During 2019 Hexfray went from a map rendering script to a working multiplayer game. In 2020, let’s take it from a working game into a fun and engaging one! The three main goals I want to work on to achieve that are:
Let players choose a map when creating a game, let matchmade games have multiple maps. Together with this I’d like to improve the editor and add map browsing and rating.
Fine-tune gameplay. Importantly, this means publicly documenting how the game works to lay ground for discussion. Also likely includes new game mechanics (like units defending themselves).
Fix serious bugs and smooth out some rough edges of the current UI. A few corners were cut short at first and I want to fix some of those to prevent some frustrating experiences (two examples: how the game works on slow connection, navigation around the website).
This should get us to a truly enjoyable game by the end of 2020 and thus building a good foundation for further development in 2021.
Tanks now do more damage than they did in the last update.
Users can now view published maps of other users (there’s no browsing at the moment but it’s useful for discussions in the forum). Also, some improvements to map publishing process (it’s still manual but a bit less work).
Added a new map The Toxic Waltz submitted by Jan, big thanks!
Fixed a crash in the mailing system but there are still some invisible improvements I’ll have to do soon.
Attacked units now deal 1 damage back. You can see a blue Soldier which attacked the red SUV in the picture below. This feature will likely get tweaked to deal damage proportional to unit’s strength, might be capped or similar.
There’s been a few other, smaller improvements, notably we finally have a page title which also indicates your turn in games.
Assignment of colours to players in invited games is now random (the inviting player was previously always blue). This allowed another change: blue now always plays the first turn, therefore giving map authors better opportunity to balance their map.
Several improvements to non-game parts of the map system: Authors get better attribution, players can publish their maps for others to see, and maps can be copied and edited (“forked”). Looking forward to seeing your wonderful maps!
It’s a good time for 2020 middle of the year recapitulation for Hexfray. Let’s see the plans, progress made towards them and where will the focus go in the rest of 2020.
We have choice of maps in the invite system & random pick in matchmaking, the editor and map creation process have been improved (see above), players have contributed their maps. This mostly concludes map editing changes for some time as the utility from further additions wouldn’t be big enough at the moment. I hope we can see 8-10 playable maps to choose from by the end of the year.
Fine-tune gameplay. Importantly, this means publicly documenting how the game works to lay ground for discussion. Also likely includes new game mechanics (like units defending themselves).
We have a game parameters page and new game mechanics, I would say the game now has a basic but solid set of features which make it enjoyable. The aim is to implement a few more enhancements during the rest of the year, likely focusing on easy to grasp mechanics for casual players.
Fix serious bugs and smooth out some rough edges of the current UI. A few corners were cut short at first and I want to fix some of those to prevent some frustrating experiences (two examples: how the game works on slow connection, navigation around the website).
This category has seen improvements too (most notably in the Lobby UI) but is also the one that still needs the most work. A bigger project to add here would be a playable game tutorial.
Overall, the game has been on a good track in the first half of 2020 and should continue on it during the second half as outlined above. With this foundation, the plans will slowly shift to increased focus on finding new players who would enjoy the game and build a fun community together.
Let me also say: thank you everyone playing and contributing, either publicly or in personal communication!
Undo button has been added. For now it’s possible to undo the very last piece movement (this might get extended to building new pieces or more than just the last move).
Also fixed a bug which allowed pieces to travel farther than was intended under certain conditions. (Perhaps notably for the programmers among you, this bug would have been prevented by linear types.)
Let users enter id of any published map in New Game dialog (UI to be improved in the future, for now you can see the ID in the address bar when opening the map in editor, e.g. 19 for Kyber Pass linked above).
Add description field to maps (example in the link above). In the future this will be editable even after publishing and also shown in more places.
Remove Dust from the random choice in matchmaking.
