Warscale 51 - As good as air
by Guimo · 11/18/2009 (5:59 am) · 5 comments
Hi everybody!
About two weeks have passed sice my last blog. As usual I have been very busy with Warscale.
In these two weeks I have been working on rehauling the game UI. If you remember in my last blog, Michael Yatskar from Sleeping Paint created a card design for Warscale. So it was my turn to make this design work. Also, I have been reading and simpllifying a lot of the monsters in the DnD monsters manual in order to be able to use those monsters as a base guideline. Finally I bought a compy of TextureMaker which allowed me to create some textures for prototyping. Quite a good program and easy to use but I guess if you have the money you should go for Genetica (but at 10 times the price of TextureMaker I think I can live without it for now).
Updating the card control
The first step was to modify the card control. Warscale makes use of Torquescript functions to define specialized UI controls by mixing other controls like buttons, bitmaps and text. So, I can invoke that function to create multiple instances of a card control. This allows me to have a dynamic UI where I can add and remove cards at will from the UI.
The good thing with this approach is that once I change the base UI control template, any other control will use the same codebase and be updated as well. As all the different UI in the game like the Equipment Editor, the Army Editor, the Model Store and the game itself use the same object all was updated at once.
The problem with this approach is that you cannot use a GUI designer. You need to code everything by hand, position text, compute text size, test resize behaviour and all that. Painful but it was worth it. Look at this:
One of the things I was forced to develop was a small modification to the BitmapButton class. I wanted it to be tri state, enabled (full color and handled mouse move and clicks), disabled (grey color), and ignore events (full color but wont handle mouse over or click, that is, work like a bitmap). It was a small change but helped me a lot.
Updating the game UI
The card control is now a component of the game and I wanted to make it feel like that. The player should be able to interact with the card in order to give orders like attack, move and activate special actions. So if you remember the older screenshots I had some Warcraft-like buttons on the lower left portion of the screen. Now those controls have been removed and now the card can be used to control everything. Whenever you pick or hover over a unit, its large version is displayed on the lower left portion of the screen and you can use that large version to issue commands. Even better, the mini cards at the bottom of the screen have their mana button enabled so it is possible to summon them in a single click.
The benefit on this approach is that the number of clicks have been reduced which is a boon for gameplay. Just one less click and only for 2 of the 4 actions, but the difference is obvious.
All the icons by Michael Yatskar from Sleeping Paint.
Special actions as URL
All the text in the cards are MLText controls which is great for display purposes and in this case provided me with a powerful tools for gameplay. One of the attributes of the ML is to be able to handle links like in an HTML-like format and you can handle that with an onURL method. So I decided to encode the ability like in this shot:
So, this text is displayed as a link which makes it obvious you can click it. So when you click the ability you get the specialid which I can use to fire the appropriate event. Simple and intuitive.
Player info
Something I was missing was the player information. I had a small bar in the top of the screen that looked terrible and was too small to be really useful. So, after removing the buttons I had more space available so it was an excellent opportunity to do something about that.
I decided to create another reusable control where I can display the player information, like the name, the number of units in mind, dead, the army and the number of mana points available. The bar also highlights the active player and allows to open the gravear by clicking the tomb button. Of course there is enough space for up to 4 players which the game currently supports.
Here is an image of the current state.
Animated textures and tiles
I'm no texture artist so any output by TextureMaker is amazing for me. I managed to create an animated texture of water and fire. Not the best, but good enought for now. I updated the fire tile so now it is animated. I still dont have any tile conversion ability to switch a tile to fire but will soon. Anyway if somebody may want to contribute with a nice animated loopable seamless fire texture (all frame full of fire not just a flame) I would be greatly thankful.
The missing element texture
I was thinking about the elements and how to represent them. Right now the elements are represented this way:
Death - Necromancer
Texture - A dark wet cave with bones.
Gameplay - Cold, death, sickness.
Spells - Death spells allow to slow movement, drain life, weaken the attacks, paralyze and kill creatures by poison or sickness.
