Elemental Harmony

surovyi 2017-08-01 06:10

I didn't manage to move earth element, just can't press the nodes around him. But I like this idea.

snowdrama 2017-08-01 07:14

@Surovyi I updated the game, there was a bug with the mouse raycast in certain spots of the map! Try it again please!

feathergunner 2017-08-01 07:16

Unfortunatly the game froze after some turns while the enmy was attacking. It is unclear what exactly the dice-rolls decide, you could add more information and text to your game. Apart from that, the game is a cool implementation of the theme. I liked the animations of the towers and the elemental warriors.

snowdrama 2017-08-01 08:29

@feathergunner, the dice rolls determine the movement speed of the elementals for that turn. As an example, if you roll a d8 and get a 6 the fire elemental can move 6 spaces. The air Elemental has the d12 which makes it the fastest, the earth gets the d6 and that makes it the slowest. I deffinitely think the game needs more information, The game had actually started out as a kind of RTS/Tower defense but then became tactics game as we got through day 2. The main gameplay mechanic(Charging the towers) wasn't even thought of until monday morning haha, so I only really had 1 day to get all the gameplay in.

kleinzach 2017-08-03 22:19

I certainly agree about giving the player more info about how the mechanics work. It can be pretty hard to strategize when there aren't any numbers for stats of the elementals or mortals. There seems to be a bug as well with pathfinding where it seems that enemies can move way more tiles then they are supposed to, and all of that makes the turns take so much longer. The ability to skip or speedup animations would be very helpful because after the first couple of animations it just becomes tedious.

Character animations and movment mechanics all felt good. It really felt like a board game.

snowdrama 2017-08-03 23:33

@kleinzach Yeah I definitely get giving more info, I had planned to have damage numbers and stuff pop up when getting hit, there was also supposed to be a whole turn list shown to see who's turn it was and what the turn order looked like. There was also supposed to be numbers next to the health bars and such. The actual AI/movement system was pretty hacked together as originally the game was not supposed to be a grid based game, but an RTS. There's some bugs for example if there's a enemy at 4 tiles away and you roll a 5 you can actually click the fifth space and you'll move and extra 3 spaces to go around the enemy and the AI won't retread over old spaces so sometimes they choose the same space multiple times if they get stuck. All of this was because the AI was all programmed in the last day after a change in game direction. Skipping was planned again but there was not time. I was going to make the animation speed faster but I didn't have time for that either. Long story short that's the whole thing, most of the gameplay happened in the last day so only essentials got programmed in, none of the "Nice to have"s like skipping turns, phases, and animations, or showing damage numbers and more HUD than necessary to function.

fledgeling93 2017-08-05 10:17

Throwing dice is a nice touch and elementals having different dices is a great idea. Using figures as enemy figures is a nice idea, but it would be probably better to keep both your units and enemies consistent, as in having similar style. Good implementation overall but it lacks that attack feel - no distinct sound, animation or cool visual effect. That would be nice

3mpty 2017-08-05 10:19

Game play is a bit slow, too much waiting. Combat could have used a bit more flair too, attack effects existed but weren't very showy. The crystal towers looked awesome and the unit designs were pretty good too. The dice rolling system was super cool though I wish it bounced off units/towers. The grid based movement system is super impressive and the game has a lot of nice UI features like zooming in/out and rotating which are super welcome, but I wish the gameplay itself was a little stronger.

Overall solid game. I like it.

apple-dash 2017-08-05 10:53

Way too ambitious for LD game. A full-fledged turn-based tactics game was, probably, too big of a project, so it's really unpolished. Opening screen has a story and objective, yet no tutorial, which would be way more helpful. The game isn't that complex, so you can't figure it out, but I was confused for a couple of turns. Hell, when I was reading story synopsis, I was convinced it's a tower-defence game. The game gives not enough information, so it's unclear, what damage was dealt in the attack, if any. Lack of any audiovisual feedback doesn't help either. Plus, it's unclear, which unit is currently selected. Plus, there is no way to skip a turn (or, at least, the movement phase, so you have to awkwardly move one tile to the side of the enemy before attacking). Also, it's overly simplistic to be enjoyable. There are no tactics involved, as all you can seemingly do is move and attack. Add to that slower pace and uneventful combat and you might realize, why I found it boring. So, when it froze at enemy attack, I didn't want to restart it.

snowdrama 2017-08-05 17:56

@fledgeling93 Yeah I didn't get time to hook up the sounds for attacks turn ending and other things, a lot of the game came in the last day when the gameplay changed from a tower defense to a turn based tactics game. So yeah a lot of the audio/visual feedback didn't get in.

@3mpty Yeah there's a lot of waiting, the game was supposed to be a tower defense but due to time constraints became a turn based game because it was quick and dirty. We tried the dice bouncing off stuff but the problem is that sometimes it wouldn't end up landing on a face, which would glitch and roll a 0 instead of choosing a face. I would have loved to have put in more HUD stuff and whatnot but yeah just ran out of time.

@apple-dash Yeah it was a very ambitious project, you did get it right though originally it was supposed to be a tower defense, but I didn't have enough time to implement the features I wanted so in the last 24 hours as a quick and dirty option, I converted over to a tactics game. The audio sounds were in but I didn't have time to hook them up, There's also a lot of hud elements missing, including a list of turns health numbers, and damage numbers. Skipping was also added but the HUD element was not working correctly to skip the move phase, and finally yes there is not a lot of actual tactics involved, due to a lack of time the AI and stuff are super basic and there was supposed to be more variety to attacks. So yes I can see why you found it boring, there is a lot of content missing from the game due to the turn in the last 24 hours to a tactics game in order to finish the game to any degree. The freezing after killing an enemy bug has been resolved since you posted, but understandable if you don't want to try it again, thanks for the feedback though!

tuomo 2017-08-10 08:00

Congratulations for making your game this polished in a such a short time! Here are some notes/complaints from me:

Gameplay wise it was nice and fluid, i encountered same bug as someone earlier noted where game would freeze on enemy's turn. Maybe you could have given some sort of run down on units in start. Took me while to figure out what they did. Also some attacks are really hard to notice, maybe add bit more “punch” to them.

Graphics are well done for most parts. One problem which is really common with all LD games is fact that no one changes default font or ui graphics of Unity. It just makes your game look so much less complete.

Music is nicely done. Maybe some sound effects to add more impact to hits?

snowdrama 2017-08-10 21:41

@tuomo

Thanks! I worked hard to get it where it is. Strange that you encountered that bug. I fixed it in the current live version of the game... Hmm if you do see this let me know if you were using BugFix_2 or not.

I know that the attacks are hard to notice I was going to add more particles and make the attacks stand out more. As you mention at the end, I also have sounds in the game files for this stuff, but they were added in the last hour with the HUD elements and I didn't get a chance to actually add them in.

The font and buttons were another thing I wanted to change, but I didn't have time since ALL the HUD elements got added in 1 hour before submission. I didn't even get a chance to play through the game fully before submitting(Hence the enemy death lockup bug)