Month: March 2013

After fixing some bugs to do with construction, I’ve added several features to make building both more flexible and sensible.

More flexible in that you can change the material of existing struts on the fly. Previously you would have to destroy the strut and recreate it, which leads to a deformed structure as the building sags in the interim. This can be done by the context menu, or by holding Alt while selecting an existing strut.

You can also add devices and weapons into your fort and automatically have internal ‘rooms’ created for them. Struts get pushed into the background to make way for them, so you get a kind of cutaway view. You can then add doors for weapons to shoot out of. I’ll be working on a preview of this shortly.

Players are now unable to build from struts that have no support. In the past you could build chains of indefinite length in the sky. This changes the way you build because you get more immediate feedback on the structural integrity of your fort and can’t easily go off building something that won’t stand up.

While the game is rapidly shaping up, my ‘todo’ list continues to grow.

The doors have become a pivotal part of the game, but due to the amount of detail in the structures selection can be an issue. I am currently working on improving the selection system, but to avoid having to select doors themselves I have simply detected when a player fires a weapon into a nearby door. The game automatically opens the door, assuming the player wants to fire through it. It makes surprising your enemy that much easier. Closing the door is left up to the player. An absent mind can leave your weapon and the inside of your fort exposed to enemy fire. You can currently left double-click on a door to open or close it.

Damage to the structure now affects how the materials look. Holes are punched into your struts as they take more hits, giving you a visual cue of the most vulnerable parts of your fort and where to concentrate your repair effort. Smoke also billows from heavily damaged weapons.

Devices – which include weapons – are now unable to be built on top of bracing, armor, solar panels, etc. You can place them on top of the fort, or inside – with the help of the ‘background bracing’ material. Feedback is now given to show you what’s stopping you from building in a particular location, but more work needs to be done to inform the player and reduce frustration during construction.

There are now key bindings to select the next weapon, and the next weapon ready to fire. In combination with the auto-doors it is much easier to manage large numbers of weapons.

Another play session last night with Brian was good fun and the game was stable (screenshot below). Early in the game he smashed the top of my fort with his mortar. Having survived that I had two mortars built behind my fort peppering the base of his. I also had a cannon punching holes in the middle.

We’ve started scratching the surface of the different map styles that might come with the game. The level editor is built into the game, and it’s quite powerful. I’m sure we’ll see maps we can’t anticipate now made by the community!

Maps can have custom Lua scripts, which will allow for custom win conditions and special events such as enabling materials and weapons, meteor showers, rising water or moving ground.