This week I have been thinking over some design considerations for future projects I will be/am working on.
Unit Facing and overlapping sprites
In my next couple of games, the facing of units is important. As those of you who follow my games will know I like bigger graphics for displaying units and hexes. However when rotating those units to allow for facing they start to overlap. Now I could make the unit counters smaller but if you have a stack of units you need to make them smaller still.
I also hit some graphical problems when rotating the sprites. I noticed that if I rotate them in the code they lose a little bit of clarity. To avoid this I will need to have a graphic for every unit in 6 directions. A lot of work but I think worth it to maintain the quality.
For now, I am going to go with the overlap look.
What to do when a mapboard is smaller than the screen width?
Valor & Victory mapboards are 16 hexes (if you include the 2 half hexes) columns across and 9.5 hexes rows down. If I display them at the normal hex size that I have used in my other games then the map will be smaller than a standard 1980 * 1080 monitor screen. Some games, Heros of Normandy as an example, display the map as if it’s on a table.
Others, like Unity of Command, grey out areas that are unreachable. Basically, they extend the map graphics beyond that needed to play the game.
Both are good solutions to the problem although I like the Unity of Command approach better.
For now, I have decided to take the third option and graphically increase the map size so it will fit (once I add a side panel for icons etc) a 1980 * 1080 monitor. What I will need to think about is what happens when a scenario uses 2 or more mapboards. Do I shrink the graphics down (in which case to maintain graphically quality I need 2 sets at each size) or just have a big scrolling map?
I am still thinking about this one for the final version. As its a tactical game, having bigger graphics does give you a feeling of immersion and wanting to protect your precious units.
Community Involvement
Valor & Victory has an existing passionate community who love the game. I would like them involved in the development of the PC version of the game. But at what stage do I release builds to play with? I would love to provide twice a month builds and get feedback right from day one. The problem for me is that means I have to ensure every build is as bug-free as possible and that any new feature is complete which may make progress slower. I don’t want the community to lose faith because every build is bug ridden and a new feature not quite complete.
However, I do see the enormous benefits of early feedback and the early detection of bugs.
I am still pondering on this one.
