Demo Video

Final version demoed in class

Link to the final version demoed in class:
Army of the Ronin

Most recent version

Most recent version of our game here:

Army of the Ronin

Huge battle

Need to limit number of villagers, but thought this looked pretty cool:

Fonts

Progress Report

Task Activities Since Alpha:

 Hero controls redone to be mouse controlled (rpg/rts style)

 New proximity detection system using triggers for flocking and combat behavior

 Redone melee combat system to work significantly better + be flexible enough for all

melee unit types

 Improved flocking movement and behavior for existing units

 New flocking behavior primitive behaviors and variables added to allow for creation of

reasonable behavior for current and future unit types

 Improved art and visual feedback for combat

 Improved art and visual feedback for villager rescue mechanics

 Improved animations and art for units

 Improved art for game world

 Improved art for villager role assignment screen

 Improved villager and enemy spawning

 Improved XP and leveling system

 Partially completed ranged combat system

 Better visual feedback for end of day time running out

Task Activities Next Two Weeks:

 Finish ranged combat

 Morale system

 Add art and any remaining extra code for more unit types

 Save/Checkpoint system

 Improve/add art for game world and menus

Work Plan Tasks Completed to Date:

 Core unit setup

 Hero movement controls (redone for mouse control)

 Investigate flocking AI and behavior trees framework

 Improved gameplay screen

 Redone hero combat

 Villager role assignment screen

 Enemy spawning

 Flocking AI + flocking commands

 Rescue mechanics

 Leveling/XP system

 Improved art and visual feedback for multiple systems (see above)Problem Areas:

 Ended up largely redoing a several systems after alpha following feedback and issues

with current systems (see below).

 The unity physics engine apparently combines children colliders to the parent to allow for

complex colliders built out of primitive colliders. Unfortunately, when attempting to use

a child collider as a trigger for things like proximity detection or weapon hit detection,

these colliders were then getting included with the parent collider for trigger enter

messages. This lead to some complications and rewrites for the proximity detection and

melee combat systems to accommodate this fact

Beta Release

Current playable version of our game can be found at the following: Army of the Ronin

Role Assignment Screen Update

Updated role assignment screen:
Added background
Put textures on up and down arrow buttons
Put in XP system

Need to put in image of each villager role:

Progress Video

Here's a video showing progress of our game:


We added/improved:
mouse controls so players don't have to switch back and forth b/w keyboard and mouse
hero melee and animation
villager melee and animation
blood splatter xp
rescue mechanic visual feedback
art: models, texture background, plane
game screen boundaries
enemy spawning

Some feedback from alpha playtest

Goal:
Goal to rescue villagers is clear.
Hard to understand the days.
Too many buttons.
Short-term goal is clear. Long-term goal leveling system is vague now.

Control:
Like the control, especially left control attack.
Will be better if there is a shortcut key for issuing commands.
User control is easy to use. Flag placing and changing command to villagers require player to switch between keyboard and mouse: inconvenient.

Intuitive UI:
Stronger UI feedback
Better playing field
Day ends suddenly, would be nice to have a notification( more obvious count down, change in lighting).

Feedback:
Confused on how to rescue villagers.
Hard to tell what villagers are doing.

Things to improve or change:
Add enemies.

From the feedback, we will focus a lot on UI, visual feedback, artwork to improve player experience for the next playtest.

Notes from meeting

XP System:

Task for this week:

Rescue Demo

Alpha Progress Report

Task Activities Since Design Document Submission:

Week 1:

· Core unit setup (movement, stats, rigid bodies, placeholder art)

· Hero movement controls (to help test above)

· Investigate flocking AI and behavior trees framework

· Basic gameplay screen (camera placement, barriers top and bottom, camera scrolling to follow player)

Week 2:

· Hero combat controls (to test above)

· Villager role assignment screen (basics)

· Basic enemy spawning

· Basic flocking

Week 3:

· Rescue mechanics

· Leveling/XP system

· Improved flocking

· Flocking commands

Activities Planned for Beta 1:

Incomplete tasks:

· Combat system basics for a melee unit (attacking, health, death)

· Ranged combat

Week 4:

· Add more unit types (sword, healer, flag bearer)

· Combat mechanics for more unit types

· Improved flocking AI, rules/behavior for new units

· Morale system

· Add/Improve art

Week 5:

· Add more unit types (crossbow, shield unit, armored)

· Combat mechanics for more unit types

· Improved flocking AI, rules/behavior for new units

· Add/Improve art

Week 6:

· Save/Checkpoint system

· Add additional enemy unit types (giants, Zombie Shogun)

· Combat mechanics for more unit types

· Improved flocking AI, rules/behavior for new units

· Boss fight

· Add/Improve art

Work Plan Tasks Completed to Date:

· All week 1 tasks

· All week 2 tasks

· All week 3 tasks

Problem Areas:

· Had some issues with getting SVN to work

· Combat system is still having some issues as far as correctly detecting attacks.

· Decided to integrate CIS 562 boids style flocking AI rather than the NavMan pathfinding for basic villager/enemy behavior, seemed easier within our time constraints to get the desired behaviors using that.

Attack and Flocking Demo

Game Play Screen + Villager/Enemy Spawning

This is the basic game play screen. Buttons on the bottom allow players to issue commands, the box above buttons contains the time remaining for that day, I set it to 30 seconds right now. The 'assign villagers role' button is just temporary.

Villager + Enemy spawning
Right now, an enemy (red) is spawned at a random location on the right side of the screen when there are less than 20 enemies in the game. New villagers are spawned at the beginning of each day according to the role assignments. We just have general villagers right now (blue) that represent all roles.

Villager Role Assignment Screen

Should have posted this a while ago...This is the villager role assignment screen that displays at the end of each day of battle. Level 1 villagers level up to Level 2 villagers at the end of the day and so on. Players use the up and down arrows (buttons labeled 'u' and 'd' right now) to assign villagers to roles.

Welcome to the Blog

We will be posting updates here as we work on our game: Army of the Ronin. Stay tuned.