2-3 turns)
Buttons for move, attack, and rotate now have text saying what they are
Assassin now changed to have a 4 distance move
Fixed server side bugs


Enjoy, and let me know if anything goes wrong!

The One
01-07-2017, 08:08 PM
Any new versions coming up on the horizon for Stratagem? I'm curious how game development has progressed.

UnitOfTime
01-08-2017, 06:33 PM
Yes Absolutely! I was thinking of making an interim post because this update is taking a while, so I guess I'll do that now: Note: What I'm about to mention is not live on the game yet.

Abstract: My goals for this update were to improve the character and UI graphics, create a better way to show unit block numbers, and add a short tutorial screen. Midway through I ended up also doing some webserver fiddling so that my game can be wrapped in an iframe on any website(improving distribution for later on), and rewriting the entire frontend (in-progress, but important and not super fun).

I started out hoping to improve the graphics that Stratagem had, because that was highly requested. It is also vital before I can properly "show off" the game. So I went through and remodeled most (1 left) of the characters to make them look better. I was fairly happy with how they looked, but once I animated and rendered them into my game the frame rate started to drop horribly on chrome because the new sprite sheets have about twice as many frames and are twice the resolution. From this and some digging I realized that the frontend library I was using (CreateJS) used the canvas renderer (slow) rather than the new WebGL renderer (fast). So I did some digging and found a new, but similar, HTML5 WebGL frontend called PixiJS which seems pretty popular. With this new library I'll also be able to have higher performance rendering as well as a lot of the cool WebGL features, like shaders. Converting to PixiJS is slightly tough, but mostly just tedius find and replaces of changed function calls.

Anyways, Here are the new models that I have done:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56657351/DemoGif/graphicsUpdate1/newUnitGraphics_ortho.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56657351/DemoGif/graphicsUpdate1/newUnitGraphics_perspective.png

Next, I've creating a better "character inspector" (I guess you could call it) which is basically what was in the upper left hand corner previously and describes the character who is selected (or hovered over). So the new version will have a circle in it when you hover over a troop which will show their block numbers from every side, and remember that number is basically how much damage is removed when they are attacked with physical type attacks. The new character inspector will also contain a short, minimizable description of the troop and all their essential details. Mostly though, this has been a long update because the holidays were fairly busy and I've been struggling through 3D modelling.

After this update I'll likely start work on player progression and an ELO system, and then a leaderboard for me to inevitably become the bottom of :)

I've also had some ideas on fairly major gameplay changes. What do you guys think?

(1) What if, each character had their primary move as usual, but then had a side "spell" that could be used at any turn and used some other resource, like mana, or stamina or something and a short cooldown. So then there could be some interesting character interactions, like maybe a spell which buffs someones power for a turn, then that buffed troop could be moved and attacked with their extra bit of power. This would make turns require more thought, instead of just "Where do I move attack and rotate?" it would be "Where do I move, attack, and rotate, and then what spell do I cast on who?". This hopefully will make each turn feel a little more impactful.

(2) What if, the goal wasn't to eliminate all of your opponents troops, but to eliminate a "King" piece (like in chess). So then, when you create your set, you would pick (from a list of possible "kings") what king you wanted to use. The king would have higher health, and unique attacks/spells. (for example the cleric - type piece might be a good candidate for a king). This would allow games to be potentially more fast paced if you chose your set to be a rush-type set, or you could turtle up and protect your king. This adds a second aspect to the game, where previously Stratagem was almost entirely value based (ie my goal is to out-damage and out-heal my opponent), now there is both a "value-game" you can play, or a more "objective game" (ie kill the king). This also could provide a better comeback potential so the game doesn't seem lost from early-game mistakes.

