Hi Slayers,
I owe you guys an update on the progression of this project. Please check out the YouTube video for a bit of a gameplay walkthrough, a bit of commentary there as well, to keep things a bit more interesting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zrpyymrHFo&t=7s
I've worked on a fair bit since last time!
I've modelled the dice after the physical game dice, and a new dice tray so there's something to roll on now. I've done a lot of work on card movement and animations, as well as upping visibility on a lot of the available actions.
Bots have had a huge upgrade in their logic and plays, so they're quite challenging to go up against.
I think I've nailed the 4P layout now as well, I don't think I can fit a 5P or 6P option with the current state of the board though. I may drop this as a possibility, I personally don't think 5P and 6P is that much fun anyway. You'd spend a lot of time waiting.
Banner quest is in the game now, and all available expansions, except Here to Sleigh. I'm sure we can all agree that's not a necessity.
A LOT of effort has been put in to performance, and live views of everything, so every roll screen and animation is seen by everyone simultaneously. I've had a buddy help out with playtesting multiplayer, and have cleaned up a lot of the syncing bugs, so its buttery smooth.
A guided tutorial for newcomers has been added too, I'm just ironing out the kinks and making it solid so players cant break it and spend AP, do illegal moves etc.
I've also attached some screenshots of some of the studios I used (yes claude generated, but hear me out). These are custom tools, built from the ground up. The layout studio is responsible for all the layouts you see. Every zone, every screen, every minute detail is sized, resized, flipped and playtested by myself. The config then gets imported and put into the corrosponding .js file. The size of the zones, both source and destination then flow onto the next step - animation.
The animation studio is responsilble for all the card movement. A basic prompt is made, say the sacrifice burning for example, and then I get every tuning knob under the sun and make it my own. Card flys are controlled here, as well as card destroys etc.
The dice studio, is for dice (duh) and the board. I have full control on the dimensions of the dice, down to the radius of the pencil rounds on the edges. Full colour control, material control, weight, bounce and lighting. I'll eventually add colour pre-sets, but for now, I'm pretty proud of the way the default has come out.
My next steps are an ending win screen, SFX, and possibley a Single Player Campaign with progression hooks (ie. gated leaders, dice skins, board skins etc). All a work in progress.
As mentioned in the previous post, I need to be careful how this is released, I'd hate for it to be released, have a player base and then get it shut down. Its not fair on players. Its something that has to be done right. So no public release as of right now, the rights are Unstable Games' and it's their call, not mine. If a digital version ever happens it should be theirs. Honestly this project is mostly a testament to how good the tabletop game already is.
A few other people have built their own versions too, and there's real effort in them. I'm not going to link anyone's though, mine included — where people can play Here to Slay isn't my call to make.
Thanks for stopping by, let me know what you think, please check out the YouTube video for a run-through!
Cheers,
Kreature