Key Events
• Reform group of units.
• Fix art to work with groups.

Last update was a rough one. My original concept for a tower defense game just wouldn’t work the way I had envisioned. So, instead of moving towards a standard tower defense game, I decided to change direction and make a sort of squad based defense game. This update covers that transition. Most importantly, I feel all of my problems right now are technical ones, and that the art will work out (or be adjustable).

Because I was out of town for 3 days, I don’t have a ton of ground breaking progress to report on, but you can see the overview of my game and the current issues I’m facing in the video:

Formations

My game will now focus heavily on formations, which are significantly harder to program. This technical challenge worries me, but at least it is on my shoulders, and not something that I have to pay for (like art). Some of the issues I have to solve:

• Wheeling
• Walking
• Attacking
• Charging
• Skirmish during combat
• Reform after combat

I’m breaking down each challenge into a little piece. You can see the first item tackled, reforming after combat, in my technical overview.

Art Changes

Unfortunately, with the change of my game, some art will be thrown out. This was inevitable, but the silver lining is that a majority of art can still be used, or repurposed. Here are a few things that may not make it to the final anymore.

As you can see, the lost art is mainly props. Hopefully, I’ll find a place for these on future levels.

Width and accessibility play an important role with the art now. I’ve had to add ramps to make certain areas walkable, while other areas have to be wider to make sure a formation can fit through them.

Future changes may be necessary, such as removing the farm to allow for a larger area to walk around. Overall, I’m happy that a lot of money and work in the form of art can be used for the final product.

Interestingly, you can also see the evolution of this level, which shows how the art has changed up to this point.

Next Update

Aside from working on new art with Scott, I’d really like to make a dent in some of the formation tasks mentioned above. They are challenging, and each one takes a significant chunk of focused time. Right now, the lack of 6-8 hour focused windows of work is what is preventing me from getting this done, and I hope to chip away at that over the next 7 days or so.