Codyfight kicks off another Friday with our development series, the only place where you can catch the latest development news and dive into the mechanics of the game.
Previously on the Codyfight development series…
Last week the team immersed themselves in the integration process from back-end to front-end. As we explained in the last update, the integration process is a very valuable piece of game development as it allows smooth and complete gameplay for users. The integration is not only one of the biggest highlights of the development, but it is also an important base to introduce new features.
Meanwhile, the front-end also started finishing up certain processes from the Dashboard and collaborated with the UI/UX design to bring its visuals alive. Our development team works hard in building, polishing, and finishing up all the processes of the game. Alpha 0 is around the corner, and the team is giving its best effort in elevating the product, so players can finally dig into a great experience.
The heart of the metagame
The team is currently focusing its efforts on finalizing the integration process of the base infrastructure. Such a process has been speeding up, and only the front-end remains to be completed. To accomplish the latter, the team has shifted its focus to the Widget and UI.
As discussed in previous articles, this process will have a great impact on the metagame. Special tiles and skills will ultimately provide new ways to strategize and will increase complexity in Codyfight. Special tiles were discussed in great detail in our first development article and this time we would like to focus on skills, as it is one of the most important aspects of the game.
Skills: The basics
We have already discussed skills on Codyfight, but we will do a quick overview to give some context before exploring them in detail.
Each Codyfighter has a set of skills, native and learnable. While native skills are associated with their archetype, meaning that players will already have them by default, learnable skills are acquired through progress in battles. Codyfighters can bring a limited amount of skills to the battlefield, however, they can obtain an indefinite amount and store them in their Player Dashboard. Some of the native skills include swipe, knockback, blink, toss, demolish, build, magnetic pull, and blink.
Skills can either be passive or active. Players can use active skills to target an enemy and pursue a quick response during the fight. Passive skills, on the other hand, have a certain life span, therefore, they can last a temporary period protecting or supporting a player. An example of an active skill can be swap, and an example of a passive skill could be armor.
In addition, skills have different types of usage based on their type and level. Beginners’ skills might only be able to target a tile, but as players increase their level, they will also be able to target multiple tiles with their attack.
Complexity and damage
Special tiles and skills are part of the infrastructure that sustains the gameplay. And, as we covered in past articles, the infrastructure is just a piece of the big block of data where everything is connected, assuring the wellness of the Codyfight system.
This connection is very important as it not only guarantees that things are running smoothly for the player, but also that in each of their turns, actions trigger different events within the game. Previously in our weekly series, we explored how certain actions can have consequences and impact entities in the battle, for example, the cast of a skill can affect a certain tile, which at the same time can trigger a Special Agent that will affect the opponent’s Codyfighter. This complex process receives the name of action stack and both skills and special tiles are the keys to it.
Action stack
The action stack deals with all the actions that happen within a player’s turn. One of those actions can be a simple movement, an ability, a casting of a skill, or the activation of a special tile.
However, what makes action stack so important in Codyfight is that it allows different consequences to develop in the gameplay, making the metagame dynamic and complex. Every skill or movement is a trigger for the action stack. When a player casts a skill, that skill might interact with some of the other entities in the map and again activate the action stack, creating a loop that ends when entities are no longer interacting, and therefore, the player ends its turn and passes it to its opponent.
The game consists of multiple rounds, each round consists of multiple turns, and each turn consists of numerous actions determined by the action stack. At the same time, the action stack is a small part of a system called game flow stack which enables the following mechanics within the gameplay: turn start, turn end, round end, and game end. The action stack happens between the turn start and the turn end.
Damage dealing system
Another important part of Codyfight, inherently connected with skills, is the damage-dealing system, crucial for the mechanics of the game.
Players can be damaged by different entities within the game: their opponent’s skills, special agent’s abilities, special tiles, and even a combination of the latter factors. Such damage results in the loss of different stats until they are completely demolished. Damage firstly takes down their armor, secondly, their HPs, and lastly, the combined amount of damage with HP and armor decreases a player’s durability. Once a player loses their hit points in the battle, they will be considered dead, even though their HP will be restored in the next round. However, if a player completely loses their durability, the game is over and their Codyfighter will be destroyed and in need of a manual or automatic repair in the Dashboard.
Each skill will determine the damage that it deals to opponents based on its level. As players unleash their potential in the battle and increase the complexity of their strategies, their level will also improve. For example, Knockback pushes one or two tiles and deals one damage, but as the skill becomes more powerful, all the stats will also increase (range, damage, etc).
The damage dealing system opens great opportunities for entities to interact, as well as adds more intricacy to the metagame.
Skill management dashboard
As we have discussed in previous articles, the Dashboard is where players can store and manage all of their game assets, playing an important role in their performance in the battle.
Players cannot select their native skills but learnable skills are completely up to them based on their strategy. Skills are chosen in the Dashboard, where players can select 4 and bring them to the fight. During the choosing phase, players can see all the necessary information about their skills, including stats, level, etc.
Skill selection is crucial to develop a strategy, and the Dashboard helps players make their decision through the display of clear information and a user-friendly design. However, the assembly of a good strategy will only be achieved through the gameplay experience. The more battles that a player gets involved in, the more successful they will become in noticing certain tendencies and making predictions accordingly.
The current state of the Dashboard is completed, as all the necessary integration has been done. This essentially means that players can already enjoy their pre-battle experience in Codyfight.
The process behind skills
The development team is in charge of coming up with new and exciting skills to boost the metagame and make Codyfight more fun and entertaining for users.
The process usually starts with a couple of ideas in a brainstorming session where each team member provides a concept for a new skill. Once a concept is approved, the team decides what type of skill it will be, its impact on the gameplay, its value for users, and its stats.
When the idea behind the skill is clear and definite, the back-end devs start its implementation in the back-end and proceed to refine and test its functionality. Once everything is completed, the casting of the new skill is implemented in the front-end. As explained in the last update, the front-end also requires certain art and designs, including game icons, animation, and other visual effects. After receiving the necessary assets from the creative department, the front-end implements the new skill and proceeds to do thorough testing along with the rest of the team.
An endless evolving enigma
The implementation of skills in the game is a long-term process that opens the door to endless concepts that, thanks to the new infrastructure, can be easy to develop and adapt. As players discover and engage with Codyfight, our developers will let their creativity run free and constantly surprise with brand-new and innovative features.
An example of incoming features is the skill of manipulation, in the current state of concept, that would allow players to manipulate Special Agents or Codyfighters to behave in their favor in the battle. In this case, players could cast the skill and try to guess some of the actions that a Special Agent has in its set. The Special Agent randomizes its action and if it matches with the guess, the manipulation would be successful and the entity would proceed to do the action.
Concepts in the making, like the case of the manipulation skill, help to raise even further complexity in the metagame and allow the interaction of multiple entities that intertwine to make Codyfight a constant expansion. As new features are introduced, old features will disappear, and players will also have an important role in deciding which elements they like or dislike in the game, as well as proposing new ideas and mechanics. In our endless evolving enigma, pretty much anything can happen.
Thanks for tuning in with us, stay connected through our socials and never miss anything from the Codyfight universe. Exciting things are around the corner.
See you next week, and may Legendary Llama be with you!
