You've patched in to the enemy's security system: get ready to make your plan. Frozen Synapse is the ultimate strategy game: you have full control over your strike team, directing their every movement. At the same time, your opponent is plotting to defeat you. Plan your moves, then hit the "Execute" button: both you and your enemy's turns are executed simultaneously. Bite-size, hardcore strategy with a striking sci-fi aesthetic.
Finally got rid of the annoying hard edges on lights - looking a LOT better.
Wow that is looking great. Nice work.
nice :)
Thanks - yep, I'm really excited about getting this sorted out. When we have the new backgrounds in there as well, the levels will start looking as intended...
Yes they do :)
Oh yes it does.
Looks fantastic although I hope the new backgrounds you guys are working on don't add too much and distract from the simple, clean look it has going for it. If you do want to add more maybe you can offer a stripped down look in the options :)
Thanks for these nice comments! Yeah, I'm working really hard to make sure the backgrounds aren't too distracting - it's a very important part of it so rest assured I'm taking care of it.
Spiffy!
Thanks man...your avatar is disturbing me!
How dare you disturb the man?!!
Awesome effect, it will be nice to check when an enemie can or cannot see you.
I'm talking to Ian about this at the moment - lighting currently doesn't affect anything to do with cover / visibility - it's purely aesthetic.
bviously, it can help you to see where the cover is behind walls - light comes through windows and casts beams; areas which are darker are less visible IN GENERAL - but there's no "hiding in the shadows" per se.
I'm a bit torn on this right now. I know 1.) people REALLY want to hide in the shadows and I'm not sure that simply shadows being ANALGOUS to cover in an abstract way is enough for them 2.) the way the gameplay works is based entirely on the level *GEOMETRY* rather than where the shadows are - in its most basic form, if you're behind a wall and an enemy is on the other side, he can't see you. You use the walls for cover and duck behind them etc.
What I'm trying to do is figure out a way that we can deal with this shadows issue and give people what they want. We can't add another cover mechanic to the gameplay - that would break the game completely - we just can't do that. So it has to be some way of creating this effect that doesn't damage the game we've built.
There are a few different possibilities being kicked around right now - I will do my absolute best to figure this issue out.
Perhaps units could take a little bit longer to react to a unit in the shadows?
Nice idea, but that's a MAJOR gameplay change, unfortunately - a change like that would be totally game-breaking. When you see our proper trailer (coming sooon) you'll understand what I'm talking about.
I noticed that, when playing, shadows are actually a pretty decent indicator of cover, and other people have told me that I'm worrying too much about this. I think what we're going to do is see how our beta testers react.
Just to clarify, there's already loads of different things you have to take into account each turn - we've actually been working to directly reduce the "stress" of playing the game to make it more fun. Adding in another cover mechanic now would just reverse that process. It's a really tough one, design-wise - thanks for chatting it through with me, though, guys - we're really trying to get to the bottom of this one.
Game area looks really good. Simple, yet amazing. The GUI could use some work though. Looks old. Reminds me of hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ... Uplink: hacker elite.
Either way, deffinatly gonna try this game out once it's released!
Thanks Eleanor. Yep, GUI is WIP at the moment - need to sort that font out a bit / make the chat window look good / probably get rid of the buttons from the top / sort out the colours on buttons etc.