Overworld parties can now be attacked (even friendly ones - but they'll be less friendly afterwards...)
Changes to window sizes
Quick save option in main menu of overworld
Perk window refactored to show skills of currently selected merc
Beta Branch Patch
[h1Beta Patch 0.4.3.b]
Fixes
Mercenaries can now be dismissed
Shield damage now properly displays in battle
Injury tooltips scaled properly
Daily mercenary wages now deduct properly
Changes
Faction patrols are now stronger in the early game
Zombies now calculate difficulty properly in missions (i.e., more zombies to do battle against!)
Loot windows have been resized
Beta Branch LIVE
Everpixel Tactics 0.4 - Beta Branch
I've been hard at work re-writing large portions of the game - and I am almost ready to release it! But before I do, I want to give folks a chance to playtest the beta branch. The branch is already live and you can opt in using Steam's usual "properties." Pull down the beta branch, give it a whirl, and let me know what you think!
Changes
This release represents a very large rewrite of much of the game. Here are some of the high-level changes:
Crunchier pixels: The game has been set to certain pixel resolutions depending on the scene, and all images are now scaled to their native size.
Campaign Map: Players can now navigate the world of Everpixel Tactics! Be careful, though - the world is full of dangerous brigands and monsters...
User Interface: The user interface has been completely revamped.
Missions: The mission system has been completely overhauled. You can now accept missions from various cities sprinkled throughout the world.
Performance and Optimization: I've refactored much of the code, going so far as to have tossed out the previously-problematic UI code. The game should run more smoothly now, and I now have a cleaner codebase from which to implement new features.
Not yet implemented
There are a few things I'm hoping to implement before I merge 0.4.0 into the main branch of the game. They'll be added to the beta branch over time.
Boats: Your character will no longer walk over water!
Giant Penguins: The world is ready for giant, aggressive, man-eating penguins.
Text: Not all of the in-game text has been updated to the new resolutions, so you may see some odd scaling...
Everpixel Tactics: Devlog 6
Everpixel Tactics: Devlog 6
Context
There are two aspects/cliches of the RPG game archetype that have always bugged me - both of which I hope to avoid in Everpixel Tactics.
The first aspect is that many RPG games (in particular, games of the JRPG genre...) only give the illusion of player choice. For example, many JRPG games offer tons of equipment for a player to customize their characters with...but there is rarely any real choice in the manner. Discerning players looking to optimize will rarely have to consider anything beyond "does this sword do 10 damage - or does it do 12?"
I find this concept is also true when applied to monsters in the majority of RPG games. For example - does this monster have 10 hit points - or 100? Does it deal 10 damage - or 10,000? I cut my teeth on the SNES Final Fantasy games (which I adore), but it always bugged me that the monsters in those games were rarely more than just iterations of previous monsters....just with better stats. Rare indeed was the occasion where I found myself changing my tactics to deal with new monsters.
The "same thing but higher stats" is the first cliche I wish to avoid in Everpixel Tactics. The second is this: it has always bugged me that a mere mortal with a shield is able to "block" attacks from monsters many times their size. I think that Baldur's Gate 2 is on a level of its own in terms of the "all time greats"...but I never could over the fact that when holding a tiny slab of metal, Minsc could block an attack from a dragon. Maybe it's the engineer in me...but how does that work!? I don't care how strong I am, if "block" a swing of a 200 pound sledgehammer with a shield, my arm is breaking from the impact.
So with these two thoughts in mind, let's discuss a monster that will be added in the latest Everpixel Tactics update.
Giant Penguins
There's just something awesome about penguins. They walk like they're drunk, they're not particularly threatening, and they generally seem harmless. Which is exactly why giant penguins are going to be added as big, dangerous, tanky enemies in the next update. They're going to be so big, in fact, that they will innately have the "Gargantuan" trait.
