Genre: Turn-based strategy (TBS), Indie, Card & Board Game
Space Grunts 2
Update v0.4.0 – Captain, we encounter a big boss!
Sooo, not a very big list of new stuff this week, but there is one HUGE addition to the game and that's an end-boss! Defeating the boss doesn't really do anything yet, so that's something I'll be working on for next update ( an actual ending ) and I'll also start working on more alien-specific cards, especially for the boss battle.
Besides adding a boss to the game, there's also a collection of new cards and effects and a few big changes in balancing the whole game, I've personally been enjoying this version more than the previous ones due to the balancing in card-drops and alien encounters.. so let me know what you think!
There are now just a few big things left on my to-do list, first one is making an actual ending to the boss-battle , second is adding more cards but also alien-specific cards. Still a few events I want to add, and a couple of hidden/alternate area's for players to encounter and venture into. And finally get some daily-challenges up and running.
Of course I'll also keep balancing and tweaking all the other stuff based on feedback and my own play-throughs!
Now go check out v0.4.0 captains! - Next week the price of the Early Access will also increase !
PS: check last Thursday's dev-vlog on the game's development. It talks about getting the game playable on the move, but also some of the new events in the current version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yR1y87YbQw Next Thursday will show the creation of the boss which you can encounter in the game starting now!
Full changes list:
added: new card - Scope
added: new card - Infection
added: new card - Berserker
added: new card - Freezeray
added: new card: Invisibility
added: new passive card - Fighter
added: light to flames and burners (especially in dark-zone)
added: little jingle when finding a secret area
added: small plants now leave just a small spore area
added: End-boss: The Blob
Fixes and tweaks:
fixed: explosion sound triggered too often on cards that didn't need it
fixed: invisible aliens still show the "anger/sick/confused" twirls
fixed: babygon now also shuts-down when near EMP
fixed: if killed at idle entity, cards stay in view
fixed: invisible blockades popping up after fire or explosions
tweak: small improved mouse controls
tweak: soften/smoother lights
tweak: slight increase in harder opponent spawning earlier in the game
tweak: slight increase in higher-skilled weapons dropping earlier
tweak: balancing on drop-rates for all items
Update v0.3.0 – Events and Dragging
Another week, another big update coming in the form of v0.3.0. With this update I added a whole new control method for mouse-players. The click on a card is replaced with a little drag+drop action, you don't have to drag them a lot, but you do need to drag them a bit towards the played card area.
The main advantage is that there will be less "wrong-card" moments which happened a lot when having to just click to play the cards. Now you can always drag the card back down and it won't be played.
I also hustled the order of the special "infinity" cards a bit, so that the "Skip" turn card is placed at the end of your hand and not at the start. This gives your actual deck more a focus, and hopefully also makes the player more aware of these cards being special in a way.
Besides that there's a bunch of new game-events, and I lowered the amount of Comets in the Comet event (was a bit much). Damage area's of everything are also now much more visual, so Comest, bombs, plasma-bombs, they all clearly show their danger area, making it easier to navigate out of the way.
Check the full list below on all the many changes and improvements made in the last week. For next week I'll be focussing mostly on the important tasks of adding a bunch of new cards, more special cards, and possibly start working on adding an actual end-goal (boss battle).
Full changes list:
added: Event - Blazing - Sun is dying, causing open fires across the planet surface
added: event Darkness - first space-station area is covered in darkness
added: flame-exhaust obstacles
added: card-effects (like burning cards from incinerator)
added: Drag-drop cards instead of clicking (mouse and touch controls). Makes it less likely to play/use the wrong card.
added: item Screw Driver - fixes damaged cards in your whole deck
added: item Syringe - selection of random effects when used
added: tutorial for first "inventory-card" being added
added: tutorial for "Infinite" cards like Fist, Skip, Exit, etc
added: safe-spots now also add message in HUD
added: tutorial for "Angry" creatures
added: deck-size now also shows max
Fixes and tweaks:
fixed: added more animation to start of a card-screen
fixed: special cards aren't unlocked yet for codex
fixed: damaged-cards now actually do self-damage when used
fixed: damaged-item tutorial shows wrong avatar
fixed: teleport-card played by aliens doesn't work (Scavenger)
fixed: when player is walking a path (mouse-controls) and mouse-clicks, player should stop/halt
fixed: idle card seems to ignore first card in hand
fixed: corrected Comet-impact location and added highlighted damage map
fixed: when inventory is full, red-key card still shows up in HUD but isn't added to inventory
fixed: some tutorials would be missed due to multiple tutorials triggering
tweak: both cards in a battle are now properly played at same time.
