Hey hey ho ho!

Spooky season is over. On to new things!

Flagpoles and Capturing Buildings

First off, you may notice in this update that buildings now have a happy little flagpole next to them, like such:

By simply running up to a flagpole, any player-controlled, ranked unit (rank 1 and up) will automatically lower or raise a flag. If the building is the same team as the unit, the flag will be raised. If it is an enemy flag, it will be lowered. Rank increases the range and speed of raising and lowering a flag. Once an enemy flag is fully lowered, it and the building next to it will be converted to the active player’s team, and the flag can then be raised back up. This new mechanic adds an extra level of strategy to the game, and there is a new campaign mission, “Outnumbered”, that relies on this new tactic. In addition to affecting who owns a building, the flag height determines how quickly units will spawn (Barracks) or abilities will become ready (HQ). Building health now affects spawn rates as well, and spawn rate is weighted 50/50 for flag height and building health.

Pricing

There Will Be Ink is a one person project and my first (soonish-to-be) completed game. I started work on it in September of 2018, and the original plan was to keep it to a six month development period and release it for a low price, as a test run of sorts. As is usually the case, things took longer than expected (work on the game has been part time, as I need to keep my day jobs to pay the bills) and the scope went well beyond the initial simple concept. I’ve grown to love the game and there is still a lot more planned for it (more on that coming soon). The main feature I plan to add for the version 1 release is the in-game Campaign Editor, which will enable the stringing together of missions into campaigns and for greater customization of missions. It will also serve as a foundation for some of the other new features planned. The game currently sells for $4.99 USD. I will likely slowly ramp up the price as we near version 1.0, with the price finally settling around $9.99 USD. I think this is a reasonable price for what the game offers. It’s certainly not enough to make the game a financially sustainable project (I calculated my earnings so far to be about a nickel per hour, yikes), but I work on this game only because I love it (the game and the work) and want it to be the best it can be.

Anyhoozle, back to fun things! Aside from the new flagpole/conversion mechanic and new mission, the latest update also includes a new ability, a river variation, Quick Battle improvements, and several bug fixes. Check out the full list below:

New Features

• Flagpoles – Buildings now have a flagpole next to them, which can be lowered and raised by player-controlled, ranked units
  • Once the flag of an enemy building has been fully lowered, the player takes control of that building
• Hi-Tech Ability, “Ammo Regeneration” – Ammo slowly regenerates for player-controlled units
• Added HQ to Quick Battle options
• New campaign mission, “Outnumbered” – It’s a tricky one
• Added river variation, “River 2b” – Horizontal mirror of “River 2”

Changes & Enhancements

• Barracks & HQ unit/ability spawn rates are now affected by building health and flag height
• Quick battles/random maps now include a single Rifle unit for each side by default
• Destroyed buildings are now in the proper team colour
• When determining where to lay mines, Engineers will no longer consider medics performing healing to find out where battle fronts are located
• Seasonal Content in Options menu is now listed as “Auto” when enabled instead of “On”

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug where game crashed when resuming from pause after game paused due to controller unplug
• Fixed bug where not all objects were properly paused when controller unplugged or Steam overlay brought up
• Fixed bug where battle progress state was not properly saved/loaded when restarting a mission after winning
• Fixed bug where mission progress was not properly saved when achieving victory in Sim mode after winning in Arcade mode
• Fixed bug where player could no longer join as B-team after achieving victory on a level
• Fixed bug where player could join as B-team when having achieved victory on a level in a different game mode
• Fixed bug where Engineers would sometimes face the wrong direction when moving or performing actions