Creatures - Undeads. Undeads are weak creatures but have lots of draining abilities which allow them to heal or increase their abilities.
Pros - Spells to slow and drain the opponents.
Cons - Weak creatures.
Life - Summoner / Druid
Texture - White heavenly light and green leaves.
Gameplay - Life increases lifeforce, healing, regeneration, strength.
Spells - Life spells are about healing and increasing combat damage.
Creatures - All life creatures are giant and strong. Dire versions of the normal earth creatures. Life is all about large monsters with brute force.
Pros - The most powerful creatures are related to life.
Cons - No direct damage. Dire creatures are more expensive to invoke.
Fire - Invoker
Texture: Fire
Gameplay - Heat, passion, anger, combat.
Spells - Fire spells are related to destruction of artifacts and equipment and fire damage to creatures. Fire spells also increase combat abilities for creatures.
Creatures - Fire creatures have high damage capacity and usually have superior combat abilities. Like whirlwind attacks, destroying equipment or incinerating creatures.
Pros - Fire creatures have improved combat abilities.
Cons - No healing abilities.
Water - Mentalist
Texture - Blue with caustics.
Gameplay - Related Wisdom, intelligence, calculation, control, focus. Increase defense. Blue strategy is to be the last creature standing.
Spells - Water spells are related to defense and mind control. Blue spells allow to increase various defenses, steal control of opponent units, read minds and gain more spells each round.
Creatures - Water creatures have high defense attributes. They also have resistances against many element damage.
Earth - Wizard
Texture - Cracked dry earth.
Gameplay - Earth is balance. May not have the abilities of other elements but got mana to back it up.
Creatures - Earth creatures are the most common creatures. They are cheap to summon, low cost and have well rounded hit points and attack without being espectacular. Some earth creatures may generate mana. Earth creatures may have abilities from any element on a low level, like wolves may move faster than a normal creature or a gryzzly bear which may have great hp and damage. Earth creatures are also able to fight ethereal creatures more effectively.
Pros - Low mana cost, low price, great all rounders. Earth creatures are the backbone of any army.
Cons - No powerful special abilities.
Air - Illusionist
Texture - ?????
Gameplay - Air is elusive and tricky. Plays with the perceptions. Air strategy is to control the board.
Spells - Air spells are about trickery. Air spells allow to return units back to their owners mind.
Creatures - Air creatures have low defenses but may completely avoid any attack, They may be invisible or ethereal. Air creatures have fast movements. Opponents wont know what hit them and possibly they wont be able to hit back. Some of them may looks more menacing than they really are.
Pros - Quick and nimble creatures backed up with spells to help controlling the board.
Cons - Air creatures are very weak.
Related elements - Sound.
Ok... not that is something I didnt think about... how do I create a texture for AIR? I spent a lot of time on this one... a blue sky and a cloud? No because it may get onfused with water. Grey white as a cloud? Maybe... but I was looking for something a bit more interesting. Stars... no because I wanted air not space. Hard problem. My only reference was that in Warscale, Air is an element for trickery and light show.
Fortunately in my case the soluton came to my head in the shape of an apple. No, I'm not trying to compare myself with Sir Isaac Newton, I was just passing near a computer store and there was this Apple computer with its famous and colorful screensaver. So I gave it a long look and then thought about Windows Vista and its aurora style screen savers... and there it was... the Aurora Borealis... peaceful, colorful, covers all the horizon. Light show at its greatest. Im still missing a good texture for air but this is the idea:
Monster Manual
Creating each monster may be a pain. But fortunately we have the DnD monster manual. Of course the mechanics are different but allows me for a good base point for size, hit points, damage and special abilities for a lot of creatures. A valuable reference so I spent some time reading and trying to find some kind of rule to translate creatures and I think I got one. I hope it works fine.
I was going to create a video but it takes me too long to edit and upload so maybe next week.
The plan for this week
Now that I have defined function, I want to correctly set the elements in all the creatures and objects. Also I want to create at least 4 more creatures... or confirm those I used for beta testing.
Luck!
