Alrighty, I haven't done an update in a little while but I wanted to get my game to a certain point first before I did one. What's this point that I've reached in game development that's important enough to warrant keeping updates at bay? My game has reached a playable state!
Ok, so while a game reaching a playable state doesn't sound to interesting, it actually means slightly more than just playable. First off, I only expected my game to be playable by March, so for it to be playable now is quite an achievement I think. I was hoping to get it done by mid February and I set a deadline for April, so I'm quite chuffed I got it done in January.
Secondly, when I say playable, I mean majority of the mechanics, menus and other stuff are done and ready to use. Basically, playable means I don't really have to worry to much about mechanics anymore and I can just start adding content. Obviously there will be some mechanic tweaking and some mechanics may have slipped under my radar, but other than that, the game is pretty much playable. It's not winnable yet though, that can wait for another update.
Update time~
Settings:
There is now a settings menu! Take a gander:
It's quite basic for now, but as more features in the game are editable, like volumes and stuff, I'll start adding 'em.
World creation:
There is now a new menu as well for world generation!
So far it allows you to choose which kingdom you wish to play and what you want to call your world. World name is mainly used for saving the game. Once the map generation has more too it, there'll be more options for world generation, like maybe leaving out rivers or making that every kingdom starts with the same amount of soldiers, ect.
Saving and Loading:
Saving and loading has been revamped! It has a new menu as well: (So much new menus!)
Each world can be saved and loaded as you please. There aren't many restrictions other than you can save the same world in different saves. Unless you're smart enough to copy paste files :P
Graphics:
Not much interesting went into graphics this time around, however I have been doing some more optimisations so that older PCs might be able to run my game.
- I've also integrated some graphics options into the new settings menu so that if a pc can't take the strain, the user can turn down some of the graphics effects, like shadows and such.
- Paths now have a much nicer texture than the plain colour they had before.
- The cursor now has it's own icon in game (see above in settings).
- I fixed a long standing graphically glitch which annoyed the heck out of me and made menus look really bad.
You may have been looking at the above screenshots and may have thought "Woah, your menus are ugly!". If you didn't then thank you, but for those of you who don't like it, don't worry, I plan to do a massive overhaul of how menus look. If you have any suggestions, feel free to, uh, suggest them.
Statistics:
The statistics menus for each race are about 40% done right now. The main thing holding them back is that I haven't decided how to display the information. If I had that sorted out, the stats screens would be done in a heartbeat. However, the part that is done is the commander stats, as shown below.
Yeah, I know, pretty awesome isn't it? My graphic artists work is finally being added to the game.
Mounts: (Yeah, Finally!)
So mounts have been added to the game. They give units extra speed boots and hp boosts. Now this might sound a bit over powered but they do all that at the cost of attack range, so they have to get up real close and personal if they want to make the most of these new creatures.
Shown above, is a commander riding a horse and the next picture shows another character riding their summon.
Army creation:
One of the bigger things that needed to get done was done. The army creation screen:
This allows you to take units to attack the enemy, rather than having to go solo every time. Every kingdom will have their own units you can use and every commander has an additional special unit as well.
That's it for this update, there may have been one or two small things that I might have left out, but if I remember them, I'll just inform you in the next update. Hope to see ya later.
