Hi all, I just wanted to drop in with a quick update. It was a good week of dev on HOI, although I lost a day and half fixing the building placement logic. I thought it was all set, but it wasn't. The good news is that it appears to be working perfectly now. Buildings, walls, towers, cannons, roads, street lights - they're all working as expected.
The day/night cycle is working too. I posted a raw, high res video here:
http://youtu.be/r_rCSBGTV08
Steam only allows up to 1080p, so if you want to see what HOI looks like in 4k, there it is.
So, here are some things in the game I'm happy with and some things I'm not:
Good - The buildings that I've got completed are all working well. Blacksmiths build weapons and armor, barracks spawn units, the Rogue's Guild will run missions to raid enemy treasuries, the Scouts will discover hidden treasure and entrances to dungeons and reveal them on the player's map.
Bad - The economy is not robust enough yet. I'm not holding out until it's perfectly balanced - that's what I'm hoping you all will assist with - but right now there's not enough buildings to make this first scenario interesting yet.
Good - The bad guys are all working as expected, up to this point. They attack who they should attack, their pathfinding is adequate, they take local damage (headshots at this point), the animations all fire when they should and generally look pretty smooth.
Bad - They're boring. Sure, there's some variety between ranged and melee, and some have specials like poison or slowing, but they're not smart and they don't provide a different enough challenge between them. Not to worry, I've got plenty of ideas on how to make them better, but it's going to take time. The big question is how much "better" the bad guys need to be before launching EA. I'm still debating this, but your insights are appreciated.
Good - The player's special abilities all work great. Stuns, DPS, AOE, Heals - all working as they should.
Bad - Again, not enough variety. This goes along with the bad guys issue since good abilities give the player choices in how to defeat certain enemies.
There's plenty more to discuss, like how the friendly NPC's will work, both the generic units and heroes, but I'll dive into those in a separate update. Thanks!
-Michael