The problem with doing catch-up blogs is that you’ll never bloody catch up! Combat Week started on June 1st and it’s taken me over a month to blog about it 😉

You’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve been slugging on with my combat system since then, despite certain global launches and the constant ball-ache that is ‘life stuff’. So it’s strange to end this daily commentary on a week of work when it’s already advanced a lot since then! Nevertheless, here we go…

Combat Week – Day 7

Previously on Ventura Combat Week, we got all our Units moving in both their maneuvers. It was a grand old time. Now it’s time to stop dancing around the battle field and start brutally punching each other!

Day 7 (and a little at the end of Day 6) was all about Attacking!

In Ventura you do not directly target enemies. Due to the nature of its simultaneous Turn Based play, and a general focus on melee combat, it wouldn’t make much sense to pick out a guy or gal to kill. Targeting a specific enemy, 2 moves in advance, would mostly just end up with a miss… every time. Targeting a certain tile 2 moves in advance has much more flexibility; no-one can get in the way, the tile can’t move, and who knows who will be standing there when the attack eventually activates!

The main goal is to deal some damage to something if you choose to attack, which I believe this system accomplishes. So how does it work?

On an Attack Maneuver, you choose the Unit’s attack direction. In the screen above, this is the pointy red frame. The red tiles are the ones that Lucina will attack when this Maneuver plays out. Any enemy inside one of those tiles when her Attack Maneuver triggers will take damage.

Attack Templates are probably the biggest differentiator between Units in Ventura (although I’m a long way off having my 20+ individual Mercenaries). Some Units can attack an entire row, some can attack very specific tiles (like Lucina above). The obvious balancing factor is the amount of damage dealt by each attack, with specific templates more likely to be dodged than large areas of effect.

 

 

Much like fighting games (i.e. Street Fighter), Ventura’s combat system is based on the control and exploitation of space. The wonderful PBS Game Show just did a video about this last week, which I highly recommend watching;

While not completely intentional, I’ve got a funny feeling that Ventura’s design will feel a lot like a battle in Street Fighter. Trying to increase your ‘area of influence’ while restricting your enemy’s is the name of the game in both Ventura and Street Fighter. What will be interesting is to see if this is workable, and fast paced, in a 10 unit 8×5 grid!

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Now that Combat Week is over, I can get back to real-time updates! Here is the GSD comparison from before and after this productive period;

Lots of bloody orange! Before I uploaded this image, I forgot how much I’ve done since Combat Week ended (back on June 8th), which is a nice feeling! Since then I’ve got all Maneuvers working, sound implementation, damage implementation and ending turns probably sorted out. A lot of the above orange is now green. There are plenty of bugs but it’s getting there for sure.

I’m hoping that next week I’ll be able to post the long-overdue greenlight post for Ventura, as I still haven’t justified the project on the record.

Have a fun-packed weekend, chums!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

asda