Any character in Everpixel Tactics that is "Gargantuan" is huge. Like, really, REALLY, big - at least the size of an elephant. They're so big, in fact, that characters without the "Gargantuan" trait cannot block their attacks. Neither will they be able to parry their attacks. If any non-gargantuan character hopes to survive in a melee engagement against a gargantuan one, they'd better be good at dodging. Moreover, gargantuan enemies gain significant bonuses to armor ignoring damage against non-gargantuan enemies. Because of its tendency to make dodging difficult, heavy armor's benefits rarely outweigh its cost against such opponents.
So, if you happen to have a couple of frontline tanks with heavy armor that excel at blocking attacks, you're going to find that their strengths are quickly nullified when faced with gargantuan opponents (unless they themselves are gargantuan, of course!) In Everpixel Tactics, you will not be able to apply the same tactics against giant penguins as you do brigands. You will be forced to adapt your tactics - or the penguins will run rough-shod over your ragtag group of mercenaries.
If you've ever wanted to do battle against penguins the size of elephants (or larger!), the next update will afford you that opportunity. Just make sure that you bring into battle "tanks" who excel at dodging, or your crew is likely to end up dead.
Everpixel Tactics Devlog 5
Everpixel Tactics Devlog 5
Some of you may have seen my previous update, but I got overly busy with my real job. In the "real world", I am gainfully employed as a data/software engineer. I had big profile demos this holiday season. And so, to make sure said demos went on without a hitch, I worked. A lot. And then burned out. And continued to work. In other words, I didn't have a lot of time (or willpower) to work on Everpixel Tactics this holiday season. But! I have since recharged my batteries, and I have been working on some major updates to Everpixel Tactics, hopefully to be delivered in February/March.
Everpixel Tactics took many inspirations. I wanted it to look reminiscent of the Super Nintendo games of the past while having the tight, tactical combat of titular tactical titles like Battle Brothers and XCOM. I also wanted a zany, living, breathing world not so different from what you might find in Dwarf Fortress. Top priority was also a deep, unlimited character build system somewhere between D&D and Blizzard's heyday titles. Connecting it all was to be a campaign not so different from XCOM's own globe-spanning campaigns. I wanted a game where your favorite penguin samurai getting munched by a gigantic dinosaur was just another setback you'd have to overcome in your unique campaign.
Well, as I've released Everpixel Tactics, I've read a lot of feedback. From my pixel artist partners, I've gotten feedback that the game needs a coat of paint in order to get the pixels "more pixely." From many of the gamers, I've heard that they'd like to explore the world of Everpixel Tactics (and that not being able to explore it really breaks the immersion!) And for my own part, I didn't really like Everpixel Tactics' campaign. At all.
Especially with this final point, I found myself wanting to explore the procedurally-generated worlds of Everpixel Tactics. Why generate such fantastical worlds if you could not explore them? And so I reserved some of the harshest feedback of the game for myself.
So what to do when faced with such feedback? Everpixel Tactics is a bucket list item; something I plan on supporting for many years to come. So naturally, I am tossing out the bad, keeping the good, and polishing up the "meh" until it is "good."
I've given the entire look of the game a once-over, going so far as to have completely redone many parts of the UI. I've completely scrapped the current campaign system. I will go more into detail with the upcoming campaign in the next devlog...but I will give a sneak peek below.
Crunchier Pixels
It's always been important to me that Everpixel Tactics "look the part." I cut my teeth on the SNES era and I wanted to make a game that - while not necessarily being slavish to the SNES games of my childhood - at least evokes that era. And I was fortunate enough to have discovered a brilliant pixel artist (Benvictus) whose art meshed perfectly with my vision.
In part to showcase his art off more, I have redone the UI. All icons now are scaled to match the dimensions of his raw pixel art. I think that the results speak for themselves - the game's pixels pop out much more.
World Exploration
Many initial players of Everpixel Tactics evoked a desire to explore the world. Being the only lone, mere mortal developing this game, I limited the scope of Everpixel Tactics so that I could focus on the combat. But as I've seen the feedback and played the game myself (not to mention I've felt the urge to explore the procedurally-generated worlds), I've come to realize that Everpixel Tactics needs to allow players to explore its unique, surreal, pixelated worlds.
