If the target portal is active, prestige is gained for the source portal. Friendly portals can share technology, where the target portal gains a “pulse tick” of progress. This pulse tick can be accumulated from multiple sources at once, even while the target portal works on that same tech locally. That would be an unlikely scenario since it would be inefficient, but it would be possible if a player wanted to really speed-up the research of a particular active ability.

On the other hand, if the target portal is an enemy, the pulse event will disrupt the upgrade progress for the entire fortress. Under the hood, the game will add time to the upgrade timer in the amount of the pulse time (2 seconds). This is done for every enemy source portal that is generating a pulse event for that target portal. The maximum amount of upgrade time is currently 30 seconds, which is the same refresh time when a fortification is destroyed (to prevent instantly recreating destroyed fortifications).

Adding upgrade time essentially halts progression for the fortress, which prevents rebuilding fortifications and locally researching technology. Players can use this strategy to effectively lay seige to a fortress by cutting off “supplies” from friendly zealots while halting progression of a fortress. This enables the player’s troops to destroy the fortress.

Once destroyed, the player’s zealots will add prestige to the target fortress. The first player to add the required prestige will repair the portal and gain owneship. At some point, I will track damage done to the portal during the seige so I can give the tie-breaker to the player that did the most damage. Otherwise, other players could be vultures and just swoop in for the portal after another player did all of the work.

I’ve been testing these features, mainly by watching the computer AI play against each other. I think the flow of the game is really fun and interesting even at this stage. The interactions with the zealots allows for some unique gameplay. In the near future, I will add some additional components to the zealots to expand upon that gameplay.

The zealot at the front of a continuous line for a source portal will hold a banner to make it obvious. Right now I just make it partially transparent for debugging. This banner zealot will be a focal point for the gameplay. Leaders will gain rage during the pulse event when standing near a banner zealot and those marching zealots are not ”connected” to the destination portal. The leaders can gain up to 4 rage pulses and they start to decrease when a pulse event is missed until none exists.

This rage resource is required for the most powerful abilities. It will allow leaders to devastate enemy fortresses as well as gain the upperhand along the zealot paths. I envision intense battles happening along these lines as players struggle to push forward to an enemy fortress. Leaders can summon towers, blast enemies with abilities, and command their elite troops to destroy the enemies in an area.

I will give some special abilities for each leader class too. For example, the shadow mage might be able to teleport to a banner zealot in a surprise attack. Maybe the shadow knight can resurrect a fallen zealot to reconnect the zealot path, while the shadow stalker summons a swarm of beetles from a banner zealot to attack nearby enemies. I will work hard to create many interesting options for the zealot abilities.

My next step is to work on the guardians while I add the abilities and upgrade paths. I have many of the tech ideas on paper, but I need to implement them and figure out a logical way to divide those abilities/upgrades for multiple tech trees. Check back later to read about those details

Players can now upgrade fortresses for the different tiers. This includes upgrading the portals and each individual fortification. All upgrades cost power, prestige, and require an idle upgrade timer for the target structure. The only exception is the basic fortification, which does not cost any prestige. Right now the upgrades only affect health for the structures. Eventually, I will add many upgrade options and benefits using a tech tree that is inspired by RPG class design.

In addition, I added a lot of the code required for capturing an enemy fortress. I now save the last known player as well as the last known type for each fortress component. This will keep the exploration design consistent since ownership can change while players are not viewing a previously discovered fortress. I also have the code in place for destroying an unprotected portal using a leader ability.

Players will also use this ability to purposely destroy a fortification in order to start a new upgrade path for it. As previously mentioned, players would only want to use this option as a last resort. The efficient way to gain new tech is by sharing it between fortresses using zealots. I should have that feature completed within the next few weeks.

I am working on some ideas for the fortress upgrades and combat. I think it would be interesting to treat the tiers like encounters in an MMO — solo, group, raid. The solo tier might be possible to kill with a single average creature, group would take a few troops, and a raid would require more advanced tactics. For example, a raid tower could have an upgrade that casts an AoE ability, which requires a player to move friendly troops in the area out of harms way. Thats just a simple example. This would work with the guardian concept too, which could be similar to a raid boss. I’m just not sure if that would be too much tactics in an RTS of this scope, so I will have to experiment with it.

For now, I mainly want to wrap-up the major fortress gameplay as well as the guardians. That would take care of the most challenging gameplay features. I’m confident that I can come up with lots of interesting abilities, upgrades, troops, and other gameplay concepts. That’s why I want to focus on finishing the time-intensive tasks as soon as possible.

I plan to discuss more details for the fortresses in my next blog post, including the research sharing and capturing by enemy players. Thanks for reading!

I captured a simple screenshot to give a basic idea of the fortress. I want to emphasize again that the art assets and look of the fortress will change dramatically during the next milestone when I focus on visual enhancements. Each fortress will have many components that are themed for each leader class. For instance, the mage class could have floating islands chained together to form a fortification. I want interesting and dynamic fortresses. The screenshot below is showing a scenario where two fortresses are near each other. They are firing upon zealots, troops, and other fortifications.

