TODO: Document it here 
Influenced by: (GW) BlitzBowl, (GW) Underworld, Battletech
Flavor Text:
It is year 3026, due to mistake of its pilot, gigantic intergalactic cargo frigate hits atmosphere of one of the Outer Rim planets and badly damages its hull.
You (player) commands the team of solarpunk vagabonds and luckily captured radio communication that marks position of expected cargo drops. But You were not the only one!
High level design notes
- Scoring points by bringing to base dropped cargo and small randomly generated each turn side quests like “block oponent unit”, "destroy oponent unit that was carrying
- Grid movement (square pattern)
- Shooting 8 direction pattern, must have line of sight
- 3 action per turn for each commander
- Unit cannot perform same action twice in a turn
- Commander may perform same action more than once if each time on different unit
- Actions: Deploy unit, move (temporary name RUN), shoot, block, disengage
- Unit can be deployed in any non-occupied , non-base square
- Blocked units cannot shoot or move
- Unit that blocks is also being blocked
- To pick up cargo unit cannot be blocked
- Each units has “no entry” square round it that only can be entered by using blocking action
- Two player “hot sit” version
- Each Commander will be able to setup 2-3 obstacles / barricades at the start of the game
- Players start with 0 “victory” points and no units on the board
- Units costs victory points
- Game ends when difference between players points is 30
RNG Mechanic
- based on 8 side dice roll
- unit stats: Xd8 armor, Xd8 attack, movement range, cost, team
- when shooting player roll X number of 8 side attack dice pick up highest value, defender rolls X number of 8 side armor dice and pick highest value. If attack value is bigger than armor unit is destroyed (each unit has only “1 HP”)
Plan to have:
- Grid tiles like forest or ruins that will improve armor role
- 5 units type: HEAVY, FAST, MEDIUM, GLASS CANON, CHEAP
- long (1+ to armor) and short range of shooting
Would love to have but will not focus till base game works:
- “better” graphics
- instead of 8 directions, full grid based “range of view” for shooting that calculates obstacles limiting visibility “shadows”
- hex instead of squares
- AI player
- turn based “Chess style” multiplayer (not sure if that is even possible
)
Game link: not playable at all at this moment but if someone wants to look around : https://flowlab.io/games/play/3060300, most of the code in brown grid item and “Player” Object 896
3 Likes
So far movement is mostly done and some part of shooting:
2 Likes
I still have to decide if for rng it will be just sum of dice rolled or 1 highest roll
I want to always have option that unit with 1 armor will with super luck save from maxed 8 attack enemy but on the other hand I want to give purpose to deploy expensive high attack units
3 Likes
UPDATE:
Some Saturday code cleanup (not sure if best practice but works for me)
moving most often used values to global “statics”
1 Like
Dear DevLog Diary 
No one asked 
but I will share interesting unique (for me) current implementation detail.
Despite being totally “grid” based game. It is not using so far any X,Y or arbitrary 2d array. The whole check find neighbor tile is based on using ray cast. When marking move area it is fallowing basic recursive algorithm in 8 directions
- subtract 1 from move range,
- if ray hits grid object, check if not occupied
- label as visited at current “radius” value
- do not enter if already visited and current radius is lower than recorded on grid object previously
When marking shot / attack range it casts rays fallowing previous angle till it hit occupied grid
Even to check what object occupies grid object it casts ray “back” at itself from outside (player = unit, not human game user, naming convention from sport boardgames)
There is one small “hack” i had to do for it to work expected way for me. make collision shape smaller than 32x32
1 Like
Also added very ugly but fully functional temporary buttons to select desired action (move, attack) and change turn between red and blue team
So it is slowly turning into “game’ish” thing
Refactor weekend
*Refactor of order of steps to perform action: first select unit , than move or attack action
*Roughly working ‘deploy’ action, team action consumed, creates unit for correct current team. No unit type yet
*Each commander-player cannot perform more than 3 actions
To stop pixel art sci-fi assets hunger 
I decided to pick Kenny asset pack, turn them into gray scale images and experiment with different color palettes from web
1 Like
Small Steps forward
- Introduced rough version of UI elements to show details of selected unit
- Unit “Factory” that makes possible to deploy different types of units on not occupied spaces + basic UI buttons for that
- BUG FIX: edge of map unit selection issues (fixed by creating border of obstacles around the map)
Some small game design: units characteristics (coded in units properties)
- infantry: MOVE: 2, ATTACK 1, ARMOR 1, COST 1
- transporter: MOVE: 5, ATTACK 1, ARMOR 2, COST 2
- mortar: MOVE: 2, ATTACK 5, ARMOR 2, COST 3
- tank: MOVE: 3, ATTACK 3, ARMOR 5, COST 5
Attack and Armor are not used yet in the shoot/attack action
1 Like
Bonus update
Finally “almost” full implementation of the mentioned FLAG aka “resource” as fallows:
- Spawns in the middle of the board
- Only one at a time at the map
- Can be picked by unit + simple mark on the unit that collected it
- If flag carrier is destroyed it drops the flag
- Once delivered to own base it gives point and will re-appear on next player turn in the middle
TODO testing and debugging this
Bonus Image: There is a method in this chaos
Update
Working on generic yes/no pop up “factory”
- blocks other “click” actions if open
- draft of confirmation for move action
2 Likes
On today episode of devlog :
Currently smaller changes happening :
- cleanup of objects and code
- additional tweaks for confirmation pop up
- 2 frames animated selection mark on unit to make things easier to see
With my wife help and feedback i decided to redesign graphic into more abstract and minimalistic variant that led more vague names of the available units (Defender, Attacker, Runner, Fielder) and created the name for the game 
DARF!
Canva Design (not yet fully implemented as the attack and armor BOOST fields does not have mechanic yet) :
1 Like
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