Crystal in Carnations Devlog #23

This is Crystal in Carnations Devlog #23 

Hello! It's me again with a devlog. I've been playing a lot of Fire Emblem Engage lately. I initially ignored the game for nearly three years, because the gacha game -esque art style really didn't appeal to me and I didn't hear anything good about the story either. (It is indeed made of cardboard) But over the years I heard a lot of good things about the game play mechanics of Engage. So in the spirit of widening my tactics game mental library and becoming a better game designer, I endure the toothpaste protagonist and  play the game with my spouse. 

The ring based mechanics are indeed a riot (esp the movement based ones) The characters are flatter than my pizzas, but some of them do so well in battle that they have stolen my heart nonetheless. (Zelkov and Yunaka, my beloveds) We've had to restrict to playing only two maps /session, because the maps are so long and intense :P

But that's enough of me gushing about my gaming habits! Onto the devlog:

 Marketing: 

• Our current wishlist count stands at 78 (+13) Wishlist the game at the following URL https://tinyurl.com/CrystalinCarnation 
• We did some market research on similar games on games-stats.com It is really interesting to find out how much or how little money some games make and this site gives fairly accurate estimates. (at least when looking at Vengeful Heart our previous game) Thanks to Amaiguri and her youtube channel for giving us the idea to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPGx4jZ59GY 

Art: 

• I finished Tancred's expressions. He looks more or less shocked to death in all his expressions, but that is the kind of character he is. 

• I made a bunch of concepts and animation for our pixel art UI. Good looking UI is my passion and not enough games put enough effort to make their UI nice-looking. Not on my watch I say! I hope you also think my concepts look nice. 

• The biggest time sink this sprint was the animation of our "battle start" -banner animation. This will show up at the beginning of every stage and communicate what kind of stage is starting (3 types: Formation Battles, Skirmish battles and exploration stages)

Programming: 

• Disabled being able to control enemy characters. (but this is enableable for testing from settings) 
• Added terrain effects to the game. Different tiles have different stats that affect the units standing on them. Currently all the stats are randomized, but I have a plan to build a kind of "map making studio" within the game so that other team members can intuitively create maps, and give them all needed attributes like stats or movement cost 
• Tiny thing: Added shadows to units. They looked a little out of place without them 

• Implemented the battle start banner 
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to walk a marathon inside the player's movement range. Now you can no longer walk zigzag endlessly, since a path finding algorithm kicks in if you try to surpass your total range. 
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to target tiles outside your range. 
• Implemented data persistence on variables, so the game remembers what choices you made even after you exit and come back. 
• Implemented Unit UI that show up if you hover over a unit. This menu shows your unit's picture, HP, faction and current skill points. I'm debating if I should add other stats as well, but I might hide them behind a right click or something to avoid cluttering the screen. 
• Added an "invalid sound" if the player tries to target invalid tiles

That's it for this sprint's devlog :) If you want to discuss our game with the whole team, want to stay up to date for when we need play testers or just want to hang out with like-minded people, consider joining our Salmon Snake Games Discord server! https://discord.gg/X6rEfTYv

The gifs are still broken on Itch's side, so still no development gifs here :( It's so hard to describe some of the progress so I wish I could show the gifs.

-Hanuli from Salmon Snake Games