Friday, October 3, 2014

Mechanics: Debris and Fire

I've implemented debris and fire in order to make terrain more important. The map below spawns in with some fire. That's just for debug purposes but it gets the point across.


 When you're standing on debris, you can pick some up and throw it at an enemy in order to daze them.


Dazing takes away 25% of their time on their next turn, and can stack. In this way you can really reduce the enemy's effectiveness, but at the cost of your own actions.

Fire is more complicated. It deals damage when you enter it, and every turn you end in it (including enemy turns.) It decays after 2 turns unless it is on a Debris tile, in which case it sticks around indefinitely. Fire also counts towards surround, so backing your enemy against the fire is a great idea.

Along the way I made another round of improvements to the Effect-Action system. Fire uses the Attack/Defense mechanics to deal damage, which means that creatures could easily have resistance to fire. And since I can now trigger attacks when units move, I've done most of the work for an "Ambush" (see: Overwatch, Guard) mechanic as well.

Actions now resolve on a FIFO stack, which makes it easier to chain and combine them meaningfully. And each new trigger I add is easier and simpler, so I feel like I'm going in the right direction. Everything is feeling more flexible and uniform, and I'm able to keep all the mechanics in the data, not the code.

Next, I want to implement some abilities for the Mystic. This means AoE attacks (Fireball!), maybe a "Flame Weapon" ability which allows the mystic's ally to make a free (the mystic pays for it) attack with a flaming weapon, and a "Fire Lash" ability that allows the mystic to utilize existing Fire on the map. You may be detecting a theme.

Then.. Line of sight? Ambush? Stealth? Re-equipping? Doors? Light sources? Furniture?

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