Since the last progress re-cap in June there has been continued development on the pre-alpha version of the core game-mechanics and the additional systems that is planned to go in before we finish our first full Alpha version.
Here is some of the recent highlights from our pre-alpha patch notes:
Finalizing basic skills
The range of skill that will be available to the operators and monsters, and that one can level up through experience, has been finalized and introduced for all characters. Each skill defined what they are used for to allow different play and weapon choices to have an impact on the gameplay experience. More details as to what the skills are and their values by default for each Monster-type and variance will be published going forward here and in a wiki.
New 'Close Combat' System
Since the earliest prototypes the close combat system was a sub-system of the projectile-based attack-system that ranged weapons use, only with limited range and speed of the attacks. This was always a temporary approach until we had our dedicated Close Combat System in place. This has now been introduced in the internal pre-alpha builds, and unlike the projectile based system it instead uses a more traditional RPG-approach with a D20-roll to evaluate Success, Failure and Critical Hit, where both the attackers and defenders skill-levels in the appropriate skill (depending on weapon carried) define the chance for the different outcomes.
'Damage vs Resistance' System
To further allow for a tactical approach to the gameplay, different Monsters have different resistance to different damage types depending on their type and variance. This also allows for introducing weaknesses in some monster-types and variances, for example an Ice-based variance may be sensitive to Fire, while the normal base-type of the monster wouldn't be. The details as to each monsters resistance towards each damage-type will be published going forward here and in a wiki.
New 'AppliedEffect' System
This system is to handle unit buff/debuffs across all other systems, allowing for instance a temporary boost against a base attribute or skill to be properly used by all other sub-systemce that use this attribute or skill in their calculations. It also takes care of the general status of the Applied Effect itself, the time to live in rounds and the display of visual indication (effect) over/at the units position if applicable. The first Applied Effect that was introduced was 'CloseCombatAffected', a debuff that impacts any unit that is attacked in Close Combat but isn't focusing on defending themselves. The impact of the debuff in question is a 25% skill-penalty for the rest of the round. One typical scenario is a Operator attempting to fire their weapon against a Monster, while another Monster is attacking the Operator. The decreased chance of success indicates the Operator being unable to fully focus on their attack at hand due to having to try to dodge the incoming blows from an attacking Monster. Another Applied Effect introduced is the buff from carrying out the CloseCombat-specific order Guard Stance, having a unit focus on performing a defensive stance for the duration of a round to deflect incoming attacks with a 33.3% increase chance to their skill-level.
The AppliedEffect system isn't limited to Skills, but can also impact Attributes, Health and XP-gain, in a positive or negative way. An example of this would be drinking a potion that gives the Operator a +2 in Strength for a number of turns, or performing a ritual that gives the operator a bonus to XP-gain for a set duration.
New 4K compatible Party UI
As we move from internal debug-panels towards a proper UI, we have now added a Party-UI that indicates Health, used Action Points, class, level and Operator icon -- that also scale flawlessly between any custom resolutions and all the way up to 4K. The same is also true for the Action Panel UI, shown for the selected Operator when selecting actions to perform, and we will be showing it and the new rendered icons going forward in the near future.
(4K Screenshots with Party UI)
