Building Icons Created

A peak at all of our building icons that have been standardized for the UI.

Unit Icons Standardized

All of the unit icons that have been standardized as well.

Bigger Better Changes!

Wow! What a change adding some UI styling can make. We've added some frames and stylization to the rest of our menus. The new HUD still needs some work, but is definitely helping to tie everything together! Amazing what a change it has made!

Building Icons Created

A peak at all of our building icons that have been standardized for the UI.

Unit Icons Standardized

All of the unit icons that have been standardized as well.

Bigger Better Changes!

Wow! What a change adding some UI styling can make. We've added some frames and stylization to the rest of our menus. The new HUD still needs some work, but is definitely helping to tie everything together! Amazing what a change it has made!

We've begun to add more of our assets back into the game, such as the unit and action buttons created. These Assets are definitely helping tie the game UI together and it is starting to feel more like a 'playable' game. We have also tested the color modulation idea and it seems to work well. The only real downside is there is no real 'glow' effect anymore.

Testing more of the unit icons. It is easy to see that they will need to be resized individually. Each image needs a small margin added in as well. Otherwise, everything is starting to look pretty decent!

A look into all of our icons currently. It is easy to see why the colors needed to be standardized when seen all together.

Time for More Buttons!

We've begun to take screenshots of the different building models in order to create buttons for each. This is a look at the multiple angles each building was viewed and selected from when creating their silhouettes.

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A look at a finished building icon. The solar panels icon was fairly easy to choose a recognizable angle to be honest. Same as the deployable units, buildings icons will be used to indicate their health while providing an area to select the individual building when multiple units are occupying a single tile.

Our game and the number of units has become extensive enough we've decided it would be advantageous to create a tutorial. This will just be used to give building and unit information to the player as well as to explain any of the games base mechanics.

Science research perks are now available. With research and development facilities, players are able to build up their 'science' resource, which can be used to research advanced units, create buffs, or whatever else we feel like could be a could way to 'advance' a player's army. More tiers of research will be added over time.

MEDIC!

We wanted to create some sort of engineer or medic role for healing units. Seeing as the majority of our units are control via AI we've decided to add a programmer to this mix as our healing unit. This is one of those weak humans that needs taken care of and fed.

Working on adding a particle effect and animation for healing other units. Programmers will bow down to their superior overlords. You can see towards the bottom left that we are adding more spcial actions. We have decided to move away from action points limiting a player per round and instead providing all units with a move nad attack.

A peak at buttons being made behind the scene. We are working to create recognizable silhouettes for each model to help represent units within the players control. These buttons will be used to select units that are stacked within a tile as well as to indiciate their health via color changes.

A new power source! We are creating prevailing winds that can be indicated by the blue icon floating on each hextile. The icon will represent a tiles ability to generate electricityvia wind at that point in time... time?

Day cycles are being added in. We are now working on a night cycle that will have a large impact on players prodcutions and abilities. Solar panels will no longer generate electricity during night cycles of the game. The night cycles are currently planned to last 3 rounds and to occur every 5. We may adjust this rate as time goes on. With the change of the day and night cycle comes changes to wind as well, which can shift in intensity throughout the day and night.

Movement previews have been added to show the player a projection of what they have selected and where it is being moved to. Without this projection it was easy to lose track of what is selected and being moved.

We are playing with the idea of having to supply food to keep your humans alive. Since the artificial intelligence does not value human life, we think feeding people something simple and effective like gruel makes sense. This is the first iteration of adding a greenhouse for food production.

We've begun to create icons for the various actions available to the player. This is the first look at button framing and the icons themselves. We're trying to balance the level of detail with the size of the icons, while simulatenously conveying thir significants.

It has been a few days since we first started experimenting with the greenhouse. This is a preview of the more polished version of the buildings model that we've put together.

Experimenting with visual effects when adding in buttons. This button was created as a more polished test. You can see we are experimenting with more detail on the button frame as well as adding a glow to the icon.

We are adding the icons into the game, but the glow is broken when working with SVGs. We are converting everything to PNGs over the next couple weeks. Once converted, they'll be addded back into the game.

Water Added

We still felt like we were short on the number resources we wanted to dictate gameplay. After some internal discussion we realized we were over looking a pretty major resource. We now completely understand how other development teams pigeon hole themselves or just completely overlook design decisions or missing mechanics.

To pair with the new resource, we've create a hydro-plant. This building will be used for gathering water, which will be a requirement for food production. You can also see that we've begun modifying the UI to provide the player with more information. One overlay represents the movement cost of moving through that tile, the other represents the number of units within a single tile.

Pairing with our food production mechanics we've added the wheat field resource. This tile will be where greenhouses are built in order to gather food that can be produced for your humans.

Scrap that!

We're working on another concept we're calling scrap. The idea being that destroyed units can be reclaimed for some sort of use. We like the idea of potentially adding units that are made from scrap, somewhat of a zombie machine. The details haven't been worked out yet, nor are we fully committed to teh concept.

Look out for Guardians

In order to help break gameplay up into stages and prevent gameplay from progressing too quickly, we're working with adding nuetral units to the map that guard resources. Guardians will attack any unit within a set radius of the resrouce. In order to gather the resource, players will need to first destroy the guardian.

A new unit is being added. Laser drones! Laser drones are meant to be a lower coster, higher movement unit. Similar to infantry units. Unlike infantry units, laser drones will have a short ranged attack allowing them to attack across the distance of a single tile.

Experimenting with a little bit of in-house voice acting. We're leaning more into a theme that is a dystopian future where artifiicial intelligence has risen against humanity and is now in control of the world. In this world, human life has little value.

We're noticing that without a visual or audatory feedback, it's hard to tell if you have actually done the thing you want to do sometimes. We've started to experiment with particle effects as a solution. Special actions have been added and the original action point system has been depricated. All units are now given a movement and attack each round. Action points, which can be earned, will be used for bonus actions and boosts.

This is a great example of why our starting positions logic needs reworked. Every once in a while you'll end up with spawns right next to one another despite there being logic that is suppose to prevent this from happening. Certainly makes for an interesting start!

Updating unit and building HP bars render position and movement with camera. Building models are continually being added and updated. Power generators can now be placed in oil fields. Generators can be used to convert your oil resource to electricity.

Since making cities our primary unit for producing new buildings and lmiting the amount of area a player has to build, we've added in a Rover unit to be used for building new cities. Rovers will be an expensive alternative to expand with communication towers, but like a starting city, the buildings within its range cannot lose communication.

Here is a look into polishing biome tiles. At this point we've decided to actually put some of our work hours into this game. Prior to this point, it was primarily being worked on in our spare time and off hours.

A pretty forest tile.

Another desert variation.

Polished cobalt resource with pretty lighting.

A look into large map generation. With the new tiles, maps feel as though they have enough variation that they can provide an interesting terrain each time its generated. You can see we have also added a model for the 'Artillery' unit close to the center of the map. We have also now added a partial fog of war for areas a player is no longer receiving visual information from.

We are continually working on adding more units to the game as well as refining what we have. Both the tank and the oil well models have been updated with modified assets. Most of the assets we will be using from here on out will be purchased low poly Sci-fi assets that we've modified ourselves to match out expectations and needs.

Mortars incoming! Mortar model has been updated. We've decided to make forests impassible or cost extra movement to move through for large units, while simultaneously implementing the ability to spend an action point to attack the forest and destroy it. We're hopeful this mechanic might provide an opportunity for more varied gameplay in the future.

Adding in a city model. This will be the base of every players command post and ultimately the most important part of their production. Cities will provide players with the ability to build other units and buildings. We have given the city a building radius. Since we want players to have the ability to make choices for what resources they value most, we've decided to add a building concept to expand your building radius. We've also added another resource to the mix. Cobalt was our choice as we are leaning into a theme that may play on advanced technology and scare resources.

To expand a player's building area or range of influence we've decided to work on a concept of communication towers that allow players to expand their reach further into the map. The idea is that communication towers could provide the ability for an army to expand, but destroying them could have affect production or other varying consequences.

Just a little messing around with map generation. You can see the new solar panel model we're adding in.

Starting with placing a basic 'unit'. To move the unit requires understanding where the unit is on the hex map, and the distance to where the tile you want to move is. You can see each tile has a label for where it is in the world, as well as its distance from the placed unit.

Added an alternate camera angle as well as playing with the fog of war concept. The two yellow squares on the tile represent action points that limit a units abilities within a turn. With the calculations in place, we can now command a unit to move to a different tile. We have also added the concept of different resources as seen in the top-left corner. Electricity and Oil will be our first focus.

Fog of War added to the 3D map. Render distance to be dertermined. 7 tiles across to start seems like a reasonable amount of area without opening the entire map at once. This is also the first time we've added a unit that 'does' something. The squares on the tile are to represent a solar farm that is generating electricity per round.

More 'units' and buildings are added to the map. Accessible via a simple text menu for now, these units will allow us to start filling out a map. You will see we have added oil field tiles to the map as well as pump jacks which will be used for generating oil per round.

We've added a mini map and more tile variations. This is the start of map generation. The intent is that maps will be dynamically generated, providing players with a an extra layer of replayability. The mountains are to be impassible and will help to add some variation to each game.

Playing around with making basic a models to represent our units. Tanks and mortars added. We have also now added an 'enemy' to the map, with the ability to 'ranged attack'. The enemy has a health bar, attacking the enemy once takes away 50% of its health. Attacking the enemy a second time removes it from the map.

Just a little messing around with map generation. You can see the new solar panel model we're adding in.