On The Roadside (Turnbased Strategy inspired by XCOM)

[Davidobot]

I'm glad to see this coming along nicely!

If you don't mind me asking, is the title "On The Roadside" inspired by the Strugatsky brother's work "Roadside Picnic"?

[rmcode]

I'm glad to see this coming along nicely!

If you don't mind me asking, is the title "On The Roadside" inspired by the Strugatsky brother's work "Roadside Picnic"?

Thanks Davidobot

It actually is! The story behind the game is heavily inspired by the book (and quite naturally the Stalker games)... I hope I'll get far enough to actually implement the story

[Positive07]

Today I played this and it looks amazing! It was too hard for me but I loved it, the aesthetics are awesome, feels retro enough hahaha.

The inventory and help text is a little bit disconnected to the game, it's too "HIGH definition" hahaha. Amazing game rmcode, hope to see more!

[rmcode]

Thanks

Today I played this and it looks amazing! It was too hard for me but I loved it, the aesthetics are awesome, feels retro enough hahaha.

There isn't really any balancing yet so weapons and damage are pretty random so far

The inventory and help text is a little bit disconnected to the game, it's too "HIGH definition" hahaha. Amazing game rmcode, hope to see more!

Yeah I have been trying to figure out how to do the UI, but obviously haven't put much work into it yet... I think a monospaced font would work quite well. But that'll have to wait until some later update

[Positive07]

Hahaha that explains a lot of things. Like shurikens being mostly pointless...

And yeah monospaced should do it doesn't even need to be pixelated since graphics aren't either. But a thick stroke monospaced font would be even better.

No need for a complex UI, I would even say that the UI should respect the game grid and colors (that is background and foreground), that would make it even better. And if you can use it with the keyboard that would help with the retro feel it has. But having mouse is really nice too so maybe both? I don't know.

[rmcode]

I'm currently working on the health system, which is using a graph to represent different connected body parts, organs and so on:

I'll work into doing some basic balancing once that's done.

... respect the game grid and colors (that is background and foreground)...

Can you please elaborate what you mean by this?

[Positive07]

Oh I meant that you use a specific set of colours, something like a palette, in the game.
Those colors are rather strict and you try not to use colors inbetween them. But in your UI you use lot's of transparencies and shades of white.
As a "designer" (I like doing UI stuff and have some ideas about this stuff) I recommend you stick with one palette and avoid inbetween colors.
If the colors in your UI matches those in the game it will be a more pleasant experience.

Also I see you use a grid, which makes the game look like if every entity is actually a character of text using a monospaced font. If you respect this grid when rendering buttons and text it will all have the same retro feel to it. So for example if characters and tile are 16x16px then the font used in your UI would be monospaced and have a 16x16px size.

Also in the game you have a foreground color, the color of the tile, and a background color, for example to indicate bullet trajectory, you can use this same method to distinguish hovered and focused elements in your UI.

Those are just some of my ideas, hope they are useful, ask me if you need more clarification or feedback, I love to help in UI design! I'm not that good at games hahaha.

Also I wanted to ask, do you use that graph you showed to calculate damage? It is a rather good way of doing it!

[rmcode]

Thanks for the input, it sounds like a good way to approach it. I'm not sure about the 16x font yet. I imagine it will be kind of frustrating to display lots of information with a big a font like that (e.g. you can only fit 80 characters on a 1280x screen).

I'm still not entirely sure which artstyle to go with for the game, but since the drawing code is almost completely separated from the logic it won't be too hard to change.

Also I wanted to ask, do you use that graph you showed to calculate damage? It is a rather good way of doing it!

Well the idea is too get rid of classic HP bars and have more of a realistic approach to damage. Your attacks can hit certain parts of the body and the game decides which organs and bodyparts are damaged. This is done based on the type of damage (piercing, impact, ...) and on the nodes connected to the entry node.

So for example a slashing attack to the head has a high chance to damage the eyes and the skull, but probably won't hit the brain (since it is protected by the skull). A piercing attack however would have a higher chance to penetrate into the "lower layers" so to speak.

Code: Select all

Hit character
Chance that damage propagates from head to skull was 80%. Rolled 69.
Chance that damage propagates from head to neck was 30%. Rolled 14.
Chance that damage propagates from skull to brain was 80%. Rolled 55.
Attack hit vital organ brain and killed the character.

I have most of the system working, but I still need to figure out how to manage the effects each node will have.

The graph I posted above is actually used for modeling the bodies for the game. I load the graph data and turn it into a Lua table, which then creates the different body parts from template files.

Currently I mark vital organs with a simple "vital" flag and tell the game that a character is dead once one or more vital organs have been destroyed. I still need to implement effects like blindness when both eyes are destroyed, or forcing a character to prone when his legs are broken ...

[Positive07]

Thanks for the input, it sounds like a good way to approach it. I'm not sure about the 16x font yet. I imagine it will be kind of frustrating to display lots of information with a big a font like that (e.g. you can only fit 80 characters on a 1280x screen).

I'm still not entirely sure which artstyle to go with for the game, but since the drawing code is almost completely separated from the logic it won't be too hard to change.

The artstyle for the game itself is really good, I like it that way since as I said feels like something you would play in a console and that retro feel is really nice, if this is not the feeling you are looking for then well... most of my suggestions are pointless.

I understand what you mean about the UI, I don't know what the information you are trying to show look likes, but some buttons may be easy to explain with simple icons which you can fit in a single character. I said 16x but I don't really know what the tile size is for your game, isn't it smaller? If you design it right I'm pretty sure you won't have problems with size, I could help design it if you wanted (if you give me all the information I could layout it out for you or something)

Keep it up, that HP thing sounds really amazing, I love rol games and that rolling mechanic sounds good (little hard to balance though so I hope that goes well)

[LordSeaworth]

Nice to see such great work with this engine.
Keep up the good work!