Lastly, one of the major problems of Stratagem right now is that very few people play it or even know about it, so mostly I see people log on, try to find a game, and then give up because nobody is online(sorry about that). I'm hoping that once the game has developed a little more and has better graphics/effects/features/tutorials, we can slowly grow the number of players so there is a baseline of people to play against and matchmaking wait times are shorter. This fact is another motivation for the improved graphics, tutorial, etc upgrades.

Thanks for reading! And I hope you all can give me feedback on those two ideas that I had, but they are mostly changes for later on.

UnitOfTime
01-16-2017, 02:06 PM
Hi All,

The in-game graphics update is finally finished. The URL is different now, so check it out at https://www.vattlabs.com/stratagem/. This update was mostly a long one because I'm bad at art and because of the holidays. Hopefully the next one won't take as long (Next Update: Elo System).

Notably, not all the graphics have changed, I'm planning to iteratively improve the graphics that didn't change this update in future updates. There is also a new poll to vote on for the next round of game changes.

Here is how it looks!
https://68.media.tumblr.com/1393629ef365fb1400a2d71eded1557c/tumblr_ojvn2tyPzo1w2lqn3o1_540.png

The circle in the top left-hand corner shows the block-percentages for all directions for the selected character. The circle assumes that the character is pointed straight up (so the top circle slice would be the front of the character and the right slice would be the right side of the character)

Let me know if anything goes wrong! And feel free to provide feedback. I'll be on all day if anyone wants to chat.

Changelog

Troop Graphics Update
Made the game embeddable into other sites
Added "block circle" to show all character block numbers from all angles
Switched frontend to use a higher performance graphics library
Small graphics changes for a few surrounding objects

Mar
01-16-2017, 10:44 PM
Wow looks like it's coming together well. Have you decided on a launch date and what platforms you're going to release this on?

UnitOfTime
01-17-2017, 12:09 PM
I don't have a specific launch date, but I'm hoping to gradually increase the player-base as things get more developed. It'll likely start as just a browser game (sites like kongregate), but I may port it to desktop and try for a steam release as well. If you have any suggestions let me know.

Hulky
01-18-2017, 08:24 PM
I think the Assassin says blocking from the right is less likely than from the left. Not sure if typo, or if one side blocks better.

Looks awesome.

UnitOfTime
01-18-2017, 10:43 PM
Thanks. Yeah I just realized I forgot to go back and fix that - I was using it for testing. For now just imagine that she hurt her arm :) I'll likely fix it in the next update; uh, I mean her arm injury will recover in the next update. Glad you like the graphics.

Let me know if you guys have any suggestions or requests for the game.
Thanks.

Elphaba
02-12-2017, 06:38 PM
Damn, I didn't expect no one to be online when I registered. Looks good.

UnitOfTime
02-13-2017, 10:59 AM
Thanks. Yeah it's definitely a work in progress but it's coming along. TAO forums is the only place I've posted the game so far, but eventually I plan to do a larger scale release so we have more players, but only once the game is further along. I have a new update in the works right now which will track every player's ELO and allow them to win gold from victories. Gold will be used later to buy new characters, or more of the same characters, so that you can further customize your sets.

As always, I love feedback and ideas - so if you have any, let me know!

On another note for anyone who is following Stratagem:

I'm starting a new job soon, so development will likely slow down. Luckily, most of the game logic is already there. I think a lot of the next steps will be adding cool new characters (ideas, models, and animations) So if you want to contribute to that effort - let me know.
I recently found out that the word "Stratagem" is trade marked for another video game, so I'll be changing it soon. (Let me know if you have a cool name idea)

UnitOfTime
02-13-2017, 03:36 PM
Thanks for the feedback. I'm happy to discuss this feature and think up alternatives. Though I think there needs to be some progression in the game. I think games are more fun when you're progressing and customizing by earning gold and buying units.

I'm hoping to make the units balanced enough to where there are natural "counters" that exist between different set types. So if there is one "best" set, then there should exist some other set of units which counters that. This way people are playing many different types of sets and devising new strategies. If everyone plays the same set all the time, then it's not as fun. Farming (by cheating and playing an alt account) might be more difficult because with matchmaking (and enough players online) it is hard to get matched to yourself.

