Week 31

Hello Everyone,

This week our AI learned how to build platforms and send them at the player, we made some changes to our wire visuals, how mines get placed, and what power flow looks like.

In-game the AI is going to spend a while building each platform and we may experiment with different ways of signaling to the player that a major threat is approaching, but for blog purposes I've sped it way up:

The AI can also path platforms around obstacles when necessary

This should open up important new ways of challenging the player, now that the AI can, if given too much time, break through fortified positions. This should add a lot of interesting challenges and opportunities to later levels, since quick players can build defenses specifically to counter a platform that's being constructed, and clever players can cut off a platform's power mid flight and potentially reuse the captured platform for their own purposes.

We've also toned down the visual effects that show power flow, as once there were a lot of wires on screen at once it could get visually overwhelming. Here's what it looks like now:

Plus, we've made Miners act more like regular buildings, with the added bonus that they automatically build wires under themselves as needed. We may extend that automatic wire building capability to Lances in the future, hopefully streamlining the base building process while still keeping it interesting.

Next week we've going to be starting on a new level for the early game and doing another major round of playtesting. We're also going to start looking into publisher options soon, so it's exciting times all around!

Thanks for reading,

Tucker Bane