Joana Costa Cunha e Almeida

Senior Technical Artist

Hey everyone! Phew it’s hot, huh? What a summer this was. Glad it’s over soon. It’s- it’s not? Oh boy, I wish someone had predicted climate change, and done something about it.

So, apart from finding out I can melt, what happened this week?

Outside of the game itself, I made some calls to figure out further funding options, specially since I want to bring people in to help me on the art and programming side of things. I’m spread really thin here, and it’s slowing down development of the prototype a lot. To that effect I also had a call to get some advice on how to find good co-founders. It’s really hard finding the right match, and I hope it doesn’t take too long. I got some good advice I wanted to act on, creating some first pitch decks and more refined “call for founders” posts, but frankly this week’s heat was too much for thinky writey make words happen on the thing with th

MGZsheroes also continued. Always lovely hanging with all the other women of the program. This time was about branding! I’m not at that step yet, but it’s really great to formalize these concepts. It’s also interesting that the recommended way to speak to and catch your audience’s attention is different than what works for me. A good lesson in both that I have to learn what works for others, but also can’t disregard that there’s people out there who are like me, with different communication needs, who feel spoken to in a different way.

No screenshot this time, because it would look exactly the same as last time, despite such deep changes!
One major aspect is that I can now toggle the action phase (when actions are done) to be either at the end of a round or at the end of a turn. End of turn definitely feels a lot better, the immediacy giving you much better feedback on your actions. However I hope to make end of turn actions also work, because I feel there’s some real good tactical thinking to be had there.

More importantly I introduced status effects! Aaaand for that I completely restructured how ability cards are built, which required a lot more restructuring.
Quick primer on my terms: Ability card is the card you select for your unit to act on. Actions are what the units actually do. Ability cards can hold multiple actions (e.g. do damage & apply status effect).
See, originally I had actions on the cards as lists of classes that I couldn’t modify. Eventually I learned about instanced objects. Essentially they’re constructed from the outset, and as such you can already change them in your data asset, instead of waiting for runtime. This was important to me, because I didn’t want to make one action per status effect. This way I can have an “apply status effect” action, where I can pick the desired status effect from a dropdown list. This changed things so much, allowing me to do things like selecting targeting on the action itself, instead of having a list for actions that target self, and a list for actions that target others. Since I was already at it, I decided to introduce “boosted actions”, a second alternate list of actions, which is used if the unit’s class matches the ability card’s class. I haven’t put anything in yet, but I’m imagining damage being doubled, or a secondary effect triggers, or something like that. Damage being doubled is less interesting, since it’s already stronger due to using a unit with more compatible stats anyway.
I haven’t done any visual feedback yet though, since I’m prioritizing functionality. Though it’s getting waaay more pressing. I’ve been putting that on a backburner though, since I know that as a Tech Artist, I’ll have some specific demands and end up wanting to make too robust of a system. We’ll see.

So what status effects did I actually make? I started with a simple one: poison. All it does is do damage in the end phase and leave after a few turns. The next thing that came to mind was… wet. It doesn’t do anything. It however is my first step in attempting elemental reactions, because my final status effect is: Frozen. Like all the ice cream and drinks I currently yearn for.

At the start of the week I took a chance and tried to build my first proper combat arena. It’s a first draft, trying to figure out what even works.

Playing Final Fantasy Tactics, it’s notable that these arenas are structured through chokepoints where units can block other units, leading to difficulty getting where you need to, as wells as bunching up units conveniently to be blasted away by magic in one go. Another common, though not a constant feature, is a difficult to traverse center, which can often be used as vantage points, but more often than not forces units to walk around it, encouraging play across the whole map.
FFT also has very asymmetrical maps, which makes them look more naturalistic and leads to interesting encounters, however they are by nature unequal, which works best in a singleplayer experience (though that hasn’t bothered the PSP release of FFT, which implemented a multiplayer versus and co-op mode).

