BurritoJo







Level 0 Re: Highlands « Reply #41 on: September 16, 2014, 11:49:25 AM »



So, that being done. I'm now back at my daily affairs and that includes updating that wonderful devlog that i am getting very fond of.







So this is me, and in case you're wondering i'm not with some random booth babe. That Black Cat is none other than the awesomely talented BurritoMo. One of the illustrators of the BurritoStudio team. Hi. Just a quick shout to say I've been somewhat absent in here lately because we've been showcasing Highlands at Montreal Comiccon 2014. It happened kind of fast so it took a lot of effort but we pulled it off and got amazing feedback from the gamers as well as good contacts within the indie dev community. A lot of things are happening in the montreal indie community and it's great to be part of that.So, that being done. I'm now back at my daily affairs and that includes updating that wonderful devlog that i am getting very fond of.So this is me, and in case you're wondering i'm not with some random booth babe. That Black Cat is none other than the awesomely talented BurritoMo. One of the illustrators of the BurritoStudio team. Logged

ephoete







Level 2 Re: Highlands « Reply #42 on: September 17, 2014, 02:11:41 PM » Aaaah outstanding, how come I missed this thread for one month! Awesome. Logged Check out my Soundcloud! https://soundcloud.com/edgar-phoete

BurritoJo







Level 0 Re: Highlands « Reply #43 on: September 18, 2014, 01:26:14 PM » Devlog #5 18/09/2014



Ninja Update



Today we are focusing all our jedi forces to produce the trailer for our kickstarter as well as building the page up. We're also launching our Greenlight in a couple of days as well so unfortunately no time to develop the actual game. This scenario happens often. Always a thousand things to do and THEN develop the actual product (we still manage to develop a lot )



That's why today we'll be backtracking a bit in the production and show you a really cool illustration of how the infamous BurritoLo constructs his sectors. Be advised, should you not follow these very important guidelines, a baby will die somewhere on the planet.







BurritoJo

Today we are focusing all our jedi forces to produce the trailer for our kickstarter as well as building the page up. We're also launching our Greenlight in a couple of days as well so unfortunately no time to develop the actual game. This scenario happens often. Always a thousand things to do and THEN develop the actual product(we still manage to develop a lotThat's why today we'll be backtracking a bit in the production and show you a really cool illustration of how the infamous BurritoLo constructs his sectors. Be advised, should you not follow these very important guidelines, a baby will die somewhere on the planet.BurritoJo Logged

BurritoJo







Level 0 Re: Highlands « Reply #44 on: September 22, 2014, 06:54:12 AM » Devlog #6 22/09/2014



Hey there, just a quick post to show one of the animation we're working on. We're going 2.5D for our animations which will mainly carry story elements and possibly various actions in the game (if we have the window to do that).



Today i'm showing the enemies. A lord from a rival house is hiring mercenaries to deploy fast and expendable man power. BurritoFrank made that little goodie.











By the way. Can anybody tell me how to display the video image instead of just the link? I'm pretty sure i saw some logs that showed the image of the youtube video I tried some stuff and searched but couldn't find any info on the topic. Thanks in advance to however can help me with this one.



BurritoJo « Last Edit: September 22, 2014, 07:40:01 AM by BurritoJo » Logged

BurritoJo







Level 0 Re: Highlands « Reply #45 on: September 24, 2014, 12:11:10 PM » Devlog #7 24/09/2014



Old Challenges and New Challenges



I’m @BurritoAl (twitter) the programmer of the team! I thought it would be a good moment to recap our current game design tasks as BurritoJo is buried in piles of papers (well … bytes of emails). I also welcome any technical questions from anyone who wonders how Highlands is built!



Coming Of Age



We knew we wanted to build a strategy game. We knew we had hero characters and no small units, we knew we wanted special buildings to be unlocked and used. We knew we had resources management. But how to acquire territory? Should we gather and how to use resources? And how to present it on the map and more importantly to the gamer?



During the pre-conception of Highlands we went through many stages scratching our heads figuring out the best approach to gameplay:



- Indoor setting where rooms are connected via corridors and combatants garrison the corridors themselves. Rooms were full of enemies and secured individually.



- Same idea but combatants garrisoning individual corners or “frontlines”.



