(Concept art for an alien hero.)
Prepare yourself!
Our progress with Efencea continues. I'm still on the slow side of things what with college and being in a programming slump. Not so much a programming slump but a DM slump. I recently began piddling with javascript, which is amazing! Not that you want to hear about me getting side-tracked.
Efencea news!
We have a new addition to the team. He is also a new member of the BYOND community--not a BYOND Member, mind you. He goes by Guyst_X and will be filling the much needed 'Audio Guy' position for our development team. He'll be handling all of our audio needs (SFX and music). He's produced quite a bit of audio for us already, having just started a few days ago. I knew you would want to hear some of it so I prepared a two file sample, both of which are voice work:
Robot Voice
Alien Attack Phase
(Note: Robot Voice, 'smexy.ogg', is just a test file. It doesn't allude to anything.)
With this addition to the team we hope to expand on the minimal audio in Efencea, as well as be able to claim all of Efencea as original. As it stands now, the number of audio files in Efencea is going to grow by 318.5% from 27 files to 86. We're not done coming up with new SFX to add either. It pains me to see the sonic music go but it's for the best!
The addition of a third member has led to some new discussion as to what our team should be called. Currently, 'Brainstorm', has started to stick. I'm not sure if that's what we'll go by yet, though.
We've started using Google Docs to collaborate. I'd like to say I'm quite impressed with how they work. Very neat and once again Google has made something useful. Our collaborations consist of developing the history/storyline, a to-do list, and ideas, each being their own file.
I'd like to mention that the storyline has been divided into eight parts. I've been considering a further division into nine parts, though. Either way, this gives us plenty of room to work with. Efencea, as you know it, runs its course in part four of the history we're developing. (You can take what you want from that) I can't even estimate how far along we are here. The possibilities for expansion are quite numerous. Sadly, we haven't developed Efencea's campaigns nearly enough.
With the expansion of Efencea, we're considering quite a few changes and have already committed to a few. A couple of which are quite notable. For example, we're doing away with Build Points (BP) in favor of a full fledged cost system. This may leave you asking what the currency will be. It isn't gold.
The unequal cost system will allow us to have a larger variety of towers with disproportionate power for each. I'm hoping to make rapid towers the weakest in spite of Tayoko's bias towards them. Towers may also be receiving another change. Currently, when leveling up a tower, you choose a stat to increase and that's all you get. This may be expanded to all of the tower's parameters increasing, with you selecting a particular stat to add an additional boost to.
With the introduction of campaign mode, we're going to introduce the infamous technology tree associated with strategy games. Details as to how it'll all work are still being discussed. Just know that it's quite likely that in the next update for Efencea you will likely see a technology tree. The tech tree will likely act both to unlock units and towers.
Another avenue we've been looking into is expanding on the map variation. Topography as we call it includes ideas such as ice, poison/radiation, fog, and low/high ground. Most of these have effects as you would expect. Ice causes slippage, poison/radiation would case damage over time, fog would restrict your sight, low/high ground would have a couple effects. A downward sloping path would make units move faster, which means an upward slope would cause them to move slower. High ground could also serve to increase the range of towers.
We're tossing around ideas for a few more units. They will be supplementary units, though, units that help out the others or have special effects.
I'd love to continue to ruin all of Efencea's surprises but you'll have to wait.
