Followers

Saturday, July 31, 2021

New Encyclopedia Entry: The Psycaster Classes | Archrebel: Prelude

The psycaster classes are now available in the encyclopedia. While their perks' names on this set of classes remain the same, their functionality suffered great changes, and the results can be found here.

So, what's new about the whole job situation to become a full-time game developer? Well, the response is tied with what chance will be brought to the table next week. There are some pending issues at my job which involve going to a new project, which may not fit my current needs and expertise.

As destiny plays its card, I started working on Archrebel: Prelude to get myself familiar with Unity's 2D functionality to create a proof-of-concept strategy/roguelike game I had in the drawer for a long time.

To my surprise, in 7 days, I managed to develop nearly as much as I had done previously in 4 months creating my own engine and editor for the same project. Sure I knew it would be faster but not this faster.

Below is the resulting effort. I drew all sprites myself, learned to use tilemaps, tile pallets, tile slicing, implemented pathfinding and got the grip of some critical features like layer sorting, which was getting on my nerves at first, and develop a grid (thanks to Code Monkey on youtube) to work with pathfinding features when using tilemaps.


So, yeah, I'm quite pleased with the results. Archrebel aims to be a strategy game with a 20 mission campaign. Units can be customized, upgraded, hired, healed, and repaired (in the case of droids/robots). You will get paid with the completion of primary and secondary objects and all equipment you grab from enemies can be sold or added to your arsenal. With a persistent army, your successes and failures will reflect on the performance of future missions.

As for Underlair, "my precious", I'll just continue to upgrade its encyclopedia, for now.

Stay safe!

4 comments:

  1. Impressive!
    I'm sure your calculations are looking more promising now with that kind of development speed in mind :D

    I wonder if it might serve you/Underlair better if Archrebel took place in the fantasy world of Underlair.

    Note that the Psycaster text refers to the Warrior.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, man!

    Regarding your suggestion, I've considered that but I would either need to drastically bump up Archrebel's complexity or butcher Underlair's in order to fit it in the new format. In which case, a version of Underlair in Archrebel's format will be a possibility - most likely as a DLC.

    "Note that the Psycaster text refers to the Warrior."
    Ahh, thanks for noticing it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I meant to suggest using Underlair's theme of Fantasy, rather than its mechanics. It's mostly a cosmetic change, without changing the format. For example, the computer to be defended can be some magical ruins, sniper units could be rangers, grenades could be exploding potions, etc..

    From a marketing angle of 2 games, I think focusing on the fantasy theme would be an advantage. On the other hand, Fantasy would be less of a tribute to the original game.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I see. I'm betting on the original premise as a kind of tribute yes; I believe it will capture the hearts of those who played Rebelstar, Laser Squad, and X-COM: UFO Encounter. And finally, this is a dream of mine since I was a kid, to create my own Rebelstar based game.

    There will be a fantasy setting for sure but Archrebel will eventually evolve into something bigger. I added the subtitle 'prelude' exactly to mark the beginning of something. :)

    ReplyDelete