- At this point the game heavily focused on statistics: winning, losing, advancing or having to withdraw decisions were black & white. We then added a combat mini-game that drastically changed the gameplay.



- We then took the concept outdoors: “houses” being connected by “roads”, and played with the idea of a progressive acquisition of whole “sectors” as opposed to fighting for every building.



- In our current alphas, we moved the focus from individual buildings to whole sectors. When we put a usable building in a sector it’s special & unique. Not all sectors have them.



- We also moved the camera back some more: it’s no longer indoors, it’s no longer on city roads with barricades, it’s happening on a regional-map where you can progress from wheat fields to cityscape.



If I describe this whole sequence of iterations it’s to highlight that devil really is in the details when making a strategy game. With the same core mechanics and few variations you can give a totally different gameplay feel. Our first indoor version really felt like a small-scale family escape from evil tunnels and the focus was on micro-managing individual rooms and their occupants back to safety.



The later versions are more about saving the kingdom on a grand-scale and rallying the population to your cause. It focuses more on strategic territory acquisition and combat. Yet most gameplay elements remain the same.



This development of Highlands was full of crossroads and it was never clear at any point what the best approach to take was. You have to rely a little on your guts, but mostly on feedback from others, play play play and have people review the game. Production time & constraints also play a big part in these decisions. When you are early in pre-prod you can think big and try to re-invent the wheel a little, but as deadlines approach you need to trim options and really figure out what core gameplay you want to focus on.



For us the focus was: battlefronts via a “network of sectors”. We had built many complex mechanisms around it but decided to trim it down to the core during summer. We went for large-scale sectors with few buildings and unique “hotspots” system so it gave us time to focus on story progression and add unique elements instead of focusing on individual buildings and their properties and balancing a very complex gameplay system.



Our Next Tasks Related to Gameplay



During the last few weeks we had solid and very positive feedback about our gameplay direction. Content-wise everything is going quite fine, a writer friend has joined the team recently and we have a big artistic team full of wonderful ideas.



Here are the few remaining challenges:



Spawning: We removed spawning recently to have builds where we can showcase the gameplay ideas without having to spend too much time balancing or restarting the game, but it is now time to put spawning back. Our current big question is how to spawn. Systems we tried are: fixed spawning rates VS reach-back-to-equilibrium VS movement-of-enemy-armies. Also, what is the spawning cycle and does it spawn everywhere at a fixed time or gradually in individual sectors?



Remaining enemy forces after an attack: Enemy forces are in fixed quantities in different sectors and they also preserve HP. We are currently testing various scenarios to handle when the enemy performs a “suicide” mission on another sector. Currently it clones itself in the attack and still remains in the sector after it fails.



Stats & leveling up: We currently have 2 different scales for stats: [1..100] for Combat and [0..10] for everything else. We are looking to standardize this and re-enable learning for stats other than Combat.



Leadership & Building Actions / Strategy Tree: This one is a biggie. In our first prototypes earlier this year we implemented a lot of special combat actions that didn’t involve battling directly: long-range assaults, skirmishes, sorties, scouting etc. We want to gradually put them back. The mechanics core are pretty much set: it costs Leadership points to perform these actions, and they can be enhanced in various ways (strategic tree). Big questions remaining are if these actions will be performed via characters, special buildings or globally, if they need extra cool-down options and the UI/UX aspects.



Recruiting Restrictions: A while ago we dropped a “housing” cap that we felt unnecessary, but “food” alone doesn’t quite regulate the characters population like we expected. We might add further recruiting restrictions as limited availability of recruits, exponential recruiting costs etc.



Morale: This is the new stat/resource we are eager to introduce. One big question we have is if it should be treated as a quantity that you can gather or lose or simply as modifiers that go back to neutral when the situation & mood of everyone goes back to normal.



To Live Is To Die: Special-heroes (built into the story) cannot die at the moment (they remain alive with 1HP after a fight). This really saddens us at Burrito Studio since we are very sadistic and are looking at ways to make it more punishing, possibly putting them in coma or moving them out of the map for the remaining of the level.



Hero Monsters (aka “Super-Breach”): This one is a really cool feature that we prototyped back in spring and really enjoyed. These are super-strong creatures that spawn randomly far from the frontlines and that you see advance toward you. Adds lots of surprise to gameplay and dynamism to the map since you see these guys advance visually and hear them crush & ravage everything. Watch out!



