Pixel Battle Siege – What’s planned for the future?

Heya! Since the future of PBS is becoming clearer every day, I thought it would be nice to inform you. So what do we want to do with PBS?

The classic mode of the game is practically finished, and we would now start the testing phase to check if everything is well balanced and to track down possible bugs. I am currently rewriting the code in a clearer manner, one that will allow me to perform fixes without much trouble. We still haven’t decided what exactly we’re going to do once it’s done, either push forward or release it for some testing. Anyways, keep reading!

A server has become available for us to use, so the next step we’ll be taking will be developping the necessary code to allow for multiplayer classic mode! Among the features of this service, we would like to offer the possibility of recording games, as well as a ranking to list the best players out there. This is what will make PBS an extremely exciting game.

The next step would be to fully develop Advanced Mode with multiplayer already incorporated. As you already know, Advanced Mode will allow players to choose exactly which units they want to use in the battleboard, and will also feature at least five more units.

Next comes Android support. If everything goes well, you’d be able to play PBS on your Android smartphone or tablet! Take the battle everywhere you go!

And finally, we were also thinking of a slower-paced multiplayer, that is, a “message mode” or correspondence mode, in which a player would play a turn and then the other would receive a mail informing him that his turn has come. This would allow players to play PBS as if it was correspondence chess, and therefore mantaining several games at a time in your everyday life would be easy, and would give you some minutes of day to day entertainment!

That’s more or less everything. As you can see, we have high hopes with this game. We really want to turn it into something challenging for the mind and entertaining. Also, if you want to see more media you can always check our IndieDB profile:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/pixel-battle-siege

http://www.indiedb.com/company/goddonaught-studios

 

That’s all for now! Cheers!

-Drithyl

New checkers go live!

Hey folks,

Ever since the beginning of the visual production of PBS I’ve been trying to keep things simple while making them look nice at the same time. For me, this has been quite a challenge, since I’m not used to design symbols/buttons/signs. I’m more of a character-drawing guy.

Nevertheless, I did my best and I think we managed to get a decent result. You can check it here: Indiedb.com

Stay tuned, for there will be more checker designs as we’re now coding the Advanced Mode of PBS, which will feature around 5 completely new checkers plus the possibility to choose which units you want to use on the battleboard.

Best,
Paweł

Checkers in PBS (and not only!)

This gallery contains 23 photos.

  Ahoj there folks, I’m going to talk a bit about the visual style of Pixel Battle Siege. During the first stage of the project, I’ve created a very simple game menu and game board which you can see right below: As you can see, the style was plain and quite simple. These images above changed […]

Pixel Battle Siege – First Gameplay Video

Aaand here’s the first gameplay video of PBS! It’s quite short, I know, and you will have to forgive us for the poor quality (audio has a small delay, but it’s still watchable). The original recording weighed 300MB, so we had to reduce its quality. Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Also note that things are still liable to change, from the overall graphic feeling to the gameplay itself. We’d be grateful if you left us your opinion on the video!

Cheers!

-Drithyl.

Pixel Battle Siege – Polishing

Hey guys!

I’m aware that we promised a video probably for yesterday, but aside from some minor issues, we decided to delay it a bit until we polished graphics, animations and sounds to make it look better. Workflow is going smoothly for now, so we’ll probably be able to show a gameplay video this evening (or tomorrow if something explodes!).

Bear with us! Cheers!

-Drithyl

Sounds in PBS

Ahoj,

Other than the sprites and animations, I’m also taking care of the soundfx/music side of Pixel Battle Siege.

The sounds in PBS are all created by us recording and mixing straight from the microphone, using everyday objects I find around me at the time of recording.

However, for the music I’m mainly using two guitars and ukulele. I’d like to make some piano loops for the battles but so far I haven’t got a keyboard or anything like that.

Here you can listen to the loop we’re currently using as the main menu music:

http://soundcloud.com/goddonaughtstudios/menutheme-pbs

Pablo

PBS – Some artwork

Hello,

I would like to let you see some of the early drawings of the units.

All these drawings are to be animated in the future, to have an animation be displayed every time a unit gets killed by another.

A quick note on the Cleric drawing – when we started with PBS the unit distribution was different, and so were some units. Instead of the wizard, there was the CLERIC unit. its function was supposed to be some sort of support role. However, we decided we’ll implement its behavior in the Advanced mode of PBS.

