PawnAge

I had a few months break due to moving over. But now that I'm finally settled in, I resumed again with full brain capacity few weeks ago. Came up with bunch of new mechanics - I might publish new version within ~2 weeks.

For 2D I'm pretty sure Unity would be more than enough. Give it a try - also when you get stuck with something there's always a chance I might help you out.
For me motivation came when I started to understand how it works and what I want to create. Having an idea stuck in your head and seeing continuous progress brings motivation. Don't know if you have any programming experience (Unity uses C#), so can't tell how hard would it be to start.
It was the same with Blender - I only launched it, because I had to, didn't want to at all, because Unity had its own more-or-less working plugin for modelling. But once I watched a couple of tutorials and ran it myself, I couldn't stop modelling/learning for next couple of months while still having fun.

PawnAge v0.0.6

Download (Win)
Download (Mac)


Features:

• Units as LowPoly meshes instead of flat mesh-like images (currently used is a test mesh created in 20min as proof of concept)
  
• Pathfinding - moving directly from one field to another has been replaced with following a path, allowing to incorporate more mechanics (later on path waypoint will be selectable)
  
• Unit animations - every unit will have idle, attack and skills animations
  
• Directions - units can turn after move (later also without move) in chosen direction what defines their Opportunity Attacks range
  
• Opportunity Attacks (OA) - every melee unit can perform OA in a range of 3 fields in a direction the unit is facing. OA are triggered when:
      - Enemy is leaving OA range
      - Enemy is passing by OA range
      - Enemy is being pushed through OA range
  

Finally something amazing happening in IT world. Graphic design has entered into a new era it seems. As a lame 2d/3d artist, I'm thrilled to see how much they will improve that (already amazing) AI and its IDEs in near time.

Posting it here, because it looks like something I will be using in PawnAge.

Stable Diffusion

It definitely works, all right. About 15 iterations with techniques shown on above videos.

Absolutely. All you need is basic skills in PS/GIMP and proper GPU.

Yeah, the funny thing is I drew something terribly bad in 1st attempt that had wrong proportions and it actually turned out like some dagger/shortsword that I might use at some point later.

After I finish animating units and making some test environment, I will check how that tech performs with UI/menus.

Remodelled and animated a couple of units recently - results satisfying, so I will be continuing with low-poly approach.

Currently working on first environment, lighting and it's core instantiation so the pathfinding and line-of-sight work again. Introducing also mid-height obstacles (e.g. boxes, carts, torches), that you can shoot over but cannot step on.
I'm still unsure if Mana Orbs flooding the board is a way to go, so I'm trying to figure out how to rework this system.

Hand-drawn assets will be replaced with AI generated - I'm planning to use it for unit portraits, skill icons and even UI.

Spending a bit more time on the game now, as unempoyment helps with that.



Next steps on roadmap:
- Revisit water shader
- Rework UI
- Remodel remaining units
- Remake mana system?

So how does it look like at first glance?

(effects don't have lights yet)

I'll just leave here some Unity skills level Asian:

Dropping test build in both day and night settings:

PawnAge v0.0.8 - Day
PawnAge v0.0.8 - Night

Added bunch of improvements vs last videos:

• Water shader
  
• Moving grass and trees shader
  
• Action Fields remade
  
• Highlighting unit's path replaced with animated line
  
• Unit highlighting effect for hover and selection
  

Knows issues / todos:

• Units hovering a bit over the ground (visible especially in night)
  
• Blood splatter colliding with water
  
• Sometimes collision errors on unit's death
  
• Pushing not yet functional
  

Next:

• Lighting finish (it's harder than it seems, blinding flashes from HDR/lighting/effects are very headache to tame)
  
• Adjust pushing mechanic to new design. Implement half-covers (planning them to give -1 DMG on hit)
  
• UI rework - I'm planning to switch into 2D GUI and move units' skills in there as well, so they don't cover the board. I'm counting on Stable Diffusion to generate neat UI elements.
  
• Unit icons rework - proper HP bar will be introduced. HP/Atk of units will be greatly decreased to enhance readability and simplify dmg calculations.
  
• Finish remodelling/animating rest of units (Goblin, Goblin Shaman, Totems).
  
• Generate new kick-ass portraits with Stable Diffusion.
  
• Figure out new Mana system. Mana Orbs cannot hover all over the board due to aesthetics.
  

Dropping build with new UI. Advices welcome to its usability/readability.
Now when I look at it, I see I missed the name of the unit... Will put it probably above HP bar.

PawnAge v0.0.10

Gold, you busy hard-working man with no time for pleasures (or maybe suffering in this case). It's not open world MMO (yet!!) - takes about 4-6 minutes to test.

pew pew pew

Several days of hard work and learning stuff in Stable Diffusion. I'm very satisfied with the result. With new units I will be probably starting with sketch, generate ideas and model basing on top of that.

old vs new

Vagabond


Temple Priest


Broken Sword