Hi all! 

I am fairly very new to itch, been reading it in & out for some time and I so much admire all of you guys for consequently running your own projects. Recently I felt like I wanted to refresh my game programming skills. But we all know how tough it is to stay consistent with our solo side projects, so I hope you do not mind if I use the devlog forum to keep me motivated. 

The goal is to stay small with my biggest priority finally finishing a game from scratch to 100%. I imagined a hexagon based puzzle game, where your goal is to lead a group of units through subsequent levels, but in order to accomplish that you gonna need to prepare their way by modifying current level with available elements (e.g. repair paths, set up direction changing signs, remove/solve obstacles by steering some units to particular places, and whatnot). The units will pretty much blindly follow the path & environment you prepared for them so it's all in player's hands.

I think it's a fairly straightforward idea and I have already got a draft backstory for the whole thing in mind, but do not want to invest too much into it before I am convinced the gameplay can be made interesting. Same goes for graphics, I will be drawing some quick placeholders myself but I am no pixel artist so sorry for making your eyes bleed in advance!

Update #1 below...

Update #1

So I've actually put couple of hours into my prototype before I started the thread and now I have got:

• hexagon shaped map generated
• created two types of sprites just to know where units can go (grass) and where are the obstacles (it was supposed to be a mountain in forest if someone's wondering, when I look at it now it looks like a bunch of grey bags put together) - randomly positioned on the map
• went to OpenGameArt.org to find a supply vehicle as a draft unit - turned out drawing my own vehicle is currently far beyond my pixel "art" skills

The next steps are:

• to program some 2d hexagon logic to help me with moving stuff around the map
• handle sprite animations from the vehicle unit sprite I found
• potentially manually edit the map for it to make some sense & make it load from a file or something

p.s. the whole hexagon idea was inspired by coming across this great set of resources: https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/implementation.html

See you soon. :)

Update #2  

(v0.1.0)

Spent some time on my prototype today:

- level layout now loads from JSON format

- hiding ugly black grid when map is loaded

- truly basic point & click tile editing

- implemented axial coordinates to navigate objects in the world 

- basic unit's animation (direction and some movement from test sprite)

- units movement between fields in a given direction

Next steps are:

- units understanding of particular map elements (e.g. collisions)

- some sort of elements to interact with the world's map (like direction changers)

- very basic UI perhaps

stay tuned :)

Update #3 (v0.2.0)

Done recently:

• introduced the direction changing elements
• crude UI to manage the map & place elements
• units are now aware of the map and follow directions placed by the player

Next steps are

• figure out what could make the gameplay fun - I am open to suggestions!
• close the game loop so how exactly does the level start & finish