Cheers,

Paweł

Pixel Battle Siege – Turn Dynamics

Drithyl here! So I just finished coding all of the necessary structure to incorporate the death animations I mentioned in the last post. I will talk to you now about how turns work, as it’s not quite like chess where you just get a move.

Because the board is 12×12 squares, which makes a total of 144 squares, and units do not move more than two or three squares at a time, the game would be really slow if only one unit could take action each turn. Instead, each player gets a total of five actions during his turn. Moving one unit counts as an action, and so does killing an enemy. Also, each unit will only be able to do one attack action and one movement action per turn (you can’t spend your five actions on a single troop).

At first we considered the possibility of granting the player three movement+attack actions each turn, but we settled on counting movement and attack separately, and on the number five for being odd. This way, a player will never be able to move three units and attack with those three units in the same turn, he has to give it some thought and take tactical decisions that will, in the long run, determine how efficiently your army performs.

Be sure to not waste any actions! Also, it is possible to skip your turn anytime you want, in case you’d like to stay in a defensive position after using only a couple of actions.

That’s all for now! Cheers!

Pixel Battle Siege – Troop dynamics

So I finished coding the behaviour of the Defender units, and now I’m struggling with some death animations. As a way to cool down a bit, I decided to write a post with the detailed troop dynamics of the classic game mode. Both players get the same army, as I stated before in a previous post. This army is composed of a given number of Sieges, Wizards, Defenders, Rangers and Knights. But what is the role of each of these?

Sieges: Sieges have a long-ranged attack. They are capable of killing any unit in a 2×3 area at a distance of 7 squares. A square is basically a cell, where units stand, like any grid or chess-board. While lethal, Sieges have one major weakness: once a unit gets past its range, it can’t attack under it, nor can it move backwards, so moving sieges forward to get better range is a crucial decision. Also, sieges only move one square at a time.

Wizards: Uncommon as Sieges, wizards have less range or area of attack, but are more versatile. They move two squares at a time, and are able to hit enemies that stand diagonally in front of them. While they won’t be able to hit units directly in front of them, they make great support for archers or knights.

Defenders: Defenders are possibly they key to victory. If you can get your defenders to survive longer than those of the enemy, you’re probably well off to win the game. Although defenders don’t attack, they cover every unit at their sides or behind them from rangers’ and wizards’ attacks. Also, only knights attacking their flanks can kill a defender. If you’re planning on advancing your troops without getting shot down, defenders are the way to go. They move two squares.

Rangers: Rangers are great to stop the advance of the enemy. They shoot in a straight line at a maximum reach of four squares. They can also hit at three squares of distance, but any range lower than that and they’ll be an easy prey for the enemy. Their biggest trouble are defenders, as they will probably frustrate most of their attacks. They still serve as a good deterrent, though. They also move two squares.

Knights: Last but not least, Knights are the core of your army. They’re the faster units (three squares), and their attacks cover the squares at their flanks and in front of them. Although they don’t have ranged attacks as other units, their mobility and ability to kill defenders from the flank make them precious. They are also good at bypassing sieges’ range, and also have a heavy burden as a defensive unit to kill off enemies that have reached melee on your ranged troops.

Advanced mode will feature some more units than these, but we will be revealing those over time. Feel free to leave any comments or questions. Cheers!

-Drithyl.

PS.: I’m attaching the prototype of the board that we used in the first builds of the game so that you can see its size. It’s 12×12 squares, four more than chess. More ground to watch over! 😉

Pixel Battle Siege – Units

Hi again,

I would like to talk a bit about the units in Pixel Battle Siege (from now on PBS).

The units in the Classic mode are 5:
The KNIGHT:

The knight is the main unit you’re going to be using. Its attack range is rather short, but it can run great distances along the board.

The RANGER:

Ninjas in the forest, skilled archers whose only worry is pierce your skull with a black arrow. Its ranged attack might surprise you in more than one ambush.

The WIZARD:

The wizard has an area attack and gives support to all units on the board.

The DEFENDER:

Defenders block incoming ranged attacks (it’s vulnerable to side attacks from knights, though). Only masterminds of strategy will know how to use them properly to block all attacks (not really, anyone can do it).

The SIEGE:

The siege is the most brutal unit on the board. It has the longest and widest range and therefore can smash your units in a quick and painless death. Nevertheless, it totally lacks moving capability.

And that’s all for now. Stay tuned for more detailed units’ description. Soon we’ll release the exact behavior of all units.

Paweł