Everpixel Tactics: A New Version Approaches...
For those of you who have been checking in occasionally on the state of the game - thank you for your continued support. I've not pushed an update for the game for a long time for two primary reasons:
Reason one: I burned out. And I burned out from overwork on the game and--frankly--because the bad code led to me having to work harder than I should. Keep in mind, I do this game as a hobby; a passion project (I have a real job as a software engineer that keeps me QUITE busy...)
Reason two: I realized that reason one was in part due to bad code (and the bad code was in part from my trying to rush out features.) I've been doing software a long time - I should have known better. I doubled-down on my desire to not simply push a bad game out, but to push out a game that I myself wanted to play. So rather than continue to work with bad code, I opted to re-write every line of code in a very-high quality manner. This will make adding new features easier, and it will make debugging easier.
I've been hard at work on rewriting the entire game, and I think I'm on track to get the new and improved Everpixel Tactics--new code and all--out by Christmas.
Scrutinizing Everything
While I was rewriting the game, I took advantage of the chance to scrutinize every decision of the game. Every mechanic; every stat. And so the new version of Everpixel Tactics has a few notable changes.
I started by asking "What makes a game fun?" I then asked "What features can I reasonably implement by myself to make the game fun?" I've been playing games a long time, and games typically only do a few things well. Games that try to do everything oftentimes end up being very "meh." And so, being but one dev, I asked "What fun things should Everpixel Tactics do well?" I then asked "What fun things can I realistically add with my finite time?"
So, I whittled what Everpixel Tactics should be down into its essence. Like before, it's to be a tactical, roguelike RPG with a special emphasis on wide-open character customization and replayability. No more exploring the world, no more managing factions. Just a lean, tight focus on battles in a zany, surreal world with a lot of "roguelike stuff" thrown in for good measure.
What's Different
Tactical Battles
The game's emphasis has been--and always will be--tactical, fantastical battles. On the surface, Everpixel Tactics's battles haven't changed. Under-the-hood, however, the entire codebase is leaner, tighter, and more refined. It will be much easier to track down the inevitable bugs that are found.
I even rewrote all of the AI behaviors of the game. Before, every type of AI had their own behavior tree...and because of it, debugging AI behaviors became a nightmare. A bug in one tree could take hours to fix in all other trees if just because there were so many trees, and a lot of them used the same (buggy) logic. So, what to do? Obviously, whittle everything down to one gigantic behavior tree where branches of the tree are themselves what were formerly separate trees. It works so much better, and so one of the things that used to be the buggiest of all (agent AI) is now one of the easiest things to work with (with respect to the code, that is.)
That said, there is a tangible change from the player's perspective. Where the old version of the game allowed players to take a squad of 12 characters into battle, this version will allow for a party of up to 6. I think this is a good change, though, as it should reduce the amount of time battles take to play out. Too low of a number, and players feel as if they're forced into certain party setups. Too large a number and battles take forever - not to mention players start to lose attachment to their individual mercenaries. 6 is a good number, I think.
Stats
The stats themselves are now simpler; gone is the complicated system of primary stats and secondary stats. What's left is now analogous to the old "secondary stats" (melee, magic, power, defense, etc.) plus the usual hit points, action points, etc. I made this change because I felt that it complicated the game too much and offered too little in return. It felt like needless complexity for the sake of complexity, and so it got simplified.
Campaign
The campaign is also simpler. Players will no longer be able to explore the world (sorry.) This decision was based primarily on the fact that it is a TON of work to realize this, and I am but one mere mortal. The campaign is now short, too - roughly 10 missions-long give-or-take (I haven't finalized the number yet.) The emphasis is on making players make tough, strategic choices about which missions to take during a campaign as those missions will have significant rewards (e.g., powerful artifacts, stat boosts, or even fantastical creatures as party members), but may also have consequences for the remainder of the campaign (such as angering a titan.)
The "corruption" of the world is still in the game, however. Players embarking on missions in areas of high biomancy magic will still find all characters have much higher health pools. Similarly, players embarking in areas of high necromancy will still find the dead rising from the grave and attacking them.
Graphics
I'll be honest - I didn't know what was doing with respect to the user interface, screen ratios, or pixel aspects before I started Everpixel Tactics. I've learned a lot since starting the game, and I took every opportunity to incorporate those lessons learned into the new version of the game. Every pixel should be sharper; every UI component should be cleaner.
Take a look at the old versus new:
Old
New
Old
New
Development Philosophy
Unlike before, I'm not going to try to stick to a tight roadmap (down that path lie burnout.) Instead, I'm going to try to keep roughly to a roadmap. All the while, I'm going to push out small, frequent changes once I release the new-and-improved version of the game.
The new version of the game will not be feature complete; but it will be playable. Anyway, I am encouraged that folks are checking in on the progress of the game, I promise the game is not abandonware, and I promise that I'm going to (eventually) release the best game that I can. Thanks.
