Pickledtezcat Game Devblog

The second play test of the Alpha build went well, lasting about 30 minutes of real play before an unexpected crash. There were a number of small issues and things that need to be re-balanced, but overall, the game was great fun. When comparing to the real-time version of the game from 6 months ago, there is a marked improvement is fun, and real moments of excitement, at least for this play tester. The mission chosen was one with multiple small groups of enemies scattered around the map. The player had limited artillery and air support, one unit of each. Both sides had a combat support unit for de-buffing opposing troops, and the enemy also had a general support unit for buffing friendly troops. A short time limit meant that the player had to split their troops to tackle several objectives at once. This made the mission quite interesting as several small combat arenas were active simultaneously. The small map size (32x32) wasn't a problem, it never felt that cramped, and at t...

You can see the latest progress on the project in the most recent video diary here. A lot of work has been going on trying to get the AI to work well, without causing too much drain on computational resources. Trying to get AI states to be more flexible so that an artillery weapon might use normal attacks if the enemy gets too close, instead of trying to do long ranged attacks on a target the other side of the map. And so on. I also finally got around to adding an effect to the air support actions so they have an actual aircraft fly in and drop bombs or reveal the map. It's a bi-plane because the current version of the game is set in 1936, with early war technology. The current plan is to get this one finished with a basic set of game-play options and then produce expansions or sequels with all the other great stuff I want to do; custom vehicles, procedurally generated missions and so on. The tactical side of the game is maturing right now, with the introduction of four di...

In any RPG or turn strategy game you'll find special roles for special characters. There's the tank , whose job is to absorb damage, and the DPS whose role is to do a lot of damage per second. You might find other roles like glass-cannon , but the one you can't do without is a healer . Of course a healer isn't only supposed to heal, they also have the ability to put buffs or de-buffs on other characters. At this point you can split in to a further specialized role, the support character. They might not be able to heal at all, but they can buff or de-buff and perhaps summon allies. Once I made the decision to switch Vinland: 1936 over to a turn based strategy game, I had to think about how roles were going to work out. Tanks are obvious, and DPS is more complex. But today I want to talk support. In the above picture you can see that a lot of the selected unit's abilities and actions are grayed out. It can't currently use them because they are restricted....