Star Cadre: Combat Class: Release and Postmortem

Tuesday, 13th August 2024

The game release was similar to that of Barren Planet, with the same level of publicity and social media preparation. The differences this time were two-fold. Firstly, I managed to submit Star Cadre: Combat Class to a jam, the DOS Games July 2024 Jam. The DOS Games Jams generally have very relaxed rules on submission of projects started before the jam dates, so the fact that I started this project in 2020 wasn't a problem.

The other change was the fact that I now have a weekly livestream on Twitch, so I was able to stream the game during the testing process, and on release. I'm currently a very small streamer, so the publicity I gain from streaming is much less than that from social media posts, but hopefully the streams will grow in the future. I plan to stream Star Cadre: Combat Class along with my other games in future; such "Developer Plays..." streams might be helpful for potential players who want to see what the game plays like.

Sadly there are still some bugs in the game. While the line of sight algorithm seems to be solid, there are problems with how and when it is applied, resulting in occasional glitches. These occur during the computer's turn, so they don't affect gameplay, but they need looking into before the tactical combat engine is used in any future games.

There are some oversights that do affect gameplay, though. One is that an unconscious unit is inaccessible for healing or killing once another unit falls unconscious or dead on top of it. That hit me badly in an assassination mission, where my target fell unconscious but not dead, and then further units fell on top of it due to my team's opportunity fire. My target was no longer accessible, and you can't move bodies around in this game, so my chance of success in the mission was doomed. I developed a way of getting around this for looting bodies in a pile, and I should have added something similar for shooting and healing units in a pile too.

After my lessons learned from Barren Planet, I no longer discuss ongoing or future projects in detail. But as I stated at the start of this dev diary series, the idea behind Star Cadre: Combat Class was to create something I can build on for future games. There may be Star Cadre sequels, with added aspects like more weaponry, and some kind of campaign system. But the tactical combat engine has more potential than that, in particular by changing setting. It could be built into a fantasy dungeon crawler, a wild west shootout, a post-apocalyptic setting, a World War II squad-level game, or any number of other settings.

I haven't chosen the next project for the tactical combat engine yet, and my next project might be something else entirely. But the ideas are there, and hopefully you'll see another game like Star Cadre: Combat Class from me in the future.