Ashley (Programmer)

This week I was finishing off the animations for the buildings. I managed to get the animations to work, so that when the player upgrades a tile the building upgrade animation will play. Also, with a bit of help from Kyle we managed to get the buildings to change colour depending on what faction places the building.

During the week I had a play around with the camera so that when a player’s turn ends in, the game the camera would zoom out. I am also working on getting the camera to zoom out and move to the next player’s turn.

I have also been creating editor tools in my own time. Currently I am working on a note editor tool. I decided to create this tool so that the team can write notes down in engine about what needs to be change and what could be added to the game.

Kyle (Programmer)

We’re now incredibly close to having our first properly playable build, a goal I’d originally set for Thursday but I encountered a setback which I only managed to fix today. Over the course of the week, I’ve been setting up the framework for creating new units and have got the basics of battles working in the game.

One thing I hadn’t considered much up until now though was playability. When someone sits down to play the game at the moment, they have no idea what to actually do, since there are very few labels or visual indicators. Once the battle mechanic is ready and working, I’ll be switching my focus to some additional user interface/unit highlighting tools in order to help players when we begin play testing.

While I was hindered by the battle mechanic, I decided to go off and expand on the map editor a bit, as shown below. The generator will now generate a template (which is deleted when the player enters the game) that designers are able to add actual tiles to, as well as set base tiles. These all have their data set up just as before and should allow for an even faster workflow when it comes to designing, creating and playtesting maps.



Earlier today, I finally managed to get past the issue that was holding us back. A frustratingly small error but it’s good to finally get past it. Ashley and I had our first playtest, which lasted about 10 turns before we ran into a game breaking bug (Shown below). On the plus side, the designers now have something they can do some digital playtesting with and I’ve got an exciting week of bug squashing and user friendliness changes ahead of me.

Carlton (Artist)

This week, I made character concepts and tested how lighting might work, using the placeholders I made and put in the game world.

The images above show character concepts for the Champion unit of the God of War. Champions in this world are similar to priests, chosen by the gods to lead their earthly followers and this particular one leads the followers of the War God.

Josh W (Artist)

This week it was all about the buildings. I finished the 3D mock up for the God of the Land’s temple. I’d have more to say but this week it’s been plain and simple. The building style is a hexagonal take on the 1920s buildings found in large american cities with a large natural plant on the roof that will bloom when the final upgrade for it is built.

Isaac (Animator)

This week I’ve tackled the horse rig a lot more but we had a miscommunication and I had realized it was a low priority task. After this realization I decided to have a chat with our artists and decide on the route we’d be taking to complete priority tasks!

Overall in this week I hadn’t done much since I had my other projects to attend to but I think the following week will have tons in store for me!

Conor (Designer)

My work on the game has been very limited this week due to focus on personal assignments. I did however do some brief research into other turn based strategy UIs, particularly 4X games, to try and see ways I can build and improve on them in my own designs.