Devlog feb 14 - Movement and Abilities

 Welcome to the first February devlog!

This time we're going to look at how combatants move and use abilities. As always, remember that this is very much a work in progress.

In this example combat, the Goblin has quite high initiative and the elephant quite low. So the Goblin often goes first in this combat

We have added abilities and initiative to each type of combatant. The turn order and initiative values are shown at the top of the screen. We always show the current and next round (separated by a little divider), allowing the player to plan out their actions. 

In addition, we now have action points. They are represented by green gems above the ability panel. For now, we've given each combatant 4 actions per turn. Moving one tile costs one action point, and some actions can cost different amounts of points.

We have added basic pathfinding, so if the player controlling the goblin tries to move behind the elephant, the game will know that he has to move around. This move would cost 3 action points. To indicate this, three action gems (subtly) light up.

The abilities we have added have different action costs and also different targets. Some abilities targets a number a combatants and some whole tiles. Some abilities requires the player to pick the target, others target everything inside a certain radius

The Trumpet ability has a radius of 2, meaning it targets all tiles within a distance of 2. Clicking the ability button will highlight the targeted tiles. Clicking again will confirm the ability.

Last thing I will note is that there's two more buttons on the interface: The hourglass button ends the turn. The arrow button allows the player to reset the current turn in case they made a mistake. The intention is to have en undo button be available until the player does something that rolls a dice or otherwise have a random outcome.

For now, there's no randomness in the turn, but that is the next thing we will add!

I hope you liked this update!
In the next update we will focus on the effects of the new abilities. Some will deal damage, some will apply some effect (buffs or debuffs) and some will summon additional opponents. The goal here is not to implement every possible ability in the game, but rather to ensure that the base system can handle a variety of different effects.

The second February update will be on February 28th. Talk to you then!