I'm not familiar with Xerents game, was it another TAO clone? How did people farm gold on it? I am planning it to be similar to Hearthstone, basically there are 3 rules:


3 wins awards 10 gold, up to 100 gold per day (if you are able to win 30 games)
500 gold to start with
20 gold for your "win of the day"


Then units cost about 360 (negotiable) each so it takes about a week to get a new character you want if you play regularly. 18 days if you just log on every day to win 1 game, and 3 days if you max out the 120 gold per day cap.

What do you think?

UnitOfTime
02-13-2017, 05:19 PM
Yes. So there won't be drops, just gold (earned from winning games) which is used for unit purchases in the store. If I ever get to the point of selling things for real money, it'd probably only be for like cosmetics and silly things like that to cover the server hosting costs.

UnitOfTime
02-26-2017, 01:42 PM
I've been having open-source/shared-source thoughts for stratagem(soon to be renamed). Partly because I'm starting to not have much time to work on it as I would like, but also because it leaves the game in the hands of everyone interested in developing it and (probably) speeds up the development time. Mostly this just transfers some of the ownership from me, to the community.

This would:

Enable interested parties in contributing to the games development (Good - faster development, and better prioritization of what is important)
Depending on the license used, possibly allow people to host their own servers/make their own game from it and release it how they want (Good or bad, depending on how it splits the community)
Possibly opens the game up to easier exploits/hacks


What do you guys think? Would anyone want/not want this? Would anyone contribute?

I will take a general silence to mean "no" for all of the above questions. Which is fine, but I know some people have asked in the past about contributing so I wanted to bring this up. Mostly your answers will help me decide how much effort I put into deciding a software license, and cleaning up my code so it is easier to follow.

Thanks for reading!

Mar
02-26-2017, 03:22 PM
I hope someone takes up the project, but it seems like there are only a few people on here with extensive experience coding, Aristocatt being one of them. I'm sure if you made it open-source that at some point in the future someone will pick it up, myself included. But I do have many other things on my plate at the moment.

AllFatherGray
02-26-2017, 03:52 PM
I wouldn't mind helping out. If it's open source and the schedule is flexible then I'm in. As much as I like my game, TAO-'s pacing still affords a unique perspective on SRPG's.
I what Language is the game written in?

UnitOfTime
02-26-2017, 04:41 PM
Thanks for the responses. It's not that I'm stopping as a developer. I will just likely be slowing down. The game is written with NodeJS(backend), PixiJS(webgl frontend), SocketIO(communication), MongoDB (database) but Javascript is the main language, then obviously there's some basic HTML and CSS.

What sort of license would you guys prefer?

I'm not very familiar with open sourcing, but what I wouldn't want to happen is have someone take our hard work with developing this game, pervert it into some pay-to-win game, split the community of players, or confuse people as to which game is ours and which is theirs. At the same time, I don't want people who want to help to think that I'm trying to get free labor so that I can line my pockets.

I just need to figure out the appropriate type of license for our situation.

UnitOfTime
02-26-2017, 05:37 PM
I will likely use this license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This basically just requires the game not be used for commercial purposes and that they provide attribution. So it's technically not an open-source license because it disallows the use of the project for commercial uses.

It also allows people contributing to mark their contributions as whatever license they want. So if you code or make something, you can license it however you want.

What does everyone think?

AllFatherGray
02-27-2017, 03:17 PM
That's fine by me -How many Classes are implemented? What TAO related features still need work? Would you accept a Unity3DWeb port? I'd love to see a GameDocs if it exists.

UnitOfTime
02-27-2017, 06:28 PM
I've been developing by myself, so the documentation is very lacking. I've also done some gross programming stuff which I'd be embarrassed to show people. Right now I'm just probing to check for interest before I spend time making documentation and cleaning up messes that won't ever be read.

