TurnBased-ToolKit (TBTK) v1.0.2 is now released

Finally, after the bug ridden mess that is v1.0 and v1.0.1, v1.0.2 is finally on AssetStore. And boy oh boy the list of addition and bug fix are huge!

Obviously I fixed all of the know bugs in the new update. Or so I hope. I've spent quite a lot of time play testing. Now to the new features:

First there's the cover system and fog-of-war system I've been talking about. It's what you expect it to be. They are two independent game element so you can choose to enable both, either or none of them in any given scene. When fog-of-war is enabled, player cannot see what beyond the range of sight of the target. When cover system is enabled, unit will be harder to hit when hiding beyond cover. It's a similar system with the one in XCom so there are two type of covers, half and full. More cover gives the unit more bonus against the attack. And they are directional as well. When working along with fog-of-war system, unit behind a wall of full cover will be invisible.

A test scene in demo using both fog-of-war and cover system. The AI unit will be invisible when they are beyond player's unit sight or behind walls of cover. The small minimap on top is to gives an indication of where in the AI unit.

The cover objects can be placed manually into the grid via the new GridPainter (yes, that is overhauled as well). And yes, you can make your own cover object using custom mesh

Then there's the AI, I've to recode it almost from scratch to fit the new cover and fog-of-war system. So now not only it obeys the rule in accordance of the fog-of-war and cover system rules in a scene, it also have some unpredictability when in a simple, basic scene. I've also add a small option to set the basic behaviour of AI to either passive (wont move until hostile appeared) or active (actively move around seeking target). Having said that, it's still some what basic if I'm honest.

Another big change is the turn system. The old system completely. Now instead of one TurnMode setting, there's TurnMode and MoveOrder. Turn Mode determine the turn basic turn logic

like which faction turn is it, when is a new round, etc. The options are:

• FactionAllUnitPerTurn - Each faction take turn to move all its unit in each round
• FactionSingleUnitPerTurnSingle - Each faction take turn to move a single unit in each round
• FactionSingleUnitPerTurnAll - Each faction take turn to move a single unit in each turn. The round is completed when all unit has moved
• SingleUnitPerTurn - All units (regardless of faction) take turn to move according to the individual unit stats. The round is completed when all units has moved. MoveOrder has no effect on this setting

MoveOrder determine which unit get to move first within a faction and if unit switching is allowed. The options are: 

• Free - Randomise move order for the unit. Unit switching is enabled
• FixedRandom - Randomise move order for the unit. Unit switching is disabled
• FixedStatsBased - Arrange the move order based on individual unit stats. Unit switching is not allowed

So combined these two there are 10 possible type of settings available. That should cover a lot of ground.

And I think that's about all that excites me enough to talk about. For the rest, please read the change log bellow or explore it yourself. :)

Version Change – 1.0.2f5 (13 September 2013)

     addition/change

• added XCom style cover system
• added fog of war
• added support for a all AI faction scene (no player faction)
• Total Revamp of TurnMode and MoveOrder. More variant are now supported.
• Better AI
• Added more target area for unit-abilities (line, cone)
• Editor interface change and renaming some of the unit stats.
• tweak the aiming of the range attack visually so a hit look like a hit and a missed look like a missed
• tweak the trajectory of projectile shootObject so it's more robust
• Many tweaks across the whole framework

     bug fixes

• lots of bug fix with regarding turn transition and logic
• fix bug with unit placement
• fix bug hit sound and hit animation is played even an attack is missed
• projectile shootObject max shootAngle limit is now increase to 75
• fix bug where projectile shootObject sometime bounce off or overshoot from the target
• and tons of other bugs.

Age of Throne (A release based on TDTK)

I'm pleased to announce that a new release based on TDTK is now out for both iOS and Android. It looks pretty good, although I've yet to play it. I'm totally convinced by the trailer! 

I have to say quite a lot of alternation has been done to toolkit to accommodate the game design. I've been provide support to the developer to alter some aspect of the toolkit to fit the game design. And of course, a lot of additional work has been done on top of the base frame-work. The end result looks quite different from the 3D demo I have.

Still, quite proud to be part of it!

iOS download link:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id659900859?mt=8

Android download link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nexrage.ageofthrones

More Updates

So I've been working day and night updating all the packages, especially TBTK. Here's what happened:

A new update of InputTouches has gone live on AssetStore. It's very a minor update. The only notable addition would be the tap multiTap event filter. Anyway, here's the full list of the changes:

• Add option for multi-tap filter. Remove any prior tap event with lesser tap-count before the final tap event in a multiTap event.
• A tap can now go on (being held down) for as long as needed
• Added missing information to the documentation - pinch and rotate info
• DragDetector_AndroidFix.cs has been merge into DragDetector.cs

An update of TDTK has also gone live on AssetStore. It's a hot-fix for several bugs I missed or accidentally introduce when working on the last update. Again, the full list of changes:

• fix bug for tower aiming in separated barrel mode
• fix bug with path-indicator when paused
• fix timeScale issue when loading a new scene when paused
• fix bug with dragNdrop build scheme where it stop working if a DragNDrop process is cancelled

Finally the big one, TBTK, which has effectively consumed my life for the past few days. I must say it's a big relief for me that the next update is almost done. If everything goes well, I should be able to submit by today. I hope this update would fix most of the issues in the last update, which was abysmal consider the bugs it has. I have put an extra effort bug-testing for this one. 