tweak: acid on floors will vanish over time (48+ turns)
tweak: eased up on the comets in Comet event
tweak: unified the look of "infinite" cards like Fists, Tricorder, Skip and Exit
tweak: moved "Idle/Swap" card to end of hand
tweak: movement is now instant (when looking left, you can move right without first having to "turn")
tweak: metal-crates now don't have a minimum-damage-at value (less confusing)
tweak: "Angry" aliens now less stronger (depending on their initial strength and species)
tweak: increased spore-spawn chance on plants
Update v0.2.0 – Comets and Dialogs
Version 0.2.0 comes in HOT! With a bunch of great new features, one of which is the Comets Event! Right now the comet event has a fairly big chance of happening in a game, this will be more balanced over time as there will be more events added, and I'm still finding the right balance between having events and no-events at all.
I've also added a dialog-system to the game, which comes with a bunch of tutorial like instructions and information text left and right.
And the game now has a continue/save game feature! It auto-saves between levels, but when you die, the save-game will be deleted (permadeath!) I might make it an option later on to toggle perma-death on and off, but for now you at least get to take a break on longer runs!
Besides those main things there's a bunch of other stuff added, fixed and tweaked, so for the full list check below. This also marks the first price-increase for Early Access.
Full changes list:
added: dialogs + tutorial instructions/explaining things that happen, with avatar (doc)
added: first "Event" - Comets - has comets randomly dropping around the planet region
added: a map screen
added: continue/save game
added: bigger hero avatars (used in hero-card and dialogs)
added: changed XP-bar rendering (replaced text with visual bar)
added: skill-levels to the players status-bar
added: safe teleportation spots (require a "beam me up" card)
added: new card: Teleporter
Fixes and tweaks:
fixed: quick-teleport won't teleport if danger is gone (opponent died)
fixed: some light/visible-area issues after doing a quick-teleport
fixed: speed improvement on FOV calculations
fixed: radar rendered slightly lower (not to overlap with card-deck counter)
fixed: metal crate debris looks like acid
fixed: improved burning-floor effects
fixed: Cybergon now uneffected by it's own bombs
fixed: door near bomb was still visible but not solid
fixed: player-avatar in dialogs is the wrong one
fixed: FIST disappeared at reshaper
fixed: improvements to card-selection with mouse
tweak: Martian was too strong for early levels, now shows up later in the game
tweak: item-drop rate now includes specific-skills of player
tweak: HP given by transporting to next level now depends on class (tech get's more, grimm get's less)
DEVLOG #12 – Milestones and Planning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Z8x947d-w
Wooaah! I forgot to do a written post for Devlog #11 ! Luckily there was a video talking about the A.I. and how I made them slightly smarter (still needs work).
This weeks video talks about the "big features" that still need to be done before I can call this game "complete". Which doesn't mean I won't be adding new stuff after that, but these are the minimum features I want to add, and after that it fully depends on how many people keep playing the game and if I can come up with interesting extra's.
Most of the big features mentioned in the video are fairly easy things to implement, with the exception of "The Ending" but the hard part there is mostly coming up with the idea, not so much the code behind it.
With the codex/stats screen I mentioned in the video, I might also try and create a little "wiki-extractor" which pulls out all that informations and dumps it into a HTML format that I can use to create a wiki-page on the Orangepixel website. I did the same thing with the Sir Questionnaire Wiki and basically it generates all that informations from a little function I added to the game. It then also generates all the .png images required and correctly links to those, leaving me with just a silly FTP upload to get it all up on the server.
The reason I put this work in wiki's and codex systems is mostly that I often forget a lot of the things I've put in a game, so when players ask for support or help in X amount of months from now, I'll need some sort of reference myself because I probably forget about all of it before then !
Anyway, based on these final "big features" I expect the deadline of end-November is very do-able, I'll be pushing out updates once a week (on Tuesday's) to Steam Early Access, with probably the exception of a one or two weeks where I'll be working on getting the mobile ports up and running and won't have as many new features/changes every week.
Exciting to see the game come to life in such a VERY short time, and still have such a completely different game as the original Grunts was.. I might try my hands on a card-battle Heroes of Loot after this !
Tricorders and Special cards
Here's the first big update for Early Access, and it comes with a long list of tweaks, changes, improvement and a few big new features. The big features are the passive-skills, which are extra cards you can acquire when you level-up in experience (XP). Then before you teleport into the next level, you'll get the choice to pick one out of three randomly chosen cards.
The second big change is the Tricorder card, which is now shown on "first-encounters" with new aliens, items, objects, etc. This will show you a dialog with info on the items and aliens. Still fleshing out the information to show there, but it's a good start. It's also the start of the whole Codex feature that's coming!
So there you have it, check below's full-changes list if you want, and keep in mind that this also means the game will have it's first price-increase next Tuesday (October 8th) so this is the last week you can get the game at this deep discount.
Newly added stuff:
add: Tricorder card now replaces "Skip" card on first encounters, throws up a dialog with stats+info on entity being scanned
added: passive-skills - between levels (available with every level-up skill point)
added: Passive skill: Rager - increase HP with 1 after every alien kill (in battle)
added: Passive skill: Boring - big chance your opponent falls a sleep when entering the battle
added: Passive skill: Calming - angry creatures will calm down near you
added: Passive skill: Dispenser - dispenses spores making creatures lose your smell (harder to track you)
added: sickness status to player (when bitten or near sick creatures)
added: passive/skip cards now have their own color
added: pathfinding (mouse) now avoids hazardous floors if possible (acid, burns)
added: Powertool - +1 attack on full deck of cards
added: renamed "Leave" to "Retreat" and gave new icon
Fixed and changes:
fixed: alien-attack card images now show "attack" state
fixed: got too many skillpoints (or not deleted after using one?)
fixed: skip-card now properly reshuffles the cards to the end of your deck
fixed: various bugs with card-deck count not being correct and cards missing
fixed: "quick-teleport" special card shouldn't kick in when energy == 0
tweak: wrench-item now available more often
tweak: enemies don't level up fast enough now (low hp and low attackskills)
Let's Play Space Grunts 2
[previewyoutube="4UIqozRXqKI;leftthumb"]
A little Let's play session of me playing the game and giving some comments and info on certain decisions made and things that need changing over the coming version.
This was with build v0.0.14 so things might have changed since! :)
DEVLOG #10 – Are we on SCHEDULE?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQl7LvCM3qw
So the video basically covers where I am with the project, how much I have done so far and if I’ll make the deadline.. BUT .. what’s the big stuff still left?
One of the major things that I still need to do is get some intelligence into the enemies. The way I’ve written the card-battle code right now the opponent really just does two things:
are we being attacked? check our defense-percentage and based on that either defend or just attack OR idle. are we playing the first card? check our attack-percentage, and attack or be idle based on that! So yeah, that’s not very intelligent, and altho it all works for the easier and early alien encounters, in the later levels and for more harder opponents we need something much better. My plan is to give the aliens a set of defend, attack and special item cards (like healing) in their arsenal based on their type (alien, humanoid, robotic).
I’m not giving them a full deck of cards, which would of course be the most fair and realistic way to do the card-battling, but instead we are “cheating” a bit on this, since the opponent will be more free to choose which card it will be playing from it’s (very) limited set of cards and based on percentages.. but as with all games, you don’t want realistic enemies, you want capable and interesting enemies, and this should accomplish that!
So that’s one of the big things I’ll be working on after I’m back from my little vacation in a week or so, and I hope to have it up and running before I push out the early-access version!
DEVLOG #9 – Long list of changes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N48bSzXfgMY
Riiiiight, another week filled with changes and improvements.. but I also kinda covered it all in this weeks video! So it doesn’t leave much to talk about in this blog post.
Something that wasn’t on the list was a bit of bug-fixing with the card system. At some point during my play-test session I noticed that the attack/defends stats that were mentioned weren’t getting played and that I either did much more attack points towards the aliens, or that they maybe didn’t defend enough.
Due to me having re-done the card system a few times, I guess some bugs got in there and altho obvious if you really look at it, these bugs weren’t as obvious when I just did a play session and not checked the card-stats and alien-stats on every turn because I kinda figured it was all working correctly!
I also talked about the plant and spore problem in the video, but even tho I sort-of fixed the issue, I’m still not really happy with how the plants work. In Space Grunts one there was just the one type, and it could go either way.. which was much more tactical to base your decision on. How the plants work now, you’ll basically make a mistake once (hit a poison-spore plant) and from that moment on you’ll simply try to avoid those plants.
A few solutions I’m pondering now are:
1) Have more plant variation, so not just 3 types but maybe 12 types, some good, some bad.
2) Have plants be much more rare than they are now, and maybe limit every “world” (area) to just one plant-type. Down-side is that you’re screwed if that plant is the poison one.
3) Have much more “spore-effects” so that it’s possible that multiple, or even all, plant types have semi-positive effects.
A combination of 1 and 3 might be the best way to go, but that’s something I’ll just have to try and see how it plays.
Anyway! That’s it for this weeks blog!
DEVLOG #8 – Creating alien plant life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Qma7a1IWk
Never, ever, give somebody a green-screen to play around with.. in all honesty: I have wasted a bit too much time playing with that green-screen for the video!
BUT I still had a decently productive week, besides creating all the plant life I showed in the video, there’s a few more interesting changes made to the game this week. First of those is damaged-items! It’s now possible for items to be damaged, right now that means they will deal 1 damage to you if you use them in a battle. But it’s very likely I’ll put some more variation in the effects that damaged items have.
Code wise it was pretty easy to implement, since all tiles in the game map already track damage values, I just made the pickup-item entity test for a high enough damage value, and if true, then item is damaged. So pretty much all items that get caught in a bomb-explosion or fire will be damaged.
I’ve also been trying to streamline the use of items/cards a bit more. There were still a lot of cards that you could use freely at any tile on the map. But most of those cards had some sort of effect on your battles with aliens. So I now moved them around a bit and changed the usage of some of the cards slightly so that all these cards are now required to use in a battle – meaning the player has to make more tactical decisions on when to use those items (because you will be in a fight!).
Besides the plant life I drew a bunch of new enemies to encounter, most of those are of the humanoid type which means they will be using the same type of weapons as you! joy!
DEVLOG #7 – Don’t mention the Space Pirates…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JggWYxIozTE
Alrighty, well most of the stuff is covered in this weeks vlog. And I’m not going into the whole “card-rendering” problem I mentioned :D It was a silly solution I had, and it’s now a much better one, let’s keep it at that! One thing is that I might actually do another big update to the system, and pre-render the card graphics into a card-texture.. that way I can also rotate the cards around an angle.. something I can’t do now, because the card is build out of various elements including text, which will all look messy if I rotate and position each element by itself.
On the topic of drawing! spending time drawing a bunch of new environments also gave me a better feel for the looks I’m going after. I noticed that 50’s-70’s style sci-fi is mostly: shiny, colorful, and round.. for some weird reason. So I started putting more rounded corners on my walls and also tried some uncomfortably brightly colored surroundings. Not really my usual style, but the end result does work. So we now have bright orange floors, neon green walls.. it all makes the game have a certain look and feel that I was after.
I might go in and re-do the first area’s graphics, which were mostly a base to build upon anyway!
With game-progression slowly showing it’s face in the current build of the game, there’s all sorts of things to start thinking about. How does the player progress? how does the player get new cards in his deck? are these cards permanent unlocks? or just for the current game? How many new cards do you get? how many cards do I need to add?!
A lot of stuff that I haven’t really figured out or thought about before this point, as I was simply testing the whole card-battle stuff in combination with the classic Space Grunts turn-based action. But now that I’m fairly confident it all works, it’s time to put some thinking into all the details!