The last feature is the one we are most certain about gameplay-wise but paradoxically the hardest to implement because of the creation of new assets & content (and UI considerations!)



That covers pretty much our final planning as far as game mechanics are concerned! If you have ever played our alpha versions I hope this gives you a good idea of where we are heading and hope you are excited!



If you have any experience/tips/ideas/concerns/suggestions about any of this please tell us about it!



BurritoAl

« Last Edit: September 24, 2014, 12:26:33 PM by BurritoJo » Logged

BurritoJo







Level 0 Re: Highlands - Kickstarter Kickoff --- First Day! « Reply #46 on: September 29, 2014, 04:26:38 AM » Kickstarter Campaign Launch



We have been spending the last weeks preparing our Kickstarter campaign and it is now live. Today is the first day and we are all very thrilled. I invite you all to check out our page here:



The game has been an exciting experience and has grown a lot since it's inception. In order to finish the project we need more funding so if you feel like supporting an indie team, i say to you, thank you!



BurritoJo We have been spending the last weeks preparing our Kickstarter campaign and it is now live. Today is the first day and we are all very thrilled. I invite you all to check out our page here: Highlands Kickstarter The game has been an exciting experience and has grown a lot since it's inception. In order to finish the project we need more funding so if you feel like supporting an indie team, i say to you, thank you!BurritoJo Logged

BurritoJo







Level 0 Re: Highlands - Kickstarter Campaign until oct 29 « Reply #54 on: October 17, 2014, 09:18:24 AM » DevLog #8 17/10/2014



UI : The Fortify paradox



Recently we were lucky enough to have a lot of players test the early version of our game and something quite daunting was revealed. No one quite understood, neither used, the “fortify” game mechanics we implemented. This is quite a big problem since that mechanic is part of the core of the strategy in Highlands and not using it tend to make the game near impossible to pass. We are brainstorming as to how to solve that issue and wanted to share our thought process and see if we are heading in the right direction.



Here’s how fortify works: when you move your troops on a sector in the game, you can choose to assign a “mechanics” character (one of the classes available) to increase what we call “sector HPs”. Those HPs allow the sector to take in damages before being taken by the enemies, thus giving leeway for you to move your troops to other fronts.



Here’s how it was displayed on the map:





With that UI, almost no one is even realizing there are sectors HPs in the game. We came to a conclusion that it’s mainly because the HP bar is not the main visual element on the sector’s interface, but that it should be, since it’s that stat that prevents the enemy from taking the sector and attacking your troops.



So here’s the idea we came up with:





In the new design, the sector’s HPs are shown constantly on the map and the shield indicating the combat points of your troops only appears when there are troops on the sector. “Mechanics” characters can then be assigned to increase the HPs thus preventing the bar to fall to zero and trigger an attack.



We feel that it’s clearer than the earlier version. If you think we are heading in the right direction or preferred the earlier version, please let us know, it will be very helpful!



BurritoLo UI : The Fortify paradoxRecently we were lucky enough to have a lot of players test the early version of our game and something quite daunting was revealed. No one quite understood, neither used, the “fortify” game mechanics we implemented. This is quite a big problem since that mechanic is part of the core of the strategy in Highlands and not using it tend to make the game near impossible to pass. We are brainstorming as to how to solve that issue and wanted to share our thought process and see if we are heading in the right direction.Here’s how fortify works: when you move your troops on a sector in the game, you can choose to assign a “mechanics” character (one of the classes available) to increase what we call “sector HPs”. Those HPs allow the sector to take in damages before being taken by the enemies, thus giving leeway for you to move your troops to other fronts.Here’s how it was displayed on the map:With that UI, almost no one is even realizing there are sectors HPs in the game. We came to a conclusion that it’s mainly because the HP bar is not the main visual element on the sector’s interface, but that it should be, since it’s that stat that prevents the enemy from taking the sector and attacking your troops.So here’s the idea we came up with:In the new design, the sector’s HPs are shown constantly on the map and the shield indicating the combat points of your troops only appears when there are troops on the sector. “Mechanics” characters can then be assigned to increase the HPs thus preventing the bar to fall to zero and trigger an attack.We feel that it’s clearer than the earlier version. If you think we are heading in the right direction or preferred the earlier version, please let us know, it will be very helpful!BurritoLo Logged

BurritoJo







Level 0 Re: Highlands - Kickstarter Campaign until oct 29 « Reply #56 on: October 20, 2014, 08:58:26 AM » "If you want to insist even more on barriers, you could visually gives the same importance to "sector HP" and combat points, or highlighting the one that is currently protecting the sector from enemy. "



Thats a good idea. A lot of times people are confused as to which one is important under which circumstances. Indicating and highlighting which one is being used is a good way to remedy that.