Apart from the bugs fix, I've added fog-of-war and XCom style cover system. This should be very interesting. Also I've restructured the TurnMode setting from ground up. The new system should cover more ground and have much more flexibility. I'll talk more about it when it's finally released. For now, here's a screen shot of the test-scene I'm working on:

Updates Updates Updates...

Finally, all the latest update of PathFinder, TDTK and TBTK is now up on AssetStore.

The current iteration of TBTK is still very buggy at the moment so I wouldnt bother too much about it until the next update.

Next would be PathFinder. It's not really a big update, unless you like to use it for a vertical axis. Before this it use to only support xz-plane (horizontal) grid generation. So basically I've added grid-generation for xy-plane (vertical) following some user request. The next thing on the list would be to add serialization to the grid so it no longer need to be generated everytime the scene start. Still not sure how effective that is going to be in reducing load time, or how straight forward it's going to be implementing it. But we'll see when we get there. So the change log of the latest PathFinder is as follow:

PathFinder Version Change – 1.1.2

• Added support for vertical grid (XY-plane)
• Fix the inconsistency in the example scenes.
• Fix bug where Agrid graph doesnt work if erode is set to zero

Finally, TDTK. The latest update fix a bunch of stuff with editors and the more recently added game play mechanic. The most notable addition would be the addition of the modular tile set to the package as well as the example scene. The updated demo is looking awesome after this small addition along with some lighting. I must urge you to check it out, just look at these screen shots!

However please note that the dsitributed package is export via Unity3.5 so it hasn't got the lighting treatment in the demo. Finally, here's the full list of the change/fix in latest update.

TDTK Version Change – 2.2.4
addition/change

• Icon can now be deleted before building to reduce build size (for NGUI only)
• Added modular tile set to the package, applied to the demo scene.
• Input for Ability system has been changed (right/left click has been swapped).
• Added mobile support for abilityManager
• Added mobile support for drag and drop building scheme
• Tower position during drag and drop phase will now 'sticked' to the cursor, as opposed to the last valid position.
• Change how overlay is assigned in the editors.
• Add option for pre-calculated hit result upon shoot, to prevent tower for firing redundant shot
• (configure in GameControl)

bug fix

• fix bug with spawn editor where generate wave in finite mode gives error
• fix bug where ability armor reduction on creep doesn't work
• fix bug where creating a new scene doesn't work with only 1 resource
• get rid of the warning sign in Unity4.0 and up
• fix bug where path-indicator does not point in the right direction in Unity4.0 and up
• fix bug where DamageTable is not taken into account for shield
• fix bug where shield pierce doesn't work

*For TDTK user,  please note that the dsitributed package is export via Unity3.5 so the example scene hasn't got the lighting treatment as shown in the demo. If you wish to have that, please let me know and I'll send you a copy of the package from Unity4.2.

Status Update (So much stuff!!)

It's been a very hectic week. And I just realised I haven't make any post in some time. The good news is I've been very busy updating all the package on AssetStore. Everything has been updated, and I do mean everything! I submitted the a hot fix for TBTK last week (looking to submit another by the end of next week. Then there's the latest TDTK, submitted a few days ago. PathFinder after that. And I'm about to submit an small update for InputTouches later today.

And boy I'm excited for the next demo of TDTK. I've finally took the plunge and downloaded and installed Unity4. God know how long since I last update my Unity. I'm still using 3.5 by the way. Anyhow just for demo purpose, I port TDTK to Unity4 and redecorate all the demo scene. And I was almost blown away by what I manage to achieve. I'm hoping you feel the same when I finally update the demo, when the AssetStore update is approved. Here's a glimpse of how it looks like:

It looks a lot more better in the actual game, when things are alive and moving

I've also make another simple demo in collaboration with another AssetStore publisher 3DForge. Here's the link to the webplayer:

>> TDTK_FantasyTD_WebDemo <<

Basically I used the 3DForge tower pack for the towers and the free skeleton pack for the creep. The rest are either unity standard asset or unity terrain asset. Not too shabby eh?

But that all is not what kept me busy for the most part. What really kept me busy, is TBTK. Who would have thought a simple turn based framework can be so much work? And the amount of bug I've introduce doesn't help either. I've been working on this babe almost day and night for the past 5 days. I could really use a break. Anyway I hope the new addition are worth it. For of war and cover system will be available in the coming update. I'm still working on the AI at the moment. I have a feeling that AI improvement will be a never ending task following the addition of the cover and fog of war system. I've also been doing some major overhauling to the turn mode setting. You bet the new system is going to cover a lot of ground. 

Finally I like to apologise to all the TBTK user for all the bugs. I'm trying my best to fix them all. Too bad the AssetStore approval process is a bit slow atm. Not entirely sure why but I bet Unite has something to do with it.

Anyway, that's all for the quickie update. I shall make new post about individual package as the new update submission is approved.