Hey everyone! I took some time today to record some previews for a few characters/abilities in Spell Slingers. These are all works-in-progress with placeholder character names, models and kits. Everything’s subject to change, but in the meantime I want your feedback! So, what do you think?
I’m open to feedback on Twitter or via the game’s Discord server; this invite link still has more than 50 uses left from last week’s announcement – check the Spell Slingers splash page and Twitter in case this invite expires!
Spell Slingers is the name of the MOBA game I have been working on since December 2017. I briefly mentioned it in my graph theory series and on my personal Twitter feed. I’ve poured my heart and soul into developing the game and its engine, so I’m hoping this will be my best game yet. Open beta has not started yet, but I will make announcements (here, Twitter, Discord, Roblox…everywhere) when it does.
Please follow the official Twitter @Spell_Slingers! If a group on Roblox is more your speed, you can join it here. Finally, I’ve set up a Discord server for the game, but be warned: that invite link only has 100 uses on it! If you’re from the future, check the Twitter for an up-to-date link).
I’m excited to share more information with you soon. Thank-you for your unending support, and I’ll see you soon in-game.
In the previous article, I went over basic graph theory terms and concepts. Click here to read that article. In this one, I’m going to describe a game design problem I found while working on my project.
First, some background information on my project. Without going into too much detail, it involves two teams roaming a map killing neutral monsters as an objective. One of these neutral monsters I’m calling creeps or minions, similar to those in Defense of the Ancients 2 andLeague of Legends. In those games, minions align with a team and march down set paths and assault enemy structures on those paths. However, in my game, minions aren’t on a team, don’t attack structures, and have no set path. Here’s an early draft of the map I’m using:
An early draft of the map (not final). Notice the navigable paths through the map. Click to view the full image.
Minions roam this map freely, and one challenge I’m facing is programming the minion roaming behavior. I came up with a number of ideas immediately. Here’s some of them:
Just walk in some random navigable direction, changing direction if they run into a wall
Create a bunch of paths and pick one to follow
Pick a random target on the map and use Roblox’s pathfinding to do the hard work for me in finding a path to the point
Well, there’s going to be a lot of minions around this map. Maybe they’ll even travel in packs, who knows! I can’t have the minions raycasting for walls, and I can’t use expensive pathfinding for them to navigate. I also don’t want them switching directions a lot; I’d rather they travel a long path instead of small segments.
