Pivots:

2 Tactical gameplay styles:

• Large scale: Battle Academy, Large Grids and the Blob Abstraction
• Small scale: Small Grids. Individual/supported spatial movement and attack

Party-based rogue-like:

• Individual Fog of War (Shared fog of war knowledge), Fog Landmark/detect markers, and Fog of War without distance fadeoff

Evolution of Movement styles:

• Rogue Single-Step Movement with auto-AI followers/shooters (for ease of party movement/exploration). Mainly good only for top-view. Keyboard movement system.
• Single Initiative Tactical Turn Movement region (for best individual control and rushes). Good for all sorts of isometric views and environments, besides top view. Point and click movement system.

Evolution of Grid styles:

• English Square Grid (at fixed 32x32 resolution tiles alphas)
• Chinese Cross Grid (at 32x32 or 16x16 resolution mesh alphas)
• Free 3rd person movement along Chinese Cross Grid with fog of war simulation, optional 4-way fog blending and detection raycasts (detection raycasts needed on 3d nodes with different elevations.

3D first/3rd person view vs top-view:

• 3D doesn’t need fog of war when viewing in first/3rd person, or fog of war has no limit on viewable distance if using true first person. Allows for great depth perception compared to top view, especially when visualing irregular terrain slopes.

Movement systems:

Stick movement-based:

• Fuel expended
  • Valkyria Chronicles
• Circles expended (optional backtrackable)
  • Mordheim City of the Damned
• Radius Region backtrackable+ event-expendable
  • Skulls of the Shogun
• Grid Region backtrackable + event-expendable
  • Codename: STEAM

Point+Click based:

• Navmesh Pathfinding click
  • Divinity Original Sin
• Grid Region Pathfinding click
  • Fire Emblem
  • X-Com Enemy Unknown
• Grid Region straight line clicks
  • Tactics Ensemble
• Visibility Cone (Grid or gridless) straight line clicks
  • Age of Fear

Roadmap

Asharena: Saboteur - A minigame to provide a way of earning gold/cash as a side job within the RPG, and indirectly construct the gameworld as well (different fortress/jetty/tunnel layouts).

Saboteur: Lone Builder
Saboteur: Wild Spirits
Saboteur: Royal Rumble

Movement and actions

• Movement mode controls, hasty multidirectional or cautious camera-directional strafing/forward/back-pedaling.
• Approx route running left

End turn stances and overwatch

• Individual overwatch (Standing) vs no-overwatch (Defensive) settings
• Strategic Overwatch settings (end turn in target mode facing relavant direction/distance+direction/target). This mode will not result in auto-turning to aggro-face targets in memory.
• Reloading stance

Combat rudimentary

• Add inner solid collision hulls for non-moving units for raycastable blockings.
• Swing vs thrust proper radius check

Combat Special

• Abilities and movement point cap
• Combat statuses (Knocked down and stunned)

Visuals

• Oncoming attack shield block ranged and melee
• Decal blob shadow
• (kiv) Blood and blood decals

Asharena Combat Jam

Phase 1: A fully playable/fairly presentable Combat prototype to test mechanics

Selected Asharena/Divinity skills implementations from Level 1-4. EVery unit is base LEvel 4, with fixed/customisable stats for the level 4 characters.

Basically, same mechanics as what we have currently with some changes:

Weapon can only be switched BEFORE turn starts. Each weapon can have an assosiated set of action abilities to go along with it from any category. Using the action ability usually involves a more powerful attack, but may have stamina and time caps and such.

Sprinting will use stamina. Some abilities require stamina. Stamina replenishes up to 1/3 per new phase.

When zoom in to target mode, all usable action abilities in that situation are shown in a numeric list. Using the number in target mode will trigger the action ability. Using numeric keys or cycling through available abilities in non-target mode, will reserve the appropiate movement points for that ability and priotize that ability to be easily used via the “F” key while in target mode.

Any abilities that lack the remainig required stamina or time points are ghosted away and cannot be selected.

Circle marker to act as rough indicator in determining avilable movement distance to conduct any given action.

In the event the selected ability cannot be used, no shortcut “F” fire key is provided.

