Tag Archives: map editor

Dev Blog #29 – Building Maps

This week we’ve been playing around with the editor, and looking at the process in which we add new tiles. Take note, there are different types of tiles: walkable tiles, impassable tiles, and structures, and it takes regular playtesting to make sure the maps are fun to play.

For maps with a sporeland type terrain, players need to build a regiment of units that are immune to Infection and other spore effects.

Part of creating the map editor is trying duplicate real world things in the game. However, a lot of the maps are representational, and do not show the real sizes of things such as mountains, oceans, and villages.

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #29: Using the Map Editor from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

We’ve also been doing a lot of fixes based on the results of our unit testing last week. At this point, we have made sure that the basic game make sense, decided what features we need, designed the different characters, and built the environment it is set in. We’re almost ready to start working on the campaigns.

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #29: What Have We Been Doing from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

We have a bunch of maps already created, but some still need adjustment. Here’s the actual process of creating a map for Last Regiment.

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #29: Actual Map Making from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

For our question of the week, we want to ask our players: what do you love and hate about the map editors in other games?

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #29: Question of the Week from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

As always, send us your answers and other comments on our Discord.


Dev Blog #23 – Everyone Has A Story

This week we focused  on three things: Story, Tutorial, and Editor.

sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

As we write Olivia’s story, we realize that the characters that she meets also have their own stories. Since the game is designed to be played using one hero at a time, how do we tell the stories of these other characters? We can’t have an entire campaign mode where you can only use Olivia, so we’re looking at having a bigger story told from multiple viewpoints and switching heroes per campaign level. This storytelling framework is something we have not worked with before, and it’s taking some time to put together.

Meanwhile after some testing and feedback during last week’s stream, we have shortened the tutorial map by making the playable area smaller, reducing the number of side quests, and having less minions to fight. Completing the tutorial now takes roughly 30 minutes.

We’re looking at the map-building editor and asking some serious questions: Is this all we need to make levels the way we want to make them? Is this what we’re gonna use to go build all the campaign levels?” Because the next step is building a bunch of levels. And we’d prefer not to redo them all.

Other changes we’ve made is prototypes for AI behavior. We can now set them as aggressive, defensive, or “turtle”, but it’s still buggy at this point. We’ll see by next week how things turn out.


Dev Blog #20 – Artificial Intelligence and Creating the Tutorial

This is our last dev update for the year. Most of the week was spent fixing bugs and addressing a bunch of corner cases, but we’re adding new things to make the gameplay more interesting plus more visual improvements. We’re also getting a build ready for PAX South, so there are several things we need to mark off our checklist.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

People have been discussing artificial intelligence on our Discord. One of the hardest things in making AI is making it seem human. In strategy games, the challenge is how does the AI make a grand strategy/plan and decide to do something in the game? For Last Regiment, we take a different way of doing it by setting decision-making metrics that the AI can look at. However, you can’t get to this point until you already have a game that’s well put together.

Creating the Tutorial

Another thing that had to wait until now is the tutorial, which we are unable to do until the game exists and the rulesets are defined. In the game’s current state, and with PAX South approaching, we are now starting to build it. It’s very challenging work, especially with strategy games being more complicated than normal games, and with our relatively new turn-based simultaneous mechanic. We have to make a fun and interesting tutorial to make our players think it’s easy and draw them into the game step by step.

What We’ve Changed So Far

1. Added gameplay significance to deep and shallow waters by introducing new naval units, such as the Tentaklor of the Deep and the Giant Diseased Crayfish.

2. Added themed bridges and fords that can be crossed by people and boats.

3. Improved the way structures look to make them more “hex-y”

4. Improved the Choose Your Regiment screen and added faction backgrounds for the cards

Watch the video for a more detailed breakdown.

We’ll continue working on these before the holidays and resume next year. We’ll definitely be busy with conventions in January, but you can always keep updated through our Discord.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!