Guimo
About two weeks have passed sice my last blog. As usual I have been very busy with Warscale.
In these two weeks I have been working on rehauling the game UI. If you remember in my last blog, Michael Yatskar from Sleeping Paint created a card design for Warscale. So it was my turn to make this design work. Also, I have been reading and simpllifying a lot of the monsters in the DnD monsters manual in order to be able to use those monsters as a base guideline. Finally I bought a compy of TextureMaker which allowed me to create some textures for prototyping. Quite a good program and easy to use but I guess if you have the money you should go for Genetica (but at 10 times the price of TextureMaker I think I can live without it for now).
Updating the card control
The first step was to modify the card control. Warscale makes use of Torquescript functions to define specialized UI controls by mixing other controls like buttons, bitmaps and text. So, I can invoke that function to create multiple instances of a card control. This allows me to have a dynamic UI where I can add and remove cards at will from the UI.
The good thing with this approach is that once I change the base UI control template, any other control will use the same codebase and be updated as well. As all the different UI in the game like the Equipment Editor, the Army Editor, the Model Store and the game itself use the same object all was updated at once.
The problem with this approach is that you cannot use a GUI designer. You need to code everything by hand, position text, compute text size, test resize behaviour and all that. Painful but it was worth it. Look at this:
One of the things I was forced to develop was a small modification to the BitmapButton class. I wanted it to be tri state, enabled (full color and handled mouse move and clicks), disabled (grey color), and ignore events (full color but wont handle mouse over or click, that is, work like a bitmap). It was a small change but helped me a lot.
Updating the game UI
The card control is now a component of the game and I wanted to make it feel like that. The player should be able to interact with the card in order to give orders like attack, move and activate special actions. So if you remember the older screenshots I had some Warcraft-like buttons on the lower left portion of the screen. Now those controls have been removed and now the card can be used to control everything. Whenever you pick or hover over a unit, its large version is displayed on the lower left portion of the screen and you can use that large version to issue commands. Even better, the mini cards at the bottom of the screen have their mana button enabled so it is possible to summon them in a single click.
The benefit on this approach is that the number of clicks have been reduced which is a boon for gameplay. Just one less click and only for 2 of the 4 actions, but the difference is obvious.
All the icons by Michael Yatskar from Sleeping Paint.
Special actions as URL
All the text in the cards are MLText controls which is great for display purposes and in this case provided me with a powerful tools for gameplay. One of the attributes of the ML is to be able to handle links like in an HTML-like format and you can handle that with an onURL method. So I decided to encode the ability like in this shot:
So, this text is displayed as a link which makes it obvious you can click it. So when you click the ability you get the specialid which I can use to fire the appropriate event. Simple and intuitive.
Player info
Something I was missing was the player information. I had a small bar in the top of the screen that looked terrible and was too small to be really useful. So, after removing the buttons I had more space available so it was an excellent opportunity to do something about that.
I decided to create another reusable control where I can display the player information, like the name, the number of units in mind, dead, the army and the number of mana points available. The bar also highlights the active player and allows to open the gravear by clicking the tomb button. Of course there is enough space for up to 4 players which the game currently supports.
Here is an image of the current state.
Animated textures and tiles
I'm no texture artist so any output by TextureMaker is amazing for me. I managed to create an animated texture of water and fire. Not the best, but good enought for now. I updated the fire tile so now it is animated. I still dont have any tile conversion ability to switch a tile to fire but will soon. Anyway if somebody may want to contribute with a nice animated loopable seamless fire texture (all frame full of fire not just a flame) I would be greatly thankful.
The missing element texture
I was thinking about the elements and how to represent them. Right now the elements are represented this way:
Death - Necromancer
Texture - A dark wet cave with bones.
Gameplay - Cold, death, sickness.
Spells - Death spells allow to slow movement, drain life, weaken the attacks, paralyze and kill creatures by poison or sickness.
Creatures - Undeads. Undeads are weak creatures but have lots of draining abilities which allow them to heal or increase their abilities.
Pros - Spells to slow and drain the opponents.