As for the code base, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 9-10k. Though it will be less once I refactor. Number of classes is something like 25-30, but will probably be more after I refactor.

If I'm honest, I'm not going to fiddle with a Unity port - it seems like a lot of overhead without much gain. But if that is something you want to do, I can't/won't stop you.

As for work I have planned, in order of importance:
-New Characters to play with, better re balancing of old characters (art, idea-design, animation, minor coding)
-Store to "purchase" characters with in-game earned gold
-Code cleaning up (scalability and security)
-Bug fixing 'n stuff
-Social features (friends list, clans, clan chat, custom games, etc)
-Integration with 3rd party login site APIs (so that people from kongregate can play/other websites don't need to login through us)

AllFatherGray
02-28-2017, 10:27 AM
Cool. I can't wait to see the code.I only mentioned UnityWeb because I've built an SRPG engine and I could take the Characters and their Features and just plug them in.So I would just need the art assets and SFX. I have Lobby and Matchmaking done. If Store Purchases are using In game currency, then I can use my Battle results code to allot the gold and then make a separate menu for purchasing Units. Maybe put the store in a menu similar to TAO's Unit set up screen.

TL:DR; (I'd just need):
-New Characters to play with, better re balancing of old characters (art, idea-design, animation //, minor coding)
-Integration with 3rd party login site APIs (so that people from kongregate can play/other websites don't need to login through us).

And I wouldn't charge a dime. If it's just to re-do TAO at it's core and add more functionality, then I can do that no problem.

UnitOfTime
02-28-2017, 11:54 AM
Oh cool. sounds neat. I'd like to look at your stuff before I commit to a rebuild of my work. Things such as:
-How your networking is implemented
-How you do databases, authentication, and the like
-How you deploy your unity build to servers
-How your game loop functions (ie how do generalize troop abilities)
-How well documented it is

Is your Unity SRPG engine shared/open source by chance that I could look at?

AllFatherGray
02-28-2017, 07:02 PM
-How your networking is implemented
I use Photon Unity Networking but other methods work just fine.

-How you do databases, authentication, and the like
I could use Steam as I have a License there and could just put the game there free to play. My AI programmer is also skilled in server implementations and the rest.

-How you deploy your unity build to servers
Steam again, but we have other alternatives.

-How your game loop functions (ie how do generalize troop abilities)
The classes are created with a combination of the Decorator/Strategy Patterns coupled with some Tensors for move-trees. This way moves and animations can be assigned
arbitrarily. All of the Attacks , Searches, Effects, etc are batched to a templated delegate system that executes any desired function across any desired partition of the board.
It takes me less than an hour to completely finish a new Unit. All that is required are assets(animations,sfx,models) which you've already made.

-How well documented it is
All commented with a version control(git).

Is your Unity SRPG engine shared/open source by chance that I could look at?
Unfortunately, it isn't. It's being used to run our game which is due on Steam for Early Access August 4th (http://taoforums.com/showthread.php?467-Need-Alpha-Testers-for-Online-Tactics-Game-Battle-is-Key!). I just wouldn't mind helping create another TAO while I have the free-time(till May). I can send you a Key to my game if you'd like to see. All I'd have to do is turn off the real-time code,over-watch system,push mechanics, etc and it'd just be a regular SRPG. So I would, with your blessing:
1 Take any assets/ccharacter types you made and turn it into a Unity version.
2 Release it on Steam for free.
3 Just ask that a Patreon be supplied to pay for the servers.
4 Add new Content over time.
In just this month I've added 8 new Units in the build I'm working on. To give you a scope:
HammerKnight, Spearman, Trap-Setter, Mime, Sealing Ward, Thunder Ward, BomberMan(lol), Ogre.
Each unit at a minimum has 4 abilities with potentially 2 over-watches.

