After a 'little' hiatus, here's a video with some additions... This devlog is interesting to me personally because there's a milestone in Milirats' development... AN ACTUAL GAMEPLAY LOOP. (up to 3 rounds, eh)
Apart from the checkerboard placeholders, you can buy two units: Rifleman and Shotgunner. You control by pressing the QWERT keys to change "states," and then clicking on each individual rat with the left mouse button to apply the state. You can only apply these states when they're active, up to 3 moves. These 'ugly' statistics above their heads show their amount of moves, ammo, current state, and health.
(btw, noticed the little animation?)
Milirats has a unique economic system that adds a smaller layer of tension to the player after awhile. To the top left, you have a Cissors counter, which is the currency used by your army. Below that, you have "EXTRA FUNDS." You can get extra funds by either pressing what was supposed to be the "collect" button, or by pressing space. There are some limits, however. You can only get extra funds when your units are below the maximum limit (that being 5).
That guardrail was put in place to prevent the player from accumulating too many Cissors too soon. If the player keeps accumulating too many Cissors without buying anything, there will be more enemies, making the game more challenging. It's up to the player to choose between buying an unit right now or waiting so they can buy better units.
Let's just say the player buys 5 tanks early on. The player can easily overpower the enemy, but that puts the player in an awkward position where they will be unable to get extra funds due to reaching the "allied units" cap. There will be units where tanks are inefficient to fight against, leaving you to do nothing but wait until one of the tanks is destroyed so you can buy again.
A vehicle to a vehicle, a tank to a tank, a soldier to a soldier—so choose wisely!
Round SystemAlso, the round system was finally implemented. Before, the enemy dynamically bought units just like the player. Hell, they even used to have their own "extra funds" system as well! I ditched that in favor of a round-based system instead, which honestly made the game a little bit better. I will also be including mechanics in which enemy units will "decide" on a percentage-based system where they will go next, making the rounds more dynamic and less predictable. That, however, depends on how the maps are designed. We'll see.
UIFULL SCREEN WAS FINALLY FIXED. Seriously, this was a headache for me for months. When I used to put the game in full-screen mode, it would "stretch" the original windowed base resolution (1280x720) to whatever resolution the player has. Now, that problem is just gone. It actually scales to your monitor while keeping all graphics with their aspect ratio intact! To the left, the game on a 1360x768 display. To the right, a 1920x1080 one. (Clicking on an image opens up a new tab)
Now, that's the coolest thing so far. The game does not use "tilesets" for its maps because, honestly, it can look rather "repetitive" at times. The maps are entirely "painted," and the collision is then overlaid in the engine itself. That opens many doors, as I can also put multiple parallax layers for the background, animated objects for maps like flashing lights, fire, grass, and much more. For optimization, all one could do is put a VisibilityNotifier for every animated object, so whether the object is off camera, they won't be rendered. Yes, the "PLACEHOLDER ZONE" is underwhelming visually, but I swear, more will come.
The rats are less "chunky" now. Most, if not all, animations will have 6 frames, and the animations will have some subpixel stuff involved as well, which is intentional. I also redrew their heads a little and changed the color palette to make it more in line with the new art style.
