This is a quick post to tell you about my work in progress project Magefire, a turn based contest of magic.
I’m converting the code from an existing, strictly 2d version implemented in Adobe Director. It is a fully working game project currently but since Adobe no longer supports Director in any way, I was looking for another engine to work with and have settled on Unity
This is my first Unity project and it is not yet in a playable state, what you see is as far as the tactical battles have currently got. I do have some working menu code for picking quests and buying spells and have created my own little UI framework within Unity to manage this. It will take me a while to convert all of the existing AI and game code before it becomes playable again. The landscape is using LAM, the trees are toon trees and the unit graphics are ported across from the previous version and totally original to the project. The four units depicted are the four mages: wizard, sorceress, druid and witch. Each gets access to different spells and plays differently to the next.
Anyway, just thought I’d say hi to the community and let you know about my project. All feedback is welcome.
As a quick comparison of the new Unity version of the game, versus the old strictly 2d version of the game, see this screenshot of the same scenario as depicted above: http://www.third-impression.com/MagefirePentagram3.jpg
So here is the progress so far in terms of overall looks. You may notice that the perspective has shifted slightly. The game codebase is being converted across to c# and Unity and so I have the initialisation, start and end turn code fully converted. Half the pathfinding code (there are two systems in the engine) is also converted and working. This means that a tactical fight will run to the point where the correct player, who has units, is cycled to, but with no AI code in place and no ability for the human player to select and do things, there isn’t really a game here yet. The game supports up to four players, each of which has a colour, but has initialised here into a quest where a single player’s mage (the Witch in yellow, centre bottom) has been tasked with ridding an isle of two swarms of computer controlled Firebugs (top left). Much work still to do.
Here is the Mighty Barbarian from the game. Beware his rage!
Work on the conversion continues and has taken some leaps forward. The computer can now move its units around and about three quarters of the AI in the game is converted. The player can now select her mage and move this around too. Movement is an XCOM style green and yellow movement radius that extends around the units, click within it to step to the target location.
Next up to convert is the spell menu which allows the player to summon powerful allies into the game.
