I was a little disappointed by the info drought there for a while but I figured you were working hardcore on the game. I wasn't sold on the brownbrownbrown portraits but now that there's more I think they're coming together pretty well. Animo hero portraits gave me a >:C until I realized they were obviously placeholder shit.
Still hyped as fuck!
Anime are definitely placeholders, depending on the level of funding we achieve we will be creating 10 (base level of funding) 18 (if we reach Religion tier) or 25 (if we reach rival old ones) high quality portraits to represent hero class and archetype. Worst case scenario with a failed KS we are going to strip out the entire anime portrait, use the "head" portraits and filter them down to look more in line with what we have. Sucks I know, but we have enough of those anime portraits to have a unique image PER hero right now for dirt cheap so if we have to stay this course we will.
Sad thing is I'm barely able to work on the game this week - we're handling lots of logistical and marketing issues in the run up to the Kickstarter. A necessary sacrifice but ideally we'll raise enough to be able to give the game a consistent feel to match its playstyle.
There is not an Acid attack damage type, but there are many abilities that emulate that functionality and are acid themed. but no +1 to Acid damage or -1 to Acid Damage effects as its not a Damage Type setting (would be trivial to add if someone wanted to in a mod).
I do think the Tooltip/rollout solution sounds best - Combat is locked down right now for the demo build so we'll have to put it in the feature list for afterwards.
Oh yeah, you generally see "Leader" archetypes in charge but sometimes a Mage or even a Thief may be the leader. However, the adventuring parties do try to form "logically" so a Mage will rarely go adventuring without some protection (or the proper defensive spells to protect himself). If you have infiltration you know everything you would see in the battle screen before the fight occurs, if you don't have infiltration you will only know their classes and levels.
Alright let's use a Spider God as an example (in fact maybe I will do this for the video).
You create a New Old One, you set an integer value for time of sleep, you set if the old one has an avatar, if so you define its statistics (health, attributes, skills, abilities), you set its max/min number of agents, you pick its ability trees, you upload an image to the editor for it, pick passive modifiers, set if global or only for specific scenarios, and then fill in all the flavor text (how agents refer to the old one, how enemies do, how demihumans do, etc etc).
At this point you could simply play a rather generic new old One with a combination of two ability trees. However, to CUSTOMIZE the experience there are two very important extra steps. The first thing is Ability Trees, you can either modify an existing one or create new ones. Creating a new one "What Webs we Weave" you would then create an ability. Abilities are where there's a bit of a learning curve, because their are multiple types and each has numerous hooks to plug in to. For instance, let's say you wanted to make a Map based effect that causes all movement in a POI to cease because you cover it in massive webbing.
You'd make a new Ability, it is Activated - Immediate- Global - Map - Costs 2 Ancient Power - pick an appropriate icon from the list or upload a new one - describe it - add a clue value to it - pick your flags (can be countered, divine, fire, hidden, etc). Now comes the hard part, picking how the effect works. So this ability you add a new Effect, and you can add as many as you want. This Effect you pick when it happens (after cast), (POIImmobilize = true), Duration (3 turns + 1 per 3 ancient power). Let's say you wanted to add a Quest ot his spot that could be defeated to remove this effect, you could add a random QUest with Effect - Quest, Difficulty, Type or you could go make a specific quest and spawn that particular one.
Now you probably noticed I put "POIImmobilize= true," that's because we have that effect already coded in, we have LOTS of status effects that are possible but of course people will have more that we don't plan for. That's why we expose all the variables that the AI can understand (as opposed to just allowing you to modify anything), so if we hadn't had a POIImmobilize value you could do an "OnTurn - HeroMove = 0" "OnTurn - ArmyMove = 0" etc.
If what you want to do is even more complex than what is possible on a single level, you can leverage Events, Campaigns, and Quests to create complicated chains of events (we leverage this often) to really give you abilities an immersive feel. Speaking of which, the other major element of customization is events tied to this Old One. On the Create Old One screen you will see a list of Events that specifically reference this Old One. As an example of this, Sisyphus has a long series of branching events regarding his interaction with the prophet - though these are not an ability of his they are events that only trigger as long as he is your old one.
Basic Attack Damage refers to the damage listed on the Agent or Hero's sheet, so in the instance of Baron Greywind it would be 9 Physical Damage, it then specifies an extra attack (another effect) that specifically deals
Physical Damage. If the Prophet somehow had that ability, his first effect would deal 1 Ancient damage, and his secondary would deal 4 physical.
Physical Damage is blocked 1 to 1 by Physical Defense. Whenever the phrase "takes damage" is expressed it means Attack values are checked against Defense Values before causing the target to lose the resulting value. If you see the phrase "loses life" it ignores defense and they simply lose that health value.
In other words, basic attack refers to the attack values present on your agent or heroes sheet.
TL;DR: More tooltips!