Oxtongue Heroes

I finally updated the year-old images on the gamepage to current versions, seeing as these should be nearly accurate for the demo.

The fourth battle map is done! Coming over a month after my last blog post, that doesn't sound like much of an accomplishment, but it's a hell of a lot faster than I finished any of the first three. I think the tutorial map's doable with existing AI modules and autotiles, so even though I have to implement some other stuff for it that hopefully shouldn't take too long.

Right now I'm planning for the tutorial just to be ~3 turns with 2 characters, an enemy, and some pop-up messages. I'm aiming to tell people how to deploy, move and attack, show ZOC/engaged status, and basically leave off with "you have help and undo menus, use them if you want to figure an ability out". Tutorials have probably not been one of my strongest points in the past, but I'm hoping the context help takes care of most of the burden.

Might start on the hub first, since it and the tutorial basically don't affect each other.

Stuff to do before projected demo release

- Finish enemy deploys in the third map and test for balance
- Create and finish the fourth planned map
-- write AI modules that take advantage of NPC mages (actually didn't go with straight-up mages for this map, did it a bit different)
- Create a tutorial map
-- Let status effects be loaded from the map file that can show message boxes
- Show battle objectives from the end-turn menu
- Tie the battle maps together with a hub and scoring
- Other problems as they come up (ongoing)

Silly shot of the fourth map, ready to deploy the last PC: