By the skin of my teeth!
With mere minutes left in the last day of the month, I completed my prototype!
Holy cow you guys, I actually did it. I was very skeptical up front about my ability to do it, but I somehow pulled it off. I have a working (though not very "juicy" as some game devs say) prototype of the main battle loop of my game!
My original goal, as you might remember, was to have it done by the end of September. Well, yesterday, September 30th, at 11:55 PM, I completed the whole loop. The loop now has:
- a full initiative/turn system
- a rules engine for managing the rules of battle
- a battle snapshot system for tracking the game state
- a 3D battle environment
- a 2D HUD for displaying game data to the player
- a unit control system, where you can command your units to
- move around the board
- attack enemy units
- play cards (both normal and targeted)
- end their turn
- a full battle state machine that responds in real time to every change, from turns to mouse position, clicks, and victory/defeat
What's next
There are still a lot of changes to make before this is super compelling and fun, but iterating on a working prototype is SO MUCH easier and more fun than getting from nothing to something. Distinctly missing from the current prototype:
- Cool looking 3D models
- Animations for:
- unit movements
- weapons firing and damage
- unit destruction/death
- HUD changes
- card selection
- Props and landscape variety
- More player control over unit movement and facing
- Cool card designs
- Music and SOUND DESIGN
Not to mention a bunch of other stuff. I put that last one in all-caps because that's what I used to do for a living before I became a software engineer, and I am SUPER excited to make sounds for this game.
There's way more in the pipeline for this game (including eventually telling you its name and what it's about). I can't wait to show it to all of you.
So, with the foreknowledge of all the things missing that are mentioned above, I present to you an entire battle fought in my prototype: