This was an attempt at a tactical turn based game with dynamic cameras, localized damage, and other features.

edit: image so it appears in projects:

    Jesusemora man, i really don't play enough games with bot-on-bot violence.
    looks awesome. i know exactly where the inspiration is from. it's one of my favorite games of all time. (the 2012 reboot(the 2016 sequel is cool too))
    do you plan to take this project further?

      Jesusemora Looks like a tech prototype. Are you planning to develop it further into actual game?

        Hi, thanks for the comments.
        xyz I don't know yet, I'll see how far I get. I was stuck designing the weapon and combat system, and now I wont have much time during the week, I'll see next week if I can resume.

        packrat looks awesome. i know exactly where the inspiration is from. it's one of my favorite games of all time. (the 2012 reboot(the 2016 sequel is cool too))

        The camera is partly inspired by the x-com reboot, but it's mostly inspired by the original x-com and the battletech game. For now I'm trying to get the mechanics to work with some assets I had lying around, I'll make more assets later.

        Elements of OG x-com:
        When a unit fires, it fires a physical projectile with randomized trajectory. So there can be friendly fire or collateral damage.
        Anime-like style.
        Localized damage and armor.
        Todo 4 tile units.
        Todo geoscape view.

        I was also planning to have big mechs in the game.

        11 days later
        • Edited

        Jesusemora Maybe add an environment in that rendering style as well to see how it all works together.

        I personally am not a big fan of rendered outlines. No matter how well it's done, it always suffers from artifacts. On your particular screenshot the contours in the distance are so thin that they start to look broken/jagged. If you want to go with hard outlines, the best method is rendering them in screen space as a post effect, which is somewhat hard to do in Godot. Displacing meshes along normals always looks kinda sloppy imho.

          Jesusemora what do you think?

          The contours are done quite decently. Some "roughness" only emphasizes the style. It is quite possible that many players will like it. But, personally, I don't like contours and cartoonishness either.

            xyz Yeah, if we had geometry attributes like in blender or softimage xsi I recon a lot more interesting things could be done. At least a lot more interesting things somewhat more easily. I do not however feel properly qualified to go writing up a proposal on the repo.

              That's fair criticism, you really need other people's opinions when testing new things, what I think looks cool might not look good to another person.

              xyz Maybe add an environment in that rendering style as well to see how it all works together.

              yes, the project is in a very early stage, I didn't have much time for making assets, I fixed many bugs, cleared the code a bit (and still needs some work) and added new features like melee combat.
              the units are very simple meshes baked from a higher poly model and using mixamo animations (that's why the hands look wrong), then I painted the lines over.
              Going for an anime style was partly to speed up my workflow, and because the PBR materials didn't look very good on bigger mechs.
              I'll try to work on assets now that basic mechanics are done.

              here's one:

              xyz I personally am not a big fan of rendered outlines. No matter how well it's done, it always suffers from artifacts. On your particular screenshot the contours in the distance are so thin that they start to look broken/jagged.

              I don't like cellshader effects either, the best I've seem was from the last walking dead game. This was an attempt to make it work.
              I was going for 80s/90s/00s hand drawn anime, so the jagged edges were actually a good side effect.
              But I went back and tried to improve it, the edges looked wrong because of FXAA and too thin outlines, it looks better with MSAA and TAA, but I get lower FPS and I also need to test it with higher resolution. I'll add options to change it in game.
              the outlines are solid because transparent edges also cause FPS drops, I also have a texture with the traces and the original albedos, so it can be changed at any point or even remove them completely.
              I'm making a special shader that changes outline size depending on distance to camera, and recently added FOV to the equation. now the edges look mostly the same width at all distances. I might add some instanced coloring later.
              here's the improved version:

              and with FXAA:

              If you want to go with hard outlines, the best method is rendering them in screen space as a post effect, which is somewhat hard to do in Godot. Displacing meshes along normals always looks kinda sloppy imho.

              not always. In this case I don't want everything to have edges, things like backgrounds should look painted or even rendered. Using outlines allows me to give each unit a different outline color, the blue outline would look better on a blue or white unit, while a red or green outline would look better on a darker one, I could extend this by using textures that give each part a different outline color too.

              Tomcat The contours are done quite decently. Some "roughness" only emphasizes the style. It is quite possible that many players will like it. But, personally, I don't like contours and cartoonishness either.

              that's fair, thanks for your feedback.

              Megalomaniak Yeah, if we had geometry attributes like in blender or softimage xsi I recon a lot more interesting things could be done. At least a lot more interesting things somewhat more easily. I do not however feel properly qualified to go writing up a proposal on the repo.

              I don't use blender 3 enough to know what you are talking about, there's a lot of things from blender 3 I don't like, so I use 2.79 for everything and blender 3 for exporting.
              Could you tell me more about what these features can add that can't be done with conventional shaders?

              packrat i'm a sucker for black outlines and hard contrast

              I'm glad someone likes it.

              I think the style looks good, it wood be cool if it was highlighted blue or red depending on color.

                Idk, but i like cell shaded. DBZFZ imo did it the best, second to BOTW. BOTW cells were shaded but overall it was beautifully integrated into the world. DBZ is very vibrant.

                THe characters are 3d models yet it looks like a drawn, similar to modern animes.

                  lukboy already done. also made some changes to the shader and tried some things.
                  I'm currently using the Toon shader with roughness 0.

                  I tried some changes to the outline using scissor and dot(-VIEW, NORMAL), also tried using the TANGENT and BINORMAL, but was not convinced by the results. In the end I just multiplied the vertex "grow" by a vec3 scale to make the edges uneven.

                  kuligs2 DBZFZ imo did it the best, second to BOTW. BOTW cells were shaded but overall it was beautifully integrated into the world. DBZ is very vibrant.