Of course if you plan to release a commercial build then I understand if you don't commit to a rebuild.

EDIT: Do you know of anyone with the original models from TAO? A long shot, but I'd love to have those.

UnitOfTime
03-01-2017, 01:47 PM
Cool sounds like a good design (and your game looks super cool!). Though I'm not going to commit to a Unity port at this time, maybe I'll look into it later.

From what I know, the original TAO didn't have models in it, I think everything was just GIFs. There's an archive site that holds a lot of the old TAO information, it may have some the old graphics. Though I'd venture to guess it'd be copyright infringement to use them. I think hulky told me about it a bit ago. Here's a link: https://web.archive.org/web/20080208140700/http://www.tacticsarena.com/units/

Mar
03-01-2017, 07:06 PM
BrutalRage has everything TAO related. I mean everything. You can probably contact him through Facebook.

AllFatherGray
03-01-2017, 07:18 PM
Thanks for the link! I really missed the models and at the least just want a local copy of them. I can still give you a key to my game if you'd like. Whenever you want to commit to the port just let me know. It wouldn't take me more than 2 weeks. I just don't wanna go implementing without your permission.

AllFatherGray
03-01-2017, 07:19 PM
BrutalRage has everything TAO related. I mean everything. You can probably contact him through Facebook.

How often is he on here? Did he make a thread for it?

Mar
03-01-2017, 08:05 PM
How often is he on here? Did he make a thread for it?

He isn't on here, if you search the names in the Facebook group, you'll find him. I think his name is Dave Clark. This is his website: http://taorankings.com/

And this is the game he shelved for now: http://www.taorankings.com/html5/

AllFatherGray
03-01-2017, 11:02 PM
Thanks a lot! He has everything!

Mar
03-01-2017, 11:09 PM
Thanks a lot! He has everything!

Who? Hulky or BrutalRage?

BR made his game identical to TAO and very close to UnitofTime's. I don't think he was planning on changing very much from the original. A lot of people would be interested in a game more similar to TAO.

AllFatherGray
03-03-2017, 10:56 AM
I meant BrutalRage. If I could get into contact with him I wouldn't mind helping make a TAO game.

Mar
03-03-2017, 06:13 PM
Try reaching out and sending a message on Facebook.

The One
05-11-2017, 08:40 PM
Any updates on the progress of this project?

UnitOfTime
06-01-2017, 08:38 PM
Ah sorry for the late reply. I've been pretty busy (moving and a new job) and haven't had time to work on much recently, but I think things are settling so I should have a bit more time in the near future. This is definitely something that I would like to finish and eventually put out an official release, but that seems slightly far off now. For now I'm going to focus on adding new characters when I have time, and thinking of a new name for the game. Thanks for reading!

Hulky
06-16-2017, 01:52 PM
Unit of Time would seeing the TAO actionscript codes help? I think the main thing missed from your game is blocking if I remember right, but especially after your art redo it's a really awesome project.

UnitOfTime
06-17-2017, 10:51 AM
Unit of Time would seeing the TAO actionscript codes help? I think the main thing missed from your game is blocking if I remember right, but especially after your art redo it's a really awesome project.

Thank for the feedback. I really appreciate it, and I'm glad you like the art - that took a while for me to figure this iteration out.

As for the actionscript code, I don't think that would help all that much. However, let's talk about blocking because my game does have blocking - It's just different than what the original TAO has (And is currently up for debate if needed). Let me preface this next bit by saying that I didn't start this project to make a TAO clone - rather I was trying for a game which incorporated feedback from the community (You guys) and had some ideas that I had thought up, but still built upon the foundation that TAO presented. One of those ideas I had was a more deterministic game (ie less randomness), and part of creating that was changing blocking, basically the less RNG's you have in your game the more it comes down to player skill winning the game rather than lucky. But if having the blocking system that I have now just sucks and is a huge turn-off to the community - then I'd be fine changing it.

