Hello everyone!
For version 0.8, we have made changes to the cutscenes in the battle. The new system offers us new possibilities for further features and for balancing the levels. The new cutscenes are generally completed faster and can also be skipped once the NPC troop calculation is complete.
What has been changed?
The situation is as follows: Troop I moves from A to B. Troop II then throws a hand grenade at the new position B, causing a soldier from Troop I to flee to position C. Troop III then moves to position C and captures this soldier. The calculations for the NPC troops are turn-based, so all this happens in a single cutscene.
Due to the way the individual events were linked, the NPC troops' calculations were previously paused in certain situations (e.g. when a hand grenade was thrown and a soldier's position changed) until the in-game display caught up. This was the easiest way for us to implement and didn't pose a problem prior to version 0.7, as such links occurred very rarely. However, with the introduction of melee combat and the revision of the grenade mechanic, the cutscenes sometimes became very long, which is why we decided to write a completely new system for them.
With the new system, the display is completely decoupled from the logic. Actions, movements, injuries and other value changes now take place in the background. All these things are then forwarded to a system that progressively processes the actions in the display.
This not only results in a better and clearer code structure, but also makes it possible to skip the cutscene once the calculations are complete. Furthermore, the cutscenes are also faster because events that occur independently of each other are played in parallel.
The gear symbol in the bottom right corner indicates that calculations are still being carried out. If it is no longer displayed, the cutscene can be skipped by pressing the ESC key.
The new system also offers us further possibilities:
Previously, if a soldier was wounded by a rifle shot, we had no ‘proper’ display for this in order to avoid further chaining and thus slowing down the time between rounds. So far, the soldier has walked to his target position and played his wounding animation there. We have found that this automatically led to the effectiveness of, for example, overwatch being rated as too low, because it was often not clear what exactly the consequences were. With the new system, we can now better depict such moments.
From version 0.8 onwards, rifle shots will be assigned directly to a specific soldier and displayed accordingly.
Furthermore, the new system now allows us to do a text-based simulation of a battle in the engine to better balance the individual levels. This involves replacing the player group with a NPC troop and running through a level multiple times at the push of a button. This allows us to see which levels have one-sided odds and adjust them again.
The rework of the cutscenes was not originally planned for 0.8, but arose from the frequently expressed feedback to be able to skip cutscenes. We are looking forward to your feedback on the new system!