Update 11: Chipping away at the basic game

It's been a busy few months for me as I had a new baby girl, kicked off two major projects at work and worked on a variety of outside spring projects in the backyard.

I have still been chipping away, converting my characters into Unity Prefabs, working with selecting objects on clicks and finally, getting the first, very basic turns working. It's always two steps forward and then one step back. Fixing a shooting bug introduces a camera bug, which when fixed creates a UI bug.  

Tonight was typical. I rewrote the shooting mechanics, everything looked good, I fired it up, and then.... nothing. One of the downfalls of game development is that a lot of the debugging tools are still behind that of most web applications. I did figure out the issue, but my code is riddled with Debug.Log statements that track my progress.

It is coming along. Here are 4 screen shots that for the first time are beginning to show the basic workflow. Please ignore the obvious clipping and camera issues.

Turn 1 Player: The isometric camera scrolls to center over the player. The player can see two targets (ninjas). Clicking on these centers the isometric camera over the enemies.

Turn 1 Player Shooting: the player then presses/enables the shooting button, which switches to the player cam view. Here the player has 3 options. 1, shoot the current target. 2. using Tab, switch between the other targets. 3. Press escape and go back to the first screenshot.

Turn 2 Enemy. After the player has show, it's the enemy turn. The same rules apply as turn 1, but now it's the enemy. Note that I now appear in the enemy/target list on the bottom right

Turn 2 Enemy Shooting: Ditto, but with the enemy again.

Introduction

Hello. My name is Sam and I am a professional software developer. The main reason I studied computer science at university was because of 2 games I played in my youth, Civilization and X-Com.  I've always wanted to create a similar strategy game - and several times I've tried - but the technology always got the best of me. Now after nearly 14 years developing business applications and the advancement of game development tools, I've decided to have another shot. 

Why now? A few years ago I almost gave up on video games all together. I felt that most games being released were basically the same, with slightly better graphics and slight variations (e.g. the new FPS/COD, the new strategy war game/Civilization, etc). Honestly, I just started to feel that games weren't worth their investment and I wasn't satisfied with the time I was spending.

Then, in 2012, an XCom - Enemy Unknown remake was announced. I read all of the articles, previews and interviews I could find. I discovered the designer Jake Solomon, who works for Firaxis Games, who coincidentally, also created Civilization. Jake's inspirational story just seemed to mirror my own, except that he was fortunate enough to find a job at Firaxis. 

I've created this blog to talk through my development story as I try to create my own Turn Based Strategy engine, primarily to make a game similar to X-Com, Jagged Alliance 2, Fallout Tactics, and Silent Storm. I'll explain my game development and design ideas, as well as show progress in game design, game engine selection, game development and overall progress. I hope you enjoy the ride!