Coalescence: Battle System Prototype by Seth Tal
Prototype Battle System for my game Coalescence
itch.io Page
For this entry I felt terribly uninspired by the theme, and so I chose late in the day to forgo adhering to the theme this time around and instead wanted to prototype a battle system for a side project I am working on called Coalescence. This prototype was made in about two and a half days.
Edit:
I made a mistake when creating the LDJam page for my entry, please refrain from voting in the graphics category if you see this message. I did not read through the rules clearly enough. According to the rules of "The Jam", "You’re free to use 3rd party Artwork/Music/Audio assets, or assets you previously created, but we ask that you OPT-OUT of the respected voting categories (Graphics, Audio). You can opt-out of a voting category when you submit your game.".
Some of the graphical assets (the creatures, and parts of the cover image) were made prior to entering the jam. Although I did make very minor adjustments to premade assets this does not justify ignoring this rule. I am not sure I can change the entry page to opt-out of the graphics category but will update it if I can. Thank you for your understanding.
Game info
The battle system consists of real time management of three selected partners, as well as three abilities to aid your team when fighting. The controls of this game are relatively simple: point and click. You can click on any partner to select them. Once selected click either on empty ground around them to make them travel there, or click on an enemy so they will target the enemy. After using one of the ability buttons it will go on a cooldown for some time.
Credit
- Art - Me
- Creature art made prior to jam, as well as Main Menu Title sprite
All new code - Me
BULKYPIX font - Copyright ©1999 Smoking Drum
Music - Tallbeard Studios itch.io, Main Website Link
- main menu song: Abstraction track 10
- pick your partner song: Abstraction track 2
- Battle scene song: Abstraction track 9
SFX - Kenny Assets (Digital Sounds + UI Sounds)
Ratings
| Overall | 1205th | 3.213⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 954th | 3.217⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 993th | 3.162⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1648th | 2.164⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 683th | 3.69⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 72🗳️ | 119🗨️ |
As for me, theme of the jam is yet noticable in matchmaking-ish behavior of this game.
But it is super cute, fun, and I'm waiting to see it some day on mobile :)
Good luck!
Regards,
Alex
During the battles, it could sometimes be hard to tell friend from enemy at a glance, especially when the opposing team had similar appearance. Color-coding the names of the creatures depending on which team they belonged to could improve this a bit.
Similarly, adding floating life bars over the characters would be a nice quality of life improvement as well, so you don't have to glance between where the action happens, the top left for the ally bars, and top right for the enemy bars
Additional visual feedback, e.g "floating damage numbers" might also be useful to gauge the effectiveness of a specific battle assignment, although this might also depend on the underlying mechanics.
I had a bug during one of the rounds, where the last enemy on the field stopped taking damage.
* Sometimes the health bars do not accurately track entity health data
* Sometimes the floating damage numbers do not appear at all despite entities taking damage
* object reference for instantiating entities onto the battlefield remains on battle field throughout the match (its just invisible)
* Some button sounds randomly become inconsistent (meaning they play different sounds...)
* Hit detection is just wonky in general
And I am sure there are many more. Once again, thank you so much for taking the time to list out your thoughts. One thing I hope to improve on for my next jam, and for my games in general in the future will be to improve technical performance and improve UI / UX design. :smile:
The music was fantastic, and the graphics really cute!
I don't know if it's something specific to the Mac version, but the character selection screen only had a 4x4px clickable area for each character :sweat_smile:
If the battles are going to be 3 vs. 3 in real-time, I would like some reduced micro management. Characters choose new enemies themself, flee if low on health etc., and I make the big-picture decisions :smile:
Overall, great prototype! :thumbsup:
The battle system also was pretty straightforward for me to understand, although most of it seemed to be just me button mashing the three buttons, then fiddling around with clicking on the player characters to have them gang up on remaining enemies. As much as I enjoyed the look and description of the characters, I didn't feel as though what character I selected had an impact on the outcome of each round. Going into each round, I wish I knew which enemies I was fighting against and their stats, since I picked each character based entirely on looks :smirk:.
In regards to the music, the battle music seemed like a good fit. The titlescreen music, while also nice, didn't seem to fit as well. It was as if the music was going for two conflicting moods.
Overall, I think the characters and battlefield look great, aesthetically. Best of luck fleshing this prototype out.
Rule: You’re free to use 3rd party Artwork/Music/Audio assets, or assets you previously created, but we ask that you OPT-OUT of the respected voting categories (Graphics, Audio). You can opt-out of a voting category when you submit your game.
@etrealjunior Thank you! I hope my feedback for your game is helpful!
@copito Thanks for checking out my entry! I was considering making some kind of player progression but I ultimately wanted to finish prototyping the core concept. I appreciate the feedback!
@theseusinabottle Thank you! I'm glad some of the game breaking bugs didn't impede on your enjoyment too much
@random-storykeeper This is fantastic feedback. I really appreciate you taking into consideration all of the components here. I agree with pretty much all of the criticism, and in the future I will be reworking every system I implemented to be more flexible and manageable. One thing I was disappointed did not make it to fruition was that each of the ability buttons was actually supposed to be a unique ability per partner instead of team wide support abilities. What ended up happening was that I could not think of a clever enough programming solution for providing uniquely programed abilities to each creature without reworking systems I already had in place. This is really what I hope to improve the most in the future. Thanks again for playing!
Only this message "Application cannot be opened"
@seth-tal
* Open the macOS terminal
* navigate to the folder where the game was downloaded: cd [PATH_TO_APP]/LD47_macOS.app/Contents/MacOS/
* then type the following command: chmod -R 777 Coalescence_BattleSystem_LD47.app
This may work. Sorry for the inconvenience. If this solves the issue then this will not be something I can fix on my end as I am not able to compile a working build on a native apple device. Hope this helps :)
Certainly an impressive prototype in just a weekend, keep tinkering with it!
EDIT: I should add I loved the visuals and music, it had a really fun energetic feel.
I think I had a glitch where I had killed all my enemies, but it still said that one was alive in the HP bar on the top right, but there were no creatures on screen. My allies didn't have anything to target, so I just had to wait for the time to run out.
Other than that I found it interesting and fun! It would be cool to have some sort of upgrade system, or reward or unlock system to make gameplay feel like you were competing for something.
No matter what, great job :)
It would be convenient to block or at least slow down the time to change targets more easily. Also, at the moment it is difficult to distinguish the characters of your team from the opponents.
Finally, buffs are a nice mechanic, but do your opponents have them too? It seems to me that they are a bit overpowered, I rarely lost.
Otherwise though I like what you got here! I'm also in agreement that the theme was kind of "meh" this time around. Props to you for tossing it to the wind while making something anyway!