[On Hold] Fire Emblem / Advance Wars-like game

I've been working on a (for now) simple way for units to attack each other and actually subtract each other's HP. When a unit falls to 0 or less HP, their unit is destroyed on the overworld map.

Do you planning to add visual pathway as route guide?

alextro Yep, I'll have on hover of the mouse a path shown, and if I make this for iOS / Android I'll have a 2-tap verify to move a unit to position, or draw a path with the finger.

Manual path kinda reminds me an rpg title 'Rondo Sword', giving extra layer of strategy. By the way the battle animation looks legit for early development.

alextro thanks! Yeah I’m using sprites I bought on itch.io, the animations were made with developers in mind, so I just import them in a animation strip and that’s essentially it! I also just have to recolour blue to red for enemy units 😊

Added more in battle stuff like now I have normal attack, critical attacks, evasion which lets them dodge attacks, etc. Still fleshing out the whole battle system but this seems to be working nicely.

Really like your project. Your pixel art is great too.

Was looking back at some old abandoned project and found a similar game i was working on. The file says 2015 so i guess coming up to 7 years ago.

This was messing around with influence maps for the enemy ai.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kfk39jhul61p3s5/tbsAIAttackMove2.gif?raw=1

mOOnpunk Maybe you should dust off the abandoned project and pick it back up! I'd love to see and comment on it! Plus there seems to be a real shortage of good, 2d grid-based strategy games...I can only think of the older Fire Emblems, Advance Wars (remake coming soon to Switch) and Wargroove...

Anywho, here's a little update, I've gone and added a Storm Mage unit. They have a 2 tile attack range, 4 tile movement range, and since the halberd knights don't have much magical resistance, they tear right through them with their lightning bolts!

Presenting the Knight, the wall that stops all physical attackers with his heavy armor and shield (except the player's Lord, but even they only scratch the paint off their armor)!

Since they're in full metal armor, I decided to make lightning super effective against them. Notice in the video the Halberdier does no physical damage at all, but the Storm Mage wrecks the Knight in 1 hit.

I added some battle backgrounds, and while I was doing that I discovered a bug with the 2 tile range attackers which actually soft-locks the game as they'd just stand there and do nothing. I fixed the bug and the game is running smoothly and looking better and better visually.

Not too much to say here, just did some cleanup and behind-the-scenes bug fixes, but I did add a nice cursor that changes depending on the tile's state.

OK finally I created a playable version which you can see here: jonpoischen.github.io

Unfortunately there is no UI just yet, so you will need to follow the on-screen instructions in the upper left. Don't press Spacebar until you've moved all your units / don't want to move any more units. Once I add UI it will be much smoother but for now should be 100% playable.

Essentially just click on any non-gray unit, right click to show where they can move, middle click to make them wait, spacebar to end your turn (which you need to do manually as well).

I haven't implemented a Game Over or victory condition either, but the rules are simple: If your Lord dies, its Game Over. If you kill all the enemies, you win the map!

Had a quick play. Looking good so far, though its a bit hard not knowing what units are good against what units.

I'm sure you'll sort all that though.

I've added a more zoomed in view since now it will support mobile! (Sorry if the video quality is a bit low, I recorded it from my iPhone 11)

You can move the camera around by swiping. Also, since the last post, I've updated several backgrounds and even created a new mountain and castle background.

Progress so far: I just wanted to show off how its coming along, after adding a river for units to cross, and doing some more bug fixes, the game really does feel playable now! I will probably need a tutorial to explain that certain units are very good against others, or at least "show don't tell" the player somehow that they learn that through playing.

I'm actually now thinking of what to add next, I guess I could start on levels and make more maps, or I could try implementing a system where you spend gold to hire more units on the map each turn and the enemy does the same...then again I wouldn't want each map to drag on and on forever.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm always open for ideas and comments! :)

iS there any morale system that affecting units? For example if an unit surrounded by enemies that unit will likely to drop his guard or loosing focus so he can't attack properly.