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Thread: Pre-Alpha Release of new Tactics-Style Game!

  1. #1

    Default Pre-Alpha Release of new Tactics-Style Game!

    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

    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



    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.

  2. #2

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    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:


    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!

  3. #3
    Blues Traveler The One's Avatar
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    Any new versions coming up on the horizon for Stratagem? I'm curious how game development has progressed.

  4. #4

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    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:




    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.

  5. #5

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    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!


    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

  6. #6
    Senior Member Mar's Avatar
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    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?


    just some rage and three kinds of yes
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    quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock

  7. #7

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    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.

  8. #8

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    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.

  9. #9

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    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.

  10. #10

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    Damn, I didn't expect no one to be online when I registered. Looks good.

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