Scramble Quest does not play like Final Fantasy Tactics though, so I’ll have to adapt the learnings and see what even fits for my purposes. So far height has no influence, so a vantage point would do nothing. blocking a passage doesn’t quite work, since characters don’t occupy a whole tile of space. Meanwhile SQ is going to have players chasing each other a lot, meaning it may be good to have a lot of places to hide behind and run around. Lots to consider and try out.

Something major I noticed though, was the consequences of not letting the players control the camera. It’s not too much of an issue for knowing where your characters are, since they feature outlines that are shown no matter what. However I found that there’s elements of the map that can be hidden behind other ones. Tall trees obscure viable paths. High plateaus hide ramps to get onto them. So, I’m thinking, tall objects need to be further in the back, where they can’t obscure anything, while smaller details should be more in the front. The arenas themselves should likely be structured so that lower heights are in the front, and higher locations are in the back. It can also represent an opportunity though, to give advantage to a player that is more willing to explore the map, or risk using a path they can’t properly see.

On the MGZsheroes side of things, we had our mentor matchmaking! There were few game-focused mentors there, but it was still fascinating to talk with all of them. They were all there driven to support us on our way to founding our companies and brought their own perspectives, from finance, managerial, production, marketing, etc.. Everyone had advice, insight, or tried to think of contacts that could help us. Afterwards we submit our preferred mentor picks, and we’ll see who we’ll end up with. I’m really excited for this. I’d had a mentor in the past, but at the end I realized that I came to it without any particular needs, just hopes for the future and no path to get there. It was nothing a mentor could help with, though I’m still thankful for her time and her insight. For this mentorship though, I’m actively working towards building something, and am gathering all the help I can towards my goal. Even while I’m still learning how to ask people for help, I think this time at the very least I know what to ask for.
As building a studio becomes more serious, I have also started looking for co-founders. In particular I’d love to have an experienced Artist and Programmer to back me up. I want to be able to entrust those aspects without second thought to others to be less spread out. Though I also desire the fresh insight and input of other people. I’m excited for what surprising things other people can bring into this idea of mine.
For that purpose I also looked into local financing options. I just don’t want to risk or be a drain on anyone’s finances at all. This work has to be sustainable.

The Film- und Medienstiftung NRW also organized a summerfest! I’ll admit, I’m not a party person, the noise was a lot for me to handle, but it was interesting to be in an environment with so many people from various media branches. Specially film/tv if I understood it right. But the highlight was having a chance to hang out with my fellow Sheroes, and getting to know them better. We usually only meet for seminars, so we don’t really get to talk much beyond the topic of why we’re in the same room together. They’re an impressive bunch, and I can feel a bit out of place, but you know, impostor syndrome and all that. So yeah, it was a lovely evening with nice people.
Oh, and there was wonderful ice cream with a variety of toppings you could put on yourself. Marvelous. I miss it.

I swerved hard and away from level design for the rest of the week. Something I care immensely about in games is story. And this story is supposed to depict people who grew up in a world that is trying to recover from and prevent the violence that has plagued the past, not unlike our own real-world experience.

I’m not under the illusion that what I’m going to say through my story is in any way ground breaking. I’m not a grand thinker or writer. But I’d be remiss to not do my due diligence in researching the circumstances from which what I will say are derived. I’m a child of the European Union through and through. Born around the time the Berlin Wall fell, the east and the west reunited. Grew up and lived in several countries in Europe that were living through immense optimism. A growing union, neighbouring wars and its refugees, a single currency, free movement. Defining features of my youth growing up largely outside my home country.
Of course the history behind what I lived wasn’t unknown to me, but as said before: due diligence.

