The Meeting

Our Sapphire Blood Studio team had a meeting today. We got together (in person) and discussed future plans over coffee (well, technically hot choc & tea, but whatever).

Although we get sidetracked from time to time, it worked out much better than I imagined. It was definitely worth the trouble. Communication over the Internet is comparatively pathetic.

It was pretty cool. :)

Anyway, we decided to start on a team project right away. Maybe I talked about it before, but it's a traditional RPG currently titled "The Chained Sky". It's not a massive undertaking. In fact, this project is essentially a "practice team project", where we try to figure out the best approach to developing a team game. It also makes use of many unused resources from my previous team projects. The battle engine is already half-finished. The field engine needs some polishing. The tilesets, although not very impressive, is completely usable. There is no release date for this project yet, since we haven't determined the work rate of each team member.

We also thought about joining Game Maker Showcase's "Idea Competition", but we decided against it, since it is too much trouble.

Anyway, wish us luck. :)

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Immunocide - Update 3

Development:

New Enemy Unit Completed - "Protozoa". Originally, I planned to call it "Parasite", but although it is a simpler name, it is also more misleading, so I instead went with "Protozoa". Anyway, this is a very interesting enemy unit, with many abilities and behaviors, as follows:

Weapon. It releases a highly toxic goo that causes area-of-effect (spread) damage.

Behavior. It uses basic AI that switches between 3 modes: Offensive, Evasive & Passive. Originally, it behaves in Offensive mode, automatically seeking out enemies, stopping & firing when in range, and moving on. When it becomes badly damaged, it will move away and try to avoid enemy bullets at the same time (Evasive mode). Finally, once it is far enough from the enemy, it will go into Passive mode, regenerating itself until it is fit enough to go back and fight. So, what does all this do? This unit uses a basic "hit-and-run" tactic. XD

Slime Trail. Once it is badly damaged, it will ooze small puddles of slime that can slow your units when it is escaping. The effect is minimal though.

Design:

The focus this time is on strategy, which is taking better shape.

The Protozoa completes the "circle of strengths and weaknesses". In other words, it completes the "rock-paper-scissors" strategic circle:

Macrophage is strong against Bacteria which is most resistant against Memory B Cell which is strong against Virus which is strong against Helper T Cell which is strong against Protozoa which is strong against Macrophage.

There is also the Killer T Cell, which is a specialist that deals with Cancer and Infected Cell units.

Unfortunately, the "strategic circle" isn't complete for the two remaining units. This should be solved once nanomachine units are introduced.

Lymphocyte (with the help of Helper T Cell) is also strong against Bacteria, but it is weak against both Virus and Protozoa. Later though, it will be most resistant against nanomachines.

Defense B Cell is also strong against both Protozoa and Virus (while being relatively ineffective against Bacteria), but it is most vulnerable to nanomachines.

More balancing has to be done though, so all these are subject to change.