Dev Blogs

This blog was meant to be posted around May, but it'll be posted here. Basically the Siege game has grown to include shadow minions within battles to add pressure and expand decision making / risk taking. This now forces the player to consider focus firing on the minions, or to ignore them and focus on the boss and let the turrets deal with the problem. Originally the game wasn't built for multiple enemies, so there was some rework to the interface. The simplest approach for targeting minions or the boss would be to simply touch them. The selected target would then require mitigation look ups and any changes in damage would need to be reflected in the cards. Player abilities also needed to be directed to the target, and status effects also had to be added to the minions. The critters also need to have some weighted decision making for attacking, blocking etc.

Additionally the turrets also had to be adapted. They now scan for the closest target and open fire on the minion closest to the base, providing they are within range. It was fun to add in scanning and target acquisitions for the turrets though, always rewarding to see things work properly.

One of the key concerns was not jamming the screen with excessive interface elements. The HUDs were simplified further so they won't draw unneccessary attention from the player.

Next consideration was adding area damage. This got a bit trickier, since different minions and the boss would likely have different mitigtion. It was approached by displaying the damage output for the currently targetted enemy only. Thankfully the modifications weren't too much work. Another piece of work was updating the traps and summoned drones to engage the minions (i.e. scan targets, target nearest, find next target if needed).