Procrastinating on the Grenadier animations... so that means tileset work
I've thrown in some extra colours. 1 for the grass and 2 for the dirt. They're most likely place holders until I get to a more encompassing palette expansion that puts the colours to their full utility. I just needed some colours for now so I could do the cliff ramps, basically.
During my playing around with the tilesets, I figured out that snow and desert tilesets are probably possible, though they'd both be quite bright, so I'd have to do a bit of playing around with the sprites on them to see how readable they'd be. The other issue is that the long grass that units can hide in offers a game mechanic that would have to be mirrored in the other tilesets for each tileset to be equal, gameplay-wise. How do you justify patches of tall grass in a desert? In a snow-covered landscape?
The only thing I could think of was having an alternate visual representation for the same mechanic. So in a desert you might have a dust cloud. Units can pass through it and hide in it just like the tall grass, but it fits the idea of a desert a lot more. Snow could even just be like a snowy-cloud. Would probably be hard to draw though...
The grenadier throw is very cool looking, but I think the long delay before throwing due to the exaggerated pin removal could impact their usability. Compare with the Soldier and Cannon, who both appear to shoot immediately. The Grenadier could potentially be killed off before even attacking :O
I'd try out having him remove the pin simultaneous to winding up for the throw, you could probably cut the pre-throw frame count to 3 or 4 that way. Another idea could be having the throw immediately, and then he pulls out a new grenade and removes the pin on that at the end of the animation (implying that when running around the pin is always removed :D ) since the pin is just a safety for the lever; gives you a good reason to make them explode on death, too!
Some cool ideas, thanks I'll keep them in mind. My reasoning for the delayed attack is that the Grenadier can be massed pretty easily, being an early, cheap unit, and it has AoE damage and a powerful kamikaze ability. So in an attempt to keep them balanced, they needed a disadvantage, which at the moment is their delayed attack. This gives enemies a small chance to scatter their units to minimise splash effect. But against slow or static targets, or against very large crowds of enemies that get in eachother's way, the Grenadier will be a powerful unit still. That's the plan, anyway. If play testing shows it doesn't really work that way and it's too much of a disadvantage I'll definitely try out your suggestions.
Oh and they only explode on death if you order them to use their Sacrifice ability.
So let me get this strait! You have three teams: humans robots and mutants, right?
Why do you not make a red team? the ailiens!!! That could spruce up the look a pit! And You could make the screen a little bigger so that it is not a phone game(i hate phone games). I live the explosion, the blast wave is totaly awsome, but, it is a little funny. why not make a bombardment explosion that was made by a falling bomb.
A few problems with that idea. First, there's not enough reds in the palette (as far as I can figure) to base an entire team style off. But that could be remedied in the palette expansion, I guess. The main issue is that I want this to be a story about Earth and the kinds of forces that have grown out of it. The idea of aliens coming throws the subtext out the window. This might sound ridiculous, considering the very cartoony graphics, but I do want the story to stand on its own merits as having something to say. Third reason I don't really want to divulge because it would be a bit of a spoiler.
As for falling bomb explosions... don't worry, I'll get to the Napalm Strike animations as soon as the Grenadier is done.
