More End Turn Improvements

Here are several more improvements aimed at making it more clear whose turn it is, and who still needs to move. First, when a hero is out of time, we end his or her turn immediately, rather than waiting for you to push the button.

Next, we removed all actions from the action bar when you are done with your turn, and we added a new button to the ability bar that lets you advance to the next unit.

Finally, the portrait cards now tint to a sepia tone and animate over to the left when a hero's turn is over. This makes a big difference! And when it's your turn again, they all brighten up and animate back, which is a nice cue.

It's not what I'd call shippable, because we're missing a clear in-world indicator, not to mention most of the UI art is programmer art, but it's getting easier to use, and I should be able to leave it alone for a while.

Next up is more mission content. I want to build out a complete (minimal) plot line for the Gorgon Menace. That's going to be our first playtest content.

Unknown Terrain and Thin Walls

Here's another pass on missions. Now instead of having holes in the world where you can't see, we show unknown terrain as basically black.* 

So it's a lot easier to tell where the end of the map is, and what you haven't explored yet. Also I've switched out the wall gen algorithm so that walls are no-longer tied to pits. Now we have thin walls that emphasize the "made of paper" look that we're going for.

Here's another shot from a different camera angle. 

Sorry these scenes are so dark. I need to put some torches in there or something** :-p

*I'm not totally happy with revealing all of the walls to the player like this, and I might take them out and just show the terrain (floor/cliff) instead, we'll see.

**Or some mystical glowing wall crystals. Or some glowing mushrooms, or some other high fantasy lighting fixture. I guess I never complain when other games are well-lit, so I doubt if anyone will call me on lighting that doesn't exactly fit with the lore.

Gorgon Interior Decorating: Initial Concepts

Some relatively quick concepting on the gorgon lairs & inhabitants...

Emerging themes seem to be: tendrils, jagged rocks, cathedral-like arches with some weird organic elements, and a turquoise/indigo color scheme.

The Eponymous Feature

I've (finally) implemented the player's "Legacy" in Legacy. When one of your heroes dies, you are given an opportunity to build him or her a tomb:

If you choose to, a new job opens up and you have to spend a bit of time building the Tomb.

When you are finished, that hero is added to a persistent store that keeps track of all of the memorable things you've accomplished. This is your "Legacy." What's cool about it is that those characters can then come up again later in subsequent games, in two ways.

First, they can show up as historical characters, legends that your characters talk about, or town founders, who gave their names to certain sites.

Second, they can be "rebooted" as fresh-faced playable characters, giving you a chance to tell their story all over again.

When you complete the campaign, all living heroes will also be added to your Legacy. The plan is that towns, sites, monsters, items, really anything that can have a name and a history, will be saved as well. This allows you to craft your own mythology. As you play the game multiple times, your heroes will become epic legends, and sometimes they will wander back into your current story.

That dreamlike, circular continuity, where the names and faces are the same but the stories change every time, is one of the central emotions I want to get across.

The Clockwork Dead

(from the research notes)

The Morthagi (a singular and plural noun) is what we call the large variety of constructs, and even, dare we say, beings, that combine once-living flesh and magic with mechanical components and clockwork, in order to achieve a semblance of life, and in some cases an all-too-real agency and cunning.

Mortificial is a term for a mixture of dead tissue and clockwork, bound together with magic, to serve some purpose, such as a prosthetic limb. It would not be incorrect to say that the Morthagi are mortificial beings.

Mortificer is the term for one who invents and builds Morthagi. They tend to be a blend of tinkerer and mystic; both crafts are necessary, and mortificers come to the craft with a variety of skill and motivations. Some are history's greatest villains, and some (more rarely) are heroes.

Mortificial devices in general, and the Morthagi in particular, tend to remain operational indefinitely or until destroyed by violence, whichever comes first. Thus, it's not unheard-of to find the loathsome constructs in ancient tombs, or sealed caves, untouched by time for eons. Such constructs often have unique designs, but again certain designs seem to be timeless, repeated by every practitioner of the artform.

Some of the simpler Morthagi must be powered by an external mystical or mechanical source, and can fall dormant in the absence of a power source. Others though have been crafted to harvest their own power from their surroundings, sometimes by consuming raw materials such as "the flesh of the living" or some other such magically rich substance. Still others seem to gather energy in a more complicated (and probably even worse) way that we don't completely understand. Regardless, it is never safe to assume that a given Morthagi is dormant. Almost all of the common designs include a storage mechanism for energy, and can reactivate when certain conditions are met.

If a Morthagi is encountered in a dormant state, it is sometimes possible to remove its power source without destroying the body. This is an extremely dangerous operation obviously, but we have some accounts from the literature of skilled mortificers who have safely disabled dangerous constructs in the field. We do not recommend this procedure. We recommend extreme preemptive violence instead. Fire is also effective.

Save/Load, Company Names, and FMOD Integration

You can save and load games now. It doesn't handle the case where you're in a mission as part of a campaign yet, but it handles them each separately.

Now that I can save and load, it's much easier to test and develop campaign features, such as the tutorial plot. One new feature in that vein is the ability to name your company, and to rename your base when you claim it.

I think naming a thing has a powerful psychological effect on a player, that it creates a bond with that thing. I want to give players opportunities to name and customize without overwhelming them or stumping them. That's why I have the name suggestions there too, so that if you're feeling lazy you can click through. The name gen algorithm, uh, could still use some work.

Next, I'm pretty proud to say that I've integrated FMOD into Legacy. This is non-trivial since FMOD doesn't come with Java bindings and I've had to craft my own. It's up and running with 3D positional audio. I haven't finished wrapping the entire FMOD api, but already we've got the major win, which is that we can use FMOD Studio to do all our sound design. And by "we" I mean "Candy." :-)

It does all the sounds!

So, next? Campaign usability and streamlining. I want to get to a state where the player a) understands the current state of the game and b) understands how to move forward. Once there's a playable campaign in place, however basic, we can start playtesting. I know I keep saying that. Heh.