So to start this post, we are going to give a little more detail about what our game is. While we love playing strategy games like Civilization, Europa Universalis and the like, the learning curve on these and similar games can be initial crushing and neither is well suited to single session multiplayer games. Our aim with Salem City is to provide a game that is able to offer enough gameplay depth while keeping our mechanics pool small enough to reasonably learn in a single play session, as well as having an average game length that allows for a game to be completed in a single session in order to facilitate multiplayer games.

Ashley (Programmer)

At the beginning of this week, I sorted out the zoom function for the game. I worked with a few different ideas but the one that worked the best was writing a script that made the camera move depending on the input from the mouse wheel. After getting the camera movement working, I was able to get the camera to zoom in to where the mouse cursor was at in the game. I also edited the zoom script so that the camera would not zoom too far in or too far out.

Next I Started working on the animations for the building and getting the buildings to spawn when the player buys a building on a tile. Currently I have got the buildings to spawn on the tile that the player is on. However, I am currently having a few issues with the animations for the buildings. I hope that in the next few days I will have the animations working so that when the player buys a building then upgrades it the animation will play to show that it has been upgraded. I am also working on changing the colour for the builds so that if the player colour is blue the building that spawns will also be blue.

Kyle (Programmer)

I’ve spent this week focusing on creating tools for our designers to use, as well as the functionality for taking turns between different players, each player having their own values as well as units tied to them and some placeholder map painting.

First of all, the tool. In last week’s devblog, I mentioned wanting to make this since I spent almost an hour setting the up the current placeholder map by hand, an unreasonable amount of time. I have never actually tackled tools creation in Unity before and it turned out to be significantly easier than I thought it was. For now, it will just generate the number of columns and rows specified, as shown below, with their coordinates set up correctly, but I hope to be able to expand this in the future to provide a relatively fully-fledged map editor for the designers.

Next up, I made a player class for each individual player. This meant tweaking the units to respond to this player, rather than a faction, which I had previously set up. I have made a placeholder UI widget to store all of this information and each turn, depending on what buildings the player has, the player will now receive their income and their power. Each unit can only be moved by the correct player and will build buildings of its own faction.

Finally, I introduced some basic map painting. For me personally, map painting is one of my favorite parts of strategy games like these, especially multiplayer ones. This actually proved more difficult than I first thought it would be, but it is in there now. This will be updated as art assets make their way into the game but it works well for demonstration purposes at the minute.

Carlton (Artist)

This week, I finished UV unwrapping the horse model, started modelling the hero and began research into the environmental assets.

I also started to look into how I would implement the hexagonal buildings to resemble a 1940s American city. I decided to create hexagonal building grids similar to the square grids that the New York has and added lighting to it for the effect. There are currently only two types of buildings acting as placeholders, but more will be added as production goes.

Josh W (Artist)

This week I set about concepting the building that generates income and with three current classes, the buildings have to be unique yet fit into our art style the factions theme and the worlds setting. I also mocked up a stackable pyramid, which belongs to one of the factions.

Isaac (Animator)

Hey there guys! Today I received one of the models from my artist and I have to admit this is going to be a challenge, it is a horse and I must say I have not rigged a four-legged animal before so it will be quite an activity to tackle. Rigging seems to be going fine though!

On a simpler note, I have managed to complete the animations for the other two placeholder bases so in terms of most placeholders we are on our way!

When I make placeholders I try to have as much fun with them as I can, just trying new shapes and ideas without overcomplicating the process.

For the green base I decided to play with the mesh (outer rings) transformation, definitely created some satisfying results!

Anyways that’s me for this week, ciao!

Conor (Designer)

This week I have been mainly focused on the UI. Initially I started by producing a flow chart which conveyed how each element would link together, which allowed me to get a much better overview of all the elements that need to be produced. I then moved onto creating a basic skeleton for each part of the UI, giving me a good base to expand visually. At this stage, I will be looking to get some of these basic white box designs in game so there is at least some sort of usable UI in place.

Josh K (Designer)

This week I have worked on testing new game elements, such as movement abilities, experimenting with “Action Points” and researching games of similar genres. I have also been working on level designs for the game, testing and iterating on different sizes, tile types and map shapes for different player numbers and for random occurring events in the game. With the help of some other team members, it was decided that random events (Whether they be tiles for the player to step up unknowingly, or events that affect each player/individual players) would be implemented into the game to help with balancing of the game, forcing players to use situational strategy rather than simply trying to find the best strategy for each map with each character. Additionally I have worked closely with Carlton (Artist) on finalizing some of the artistic aspects of the world and the map in terms of the setting.

Dan (Writer)

I this week, I have finished the world information, current situations and events of the world, gods and factions information and flavour text for each the units documents and I am currently awaiting feedback from the rest of the team before I say that they are officially ‘completed’. I have been speaking with Josh K and he has decided to implement a new gameplay mechanic where there are NPCs on certain tiles that can help or hinder the player. We have agreed that these should be noir detectives and loan sharks. I have therefore added these 2 characters into the flavour text document and have written that noir detectives can use arrest spells on low ranking characters. The consequences this will provide for players are yet to be discussed.

The loan sharks can lend faith (this game’s version of currency) to factions should they be in need of it. However if they do not pay them back plus any interest incurred, They will do something bad to that faction. Again, this has not been fully discussed yet (although I have briefly discussed this with Josh K who liked the idea) but I have had the idea for the loan sharks to be powerful sorcerers that have been taught a unique spell that allows them to absorb a faction’s entire faith power reducing it to nothing. I have thought that this could also be how these loan sharks enforce their charges with the factions being too fearful to retaliate.

I have also started writing in-game dialogue for the various units that will be said during a gameplay session. Although this is taking time, as dialogue is not my strong point, it has been coming along a lot better than I thought it would and I am confident that what I have written so far matches the characteristics of each faction nicely and is somewhat punchy without being cheesy or cringey.