Finished the design for the onboarding by designing the arrows for the cards, so that the combat worked as intended. I also included using a special card in one of the steps since that was missing.
Then I jumped into implementing the scripted onboarding; in order to make it possible I broke down the project into several tasks:
- Hardcode the tutorial match to a given grid instead of generating it.
- Feed the player deck with a predesigned set of cards.
- Force the enemy hand to a predesigned set of cards instead of generating it.
- Force the player to select a predesigned hand.
- Force the player to play a given card on every step of the game.
- Force the player to play the card into a given location of the board on every step of the game.
- Force the AI to play a given card to a given location of the board, on every step of the game.
- Manipulate the outcomes of conflict, on every step of the game.
It was not a short task, but it’s working now… I sent the redesigned onboarding script for localization, while I verified I hadn’t broken anything.
But of course some stuff was broken: the Deck popup wasn’t showing at all because I had broken the connection between the button and the no parameters method, and crucially, the normal battles weren’t loading because a scripted game was expected. All that was promptly fixed, hopefully no more bugs were introduced.
Next up is integrating the new onboarding text translations, verifying the visuals with the team, and pushing the update.
Slashie's Gamedev Adventures 