Combat, scanning, & destruction!

I’ve been working on the scanning phase today!

At the start of each of your turns, your seismometers will pulse out and highlight any potential Graboid positions in their quadrant - this gives the player vital info for strategising.

Finally as a little treat I polished up the grid and blueprint placement visuals with some lerping and particles and sounds :)

Emmy has been working on combat! That’s gameplay! Now you can equip your meeples with guns/bombs and have them fight back against the Graboid menace (or just defend themselves if they’re attacked)

They goal is to have a few different weapon types with different stats - basically high damage low ammo guns & low damage high ammo ones.

(you can see my beautiful placeholder art for this below)

Meanwhile Caspar made some more building destruction models, added new card tip icons, & worked on the meeple stat popup UI

Gameplay!

Today we got closer to actually having all the core gameplay implemented;

I was working on the Graboid AI some more - they can now burrow underground to get around faster/without worrying about running into buildings ;)

I also added the snake tongue creatures using Caspar’s lovely model. For now these are much slower than the graboid but are able to immobilise meeples they touch & send out a signal to their graboid parents - dinner is served!

Then I added the occupiable system which allows various entities to support meeples being inside (on top) of them - this will be useful for the buildings, boulders, & vehicles. I’ve already tested the basic truck, its already super fun and endearing watching the meeples drive each other around :)

Emmy’s been working on the grid interactions some more, making the UX better and improving how the clicking input is managed. She also continued on the ruins/boulder objects which are pre-placed in the world and have unique interactions with your meeples.

Caspar was focused more on the UI; the population counter, meeple icons on cards, expanding on object tooltip functionality.

They also continued work on modelling and texturing the 3d assets, and supporting the destruction system

Planning! Music! Ruins! Art!

This morning we all got together to plan our final week of development! Also to iron out the design, since so far we’ve just been working off a vague concept (grid based card gameplay)

A big part of the design meeting was figuring out what meeples do; what actions they can perform, how they can fight back against the graboids, all that good stuff.

We’re feeling a lot more focused and confident with our idea now, and we aim to get a playable prototype done by Friday so we have time for playtesting and feedback before the final submission :)

I sourced some music from my favourite Kevin MACLEOD via his royalty free site today. Inspired by the movie soundtrack I went for a western/country vibe, fairly chill to match the slower paced gameplay. The menu music is diegetic & coming from Chang’s Market, which adds a nice effect when moving around the menu with my camera code from the other day.

Of course I couldn’t leave the menu alone and spent the final part of my day polishing it up some more (I know). I added Valentine & Earl’s truck. which follows you through the menu scene. The different menu ui segments now lerp in and out when you move between states. Very tasty.

Emmy got started on the debris and ruins objects, including meeples being able to search ruins and find temporary midgame cards.

Caspar continued working away on the models + textures, but also mocked up the gameplay UI, some of which you can see below!

Vibrations, Heatmaps, & Graboid AI

Extending the graboid AI/sensors today! Before they were simply moving towards the nearest meeple for testing, but now they track vibrations felt by movement and investigate the closest, strongest vibration for juicy treats.

This is going to help a lot with different types of behaviours, and I’ve already got it working with the prototypical distraction card; the old tractor from the movie. This can be placed on the grid and will automatically move in a straight line making lots of noise and drawing attention.

I also cobbled together this heatmap shader to help visualise the system. I’m not sure how we’ll display this sort of vibration info to the player in the final prototype, but this definitely helps with debugging for now!

Other minor fixes/tweaks/polish to the menus and card system too.

Tomorrow we’ll be meeting early with the full team to flesh out the design some more and plan out the final 7 days of jam time!

Graboid AI, Pathfinding, Decks, & Menus!

Lots of good progress today!

I added the new Graboid agent to the test grid and worked on some A* pathfinding for it to seek out the player’s meeples. If they enter the same cell as a meeple then the meeple explodes in flesh and blood :)

This is all tied in with Emmy’s game state system!

It’s really encouraging feeling the gameplay loop already. It also has a lose condition now - if all your meeples die then it’s game over.

I also polished up the menus some more, adding a scene backdrop for the camera to swoosh around. This gives it a much more dynamic feel, I’m always a fan of these type of menus in games.

Gameplay?!?

Today I finished the basics of the meeple movement; you can now select a meeple and move it 1 grid cell in any cardinal direction (currently not restricted to turns in the game loop but definitely getting there!)

There are also helpful tooltips and visual feedback for invalid choices

Meanwhile Emmy coded the card playing functionality. Currently this means clicking any card allows you to spawn a new meeple on a grid cell of your choice, but its super extendable and will be a great basis for all the different cards we have planned :)

Card store! Meeple death! Grid placement! Buildings! Wow!

The card store now downloads from LootLocker assets and autopopulates the listings with prices, images, text, etc!

I spent the majority of my time once again working on getting the UI & LootLocker integration perfect.

We now also have asset contexts in LootLocker;

• “Feature Unlocks” - The default context, these items are purchasable in the in-game store

• “Progression Unlocks” - These items are unlocked via xp milestone progression

• “Starter Cards” - These cards are automatically available in all players’ decks

• “Game Variables” - These assets are used to help us tweak variables in the wider game via LootLockers dashboard - very useful for testing in builds!

Caspar made more progress in the modelling department, with new models for Chang’s Market, Old Fred’s Farm, & The Gummers’ Bunker.

We also worked together to figure out how to best support the destruction mechanic, with each model having fractured pieces to simulate on destruction.

Meanwhile, Emmy has been working on the foundations of the grid system upon which the whole game depends, so that’s pretty neat! She also added functionality to place Caspar’s building models. This really opens up what we can get to work on next and makes it feel much more like a game already.

(I’m pretty excited to move on from UI tasks myself!)

Game store! Meeples!

Today I’ve been making progress on the in game store, setting up the currency system with LootLocker & hooking into the xp/progression system too.

Currently you can buy XP or a random card, next I need to populate the list of buyable cards with actual data downloaded via LootLocker.

I also started work on the meeple selection/movement as a fun change from all the UI I’ve been focusing on :)

Emmy worked on the foundations of the grid system, which will be integral to the gameplay!

Caspar started on the building models

Meeple Models!

Caspar worked on the meeple models today, while Emmy & I took the day off 8)

MOTDs! Updated card art!

Today I’m working on implementing messages via LootLocker (that’s what you’re reading right now!)

I had some issues with the Publish Date setting as it is localised to CEST time, while I am in BST.

The LootLocker dashboard also doesn’t let you enter dates/times in the past, so I had to wait an hour after publishing each message before seeing it appear.