After I first got my headset, I realized that there weren't a lot of games I could play without getting motion sick. This was mostly from when the playspace moved but I didn't. Teleport movement helps, but not enough to move in real time. So I'd started out just wanting to make a game I could actually play in VR.
Tactics games are my favourite genre, but it's always kind of annoying when I would miss easy shots at close range, or if I would just barely not do enough damage from RNG. So for ValoR Tactics, I let all the RNG aspects fall to the player instead. How far could they actually shoot a bow? Could they hit them in the head, or just the leg? Everything had its damage and accuracy based entirely on the players own abilities. With a sword, straighter cuts with good edge alignment do more damage. Drawing a spell sigil more accurately will make the magic stronger. You can risk tossing a potion at someone far away instead of someone next to you.
After I made a proof of concept I had so much fun playing it that continued working. I created a VS computer mode, in game interactive tutorials, and commissioned better illustrations/designs/models/animations to replace my temporary assets.
For the Hackathon, I wanted to add online multiplayer. This was easier said than done. Even though it's turn based, ValoR Tactics uses a dynamic initiative system. A character that skips their movement will go again sooner than a character that both moves and attacks, and even sooner if they don't attack at all or skip their turn. This also means that in future updates job some classes can be modified to have a faster initiative than others and get slightly more turns. But a dynamic initiative meant managing all character's initiative values across all clients. I also couldn't decide on how to best show the opponent attacking. Teleporting to their POV on the board was disorienting, and making them attack on the board was too small to witness impactfully. For now I decided that rendering their POV during attacks for you to watch was the best solution. You wouldn't be disoriented from teleporting suddenly, and you could see enough detail to really know what was happening.
There's also an offline multiplayer mode available, where players swap turns after moving their entire army. This made turns long enough that swapping the headset was similar to waiting your turn to play beatsaber after a few songs.
There are lots of other improvements I have planned. Including;
- A map editor
- Music and Sound effects
- Voice Chat
- Lobby system
- Left handedness detection
- Fusilier, Monk, Thief, and Bard job classes
- New spells for mages / arrow types for archers / weapons for knights / items for chemists
- Simple single player roguelike mode
- Long form online multiplayer, where players pass turns over days instead of a live session
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