"Fortification or barricade is a better word than sector HPs. Buildings in strategy games usually have HP and if I see a a building (or a sector) with a HP, my first thought will be than it would be broken/destroyed/malfunctioning if the HP level were to reach zero"



Youre absolutely right about that. Im guessing most people would have the same thought that the sector or building will be destroyed. It is not, if fortifications reaches 0, it is only vulnerable to attacks.



Thanks Logged

BurritoJo







Level 0 Re: Highlands - Kickstarter Campaign until oct 29 « Reply #57 on: October 20, 2014, 09:06:16 AM » DevLog #9 20/10/2014



Let Me Tell You a Story



Hi everyone!



I’m BurritoSim the 3rd story writer at Burrito Studio. Today I’ll try to give you an insight about how random events will work in Highlands. They’ve not been advertised much to this date, but they’ll help a lot to give you a feel of where we want to go with Highlands’ narrative.



Random Events



Since I started working on those random events, the concept behind them has evolved a lot. At first, the term designated mini-events that happen at the start of each turn. They were pretty sketchy, with no backstory and were only a way to bring a little randomness in the game. In parallel, we had the idea of integrating short encounters in which the player had to take a decision between two equally appealing options. Since they seemed much more interesting and could be a good support to drive the story onward, we decided to put the first idea in a closet to concentrate our efforts on the second.



This change of orientation was also fueled by a change in our map designing. We changed our initial idea of corridors fighting for independent outdoor sectors with unique features. In this kind of map, it was very easy to write interesting short encounters that could happen almost anywhere. To trigger these events, we thought that the player would have to put a character in a slot near a building that we called a hot spot. At first, we didn’t think much about the number, frequency or relative importance of the random events in the gameplay. We just began writing some of them and planned to do a lot more. But recently, we did a big brainstorm to decide what we wanted to do with these events and here is the result of our reflections.



The Two Categories



First of all, we decided to bring back our short random events, but with a different twist. We now call them bad news and they happen once in a while at the start of your turn. As their name implies, they are short random events that will present a setback to your war efforts, disrupt your current strategy and force you to reassess your short-term objectives. They are designed to give you the feeling that even with the best strategies, you can’t plan everything beforehand. But don’t worry, most of these events won’t be world-shattering… at least not much. J



But we also kept our short encounter events and called them hot spots events. They will happen when you send a character to investigate a special location in a sector you own. Most of the time, your character will experience a small event that can be qualified as positive, negative, or neutral, depending on its outcome. You won’t have to take any decision in these ones. But at times, your character will get a story event that will affect his capabilities and/or the progression of your war effort. Those events are much more elaborate in their design and will have a profound impact on your gameplay.



The Story Events



Basically, the story events will all have the same pattern: after a short description of the initial situation, you will have to choose between two or three options. Some of these choices will highlight ethical motivations, while the others will be much more straightforward in their approach. Depending on the option you choose, your character will have to deal with the consequences, positive or negative, of your decision. Those events will help strongly to make your characters unique. In them, your character will experience their own mini-story that will give them a little time under the spotlight. Even more, the decisions you make might change their progression path and give them an edge that will make them invaluable in your eyes.



The impact of the story events won’t be only for the character that will trigger them or for the gameplay, they will also give you a glimpse into Highlands back story. They can bring the spotlight on any of your characters, but you can also learn much about your favorite main characters in them. Also, their value doesn’t reside only in their randomness, they’re designed to support the main story and help to express the general emotions of the game.



In short, even if you only have a modicum of control over how they will play, the random events will help to shape your Highlands experience and might even incite you to play the game again!



If you have any suggestions or ideas about any of this, please tell us about it!



BurritoSim the 3rd Logged