Americana Dawn: Microbattles

A Staresque Ring on Foster could've brought him back up, but they're quite expensive early on.

A Microbattle in AD is the game's battle system and the main way to resolve conflicts. From a distance and from screenshots, just like ordinary battles you see in other JRPGs: Turn based combat, characters using skills and items on the field, etc.

Beyond that, the similarities end here. Other than a few functions which handle battle related units (such as stats, learned skills, and equipment), what exactly occurs in the battle is based on map implementation. Want to have a simple skirmish vs a few soldiers? That works. But for those who demand more creativity (like me) I focus on a few other mechanics it can have:

• Units have both HP / willpower. Your characters (including enemies) will regenerate their HP once they're down or in cover, but further attacks on them when incapacitated will drain their willpower, which doesn't come back on its own and increases the amount of damage they take in combat.
• Each character has carrying capacity, which limits the amount of items they can carry at one time.
• Pardoning. Because killing enemies isn't the only way to resolve a conflict. Some events in the game may change based on your decisions.
• Passive environmental effects, meaning some weapons can be less effective in an area.
• Interactable objects. Sometimes the method to defeat them isn't as direct as it seems.

Note on Commands: Attack / Defend are not simple one-off commands, since characters usually have more than one attack type available. Example: If Foster has a musket, he can either fire (at reduced accuracy) or engage in close quarters combat and use it as a melee weapon.

Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows Strategy - Turtling

The two gems do a max of 1k damage (0 on these swarmlings), but it's the orb that cleans them up.

Note: The damage boost on the orb was removed a day after it was released but I'll still leave this post up here for historical purposes.

The new Gemcraft Chasing Shadows is finally out, and after a few hours found a viable strategy to power level early game. They added quite a bit of new features, including dropping gems on your orb to increase its damage done to monsters (before being banished). Which is specifically what this post will cover here - turtling.

It works wonders on levels with lots of swarmlings (B3 being a notable example), where they have low hp and you can anger them a lot to jack up their XP. And even more if you spend shadow cores to up traits Haste and Beacon Storm (the latter giving you free XP if the map doesn't spawn any).

• You're gonna need a bit of mana reserves for this one (be at least lv10 first). Level up Fusion and Mana Storm as high as it can go, and True Colors when you unlock it. Getting bunches of Achievements will help with this one.
• Create a grade one gem, drop it on your orb to increase its damage, until it's minimum damage is at least the hit points on the first few waves. Use red / green if possible, since they grant more minimum damage on the orb. If you have spare mana, you can repeatedly balance betwen angering the next few waves and upping the orb damage.
• Start the first wave - the first pack of monsters should hit the orb and die instantly granting you mana.
• Use that to keep upgrading your orb damage to keep up with the increased hp in later waves. If your mana's near full let it level up first.
• If there are giants on the field, you have more than enough mana to create high grade gems and have them specifically target Giants (Bolt is useful here). Don't use anger on them - they don't give out enough XP anyways.
• One you see the last wave and no giants are there, you can use high strength gems to upgrade both the orb and incoming monsters. (Higher grade gems dropped to anger them uses up more mana, but it has a larger XP multiplier and more monsters compared to a wave angered to the same HP with low grade gems.)
• Plan appropriately if there are some special conditions you need to meet to complete the stage (like wizard tower levels)

Angering them enough times gives enormous amounts of XP and causes their armor to go through the roof (several thousand when angered enough), but as long as your minimum damage is a bit under their HP, it's no bother since the orb usually one shots them. If they don't they get another pass but it's not like they'll survive the second time through. The number of beacons on the field don't matter, as it doesn't stop this strategy from working.

Considering that it nets tons of XP (as in tens or hundreds of thousands) in the first few map tiles, and that it detracts heavily from its intended purpose of the game (it allows you to complete maps without placing any gems in towers at all), it might be nerfed in the future.

April's Fool

One of the many whiteboard graphics on this whiteboard that appear in the Goleman Library. The other whiteboard, however, has a simple notice (that changes from time to time) about the fact that whiteboard markers are no longer issued to tutors. They're just for these boards, I guess. (And updating the tutor availability board)

Goleman Library + Quad

Just another day this semester where I do tutoring sessions three days a week in the morning related to Computer Science. It's 8am and it's about to open... except it's cloudy, I see this view, and took this image after giving it a second thought.

(The original Goleman Library's entrace was in this direction, the new one seen here is on the left side)

Americana Dawn: Macrobattles and a Dynamic World

Foster's team defends against a infantry rush.*

The distinguishing feature of Americana Dawn is the focus on large scale battles, also known as macrobattles. These battles are similar to most turn-based tactical games, such as Advance Wars and army battles in Suikoden 2. Although most large battles are based on historical battles, there are some minor skirmishes using this system that can take place during the game during missions and side quests.

Players control a variety of units, historical figures and officers known as 'Elites', who are both customizable and have a diverse set of skills to handle various situations on the battlefield. Units fall under eight general unit classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses:

• Brave: Melee warriors that can deal additional damage when flanking an enemy
• Infantry: Ranged gunman that can control cannons and utilize buildings and towers to their fullest
• Cannoneer: Artillery with large area of effect attacks and is best used for taking out fortifications
• Calvary: High movement/evade and excels in hit and run tactics
• Ranger: High sight range, and can detect units in cover or in buildings
• Rifleman: Sniper units that can pick off calvary and lone units with ease.
• Sapper: Can construct defensive structures on the field
• Commander: Can boost nearby soldiers' morale.

The key element in these large wars is using the environment or the enemy's weaknesses to your advantage, whether it is ambushing cannoneers and using infantry to steal their artillery, or using cover to recon and find a weak spot in the enemy's defenses. There is no 'right' way to win a battle, but you have a limited number of troops at your disposal.

All skirmishes take place on the world map, and decisions from battles are persistent; Your choices on the field determines how the story unfolds. Any elite character killed in battle is permanent and may affect dialogue and future missions. Similarly, collateral damage can directly harm towns and establishments for the duration of the game, so if a shop is destroyed when retaking a city, you deny yourself the goods and any sidequests it has to offer.

Animations

The animation loop generated in Americana Dawn while trying to script the Braddock Scene. It's done with a custom scripting system in the game, particularly since I didn't want to put the effort into using another preset scripting language (such as lua) and getting it to work properly with what's already in the game, including how it's stored when the script is saved into a map file.

I've decided to change the way things are displayed on the blog; sometimes a picture isn't enough to describe things, so a short video clip (without sound) might be used instead if the browser supports HTML5. If not, it will load a still image instead.

Cutscene Update: The finished cutscene was rebuilt a month later with a slightly different tileset and is viewable here.

Lunar New Year 2014

The sign celebrating Chinese New Year at Red Hawk. I'm a day late on saying this, since it occurred yesterday, but I couldn't make it to the Thunder Valley one, which occurred on a Friday. The lion dance was quite short but there were three performances that day (with some slight differences between each of them).

Also, there was no greeter at the entrance, contrary to what it said online.

Note: The lion dance group is different from the one that performs in Thunder Valley / Cache Creek this year.