The past two weeks have been very busy, but nevertheless I have made some good progress on the game, hammering out the brand new magic system to replace the clumsy and buggy one that is currently in the game. I've implemented the new Magical Influence system, which limits the range players can cast Grand Spells to within a few tiles of the Enclave, this comes into play when you complete your first Sorcerer's Tower, to increase your Magical Influence you must build Beacons, which provide some Magical Influence to the tiles surrounding them. The power of the spell that you can cast within the range of the Beacon depends on the level of the Beacon, which can be upgraded like Citadels. When you select a spell to cast each tile that you can cast that spell on will become highlighted. Beacons can only be constructed within your Magical Influence, as they act like reflectors or relays for the spells that are actually channeled from your Sorcerer's Tower at the Enclave, as of yet I have no plan to require players to level up their entire 'grid' to channel a spell across the map, i.e. as long as the tower recieving the spell at the end is high enough in level the spell will go through. (Though I'm certainly open to feedback on that point!)
With that completed I began working on the new system for generating Mana to cast the spells with, since raw Crystal will no longer be the fuel for such things. This proved a bit more daunting a task than I had initially thought, and has delayed me some in the making. I didn't really go into it with a concrete plan, only an overall feel for what the system should look and play like, so I iterated a bit while I was working and arrived at the following system; With a Sorcerer's Tower constructed in the Enclave players will be able to start 'Channeling' Mana into their reserves by transmuting Crystal, players may select a rate between 100 to 400 to use in the reaction (which, once set, will continue at the beginning of each turn until cancelled) but the more Crystal the players use, the less efficiently it is turned into Mana, this is because the reaction becomes less stable and more Mana escapes into the ether (it's all very scientific you see), adding in raw resources to act as 'Regulators' like Food or Iron will increase the efficiency because they work like 'sponges' or 'barriers' for the escaping Mana, permitting more intense reactions to be sustained with a lot less waste. The base 'Purity' of Mana is at 8% for 100 Crystal with no 'Regulators', so leaving the Tower running at these settings will cost 100 Crystal each day and generate 8 Mana. This Purity goes down 1% for every 100 Crystal added, and Purity can be increased by +2% for 100 Food or Lumber, +3% for 100 Stone & +5% for 100 Iron. I plan on adding Techs to increase efficiency or decrease material input costs, making the magic system a very powerful weapon if players want to invest in it (and I'm thinking you definitely will want to once it's finished).
That pretty much sums up what I've been working on lately, what I plan on tackling this week is finishing off the Mana Channeling system and begin feeding in all the old spells to run on Mana and the new Beacons, then I'll probably make up a few more spells which will really compliment the new system and make for a much deeper experience, hopefully I'll get that done in time for the next article, but it's the holiday season and it's getting kinda crazy over here.
Thanks for reading and I hope everyone is enjoying the Beta so far, keep up with the latest developments on your social media too!
Liking, sharing, or re-tweeting really helps get the project infront of other eager games looking for something new and different to scratch their turn-based-strategic itch!
Compliments of the season!
~ Heftig
