Shardpunk News

Well, another year ends! And it's my first year as a full-time indie game developer. The feeling's awesome!

Now, there will be time for a yearly summary, but let's wait for the year to end first. And now, let me show you something else.

I was recently thinking about how to make the game visuals even more appealing. One of the ideas was to make sure that the animations are as smooth as possible.

Take a look at this animation:



In here, there are no transition animations between the crouching and standing stances, and no turn animations. Now, the lack of them does not break the game, but I believed that filling in these gaps might be worth the effort.

Here's a new approach, with the transition animations in place:



Feels smoother, doesn't it?

The other thing I've worked on was adding some emission map-based HDR bloom effects, based on this YouTube tutorial from Brackeys. It allowed me to add extensive glow on specific things, like this grenade explosion animation:



Now, these are just some of the things I've started to implement to up the visuals/feel of the game. This, combined with a pretty nice gameplay loop will result in a fantastic game!

In the meantime, I wish you all a Happy New Year! Take care!

The last two weeks were a little bumpy due to hardware issues. Basically, my PC is dead for a week due to a faulty power supply and the incompetence of a shipping company to deliver the new one. I am still waiting for it to be delivered.

So, I am stuck working on my old laptop, which is not a developer-friendly situation. Still, I managed to get some work done - mostly technical one. To be more specific, I've added key bindings for mouse+keyboard control scheme.

First, I studied how the bindings are handled in similar games (think XCOM, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, or Pathway) and then took the stuff that made the most sense to me.



Few notes here:

1. Camera movement is not rebindable, and stays at WASD/arrow keys
2. Bindings are not unique - so the same key can appear in more than one binding (example: speeding up enemy turn and displaying to hit preview both use the "alt" key, which is OK - as the player is never able to perform both actions at the same time). Technically, these actions could be defined under a single binding, but I don't feel it would be better.
3. The Main binding for the "Cancel/Pause" action cannot be cleared (XCOM 2 has the same approach). Otherwise, there might be a situation where the player has no possibility to pause the game and re-enter the bindings menu. Of course, I could add a physical UI "pause and enter the menu" button, but I don't want to make the UI more cluttered.

From other things, I have started working on tuning the visuals up more - for example, making more use of HDR and bloom:

An original image:


HDR, more colors:


Bloom effect:


I believe the visual changes are going in a good direction - do let me know what you think.

Take care, and don't forget about the Discord server!

Let's talk about the latest addition to the game, and (hopefully) the last major gameplay change that I've implemented: I've added new character types: automatons/bots.

Lore-wise, the Empire has recently managed to create a prototype of a new, bleeding-edge technology energy source that will allow humans to gain a significant advantage in their war against the vermin.

A few days prior to the surprise rat attack, the Empire's scientists have been able to install that new energy source in a machine - an automaton. Then the attack happened.



Your job as a player will be to make sure that this new energy source does not end up destroyed or get intercepted by the enemy - which basically means that the player's job is to make sure that the bot stays alive.

Now, the automatons are not defenseless. Depending on the type of automaton the player chooses at the start, it will be providing significant bonuses on the battlefield. The one that I have added to the game so far is a support unit. Its main ability is the "support mode" skill, which makes the automaton immobile, but generates a support aura that makes sure that player weapons do not gain heat when firing and increases their % to hit. Therefore, it works great when the player is setting up a defense spot somewhere on the map.





Other skills include the ability to taunt enemies in the area, forcing them to attack the automaton.



Also, the unit is equipped with a stun grenade, which does exactly what it says.



The automaton is able to heal on its own and can be healed in the shelter by other characters.



I believe that introduction of the automatons will add even more variety to the gameplay. The player will always be choosing one automaton type at the beginning of the game, and its type will significantly change the tactics. This means more fun - and as games are all about fun, I believe that's a step in a good direction!

That's all for this entry. Take care, and have a great weekend! And do join Shardpunk's Discord server!

Hello everyone!

I am currently busy adding new mechanics for handling and upgrading character skills. As it is totally incomplete, there's nothing I can show you yet.

That being said, here's a bunch of new visuals of weapon upgrades. It's just the visuals for now - I will describe the function of some of these in future entries.

Enjoy!

I am finalizing another monthly build with all-finished localisation support, so I will make this one quick - except that instead of talking about localisation, it'll be about handling character inventory.

Every character in the game can have three different item types in their inventory: grenades, fusion cores and stimpaks. Their number was displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen, and the player could drop items on the ground if they really wanted to.



As there was no carry weight limit (I've dropped it in one of the early demos after realising that it is doing nothing but causing frustration), there was no real need to shuffle items. Sure, one might want to pass a grenade or something, but most of the time it was not a big deal.

However, there was one major game design flaw with this approach: in Shardpunk, when a character loses all their HPs, they start to bleed out. The player has a number of turns to revive them using a stimpak.





However, there might be a situation in which a bleeding character is the only one having a stimpak. Therefore, there was no possibility to heal them as it was impossible to pass inventory items around.

Initially, I thought that characters who bleed out might auto-drop their items. The thing is that they could not be dropped on the same tile they are standing on, as another player only can pick up items from the tile they're on.

So, I could make it so that items are dropped randomly into neighboring tiles. Still, there may be situations in which there are no neighboring tiles that one can walk on (e.g. when a character is surrounded by walls/crates), or some of these tiles are inaccessible. Bad idea.

Alternatively, bleeding out characters might become "transparent", meaning that other characters can walk over them. In such way, another player character might stand on their tile, pick up a stimpak and use it to revive them.
On the other hand, I would then run into issues after the character has been revived. I mean I would have to place them somewhere else on the map, as their original tile might be occupied by another friendly character. And again, there might be no valid tiles around, so yeah - another silly idea.

It was clear to me that the best way of handling it was to introduce some kind of inventory management. So right now, after the player clicks the backpack button, a new window appears. It allows swapping items with adjacent characters. Now it's not a problem to approach a downed ally, grab their stimpak, and heal them!





That's it for this entry - thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!