Slaves of Magic News

Hello everyone! Today's devlog will be about the inside of the resistance base, and some other scenes which you can encounter while you are managing your operation. Quick disclaimer, everything you see is a work in progress, especially the font!
[h2]Home sweet home:[/h2]


As you can see from the picture, we are not doing anything super innovative at the base building portion. We will have the nowadays typical ant farm set up for the inside of your base. As time progresses, you will be able to dig out more rooms for your base and place a variety of buildings. The one-room which you will always start with is the teleporter, which is responsible to get your small resistance force to the mission site and back.
[h2]The age-old question, which is mightier, the pen or the sword:[/h2]

What is an Xcom-like game without research? So, we will have not one but two separate research trees, one for the smiths, and one for the scholars. The general idea will be that the smith tree will govern the equipment research and learning new martial skills, while the scholar tree will be more about every other non-martial skill and about learning magic. Of course, there will be some interconnections between the trees so you can't completely ignore either of them, but we want to give the player a real choice in which one he/she focuses on.




[h2]You will be judged:[/h2]



Another important part of the Xcom experience is the end-of-month report. As you are depending on the resistance territories for supply, the council will mark your performance every month. It summarizes all the actions the enemy and the resistance did and their consequences. For example, if the enemy gathered enough science, it shows the new enemy squadrons you will need to face from now on.
[h2]Closing thoughts:[/h2]

This devlog was a bit shorter than usual because we are really hard at work in our preparation for the next #pitchyagame which will be on November 2. We want to finish our last big visual update to the combat portion so that we can show that as well. Without spoiling too much, I think we finally managed to figure out how can we make every skill visually impactful while keeping the workload reasonable for the planned 100+ skills. Can't wait till we can show it to you! Till then see you around!

Hello everyone! Today's devlog will be about things we changed since the last time, thanks to the testing we have done, plus to show you the mostly finished map.

[h2]Information overload:[/h2]

Check this picture, where every territory has a spy network and an enemy base:



I think this picture became super noisy. Hard to see what is relevant (cities and armies) and what is not, so in the end, we canned the idea of the enemy base and the spy network to be on the map so dominantly. Instead, we made it so that they are part of the cities they belong to, clearing up the picture.

New enemy base:



New spy network (yes, is just a flag, not as nice, but a lot more functional):



[h2]The good the bad, and the ugly, the agenda system:[/h2]

Let's start with a reminder of what I mean by the agenda system. My initial idea was that the enemy will have a random goal (mostly to conquer a random region) and it has 2 months to complete it. If the enemy can complete X number of it, depending on the difficulty level will make the player lose. There was 2 problem with it. For one, I started to think about how long I want my campaign to be. XCOM long war mod was great in a lot of regards, but it was too grindy for my taste. I realized that the game will need to take around 6-10 in-game months time. So only 3-5 chances for the enemy to score its objective. The other problem was that it is way too easy to cheese its objective of conquering a region with just 1 action which increases the loyalty of a region from the player.

So what is my solution? Well, I just defaulted back to the good old loss condition of losing too many territories. Easy to understand, works well, as if the player loses too many territories that it makes it impossible to come back, it instantly ends the game. But I still liked the general idea of the enemy focusing on regions, so I didn't throw it completely in the bin, just repurposed it. The enemy will be focusing their loyalty-reducing missions on a region (which will be the starting region of the player, in the beginning, just to make sure the player will have missions in the first month). But if the enemy sees too big of resistance (too many missions were countered by the player) it will change its target. The enemy will remember this though, so this will increase the likelihood of terror missions in this region, as a retaliation. This gives the feeling of the enemy being revengeful which I quite like.

[h2]The diversification of cities:[/h2]

Now, onto the new stuff. A lot of time was spent to make the regions and cities more distinct visually, and mechanically. Hopefully, you already saw this in the opening picture, but here are the 4 different cultures and their main cities:

In the north, you can see people building cities around mountains. These mountains are rich in ores, so you will find a high concentration of smiths in these regions.



As we go a bit more south you will find people living in a more temperate region. These are rather balanced regions, with just a slight preference for one resource.