Eventually, the fortresses will be built upon rocky terrain that defines the foundation, where the center will be a crystal formation that represents the main resource where the portal resides. Players will use their leader to summon a portal over the resource, which will initially have very basic protection. Each corner fortification can be upgraded with its own progression path. When all 4 fortifications have their first tier of upgrades, the portal can be upgraded to a keep with its own bonuses. Then another round of upgrades can be done to the fortifications, where the upgrades will be more important. Likewise, when all 4 have their major tier of upgrades, the keep can be upgraded to a stronghold. At this point, players can choose to summon a guardian for the fortress.

I want to treat fortresses like an RPG player class where only a subset of the full ability list can be obtained — at least efficiently. As skills and abilities are researched, they are burned into the portal and remain until the portal is destroyed. Therefore, players can choose to switch to different upgrade paths in order to learn new abilities, but at a greater cost. The same thing can be done if a fortification is destroyed. However, the passive bonuses associated with upgrades will be lost, which makes it even less desirable. For example, a meaningful troop bonus might be lost when switching the upgrade path to a new one.

The efficient way to gain all skills and abilities for a fortress is to share technology between fortresses. This is accomplished by sending zealots from one fortress to another. Not only does this gain the prestige resource for the source fortress, but it also shares technology with the destination fortress. Players will have a selection of all upgrades not owned by the destination fortess. These upgrades can be queued up and they cost power as the resource. The progress will be “pulsed” as each new zealot spawns from the source portal. As long as there aren’t any gaps (killed zealots) between the fortresses, the technology will continue to be learned until completion.

This tech sharing will further encourage players to protect their zealots as they head towards their destinations. If any zealots are killed, the tech sharing is broken until the “circuit” is continuous again. It also creates opportunities to harrass enemies with the goal of breaking the zealot lines so their tech progression is hindered. I think it will create some fun and interesting gameplay. Furthermore, the zealots will also share the “pulse” energy with leaders in range of the target zealots. This power will convert to rage, which is a required resource for the elite leader abilities. I imagine scenarios such as a leader devastating a fortress, until a group of troops ambush the zealots behind the leader and cut off the rage resource, which will also be depleted over time.

I have a lot of other ideas involving the capturing of fortresses by enemy players, research upgrades, sharing tech between different leader classes, fortress progression, gaining prestige, etc. I will continue to share gameplay details over time. Thanks for reading my incoherent ramblings

The following screenshot shows a basic board that I use for functional testing of the zealots. I (in gold) am attacking a pair of enemy portals (in red) with the help of my team member (in blue). You can see some of my gold zealots marching towards the red portal, where the closest one is getting hit with a spell by the enemy wraith. I placed two towers that are picking-off some of the red zealots marching out of the red portals. A few make it out alive and march northwest towards a safer friendly portal.

My next milestone will begin with implementing new gameplay mechanics for the fortress. I will start by adding the option for towers and walls that surround the portal. These towers and walls can be upgraded and determine some of the available gameplay options for players. Also, the new fortresses will act as control points, where ownership can change if enough enemy zealots reach a portal. The defensive walls will prevent this change in ownership until they are destroyed. This gameplay enhancement will allow players to move towards enemy fortifications with shorter distances for reinforcements. It should create an interesting flow to the game as well.

I will give more of the gameplay details in future blog posts. These next few months are dedicated to gameplay, so I am really looking forward to seeing how the game evolves. Check back to see the newest improvements

I tested out the new attackable zealots and it is cool seeing them interact with the other enemy troops and towers. The zealots generate prestige for their source portal too. I just haven’t done anything with the prestige yet. It will be interesting to see how the game feels when the zealots are able to get players prestige to summon elite units and perform more advanced actions.

In addition, I have been thinking about some tweaks to the overall gameplay. I would like to make it so portals are captured by enemy zealots when enough have successfully reached the portal. This will make the game flow better since players can advance towards enemies. I will still provide the option to destroy the portal in order to eliminate points that are hard to control. That way the game doesn’t go on forever.

When a player captures a portal, it can be protected against enemy zealots by building fortifications. Each defensive upgrade will make it tougher to capture. Prestige will be a big part of those upgrades. The towers connected to the fortress will help decide what upgrades are possible. Furthermore, when all 4 towers are maxed out, a guardian can be summoned. I want to have some cool particle effects between the fortress towers and portals to indicate the advanced upgrades.

This week I will be adding some of the initial computer AI to use the zealots. I will start simple by focusing on generating prestige using friendly portals. This will give me an idea of what the game will look like with lots of zealots marching around the board. I will then work towards more advanced AI such as using zealots for an attack. However, I will probably wait on that part until I implement the fortresses. That way I can go right to the control point concept.

