Advance Wars update

Just back from seeing the hobbit with my best friends family, was pretty good had some really good light comedic scenes and couldn't help but laugh every-time they're in a mine falling and no one ever falls or is hurt from falling. Also laughed at the MMO adverts they put on before hand, seems to be a trend to get a cheesy quote and high rendered cutscene to advertise MMORPG's at the moment. I mean have you see this one :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajz5Poh_giI

Added all the units, except APC's so far

-Infantry
-Mechanical Infantry
-Recon
-Small Tank
-Medium Tank
-Neo Tank
-Artillery
-Rocket Launcher

Got the triggers sorted for capturing the buildings, has a lot of issues detecting just infantry units in a region so the infantry initiate the capturing now and as long as you have more units than the opposing player then you continue capturing. Also like the turn based game-boy game the buildings heal allied units on upkeep. The floating text for upkeep (+100 and the HP +25%) slowly pans up and last for 5 seconds). Permanent Floating Text is also used to represent who owns which buildings and changes colour when captured by the opposing team (blue).

There is also a simple weather system which checks every minute having a 1 in 5 chance to be raining this minute or 4 out of 5 of being clear weather. The rain half's the vision of units which disables artillery significantly and makes Recon units more important.

The other terrain advantages and disadvantages are controlled using region entering/leaving triggers. The forest regions slow down the units movement by 25% and the roads increase movement by 25%.

Spent a lot of time getting the units balanced counters but only a good length of play sessions will really show if there are significant dominant strategies or units. So I can't really start fine-tuning unit stats yet. I've been thinking over whether to have CO's (commanders) like the advance wars games each with there Special Powers and Unit bonus'. But again it's probably something best added when the units themselves are at a more balanced stage. I could have a select like Hero maps do for the game before the game begins or perhaps just a Button input select screen at start.

I also have another idea I might try for a map inspired by seeing the old bomber-man game being played on the sega genesis at my friends house before going to the cinema. Where as bomber man is about capturing people offguard with bombs placed, kicked and thrown. I was thinking of doing the same with a caster and different missle types. Missleman! :D Delayed missles, slow heavy damage missile,s fast missiles strengths could be based on there mana cost or recast time. Could throw in random pick-ups and destructible environments like bomber man also maybe even creatures?

Also decided to get some 3d modelling done for a change, working on a Anti-Infantry Steampunk Mecha-Tank design at the moment

Soldiering on

Just played through a bit of Battalion Wars 2 for an hour or so, got some new rechargeable batteries only to find one of my Wii motes has died no reason. Cheap modern Nintendo for ya, wish there were more games like it preferably for the PC though, I'm short sighted so seeing the blurry low rez TV isn't an option gotta wear my glasses just so I can still barely see. It's a nice game but i wish there was a skirmish mode like Advance Wars. The theme tune is pretty awesome....

I've been a pretty crap mood for the last 4-5 hours, started the day quite well with a load of Uscript theory and a bit of Uscripting. Going to try get another hour or so of it in today before i crash. Decided i'm going to spend the next 2 months working on my unreal game and maybe try and put it up on Greenlight if i continue on with it from there.

Playing Battalion Wars reminded me of one my favorite GBA games Advance Wars 2 : Black Hole Rising and how awesome some the midis are for it

Sami's Theme

Grit's Theme