Trench Warfare

The Game!

Currently, the game is entering level planning and design phase. This will include multiple levels (Likely 3 per side) from the separate factions throughout the war, in particularly Allies and Axis. They will be represented by the French and British forces against the German and Italian respectively.

In regards to the battle of the Somme (The first level already discussed), enemies and allies will spawn primarily in their opposing trenches, which are currently represented by white sprites in the scene, in a somewhat standoffish manner.

Much of this devlog will cover concept designs that this and future battles will cover and some ideas going forward with battle scenes.

What’s new in this update?

This update adds ‘template’ blocks to the scene, mainly in the trenches as previously discussed, to represent the enemies that will be interactable throughout future updates. The templates also cover traps, barbed wire, and light artillery that will also be collide able, and interactable, in later releases. Many of these basic templates are visible below!

From the scene above, the different coloured basic template sprites are spread out in a realistic formation of distribution with the blue sprites representing the allies, red the axis and yellow the light artillery. Terrain collision sprites will also be soon added, likey placed between the two trenches in what is often referred to as no man's land. This area will likely slow and or damage the player adding to the realism in the scene.

Following the trend of planning and level setting. This update will also bring substantial changes to the main menu and UI (User Interface), which will now display fitting artwork and functioning menus for the required scene navigation. Below are some examples of such cases!

 Scene wallpaper image sourced from, '2021, German WW1 Wallpapers'

Provided is also a short GIF of the seamless menu navigation at work!

User Testing

Basic user testing from this update primarily covered the new user interface and template placeholders and served invaluable in understanding user perspective of the innovations.

"The menu looks good and works well. I would toy with the sprite pixels per unit to resize things a bit better, this may help with sprite quality on a greater scale going forward."

 Following this feedback future versions of the game will aim to reconfigure sprite pixels per unit when resizing, and the menu will continue its stable growth of functionality as it seems to be doing well so far.

Next on the horizon?

Following this template and planning update, artificial intelligence or AI enemies and friendlies are within the next stages of planned development. These elements will allow the player to gather more emersion into the battle scene and add to the realism.

An accumulation of sound effects will be created and or sourced to be used throughout the menu and battle scenes which will again add to the player experience. This change is also expected to come within the next few version releases.

Furthermore, subsequent updates will bring player battle mechanics like inventory switching and shooting. The player will also be able to interact with the terrain and light vehicles like artillery and basic armor.

With many of these features listed above implemented, the game will slowly begin adding more battle scenes from famous conflicts, such as the battle of Verdun and the battle of Jutland, both notorious skirmishes from the great war.

References

2021, German WW1 Wallpapers, [Accessed 22nd September 2021], Available at: https://wallpaperaccess.com/german-ww1<https: wallpaperaccess.com="" german-ww1=""></https:>