Let me know if you have strong opinions on the blocking system that you would like.

As for features that my game is missing, in the priority that I am pursuing them:

ELO system - This is in my current unreleased build
Gold generation from winning (to buy new troops) - This is in my current unreleased build
Super cool (I think) splash screen and better menu environment - This is in my current unreleased build
New characters (I'm kinda just creating characters/abilities then I'll see what sticks) - In progress (but I love suggestions if you guys have them!)
Ability to swap characters out of your board lineup with characters on your "bench" - In Progress
ELO based matchmaking
Ability to undo moves
TBD


Thanks for reading!

Hulky
06-17-2017, 01:49 PM
Wizzy and I just played a game and the damage reduction blocking was pretty cool. Only issue was the pop up in stats blocks the top left corners in game. You can still attack them but it's hard to know what is lethal and whatnot if you cursor over before making your thoughts for the turn.

Also listing who is online in the lobby instead of generic 3 players in lobby would be nice. For example Wizzy and I finished a game and there was a third in lobby and we didn't know it was burnout until he said something.

Buying new troops might be a lot of work to keep the balance. It's a good idea though.

Line of Sight was a huge strategic thing in TAO, and the archer seems to not have that here. It's fine either way, but confusing to people from TAO to make the switch. Assassin seems underpowered (old one hit all four tiles not just one, in a + shape [front back side to side]).

When in game in the bottom right there is "?" is that Avatars? If so how do you set your avatar?

A calculator for damage on the side would also be useful so people don't have to do the math. (example at the top here: http://greatlakes.taorankings.com/play/)

Awesome game.

Maverik
06-24-2017, 03:47 PM
just played my first game and these are my thoughts:

-blocking needs to be increased all around
-Barrier is incredibly broken; range needs to be reduced, you shouldn't be able to move with it and there should be a means of breaking the focus of the barrier
-Enchantress is incredibly broken as well; see Barrier comments
-you should be able to target a blank space
-overall balance of the characters is pretty poor, I think you need to re-tool a lot of the characters. Not trying to make it exactly the same as TAO, so not going to tell you how, but I think using the TAO guidelines are a pretty good move

UnitOfTime
06-25-2017, 08:46 AM
Thanks for the feedback guys, I really appreciate it. You honestly won't hurt my feelings and can only improve the game by giving feedback in these early stages of development. To address everyone's points:

Hulky:

I'll try and have a 'whose in lobby' box in my next release build
I will improve the HUD for showing how much damage a selected character will do when moved. I'll also try and eventually add a way to undo moves (that was also requested)
LOS for scout/archer was something that I couldn't remember how it worked from the original TAO so I rolled my own little algorithm to do it. The noticeable differences are that: (1) there are no trick shots (ie clicking somewhere else and doing damage elsewhere, I think that would be poorly understood by newer players) and (2) my LOS blocks more than TAO's did I think. So Hulky, Wizzy and Burnout and I discussed having a GA type character who could do easy damage past LOS. We can obviously discuss this more if we think the new algorithm is too restrictive.
The "?" Icons when you are ingame will eventually be customizable avatar icons. Still on my Todo list so everyone is a questionmark for now.
I'm hoping to not have an explicit calculator, but rather some sort of text popup on the board which will assist with how much damage you will do. Still a Todo


Wizzy:

Yeah, the character stats popup is super in the way right now. It's hard to scale non-vector graphics and have them still look good so I'm still looking for a solution so that screen resolution isn't fixed for the game!
For your other points I lumped them in with Hulky's bullet list


Maverik:

Blocking: So there is no more RNG blocking in this game (could be changed) - It's now all percentage based damage reduction, but I felt the damage reduction was fairly balanced or maybe even too drastic in some cases (knight)
Barrier is broken: Haha yeah so I've heard. There have been talks of changing it to be a single cast shield that you can move with but pops after one attack and decays after 3 turns. What do you think? Up for discussion though.
Enchantress I could add focus to, she's definitely a little OP right now.
Targeting blank spaces: What characters do you want to target blank spaces with, and why?
Overall balance is poor: Happy to retool characters where there is inbalance so that everyone is a viable character to use. Could you list a few characters that are out of balance (besides the BW/Chanty you already listed)? I did however use TAO as a general guideline to follow when I created my characters.


