BattleRoller: Development

It still looks like the dog’s dinner since I haven’t touched design or any styling, but the HTML is more or less in place except for some JS hooks that will get added as needed, and I’ve got more or less all the controls working to swap out variables, images, texts, etc. Building it using the AngularJS framework and it’s pretty exciting to see everything updating and changing on the fly 🙂
Now to work on the actual images it’s supposed to be swapping around!

Nothing to show off yet, but I’ve started working on a customizer app that will let players mix/match parts and colors for pilots and rollers and will generate the required cards, a custom playmat, and the papercraft miniatures templates for them.

reworked the play mat based on the recent play test. I’ve expanded the SPD area so it’s more obvious where to put your EN; I’ve gotten rid of the extra weapon and shoulder unit spots since no Rollers currently have any use for them; I’ve tightened up the layout in order to add a cheat sheet of basic tips and reminders for planning, movement, combat, and pilots. I’ve also upped the base Roller EN from 10 to 20. This should allow players more freedom to do cool stuff rather than be stingy with their actions and live in constant fear of taking any damage and being rendered inoperable right away.

got to have a great play test with Duane Johnson, Erin Johnson, and Stephen Brock this past weekend and got some really great feedback as well as got to work out some issues I hadn’t thought about. The “jack” mechanic worked out really well and kept the game going for a bit even once your Roller had been destroyed. Erin for example, was the first to lose her Roller but thanks to jacking my ride was able get 2nd place. In fact, Duane was the only one able to stay in his original Roller the whole game and came in first.
Some of the instruction text needs to be clearer/less confusing on the cards, The skill abilities are too difficult to pull off so I’m going to adjust those from 3/5 stars to 2/5 stars. I’m also going to up the base batter level from 10 EN to 15 or even 20 since it seemed like as soon as you took any damage at all you’re only option was to high tail it back to a power station because you didn’t have the power to move and fight at the same time. I’m also going to adjust the order that you lose power from your systems so that SPD is the first to get hit. If you’ve already taken your turn it shouldn’t matter to your roller but if you haven’t taken your turn then you could get pushed from going 2nd to going 4th thanks to the damage.

Lastly, I’m going to develop 2 new character Pilots that will get included with the Equipment Expansion. One will have a bonus for jacking other Rollers, and the other will have the ability to readjust their EN allotments on the fly (except for SPD) rather than just prior to each round. I’m thinking of naming one of them Neo, but I have a rule against white males in my game so who knows how it’ll end up.

I had to create a test blog for work (several actually) as we’re QAing a bunch of stuff. Naturally all mine were named something to do with robots. But my favorite was “Mechromancer”. I love that name so much I’d totally change my online handle if I didn’t have 16+ years of online history invested in “WuLongTi”. That said, I’m seriously considering changing the name of this game from “BattleRoller” to “Mechromancer”. Or maybe I aught to save the name for something else…