I plan to focus mainly on the fortress and related gameplay for most of April. That will also mark the start of the next milestone, which is PRE-ALPHA 2. I wrap up PRE-ALPHA 1 at the end of this month. That will be almost exactly 6 months of progress since my initial prototype. Gotta keep grinding!

I still have more code to complete before I can move to the next gameplay mechanic. For example, I need to make the zealots attackable and have the ability to see around them. I will inherit a different C++ class that has some of those properties and then tailor it to fit the mechanics of the zealots. I need to save the current zealot paths and states too. I should have the remaining required code and initial computer AI completed within the next 4 weeks.

The current design will allow for 12,000 zealots to exist within a game. The max number would only happen with very large games under extreme situations, but the game should handle it. In most cases, there will be at least hundreds of zealots marching between portals at any given time. I hope that they help make the game feel alive with action. Using them effectively will be vital to winning the game. Sending zealots to ally portals will not only generate prestige, but also allow trading important resources that help to speed up the tech tree progression. Furthermore, zealots will be the only type of troop that can damage enemy portals. They will gain additional bonus prestige too when they damage an enemy portal.

As prestige is gained, players can choose upgrades and summon elite troops. Even zealots can be upgraded to several different tiers. Each tier will improve the abilities of the zealots. The first zealot type will be passive and easily destroyed. The next tier will be much tougher to kill. The third tier will have a reactive ability that damages the attacker when the zealot is killed. This will make it dangerous for enemy troops to attack those types of zealots, leaving the job better suited to towers.

Upgraded towers will also be important to defend against guardians. After a portal fortress has been upgraded with all 4 towers, it can summon a powerful guardian at the cost of prestige. The creature will provide a strong defense against attackers. The guardian is a special type of zealot that can even be sent to attack an enemy portal. This will cause the guardian to materialize and fly along the zealot path, wreaking havoc on all enemies as it flies by them. The guardian will pummel the enemy portal until it is killed or the portal is destroyed.

The gameplay design is becoming much more clear as I make progress on the gameplay mechanics. I think it is shaping up nicely and I am on schedule so far. I will continue to reveal gameplay details over the next few blog posts. At some point I will update the web site too. Thanks for reading!

First, I redesigned some major parts of the game engine to make it easier to add new manager components. I had around 75 files opened for a few weeks while I made the necessary changes. I added a new game manager class that contains most of the other managers and helps simplify some of the code.

I put a new resource manager in the game manager. It is responsible for all interactions with resources, which made it possible to add a new gameplay concept. I combined resources, portals, and spawn points into one entity. These resources have a last known state for each player team in order to support the discovery of the resources and a quick way to see the last known state. All resources are now shown from the start of the game and are displayed as orange icons on the game map. Most importantly, the computer players use this same last known state so they are on equal ground with human players.

In addition, the resource manager uses the path manager to compute all possible paths between resources. These computations are done asynchronously so they don’t lockup the game during the process. These changes improve the accuracy of the targets that are generated for the computer players. Furthermore, it will make it easier to add the zealots manager, which is the next component that I will add to the game.

The zealots manager should really add a fun dimension to the gameplay. I have most of the supporting code ready so adding the zealots will not be too difficult. I will save the network part for later since that will have a few challenging issues.

My goal right now is to get the major gameplay coding done so that I can focus purely on gameplay mechanics for the next few months. Then I will work on the code changes for artwork that supports the new gameplay mechanics. While the art assets are being created, I will work on the remaining multiplayer code. I hope to have all of these parts done by the end of the year. During 2014, I will finish the art and sound assets while I create the Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidates. I am on schedule to have the initial release for Pursuit of Power 2 ready some time during December 2014.

I will try to provide updates more frequently if I have the time. I also plan to release a new video after I complete this next milestone… some time during March. If you have any questions about Pursuit of Power 2, please feel free to ask on the forum. I will be happy to discuss

This week I will work on a few things. I’m going to now use the async path manager to compute more accurate distances between resources. Next, I will add a new zealots manager that will be the foundation for the marching zealots. It will use the improved path manager, which is already setup to handle the different path data required for the zealots.

I’m excited to get the zealots gameplay working as intended. It will allow me to add some more of the gameplay from my original design. I’m really looking forward to playing against the computer when the zealots and corresponding computer AI are available. The new game actions that use the prestige generated from zealots should be interesting too. Can’t wait to play the game prototype with those features!

Hopefully, my next post will discuss the code that I added to implement multi-threading for my path engine!

My next step is to actually place the most CPU intensive component on its own thread. The new path manager will handle path requests in a way that encapsulates some of the logic for troops. I will also be able to increase the level of detail when computing targets for the computer AI since that code will be on a separate thread. Finally, I will add code to perform path-finding for the zealots. This will enable the real gameplay for zealots, where banners can be placed to initiate the marching. I am really looking forward to getting the new gameplay features working within the game!