I think I got everything. Let me know if I missed anything.

Maverik
06-25-2017, 01:36 PM
Thanks for the feedback guys, I really appreciate it. You honestly won't hurt my feelings and can only improve the game by giving feedback in these early stages of development. To address everyone's points:

Hulky:

LOS for scout/archer was something that I couldn't remember how it worked from the original TAO so I rolled my own little algorithm to do it. The noticeable differences are that: (1) there are no trick shots (ie clicking somewhere else and doing damage elsewhere, I think that would be poorly understood by newer players) and (2) my LOS blocks more than TAO's did I think. So Hulky, Wizzy and Burnout and I discussed having a GA type character who could do easy damage past LOS. We can obviously discuss this more if we think the new algorithm is too restrictive.


Maverik:

Blocking: So there is no more RNG blocking in this game (could be changed) - It's now all percentage based damage reduction, but I felt the damage reduction was fairly balanced or maybe even too drastic in some cases (knight)
Barrier is broken: Haha yeah so I've heard. There have been talks of changing it to be a single cast shield that you can move with but pops after one attack and decays after 3 turns. What do you think? Up for discussion though.
Enchantress I could add focus to, she's definitely a little OP right now.
Targeting blank spaces: What characters do you want to target blank spaces with, and why?
Overall balance is poor: Happy to retool characters where there is inbalance so that everyone is a viable character to use. Could you list a few characters that are out of balance (besides the BW/Chanty you already listed)? I did however use TAO as a general guideline to follow when I created my characters.


I think I got everything. Let me know if I missed anything.

re: targeting blank spaces - has to do with LoS, I actually think the TAO LoS was very good and I think yours takes away a lot of competitive aspects

if you create the game targeted to not overwhelm new players, your threshold for keeping players interested is going to be very low

I think the highlighted part in red is really, really bad and would definitely dissuade me from playing

for Barrier/Enchantress, allowing for having successive targets is a really bad feature as well

I think indefinite, single cast targets that have a limiting factor (ie. for Barrier, target can't move; for Enchantress, she can't move while in focus) is much more balanced.

re: retooling the characters - not sure if the board is the same size as TAO's was, but the ranges all seem off-balance, I think the ranges need to be adjusted or board size needs to be increased. I think range should be reduced and board should be a bit bigger.

I'll play a few more games and give you more feedback, but I think the damage reduction should be increased overall as well. The game I played with Wizzy was really short/quick and rather uninteresting. Didn't feel like there were very many difficult decisions to be made.

UnitOfTime
06-25-2017, 10:40 PM
Thanks for the feedback guys. Really appreciate it.

LOS: I'd be happy to add this back in as needed. But I'm hoping that there will eventually be more competitive aspects to the game as well as more ways for players to grow in their knowledge/strategies as they play more. I think that the trickshots in the old LOS were kind of a "gotcha" and are weird to visualize because of the grid nature of the game.

BW/Enchantress: I will work to balance these better, because I know they are off.

Retooling characters: Board is the same size as TAOs. I made most of the ranges from what I could remember or scattered Youtube videos so everything should feel pretty close. In general I'd like to think that character balance is relative to what other characters are in the game and since everyone has basically the same set, matches should feel balanced regardless; however, once more characters are released it'd get boring to constantly play against one set over and over again because it's the strongest - will try to keep balance and metrics against that.

