Guru
Joined: 13/08/2020
Location: CanadaPosts: 490
| Posted: 11:25pm 12 Jan 2025 |
I've been working on the gameplay this weekend. It's going to be an on going mechanic to balance the power usage of the ship. So you will have a set amount of power that regenerates partially every turn.
You are also restricted to using three actions each turn (moving 1 space, turning 45 or 90 degrees, firing phasers or firing a torpedo each take 1 action). Other tasks such as balancing shields etc. won't take up an action point. The count of Action Points is shown at the bottom left of the screen. If you buy bigger ships, or upgrade your crew, then you might get more actions per turn.
So you can move up to three squares in a turn, or in another turn you could fire phasers, move, then fire a torpedo, or you might fire three torpedoes in a turn. Each of those options would take up all of your 3 Action points. But if you want to conserve energy you might just do one or two (or no) actions. At the end of the turn, the enemy ships all move/attack.
Phasers and moving use up energy, so although you might be able to move three square to escape an attacker, you might find that you only have enough power to move two squares next turn - or no power to fire phasers. Because torpedoes don't use energy, these are a great option - but they are a fairly rare item you have to find/buy, and they can only be fired when you are absolutely dead on pointing at the other ship (0 degree angle), which can be difficult when the other ship moves just one square over.
Here's some video footage of the player ship taking on a lone enemy (firing phasers and torpedoes), and then running into trouble right after it. The enemy logic is very simple currently, and they don't shoot back (yet).
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AnkZn9N9Pt1fyYMvkWUdnRP8Bb_O0Q?e=Ols6iF
In the original Star Trek game I thought the Klingons didn't present any challenge to the player, it was more about how you manage to move around fast enough to kill 36 enemy ships within the allotted time. The actual ships were easily dispatched with a single torpedo. In my game, I want it to feel like a naval battle, with two or more mighty warships slugging it out, with each battle being about maneuvering, tactics and licking your wounds in between fights. i.e. There should be real jeopardy that your ship will be destroyed.
I haven't tuned the power usage yet (in fact, despite what it says on the menu, firing phasers doesn't consume any energy currently), but it's starting to get that big naval ship vibe that I want. Each ship has 4 shields, and punching through the shields is essential to getting a kill, so I provide a white line marker on each ship's scan that shows where the other ships shots will hit (see image below). Infact in the video above, you can see that once I get through the port shield, the enemy turns so that I am facing their full strength front shields, forcing me knock those out as well.
If I'm going to make the player work for every kill, then I want to reward them when they succeed. Therefore I've worked in a satisfying ASCII ship explosion animation, (still shots shown below).
That's the progress so far. I'm very happy with the look and feel of the ASCII/Font mapped graphics. They are a stimulating challenge.
Thanks for reading.
Edited 2025-01-13 09:26 by PeteCotton