What's in a name?

Added a new outfit, along with the first weapon class in the game - riles! The outfit colors will be customizeable so if you don't like the default scheme, feel free to pick another. They will be coming as individual pieces too, so you can pick and choose between different sets.

Another important note, outfits are purely cosmetic and carries no stats. The stat-influencing equipment will be a separate thing, like accessories or perhaps as equip gems. So appearance and functionality are completely independent from each other this time.

Video here:  https://twitter.com/Enlit3D/status/1265849410451156992 

Secondly, the name of the game, it is Corrupted At The Core. I feel like if I start with "Heroine X..." again then it kind of locks me in continuing with the "Heroine" name forever. So decided to go with something different.

Like the name suggests, corruption with be an important game mechanic. I model it after the stress system in Darkest Dungeon. Basically, characters you send in the party will pick up corruption in their adventures, and you'll have to manage corruption outside after each adventure, in town, or prepare to meet the consequences. 

Thirdly, regarding the game setting, it is futuristic fantasy instead of medieval fantasy, so that's why there are guns like rifles and pistols. And outfit wise, bodysuits instead of purely medieval armor. But melee weapons like the classic sword or spears will be in game too, in the future.

New Environments

Short videos here: https://twitter.com/i/status/1263694344373956608, https://twitter.com/i/status/1263694276237463553, https://twitter.com/i/status/1263694214673489920

These videos may give the impression that these are interconnected dungeon that you can walk in, but they are not - at the moment, at least. I do plan to make that as a feature in the future.

What they are for is to serve as the backdrop of each combat room. When a new room is entered (and triggers a fight) the game will pick a random background the fight will take place in. The goal is that this should be a more immersive dungeon crawling experience than having to fight in the ring all the time.

Also tweaked graphics and other misc stuff. There are shadows now, and hair are less stiff, as an example.

Jiggle jiggle

Here is a video showing some of the new things: https://twitter.com/i/status/1261135017922592768.

And here are the more in depth explanations:

This week I started a major restructuring of the skeleton system. It's a stepping stone  towards the ultimate goal of supporting the outfit customization system and modding system. That part was just completed.

The resource usage was optimized and I saw a reduction of ~30% total memory usage. But enlit3d, why does that matter? Well, it means that the game will be both faster to start and less lag when spawning new units. So that's nice.

But also, the restructuring also enabled me to added a couple of features that I didn't want to add in the old system that I know will become obsolete. So that's what the video is mostly about - jiggles, look ats, eye blinks.

I also added a WASD-control scheme outside of combat. This type of control is probably more familiar to players. (The mouse click and move works too.) Note that there is no collision handling yet, but that's probably okay atm.

On the game side of things, I incorporated feedback and implemented these changes:

1) units will regen HP up to their red HP bar outside of combat. I think that's only fair since I imagine most people will bring a healer in their party, and having a healer will enable unlimited heals to the entire party. So this change removes the tedium of having to manually wait and heal everyone.

2) I swapped the MIDDLE mouse and RIGHT mouse buttons. So RIGHT button is now rotating camera and MIDDLE button is the panning. In addition, mouse button will no longer undo the movement. The same feature is found in a separate "Undo" button above the ability bar when applicable. I think undo movement is definitely the right idea in a tactics game, but binding it to mouse button is too ambitious. So now it is a separate button. RIGHT button rotate is probably the more familiar setup to most players, too. (The original design was motivated by RIGHT button -undoing movement, but since that is gone, going for RIGHT button rotate is better)

Demo 1

Patreon LINK.

Here is the short dungeon crawling/"wrestling tournament" demo as promised. Not quite sure of the difficulty level yet. Let me know if you find it too easy/hard.

Dungeon Crawling v0.1

https://twitter.com/Enlit3D/status/1258800502877245442

Faster Than Light (referred to as FTL from here onwards) was one of my favorite games. It is a roguelike game where you pilot a ship through different sectors with the goal of defeating a big bad at the end. There is something really charming about it's simplicity in it's individual mechanics, yet when put together, creates a one of a kind experience.

Anyways, the reason why I talked about FTL is because I decided to postpone the complex, Divinity II like map exploration to a later date. Instead, I implemented a much simpler "dungeon crawling"/rogue-like experience inspired by what FTL had.

The reason for this change is because it takes a lot of effort to actually get the Divinity II-like map exploration working. Not only it needs the map generation, but also complementary mechanics such as group movement/follow leader, enemy FOV + enemy spawns, editor to author the map segments, just to name a few. Instead, I want to focus on things that are more pressing atm, such as the outfit system, porting moves from HRT over, working inventory and items.

The demo (shown in the twitter video) is more or less working, and it's currently undergoing testing in the discord as a first pass. I will be releasing that demo this weekend.

(The Exploration mode isn't scrapped. Just that instead of walking in a big map, it is confined to a small battle zone. When the combat is over, the game will switch to Exploration mode, where you can do what you wish with the spoils)

Progress update

Another weekly update!

The new "Mahou Set" is done! It is shown in the picture above. I also put up a short video on how it looks in-game here: https://twitter.com/i/status/1256644999250186247.

I got feedback from the previous build that the targeting controls still is pretty awkward in certain spots. So I sat down and thought how about how to tackle the problem. I took a look at other tactics game again with the focus on their UI elements. One thing that captured my attention is the targeting controls from XCOM. I thought that is a great addition to the game. Here is a video showing how that works: https://twitter.com/i/status/1256645203097645056

Finally, I started to work on Exploration side of things. They are still WIP and are mostly individual components ATM. Will do another update when things become more coherent.