                  DBZ uses some really detailed meshes, it can do this because it's a fighting game so there's only 6 characters on screen. I haven't decided on a style yet, but it's going to be something darker. because of the way I'm doing things, the units will be affected by environment light and take advantage of different atmospheres. for now they are in a clear skybox for testing.

                  I've done some more bug fixing and clean up, and implemented a turn order bar:

                  It uses toggle buttons, a button_group and a theme variant. the pressed state and normal state have different styleboxes, so more customization can be made later.

                  I'm also using an invisible button on top of the turn_order_icon that moves the camera to the unit, and only works when the camera can be controlled by the player.

                  Maybe you could use this shader. For some reason it was removed from the documentation of the new version.

                    Tomcat that's a simple sobel shader, I already have one and don't plan on using it.
                    sobel works by finding the difference between the colors in the screen, so it doesn't differentiate objects. You get little to no control over the result. I'm using vertex outlines because I can change the color of individual outlines and have background objects without one, it gives me more control.
                    all of the screenshots have been done at half resolution, in a window. It can look better with MSAA and a higher resolution.
                    I also need to work on assets, one being the background and floor. It's going to look better once I have some finished models and textures that contrast better. even these units are for prototyping, I might replace them with higher poly ones or scrap them entirely.

                    Hello, another mech fan here; I love what you are doing. Even if it´s still too soon to ask, what are you aiming to make?, a X-com of human versus machines or something like Final Fantasy Tactics in space?. Those bubblegum crisis suits alikes came out very well, kudos for that.

                    If you want some license friendly models I made this list some time ago, maybe you can use something for a quick variety filler:
                    https://opengameart.org/content/models-for-a-space-game

                    I think these ones fit your style pretty well:
                    https://opengameart.org/content/animated-mech-pack

                      Danimal what are you aiming to make?, a X-com of human versus machines or something like Final Fantasy Tactics in space?

                      The original-original idea was to make an RTS, but I didn't want to mess with networking or real time AI, and it would've been a lot of work. Making a Tactical turn based game was much faster to code, because there's fewer unknowns, one unit acts at a time, in a phase, and then the next unit acts.
                      The next idea was to make a mech vs mech game like battletech or phantom brigade, with localized damage and salvage. I didn't have a mech model so I baked a sci-fi cinematic mesh that I had and looked good enough.

                      The story will be about a planet that has to defend itself from an empire, so the game will start at the geoscape, missions will pop up, and then you would send your mechs to fight other mechs. there will also be research, and mechs will be able to be outfitted with different weapons, maybe even parts like arms. after the mission, weapons and parts will be damaged or destroyed, and the rest will be salvaged. new mechs and weapons will have to be researched to be used and will unlock new technologies.

                      There's a ControllableUnit class and the units inherit from this, so far the foundations for localized damage, turn based gameplay, visual customization, weapon customization, ranged combat and melee combat are done, but these units are a single mesh. the next step is to make an actual mech with different parts that can be damaged and weapon slots.

                      If these placeholder units are kept, I might split the gameplay into two "phases", in the first phase the giant mechs would fight other giant mechs, and try to reduce collateral damage to buildings. the second phase would take place inside buildings, with smaller mechs and powersuits. This was decided because of the size difference between a human and a bigger mech that would make the gameplay more engaging, and because coding 4x4 units will mean creating a parallel pathfinding system, and the maps will shrink as a result, so no "armor hunting" for now.

                      Danimal Those bubblegum crisis suits alikes came out very well, kudos for that.

                      yes bubblegum crisis was the inspiration, thanks for noticing. I just hope the other mechs end up as good.

                      I'm almost finished with the fist mech, it will be a basic medium sized mech with some weapon slots, mostly for testing the new features, but will be kept in the final game:

                      Danimal If you want some license friendly models I made this list some time ago, maybe you can use something for a quick variety filler:
                      https://opengameart.org/content/models-for-a-space-game

                      I think these ones fit your style pretty well:
                      https://opengameart.org/content/animated-mech-pack

                      I will try to make my own models for now, but I will look into it.

                        Jesusemora The story will be about a planet that has to defend itself from an empire, so the game will start at the geoscape, missions will pop up, and then you would send your mechs to fight other mechs. there will also be research, and mechs will be able to be outfitted with different weapons, maybe even parts like arms. after the mission, weapons and parts will be damaged or destroyed, and the rest will be salvaged. new mechs and weapons will have to be researched to be used and will unlock new technologies.

                        May I suggest a change to the story?, instead of being attacked by an empire (which is a bit plain and overused imo), make the enemy a rogue scion of an imperial family that failed in his/her throne takeover and is on the run. He/she arrives from very afar at the systems owned by your state, obliterates all space defenses (due to technological superiority but with small numbers) and starts with light plundering initially (not just your planet, but many systems at the same time) to outrigth conquest.

                        And as they become more desperate by the mounting resistance, lack of resources and retribution army coming after them, intensifies pressure and goes outright crazy, ordering orbital strikes, deploying bioweapons and other future war crimes; also add some goverment traitors for plot twists. You can tell the story little by little by using tv war emisions from your state of how other planets are getting conquered, or suffering big attacks. Final objective could be like all Xcoms to take down their mothership.

                        Because what conqueror gives their prey the chance to grow strong little by little instead of crushing them swiftly unless having very small numbers or being outstreched?, in which case they wouldn´t attack at all.

                        Anyways, sorry for ranting, I hope to see your progress from now on.

                          Danimal instead of being attacked by an empire (which is a bit plain and overused imo)

                          There's no overuse here. It's very real.

                          Because what conqueror gives their prey the chance to grow strong little by little instead of crushing them swiftly unless having very small numbers or being outstreched?

                          Underestimating the enemy. That's what we're seeing in our world right now.