What struck me the most, was that I was looking at a generation looking for a solution against nationalism. Many looking for disparate yet similar solutions. But also the same aging generation, so focused on unity and peace, was the one that stewarded the world into war or at least grew up among nationalism. Now they disregarded the needs of the youth, even while they focused on community. Baby boomers rebelling, not inheriting, but taking the world. An interesting comparison to the current times, when again we’re rebelling against an aging power structure that disregards the youth. Though this time those in power have forgotten why the world has its current shape and why it needs to be upheld, how desperately their predecessors fought against nationalism and for unity. It’s disheartening to know that ideals of cooperation are so fragile and can erode with the passage of time, as those who experienced the worst case disappear from the face of the earth.

The other thing that jumped out at me is that the European Union could not become a union without the support of those outside it. Of course the US was instrumental in building Europe not only back up, but sharing with it structures that support many states working together. The goal always being that we’re stronger together, no matter on which scale. We’ll be there for each other when the other suffers. Community.

Phew, so political, and yet it’s just the forces that shaped me.

Been a busy week!

On behalf of the IGDA Foundation, I held a talk as part of the STEM Game Lab panel for the German American Chamber of Commerce (probably should’ve plugged that here. Whoops) and I had a seminar through the MGZsheroes program.
The panel was interesting, as not only did I get to word vomit about what I do and what I value in game dev (curiosity, learning, knowledge sharing, communication), but I got to hear from others how they handle game dev education. I was pretty impressed, it sounded exactly like what I’d want from an experienced developer’s point of view.
Now, the seminar was largely on generative AI, and while interesting (and the speaker was genuinely nice and really knowledgeable in his non-AI discipline), I still can’t see a reason to use it, specially considering the costs (specially, but not only, environmental costs). And as much as I might hate writing long documents and presentations, they invariably help me think through the topic at hand in a different way, giving me new insights and a more solid understanding. And I wouldn’t want to lose that.

Alright, but we’re here for Scramble Quest. What did I manage to do?

Now, currently my favorite format of Magic: The Gathering, when playing with my partner, is Jumpstart. You have two random 20 card decks, mix them together, and you’ve got a semi-functional 40 card deck. That works. The issue is, the larger the deck (and I still haven’t locked card count), the harder it becomes to find a particular card. Throw two 40-60 card decks together and it just becomes awful. You’re trying to do a damage type of action, but you’ve got only healing and defending on your hand. Terrible experience.

The solution of course is to divide it up again. Each side draws from their own deck to their own hand, even if ultimately the cards are available equally to all. I put one hand to one side, the other to the other, and the selection pucks in the middle between the two, so they’re equally accessible to all players. Now each player has a proper equal chance at accessing cards from their decks. They have full access to their strategy.

It sounds like it should be an easy refactor, but it’s a weirdly fundamental change to the first system made for this prototype. Everything was built on this one deck that was mixed from two. Though not changed as quickly as desired, it still was a blip in the grand scheme of things, and so worth it.

The result screen though… It feels stupid, but I keep pushing it out for as long as possible on every project where I need to make one. It’s just… it feels so big, because after all, it’s the culmination of a competition. It needs to be flashy, and rewarding, and give you loads of information about what happened in the competition. Heck, you need to define and track things that happen during the competition. You need win conditions, and various things that could happen, so you can show it on your result screen. You need to have buttons that work perfectly to return to specific previous states and whatever else the player might want that I’m not thinking of.

No. Just do the damn thing. Yes, of course you need buttons to leave or restart. And you need “a” condition that triggers the screen (not even a proper one). But that’s all. It doesn’t even have to be bug free! After all, this is an early prototype, and even if it wasn’t… Gotta start somewhere.
Frankly, this applies to pretty much everything you want to do. Don’t let it balloon in your mind. Reduce it to the bare minimum. Make it a small step. Everything else can come later. Heck, it will be clearer later, so don’t even think about what comes after.

So that’s what I did. I first set up a win condition object that gets checked at the end of each round and I made it check if there’s any team with no undefeated units left. And then… I simply display a quickly thrown together screen that displays winner, team composition, and defeat state. I also have the win condition add a widget with further information relevant to the win. In this case, in which round which unit got defeated. This latter feature is still buggy, but that’s fine. It’s fine. Absolutely fine.