I migrated the creeps from individual to group movement.
I played with group movement before but ran into a mysterious problem; units would randomly run away from the group and wander the map! It seems this behavior is a known issue with “Unit Group - Order Group to Attack-Move To (Center of LOCATION
Group movement has many advantages over individual, though it is trickier to pull off. Groups move in formation without running into each other whichmakes them more efficient in terms of both combat effectiveness and pathfinding performance.
Ranged units became MUCH more effective since they actually attack in sync with the front lines.
Fortunately the individual group system is still being used by the AI Heroes, so I didn’t have to throw it away.
The game feels very different now and certainly for the better!
I created and now maintain a balance spreadsheet which tracks and rates the effectiveness of every unit type and spawn group.
Here is today’s copy. So far it has been an invaluable tool for visualizing and implementing balance changes. The game has undergone drastic changes in troop roles and balance, and even spawning patterns, and this spreadsheet lets me navigate those big changes while keeping the creep tug-of-war balanced and even.
I created a prioritized plan to git ‘er dunn.
Here is a glimpse at my high level ‘sprint’ plan which details the path the finish line.
1 BUGS (check)
My backlog of bugs has been pretty small at this point, since I usually try to fix them as soon as I find them. Some of these I had tried to fix before but ran into gotchas or dead ends, and some had been recently broken by movement system changes. The Warp VFX was popping up and sticking all over the place and it took a while to squash. The only open bug is the Rot Structure Icon that randomly attaches itself to human heroes when the Black King upgrades to (uses?) his Rotting Touch skill. There must be an ability side effect I am missing since the trigger seems so simple. I will try again on that one if I am bored.
2 AI (check)
Hero AI has turned out to be a huge task, and has probably accounted for 1/3 or possible even ½ of my dev time so far!
I’m sure it will be worth it. Playing against and with AIs that have almost full knowledge of how to play the game has shown me some very exciting in game moments! The convenience of the AIs for dev testing has also been a great boon in aiding the development and balance of AoR.
The last major items I checked off recently are: Stand Back from Enemy Bases You Fools! Warp Forward, and Warp to an Assaulted Base. The added survivability and mobility this allows makes the AI more competitive. In terms of emergence I saw a beleaguered AI hero warp home then buy and chug a health potion while warping back to the fight. It happened so fast I thought I was lucky just to have seen it happen at all!
3 MAP
It’s finally time to make the map look pretty and terrain more interesting! This kind of work will be a major shift in thinking so I expect it will be quite refreshing.
4 EXPERIENCE
Time to play several games with each hero! While implementing this excruciating task ;) I’ll be making meticulous notes about the experience, identifying all tool tips that need to be made, including color info.
5 QUESTS
I’m thinking of adding a few more advanced quests to diversify the gameplay just a wee bit. We shall see!
6 BALANCE
Take a pass at Artifact Costs, Hero Balance, and Spawn Balance based on the notes from #4!
7 TOOL TIPS
This will be a total pass for content, color, format, and style consistency based on notes from #4!
8 TECH
Time to address the few lingering technical tasks, like combing the triggers for outstanding leaks and handling player disconnects. Optimization might be necessary.
9 CINEMATIC
A quick set-up of the world, and maybe a simple tutorial? This will require more thought but it is low on the list for now so that is OK.
10 STORY
Write a short story presenting the fiction of the world, characters, and game.
11 WEBSITE
I’ll probably just dress up a free net blog page with a link to the download location and maybe a few custom images.
Time to get busy!
