ty! gonna be adding more replay and stuff soon hopefully - re: more than 2 choices, did you get the chain system and backpack working? or find any cards with "discover" or "adapt"?
those are the main ways right now the game gives you more branching choices, going to hammer harder on that stuff and add more too but curious if any of that was working for you (or maybe you just didn't see it due to bad luck)
Thanks dude! Yeah, so for the modular settings menu, the general steps are:
1. Figure out which UI elements you need to display your options: toggles? sliders? pickers? drop downs? something else?
Strictly speaking you can do it all with just a picker, so start there (pickers are those things with the selected option text in the middle and left/right arrow buttons on either side).
2. Build out each of these UI elements individually so that they work on their own. You can start with the picker and add more later. For a picker, the functionality you need is something like:
Set the list of picker options (e.g. an array of strings)
Page left/page right (decrement/increment the selected index)
Get the currently selected index
Set the currently selected index (and update the displayed string)
Each UI element will be a little different of course, but you do not need to have a common programming interface between them. You can smooth that over in the next step.
3. Once you get your different input methods working individually, now you need a single "option renderer" that has one instance of each type of input. The job of the option renderer is just to flip between these UI sub-elements and to read and write the values accordingly. Something like, if the option-type is "picker", return the currently selected index of the picker sub-component...if the type is "slider", return the current value of the slider. This is where you build a common read/write interface, so even if your slider uses a float value in [0, 1], you can just return an int in [0, 100] like RoundToInt(sliderValue * 100) or however you want to design it.
4. Finally, you'll create a sort of controller that manages a list of the option renderers from step 3. The job of this controller is to take your list of options data and then pass that to the individual option renderers to display the specified submenu of options. You'll need to figure out how you want your data structure to specify a menu of options should look. The YouTube video in this post basically shows how I did mine.
Whenever the user changes an option, you can have the individual UI element pass the message back up the chain to the controller, and this is where you'll have your game-specific logic do something meaningful with that input like change the game's volume.
Ya the full version will be paid (pricing TBD but likely will be typical for indies) and should be available on itch and all other major stores.
I'm sure we'll be doing some contests in the Discord and giving away keys too. There are better free demos with more content on the way in the mean time.
Great feedback, ty! There's for sure going to be a menu in the Library with more tutorial info. I'm considering a total rework of the momentum mechanic and ditching the timer (or maybe only having it on hard mode).
the grayscale thing you noticed is not a glitch, it's actually used to show you who the enemy is going to attack when you mouse over them (everyone but the enemy's target will be grayscale, there's also a pulsing target icon too)
when picking a target for one of your cards, some cards can only target specific characters, so similarly in that case only the valid targets will be in color and everything else is grayscale - maybe I gotta find a better way to show this though 😅
wow thank you so much! you have no idea how happy it makes me to hear that it doesn't feel like another STS-style game. I really like STS of course but yeah, hard not to be compared to it and trying my best to do something fresh
"will there be a 'fast mode'?" Yes! The options menu is coming soon but this feature is already done. I'm even planning to increase the default combat speed by 20% at some point.
"can you respec your class?" Yah absolutely, this is coming soon too. There's a town upgrade system that's in the game but just not in this demo...respecs are something you get access to by upgrading the guildhall, but they're a bit limited. You can only re-spend one stat point for each upgrade tier of your guildhall up to a max of 3 stat points, and respecs cost a special currency called renown (used for buying talents, duplicating cards, ...also not in this demo). If people want unlimited respecs I'm open to that, but my current thinking is I don't want it to feel too "free" and kill any replay value.
"were any of the card names inspired by STS?" Not intentionally, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few verbatim references on accident! I know for sure some of the names have to be the same. It might be fun to do some more deliberate card game references if you have any ideas.
I've put more hours into MTG and Hearthstone than any other card games at this point (though it feels like I've played them all). Megacrit mentioned that Magic Shandalar was a big influence, so depending on the card you're thinking of we could both just be channeling MTG :D
You're right that the timer is barely explained, I will be adding a section to the library where you can read about all the mechanics at some point.
Basically, the timer shows you the turn order: whoever's timer will hit 0 first goes next! Most card games do not have a timer like this, although Wildfrost is a notable exception (I highly recommend it).
For example, if it's Fer's turn and Dari has 5 timer but the enemy has 2, that means the enemy goes next (unless Fer plays a card that makes Dari faster by -3 timer or slows the enemy down +3 timer).
After your turn ends, your timer goes up by a number based on your speed. A slow character might gain +12 timer, a fast character might only gain +6 (that means the faster character in this example takes twice as many turns).
so you should be able to edit everyone on your team's deck already, but they do come with a starter deck. If you go back to town there's an "edit deck" button in the library or the guildhall (I know the UI for the guildhall is busted right now, there's a new version for the next major release)
your bird can't die! the bird's needs do decrease in the background if you don't check in for while, but you can always restore the bird's happiness with a few minutes of care
if you ignore it long enough, eventually happiness resets to baseline
haha aw, it might be that she's tired? you can change the sleep time in the settings menu (button in the upper-right)
otherwise, just wait for her to request something and then respond with what she asked for! each of the different emojis corresponds to a thing she wants like food, touch, etc.