Abilties to implement are:

Ranged Tactics Support Fire
Archery Lobshot, Rain of Arrows, Pinning Arrow
Shield Bash/Stun/Knockdown
Martial All Kicks
Grenade
Body Kinetics all
Dual-weilding Melee Successives and Dual Sweep
Aim Firearm, Headshot
Man Arms: Cure wounds, Crushing Fist, Battering Ram, Dust Devil, Draw blood, Helping Hand
Expert MArksman: Ricochet, First Aid
Scondrel: Fast Track, Razor’s Edge, Walk in SHadows, Trip
Hydrosophist: Minor Heal, Slow Current, Ice shard
Geomancer: Boulder Bash, Boulder Dash
Pyrokinetic: Flare, Small Fireball
Aerotheurge: Teleportation, Shocking Touch, Become Air
Witchcraft: Blind, Bloodletting
Two-Handed: Mighty Blow, Stunning Blow, Two-handed Sweeps

(possible to include all armour related stuff?)

Visuals include:
Tracer lines and ribbons for slahses and bullets
Blood decals on the floor
Keg and fireball explosion genreic, Boulder,

Only Stunned, Blind, BLeeding, and Knocked Down state being tested….

To test on map types:
Daggerfall Village skirmish
Daggerfall villages by the sea
Daggerfall city by the sea
Daggerfall dungeons
And Expedition island campaigns

Phase 1a: Suppressive Fire, Fire & Maneuver

Jagged7:

Implmeent modern warfare variant of of above, with hitboxes.

Phase 2: Move to Unity 3D?
Refactorign
Summons
Remaining Level 1-4 with proper state situation rules
Applying of proper visual effects

Asharena

Ancient warfare environment.

Saboteur Builder:

1) Saboteur Minigames

Divinity original sin / Asharena combo:

• Everyone has different AP
• Expended AP by distance threshold, irreversible.
• Turn flow same as Divinity original sin
• Max 4 commanding players in party with faction

Valkyria Chronicles:

Terrain / 3D environment

• Use of CP
• Everyone has the same TU
• Abilities take up a percentage of the same TU, therefore limiting consecutive usage in a single phase.

• Units can be picked again at half of last TU assigned.

• Various abilities, particularly highly physical ones or powerful magic, can require stamina to execute. They are shown with a different background color.

• Some abilities also have expendable ammo, and are shown with a different background color and number. Ammo can be rechargable depending on th e ability.
• Some abilities appear as delegated/divinity Orders which are passed down to a player as usable abilities. They are limited in personal cooldown of number of phases, but don’t require stamina. Any ammo used for such abilities are globalized. Ammo can be rechargable depending on the ability.

Asharena specific:

PHASE0-1: Purely functional gameplay testing

• See BlitzArena mechanics TODO double asterisk **
• All the rest of the character classes.
• Various maps, obstacle layouts

‘Gameplay testing demo’: A pretty much conceptual functional game to test for mock balancing (not fully accruate), and the controls/interface will suck and using temporary abstractions at the moment. But to introduce the classes, maps and all.

• See BlitzArena mechanics TODO basic asterisk *

‘Pre-Gameplay testing demo’: Removed numeric fire mode selection.

• Start with: Homing to hit targets should be able to be deflected en-route or break to fully iron out core mechanic gameplay.

PHASE1: Core Mechanics/feel/ux aesthetics of BlitzArena combat system and Asharena

• Proper HUD for above
• (See remaining BlitzArena mechanics TODO everythine else besides kiv)

‘Prototype Game demo’: A functioning game that visually looks convincing and immersive for both singleplayer and multiplayer.

PHASE2: Game-specific features and advanced mechanics

• Kiv stuff for BlitzArena mechanics
• Ability enhancements for characters to deal automatic fire, explosive fire, cleaving strikes, etc..
• AI

‘Full Game demo’: A game with added features to add depth to current strategy.

Jagged7

Modern warfare environment.

Jagged7 Specific

• Classes / Top Graduating Characters
• Cautious Aiming bonuses

• Evasion/block rules *
  • side evasion no time bonus
• Rework crit chance rules ** (Part of BlitzArena mechanics phase 0-1)
• Valk rules (kiv till end)

Chance to crit

Basic additive X-Com:EU approach:
base weapon crit + 20% critical exposure + (40% unaware | 20% aware flanking | 0% aware front | 30% aware back)