The southwest portion of the map, gives home to a big desert, with a few oases here and there. These oases are the centers of the people living here and are renowned trade centers, so these regions are highly focused on supply income.



Lastly, the southeast portion of the map gives home to a more eastern-like culture, home of the biggest philosophers of the lands. No surprise then that these territories have a bigger concentration of scholars than any other.



The player will have to take into account the region 3 income types when he is deciding where to build additional spy networks in addition to the loyalty and defense benefits it provides. Plus the region bonus, if the player builds a spy network into all of the territories in the region.

[h2]Closing thoughts:[/h2]

So as you can see, the campaign map is close to its final form. We still have work to do on the base building portion, and to create a few menus for science/smith/barracks but otherwise, it starts to really take shape. The enemy AI works, can upgrade its armies, beat the people into submission, be revengeful if it meets opposition. I can't wait till we can actually link the combat portion with the campaign part!

Hello everyone! In the previous devlog laid down the goals of my design on the campaign, and now I would like to show you where these goals led me, and what will be the player up against in their fight for freedom!

[h2]The heart of the invasion forces, the armies:[/h2]

The most important thing the AI has to change the game state is their armies. They all start in their headquarters at the start of the month, and as the month progresses, they are all going to conduct different types of missions. Take a closer look at one of them:



There are 5 small orbs and 1 big orb floating above every army. The 5 orbs represent the army level. The more orbs are burning, the higher its level. You can think of an army level as difficulty, as it describes how hard the mission will be if the player tries to counter that army. The big orb job is just to show if the army was successful (purple) or not (red) in its mission, plus it can be shattered if the army is damaged. Under the orbs, you can see the 3 squadron leaders which represents the type of enemies you can encounter if you counter this army. This largely depends on the enemy science level and the army difficulty level.

[h2]The primary conflict zones, the missions:[/h2]

Armies conduct missions on territories depending on their planning at the start of the month. The AI takes into account the current game state, for example, how much supply it has, what its progress on their agenda goal, and updates how dangerous it thinks the player is. Common mission types :

- Tax collection: This mission if successful will increases the enemy supply. In addition, it has a small negative impact on loyalty. Prioritized if low on supply.
- Crackdown: This mission if successful will have a big impact on the loyalty of the territory. Prioritized if agenda is not yet fulfilled.
- Abduction: This mission if successful will increase the enemy science. In addition, it has a small negative impact on loyalty. Prioritized if they feel the player is dangerous.

Other missions which they will only do if they feel threatened:

- Terror mission: This mission cost supply for the invaders. This mission has a big impact on the loyalty of the territory, but the exact size of the impact will depend on how many people the player can save.
- Destroy information network: This mission aims at the player spy network. If the player does not counter it, they lose their spy network. The player can counter these missions which are being conducted by the armies if they detected them, and that leads to the tactical portion of the game.

[h2]Buildings to stake territory:[/h2]



-The player can build spy networks (left) that increased the detection rate of enemy missions to 100% on the territory they are built, plus gives a bonus to the passive detection chance for every other territory in the region.

-The enemy can build bases (right) on a 0 loyalty territory at the end of the month. This cost supply for them locks the territory down (so they can't conduct missions there) but they will gain passive income. Plus the player will have to destroy the base if they want to liberate the territory.

[h2]Science, the wheel of progress:[/h2]

One important aspect which I have not yet talked about is science. The enemy has a small passive science income, and it will prioritize it if it deems the player too dangerous. Science level primarily affects 2 things. For one, it affects how many armies it can field, and at what level. The other one is the actual squadrons which you can meet on tactical combat. For that, we have a handy screen for the player to always see and check the possible enemies:



There are 7 squadrons on the screen. When the enemy reaches a new science level, a new squadron will arrive from the right and pushes all other squadron downs 1 step. The army composition depends on the position on this line. For example, against a level 1 army, you can meet with the leftmost 3 squadrons. In practice, this means as science increases, new harder squadrons appear in the high-level armies, and the low-level armies will "inherit" the pushed-off squadrons. So the player will have ample time to prepare for new squadrons arriving if he fights against the lower-middle armies.

