Whereas the focus in the past few weeks has been in tightening up the interface, the focus for the coming weeks will be on getting Legends of Aesthir to a playable state.

I am targeting November 10th for this milestone (which might or might not be related to the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on the 11th—hint: it is); this is a departure from the development methodology I employed for Dance of Death, in which I bit off a small set of goals at a time and worked towards them as soon as possible.

The following items are slated for the playable build:

1. When a player creates a game, it will be asynchronously loaded into other players’ lobbies.
2. When the second player enters a game, the game controls will be displayed, and the game started.
3. When a player enters a game or a lobby, a “Player has entered” message will be displayed.
4. Two “bases” and two unit cards will be designed
5. Cards will be entered into the database.
6. Starter decks will be populated with new cards and “bases”.
7. When a player creates an account, the starter decks will guarantee that a “base” card is present in each deck.
8. When the game starts, the players will be assigned random positions on the board’s corners, and their bases deployed there.
9. When the game starts, a random starting player will be selected.
10. When the game starts, the player will be sent a message that it is his/her turn.
11. When a player ends his/her turn, the game will notify the other player of his/her turn.
12. Upon turn notification, game controls will be disabled/enabled.
13. Upon turn notification, the current player’s name will be highlighted.
14. Turn phases will be recorded in the database per player.
15. When the turn begins, the player will be placed in the “Draw” phase.
16. In the draw phase, players will be allowed to press the “Draw” button, and draw one card from their decks (note, this can be automated later on, but is fine for now).
17. When the draw phase ends, the player will be put in the “Exploration” phase, in which he/she may play cards as terrain.
18. During the exploration phase, the “End Exploration” button will be active, which, when clicked, will put the player in the “Deploy” phase.
19. During the deploy phase, players will be able to deploy cards as units.
20. During the deploy phase, players will be able to move units on the board.
21. During the deploy phase, players will be able to attack units on the board.
22. During the deploy phase, the “End Turn” button will be active, which, when clicked, will send the turn notification message to the opposing player.
23. If a player’s “base” reaches 0 HP, that player loses the game.
24. Upon game completion, the game is put in a completed state, at which point players may exit the game.

As you can see, most of the game remains to be built, which is what the core focus of this 20-day sprint will be. These are a good number of tasks to accomplish in a fairly short period of time, but it is necessary to restart the momentum on this project, after spending much time on preliminary UI polish.

I’ve hinted a bit at the basic mechanics of the game here, which will be solidified much more in the coming weeks. I will be reassessing the state of the game after this milestone, including the feasibility of opening it up to alpha testers to get some feedback.

Wish me luck!