Phantom Stratagem Progress
by Matthew "Ashteth" Kee · 08/11/2007 (1:18 pm) · 2 comments
I mostly lurk around Garage Games these days, but I do like to see what other people are up to. So to return the favor, here's what I'm up to. Always nice to start off with an image, so here we go:
You can see the new in game battle menu for my turn based strategy game. In case you haven't heard me talk about it before, the game resembles classic heroes of might and magic with magic cards instead of standing armies.
As far as the new menu goes, you can see that I am getting away from the square / boxed look. I really like the jagged borders that make the menu look like its blended with the background. The menu artwork looks the same on any background (there's something like 64 backgrounds currently).
For those interested in what the menu is for: The buttons in the upper left hand corner swap through the six relic screens. Relics are displayed in the top 128 pixels of the map. It doesn't matter which relics are displayed because they're active wether you can see them or not. The top three buttons (with the heads facing right) are your relics. The three buttons underneath are the enemies relics. As you may have guessed, relics alter the gameplay mechanics by their presence. You can see two relics in this image: "The Altar of Pain" which increases the attack damage of all creatures and the "Portal of Summoning" which summons random monsters through a stargate like device.
Under the relic images, you can see the friendly player (the pseudo nude angel) and the enemy player (the crazy painted guy). Under their respective images (not shown), health and various types of potentia (mana) will be shown. In the bottom left hand corner, the system buttons can be seen. These buttons allow you to load/save the game, end your turn, look in the rule book and retreat (currently selected). Next to the system button is the console which records spells being cast etc.
In the very bottom center of the screen, you can see the spells currently in your hand. The only spell shown is lightning, one of my first and favorite spells. The images don't do it justice. It's much better when seen in combination with sound and particle effects. Aside from a rather large number of summon spells, I also have sandstorm, fireball, breath of fire and lava hammer currently working. I tend to like working on direct damage spells because there's more of a direct reward :)
Above you can see one of the world maps (there are six). I'm very proud of myself for writing a photoshop script that generates these random terrains. For the longest time, I fretted about what to do about the world maps... I pondered buying Campaign Cartographer or hiring an artist. More or less out of necessity, I decided to see what I could do myself. I rather like the results and now its trivial for me to mass produce maps.
Locations in the world map appear and dissapear based on the relevance of a location. I didn't want to load the player down with repetitive random encouters, so you get to choose when and if you fight. Similarly, I see no reason to leave a forest on the map if absolutely nothing is going on there (why waste your time). Most of the world map locations are towns where you can buy and sell spells, take on missions etc. Each worldmap location has its own unique background that displays buildings or mission specific objects when you aren't fighting and converts to "battle mode" when you accept a duel.
You can see the new in game battle menu for my turn based strategy game. In case you haven't heard me talk about it before, the game resembles classic heroes of might and magic with magic cards instead of standing armies. As far as the new menu goes, you can see that I am getting away from the square / boxed look. I really like the jagged borders that make the menu look like its blended with the background. The menu artwork looks the same on any background (there's something like 64 backgrounds currently).
For those interested in what the menu is for: The buttons in the upper left hand corner swap through the six relic screens. Relics are displayed in the top 128 pixels of the map. It doesn't matter which relics are displayed because they're active wether you can see them or not. The top three buttons (with the heads facing right) are your relics. The three buttons underneath are the enemies relics. As you may have guessed, relics alter the gameplay mechanics by their presence. You can see two relics in this image: "The Altar of Pain" which increases the attack damage of all creatures and the "Portal of Summoning" which summons random monsters through a stargate like device.
Under the relic images, you can see the friendly player (the pseudo nude angel) and the enemy player (the crazy painted guy). Under their respective images (not shown), health and various types of potentia (mana) will be shown. In the bottom left hand corner, the system buttons can be seen. These buttons allow you to load/save the game, end your turn, look in the rule book and retreat (currently selected). Next to the system button is the console which records spells being cast etc.
In the very bottom center of the screen, you can see the spells currently in your hand. The only spell shown is lightning, one of my first and favorite spells. The images don't do it justice. It's much better when seen in combination with sound and particle effects. Aside from a rather large number of summon spells, I also have sandstorm, fireball, breath of fire and lava hammer currently working. I tend to like working on direct damage spells because there's more of a direct reward :)
Above you can see one of the world maps (there are six). I'm very proud of myself for writing a photoshop script that generates these random terrains. For the longest time, I fretted about what to do about the world maps... I pondered buying Campaign Cartographer or hiring an artist. More or less out of necessity, I decided to see what I could do myself. I rather like the results and now its trivial for me to mass produce maps.
Locations in the world map appear and dissapear based on the relevance of a location. I didn't want to load the player down with repetitive random encouters, so you get to choose when and if you fight. Similarly, I see no reason to leave a forest on the map if absolutely nothing is going on there (why waste your time). Most of the world map locations are towns where you can buy and sell spells, take on missions etc. Each worldmap location has its own unique background that displays buildings or mission specific objects when you aren't fighting and converts to "battle mode" when you accept a duel.
Torque Owner Jacque Preen