The enemy science screen goal is to make it clear for the player what he is up against, so you can check out the squad's composition, and individual unit statistics as well:



So that's it for today's dev diary. See you in the next one!

Hello everyone, I know I'm a "bit" late with this devlog, but I wanted to write this only when I have something to show for. Briefly about the combat demo before moving on to the campaign, while it has a lot of things it still needs in terms of polish, but we are satisfied with the core combat system in it. I think we finally reached a system we can build upon gameplay-wise so thanks to everyone who gave it a go and helped to reach this point!

So now that we are happy with the core combat system it is time to work on the campaign. In this devlog I want to share what will be the core design principles. Plus showing off the rudimentary 3D engine which we use for the campaign map because why not :) .

[h2]Design goals:[/h2]

After a lot of thinking (and binning countless ideas), I realized that I need to define what experience I want to give to the player and go from there. This is the feeling of building a deck for example in Magic the gathering or character in Guild Wars 1. In addition, I want players to have to adapt to the constantly changing enemies while they gather more and more ways to tweak their team as the game progresses. In addition, I have a secondary goal, which is that I want the player to feel they are fighting against something, and not just getting random missions from the game. I want my campaign design to emphasize these 2 points.

[h2]Starting point:[/h2]

The basic structure of the map is very simple. There are 6 different sized regions, with 16 territories in total. Every territory belongs to a region and will have a loyalty rating (0-5) which represents how much the given territory supports the resistance. Your resistance income will depend on this value. The resistance will be able to build a spy network in a territory, which will improve the income of the region, plus will uncover any mission that the enemy is conducting in this region while it is up (more on this later). In addition, there will be a base-building component, research, smithy, barrack. So far very similar to the XCOM reboot.

[h2]The invaders:[/h2]

One big difference is the way the invaders work. As I said in the beginning, I want the player to feel like they are fighting against somebody. So, what if not the players but the invaders have goals (called agendas) which they need to reach to win the game? These agendas will be things like building a base at a certain territory or have a whole region with 0 loyalty to the resistance, things like that. Semi-long goals, which the AI will be going to pursue, and the players have to realize what is the goal and stop it from happening in a given timeframe. The player loses the campaign if the AI manages to fulfill X amount of agendas (X can depend on the difficulty level for example).

Another idea that reinforces this feeling of playing against someone is the idea that the invaders themselves will have a type of income that depends on how successful they are in conducting their missions. This income can be used to create harder/more missions or upgrade their troops, or maybe fulfill an agenda of theirs. Successful players can slow down their income by sabotaging their missions in the tactical portion of the game.

There is a third point that will be important, namely how dangerous the AI thinks of the resistance. If the player fails a lot, they will not take the resistance seriously, and it might be more greedy, doing more missions with fewer troops defending them. Or if the player is playing well, then it would prioritize upgrading its units more, finding and destroying spy networks in territories, do fewer, but more heavily guarded missions, etc. My hope is that this mechanic while being immersive, will help to smooth out the difficulty curve as well, giving a chance for a come back after a big loss, and giving a bigger challenge if the player starts to snowball.

[h2]The visuals:[/h2]

In addition to working on the design of the campaign map, we wanted to further improve the visual fidelity of the game. So we started to implement more and more shader effects on the video card to create a more dynamic visual experience and to make it feel a little bit more modern. Part of this is the rudimentary 3D engine that I created for the campaign map to create a bit of depth to the map.



In addition to that, we have a day/night cycle with moving trees and lighting effects on cities.





These gif's are not perfect as it was hard to stay within the size limit. If you want to see these effects in better quality, check out our Twitter here where I periodically show them off in video format.

So that's it for today's dev diary. Hopefully, now that we have a clear design philosophy and goal for the campaign map, I will be able to share our progress on it more frequently so stay tuned for more! In addition, if you are interested in older dev logs, you can check out our indiedb page here where all of our devlog is present. But from now on we will post them here as well!

If you haven't tried it out yet, and you want to be more involved in the development of the game, feel free to give the alpha combat demo a go! We are always looking for feedback, and are interested in what you think about it.

Here is the link.