Cons - Weak creatures.
Life - Summoner / Druid
Texture - White heavenly light and green leaves.
Gameplay - Life increases lifeforce, healing, regeneration, strength.
Spells - Life spells are about healing and increasing combat damage.
Creatures - All life creatures are giant and strong. Dire versions of the normal earth creatures. Life is all about large monsters with brute force.
Pros - The most powerful creatures are related to life.
Cons - No direct damage. Dire creatures are more expensive to invoke.
Fire - Invoker
Texture: Fire
Gameplay - Heat, passion, anger, combat.
Spells - Fire spells are related to destruction of artifacts and equipment and fire damage to creatures. Fire spells also increase combat abilities for creatures.
Creatures - Fire creatures have high damage capacity and usually have superior combat abilities. Like whirlwind attacks, destroying equipment or incinerating creatures.
Pros - Fire creatures have improved combat abilities.
Cons - No healing abilities.
Water - Mentalist
Texture - Blue with caustics.
Gameplay - Related Wisdom, intelligence, calculation, control, focus. Increase defense. Blue strategy is to be the last creature standing.
Spells - Water spells are related to defense and mind control. Blue spells allow to increase various defenses, steal control of opponent units, read minds and gain more spells each round.
Creatures - Water creatures have high defense attributes. They also have resistances against many element damage.
Earth - Wizard
Texture - Cracked dry earth.
Gameplay - Earth is balance. May not have the abilities of other elements but got mana to back it up.
Creatures - Earth creatures are the most common creatures. They are cheap to summon, low cost and have well rounded hit points and attack without being espectacular. Some earth creatures may generate mana. Earth creatures may have abilities from any element on a low level, like wolves may move faster than a normal creature or a gryzzly bear which may have great hp and damage. Earth creatures are also able to fight ethereal creatures more effectively.
Pros - Low mana cost, low price, great all rounders. Earth creatures are the backbone of any army.
Cons - No powerful special abilities.
Air - Illusionist
Texture - ?????
Gameplay - Air is elusive and tricky. Plays with the perceptions. Air strategy is to control the board.
Spells - Air spells are about trickery. Air spells allow to return units back to their owners mind.
Creatures - Air creatures have low defenses but may completely avoid any attack, They may be invisible or ethereal. Air creatures have fast movements. Opponents wont know what hit them and possibly they wont be able to hit back. Some of them may looks more menacing than they really are.
Pros - Quick and nimble creatures backed up with spells to help controlling the board.
Cons - Air creatures are very weak.
Related elements - Sound.
Ok... not that is something I didnt think about... how do I create a texture for AIR? I spent a lot of time on this one... a blue sky and a cloud? No because it may get onfused with water. Grey white as a cloud? Maybe... but I was looking for something a bit more interesting. Stars... no because I wanted air not space. Hard problem. My only reference was that in Warscale, Air is an element for trickery and light show.
Fortunately in my case the soluton came to my head in the shape of an apple. No, I'm not trying to compare myself with Sir Isaac Newton, I was just passing near a computer store and there was this Apple computer with its famous and colorful screensaver. So I gave it a long look and then thought about Windows Vista and its aurora style screen savers... and there it was... the Aurora Borealis... peaceful, colorful, covers all the horizon. Light show at its greatest. Im still missing a good texture for air but this is the idea:
Monster Manual
Creating each monster may be a pain. But fortunately we have the DnD monster manual. Of course the mechanics are different but allows me for a good base point for size, hit points, damage and special abilities for a lot of creatures. A valuable reference so I spent some time reading and trying to find some kind of rule to translate creatures and I think I got one. I hope it works fine.
I was going to create a video but it takes me too long to edit and upload so maybe next week.
The plan for this week
Now that I have defined function, I want to correctly set the elements in all the creatures and objects. Also I want to create at least 4 more creatures... or confirm those I used for beta testing.
Luck!
Guimo
Sam.E
I like the graphics for the cards and the texture look awesome.
Keep up the good work and good luck with your game.
- Houssen