Rock-Paper-Scissors 🧪 news

Super secret upcoming feature for Assembly RTS. Can you guess what it is?

Hi everyone and happy new year! This week I implemented the first rock-paper-scissors mechanics into Assembly RTS and made various other improvements.

Besides various bug fixes, multi-barelled weapons now display projectiles and particle effect correctly,
coming from each barrel instead of from the center.

Additionally, riflemen now aim down sights when shooting at their target and use burst firing mode.
They take turns when shooting at their target.
This looks more convincing than all soldiers firing at the same time.

But wait, there's more! Some weapons now have tracer rounds in their magazines 👀

I added tracers as a feature because I thought this could leave a more realistic visual impression.
After all, in the real world most fully automatic weapons use tracers.

Unfortunately, every nth shot being a highly visible tracer didn't make as much of a visual impact as I had hoped. Often, it's hardly noticeable.
I'll have to do some more tinkering with the particle sprites to improve the visuals of projectiles at some point.

By the way, the new infantry running animations I announced last devlog aren't quite ready yet.
I'll show them off next time, promise. 😉

One important thing on my todo list was to implement a temporary workaround where riflemen wouldn't shoot at vehicles and certain vehicles wouldn't shoot at soldiers.
This would create the impression of yet non-existing rock-paper-scissor mechanics for the Steam trailer.

However, on second thought this seemed a bit silly. It would be better to instead directly implement real rock-paper-scissors mechanics, even if that takes a bit more time to implement, and that's exactly what I did.

Here's how it works behind the scenes. Every weapon in the game is assigned a specific kind of damage.
Its damage type is always one of these:

• Cannon (from long sticks that go boom)
• Rocket
• Grenade (from grenades and mortar-like explosives)
• Bullet (rifles, pistols and heavy machine guns)
• Sniper

If for instance, a cannon shell hits a victim the shells damage value is multiplied with the cannon resistance of the victim. The resulting number is then subtracted from the victims health points.

Here is an example of a vehicle hull and its 'acceptance' values to damage.

As you can see, its acceptance value for cannon damage is 1.00f.
That means that if this vehicle is hit by a cannon shell, it will take full damage.
But if it's hit by a rocket, it will only take 50% of the incoming damage.

By varying these values for each kind of unit this makes for some interesting strategic battle scenarios.
Yet it's important that there is a form of consistency among similar kind of units.
We shouldn't have to memorize all the different values. It should be intuitive.

The last two weeks I spent time writing music after work nearly every day thanks to my new attitude towards social media. I've spent quite a bit of time learning how to write good music from YouTube.

At the same time I also tried using Bitwig Studio for music production instead of Studio One.
I think it's really intuitive and I might switch to it entirely.

In the future I'd like to focus on one or two specific genres to write the music for Assembly RTS.

I'm looking into the Neo-Industrial and Industrial Metal as well as Ambient Cinematic genres.
There isn't much out there I can take inspiration from that would fit Assembly RTS in these genres.
Do you you know some banger tracks that could fit the atmosphere of my strategy game? Let me know!

As you may remember from last devlog, I spent an entire week without any social media and it had a very positive impact on my life. After I finished my work for the day I have the energy to write music and I even started learning the guitar. So far I've enjoyed learning the guitar much more than learning the piano.

However, I also use Discord for productive things as well.
I even have my own Discord server for Assembly RTS. Giving up on Discord entirely just isn't practical.
Ghosting my own server would be a missed opportunity.

It surely helps being aware of the overwhelming effect social media can have on us.
The effect can be sensed, but only if you know actually what it's like to be without this pervasive effect.
It reminds me of the movie The Matrix: "[...] a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind."

When I sense the effect I log out, simple as that?
Not really. There is always the urge to look at 'just one more thing' regardless of the negative consequence. This takes discipline, which in turn takes effort.

Don't rely on your own strength. It's best to not open social media in the first place.

Except for Discord, social media is restricted to Friday's only for me, when I usually write my devlog.
The only other exception I'm making is for watching videos about Titus Morris.
I find those videos highly inspiring and I recommend you check them out.

If you have your own experience with minimizing social media use,
please tell me about them in the comment section (or join my Discord server 😇)

Follow the Newsletter!

Want to get notified when Assembly RTS hits Steam? Click here!