And so it shall be. The next update of Everpixel Tactics will allow players to explore the world. But more on this below....
Campaign
As mentioned above, the previous iteration of Everpixel Tactics' campaign took inspiration from XCOM. In XCOM, you had to manage limited resources while researching new technologies in a desperate hope to keep ahead of the game's creeping power curve. But in Everpixel Tactics, your crew of mercenaries magically teleported across the world from mission-to-mission. Sometimes there was an Apocalypse, and you had to run successful missions in order to win. But it felt hollow. Put bluntly, it didn't work well at all.
Being a passion project, I'm not about to let any major feature of Everpixel Tactics be anything shy of "awesome." I do not depend on the income from Everpixel Tactics to eat, and I do not need what little money it makes. If a feature isn't good, it's either getting some polish until its good - or its getting the axe. Being unsalvageable, the old campaign system has been tossed out entirely. Nothing of its previous iteration will make it into the next update.
Instead, what will exist is something not so different from Battle Brothers. In the initial parts of the campaign, players will be able to accept one-off missions from myriad cities in the world. These cities will also be where players can purchase gear, hire mercenaries, so on and so forth.
But here's where I want Everpixel Tactics to be unique. Some time after the first few missions, world-changing events will occur. These events will very much change the shape of the world.
It is then that players can accept quests (themselves being a series of missions) as a part of this world event. These quests are inspired by Lord of the Rings and will play out something like the Grand-daddy of them all: "Oregon Trail." For example, in Tolkien's epic, the Fellowship didn't just trudge up the Mount Doom, throw the evil ring in, and call it a day. Throughout, they had to face all manners of horrors and make all sorts of decisions.
That's what I want from Everpixel Tactics's new Campaign system. Players will be able to embark on a quest (itself being a series of missions) that will lead them all throughout the procedurally-generated worlds of Everpixel Tactics. Being Everpixel Tactics, though, they will have to contend with dinosaurs, wereslugs, and vicious packs of man-eating wiener dogs. Along the way, your crew of ragtag mercenaries may acquire artifacts of tremendous power, may be bitten by wiener dogs (and thus become wereweens), or succumb to horrible diseases.
Preview Screenshots
Everpixel Tactics Update
Everpixel Tactics Update
Hello! I promised Everpixel Tactics would get a Winter Weenerland update this Winter - and I probably will fail to deliver on that. Instead, it will be a few months delayed - but not by much!
Everpixel Tactics has been a side hobby, and I got overly busy with my "real" job. Truth be told, I got to the point of burnout with my real job, passed it, and had to continue slogging through it for months. The last thing I wanted to see in my little free time was anything resembling code.
But I took some time off - and I even prototyped a Diablo-like ARPG. Unburdened by Everpixel Tactics's codebase, I was able to learn a few little tricks. I'm going to take what I learned and "tidy" up Everpixel Tactics. The next update will include the below:
Resolution and References
Much of Everpixel Tactics needs a once-over to make sure the pixels look crisp, and clean. The next update will include a more disciplined approach to resolutions.
Cryomancy and Winter content
The next update will include Cryomancy and several cold-themed monsters.
Accessibility
I've heard Everpixel Tactics is a tough game to get into! One of those reasons is the overwhelming number of perks and perk trees. I always wanted Everpixel Tactics to be a game based around customizing, building, and tinkering with a squad of fantastical mercenaries. I am not going to remove any perks or perk trees from the game. But I will be looking at ways to ease new players into the game's (admittedly) overwhelming perk system.
Campaign
I am personally not happy with Everpixel Tactics's campaign system. While I find myself enjoying the battles, the campaign feels....empty. The game's first priority was always on engaging, tactical, squad-based combat. But I also wanted the game's world to feel alive and to have a campaign that made players feel like they played some major role in world events. Currently, the campaign is basically a series of never-ending missions.
I want to change it. First, I want campaigns to be short and sweet. Perhaps 10 missions at most for a play through of any given campaign. Quality over quantity - I want the battles to be memorable and for them to build on the previous battles of any given campaign. This is more easily accomplished with a smaller amount of battles.