To Wizzy: Totally agree, definitely want to create a high skill-cap game. TAO's LOS could add to that for sure. Hoping that unique character abilities will add more though to strategies and counterplay. I'm hoping that characters will be balanced in such a way that people will create sets with characters they like/fit their playstyle, and that there won't be characters who are just flat-out better than others - that way the "starter set" or whatever will be just as winnable as any other.

Anyways - those are just my thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Hulky
06-26-2017, 02:00 PM
A Knight in Chess is as complex as the Scout in TAO the L shape wasn't that hard and learning curve can be not a gotcha by having a link to a tutorial

UnitOfTime
06-27-2017, 07:33 PM
Alright. I think I'll probably add LoS into the game. Just need patience as I add it in as a feature. Would it be better or worse if there was a path that showed how the projectile traveled from start to finish?

CPC
09-04-2017, 11:01 PM
Any progress? Cool game!

UnitOfTime
09-05-2017, 06:32 PM
Thanks. Yeah still working on it. I realized that I probably released it prematurely to you guys. So I'm working on cleaning up what I had created so that I can make further improvements more easily. I want my next release to be more "Alpha" to be a stable starting point, I then want to clean up my deploy environment so I can just run a script and relaunch everything. Right now It takes about an hour to reconfigure the project for the deploy server (Painful and tedious).

Once I have the cleanup work done I'll go back to adding new features and new units. Current Features Unreleased:

ELO System
Gold Generation from winning
Splash screen and menu
2 new characters (blacksmith (buffs troops, not satisfied with him yet), and GA)
Ability to swap in benched characters into your board when you configure your set
Troop fixes: Enchantress to be focus based, BW not sure yet (I changed these but then broke my code)
LOTS of code cleanup

New Features I plan to add (In randomized order):

Line of Sight abilities (Archer)
ELO based matchmaking
Ability to undo moves
More units
Maybe a Legacy TAO game mode (pending my many internal code changes it should be easier to add multiple side game-modes, not done with those yet)
... TBD ...

CPC
09-18-2017, 04:10 PM
Anyone wanna play a stratagem game? I'm online. :D

The One
10-19-2017, 11:00 PM
Any new progress towards the Alpha version release, UnitOfTime?

UnitOfTime
10-22-2017, 10:14 AM
Hey Thanks for checking in. Yep still in the works. I've been in a code refactoring phase for a bit now to help with scalability concerns that I had. I finished reworking how character abilities work so that it would be a lot more flexible and easier to change things around (ie fine tuning) and adding new characters in. Now I'm working on refactoring how the server sets up matches and manages all of the data distribution involved with matchmaking, chatrooms, and the game actually playing (got a lot done last weekend). Next I may clean up the GUI/Frontend stuff which is probably the most hacked together of all of my code. Not too sure what my scope will be for the frontend refactoring, but still lots to do!

I also just moved to a new country so slight delays with that :) Sorry for the wait!

UnitOfTime
01-18-2018, 01:12 PM
Thank's for the encouragement. I'm more than happy to answer questions about my game, so don't be sorry about asking. I actually log on from time to time just to answer questions. But there's nothing I'd love more than to hear that people want to play my game, it honestly keeps me motivated.

As for the game: I've unfortunately been very busy with work so I haven't had much time for development in the past month or so; I'm also unfortunately still very busy with work so won't have much time (just weekends) to work on side projects. It's a fairly monumental effort to do all the game polishing that I want, so that stuff takes time. I do agree that graphics and animation could be better, but if I spent any more time focused on that instead of other things I'd probably never finish :) I have a lot of internal and external changes since my last release (which was a loooong time ago), but here is my current list of non-released changes:

General Code Cleanup
ELO System
Earn Gold from winning
Improved UI (menu and in game)
Blacksmith, GA, Furgeon, Stone Golem
Fixed Assassin (attack 4 sided), Archer LoS, Enchantress (Focus based now), BW (buggy but focus based)


I really want to get this next release out the door, but it has been hard to find the time.

Thanks for reading. Hit me up with any more questions or comments.