New Introduction

Previously the user had to put in some information (like his unique ID) to be able to start a match. I have replaced all the old introduction for a new one with proper functionality to perform user login, password change, password retrieval, user creation, Main Menu, up to what I've called Control Panel, where the player may see all his personal matches as well as the public matches available on the server, and may change the Theme for the Match.

Theme is a feature I created probably too soon, but it is so interesting that I didn't resist. Through the Theme, the player may change all the visuals for a match, but only for himself. This way, two players may play the same match with completely different visuals. I hope it works!

I'm working now on the adaptaion of the older routines to the modifications I made on some basic scripts and on finishing some necessary functionality, like Match Creation.

There is a video showing these updates on the portuguese blog.

Also, I hope to start soon the Art Direction e be alble to work on (and finish) the visual assets next month!

Project Update

So sorry for the gap between posts!

For the last few weeks I've been working on an idea to create a minimally decent art for version 1.0 of the game (the one I intend to finish by the end of august). The problem is that Bruno and Juliana (the project's artists) are knee deep in work and we don't want to rush and create a "dirty" version of what we had planned.

But I also need the assets right now if I want to get close to the target date. So I suggested to Bruno that I would create the assets for version 1.0 in a way that would enable me to finish the programming tasks, would give them more time to work on the initial idea and wouldn't be too ugly. As a matter of fact, I came up with a nice idea that may work (I hope).

But, to make things easier for us in the future, I'm having the headache of creating a Theme system right now. That I will explain next!

And don't forget to check the videos on the Portuguese blog (link on the top right corner)!

Game Phases

This game is played in turns and each turn is divided in phases. It took me a full month to implement all the phases, but I will present them now in one post:

Command Phase : The player chooses a card from his hand plays it. The card allows him to command units on the board in specific ways.

Movement Phase : The commanded units may be moved around the board. For this phase, I also implemented a simple version of the A* pathfinding algorithm so the game can check the movement requested by the player.

Combat Phase : The most complex phase, thats where all the fun happens (and where I have most of the bugs!). The round ends with the player drawing a new Command Card.

Thats it. Right now, nothing is animated but when we reach version 2, I hope not only the hardcore boardgame players will be interested!

The Game

The game we are making is an adaptation of a board game called BattleLore. It is turn-based, multiplayer (2 players each match) and asynchronous. We made these choices because they result in a simpler design as we won't have to deal with AI routines and we can make it work across the Internet with a simple interface with a PHP script and a MySQL database.

The project is broken in 3 phases:
Version 0: Gameplay testing. We are now in this phase and a beta build is already being tested.
Version 1: By the end of august, we plan to have a complete and debugged build of the game, including simple (but cool) visual assets. We plan to release this version to beta testers.
Version 2: By the end of the year, we plan to create the final assets for the game (with animation and visual effects) and, we hope, implement the single player functionality.

The game doesn't have a name yet! We want to ensure that we have first a solid foundation of the game mechanics so we can create different themes on top of that., but next month the theme and art for the first "mod" of Version 1 will be defined.

Us

I am Almiro Carvalho, 39, graduated in Mechanic Engineering but never worked in the field. My experience is spread among somewhat disconnected activities: systems analyst, database programmer, CEO and, in a recent spin, 3D......artist?

Actually I started my animated short during a one year course at the Melies Escola de Cinema e Animação here in São Paulo. But after attending to GDC 2010 I decided to put my short on stand by and start to focus on the field of 3D and interactivity.

To do that I joined efforts with Bruno, a friend I made at school and who has similar interests, and we decided to make a 3d game using the Unity 3D engine. More recently we've been also relying on the drawing talent of Juliana, also from the school.

Bellow are some links to what we have done in 3D so far:

My short: Os Escolhidos
Bruno's short: O Conto da Caverna
Juliana's short: Guaxinim

Hi!

Today I was checking the blog's traffic on Google Analytics and I saw that many visitors were from abroad. So I decided to post also in english so all non portuguese speaking visitors may follow the project.

I know the project is being going on for two months now, but since we are still in early stages, I think I can bring all the newcomers up to date on the development. I'll try to do that ASAP, but you sure may post any comments and questions you like! On the next post, I'll show you what this game is about.

In short:

WELCOME to our blog!