Moonrise | Dev Blog #7 – Dodging

This one slightly follows suit from our fifth blog, which features an in-depth look into our combat system, available here: https://www.indiedb.com/games/moonrise/news/moonrise-dev-blog-5-combat-an-in-depth-look

Dodging is an interesting topic when it comes to RTS-style games. Traditionally, attacks home into the target, making it impossible to escape, and the spell effects to be guaranteed.

Within the world of Moonrise, all attacks are not homing. No attack is guaranteed. Instead, spells are cast at the location of the target once the spell is released. This gives a unique element to the game in which all spells are dodgeable- Enemy casting a powerful spell at you? Be sure to act quickly and move out of the way before that warrior is slain. Explosive spell being cast at your group of soldiers? Disperse them so they are not hit by the area-of-effect. Ally trying to heal you? Don’t move, or the healing spell may miss, wasting the spell’s mana cost and leaving your low-health warrior still vulnerable to new attacks.

There is a great deal of strategy behind every dodge- whether its avoiding enemy attacks, or ensuring your healing spells take effect, you need to be constantly thinking about every single warrior you have on the battlefield and their necessary needs- sometimes, skipping dodging one warrior so you can successfully heal another that desperately needs it will keep you in that fight longer and able to reach victory.

Let’s start with the basics of spellcasting and dodging, and then dive into the more complex dodging mechanics, dodging area-of-effect spells, etc.

This is the quintessential dodge. An enemy is ready to strike, but quick movement at the last possible moment allows for the damage to be completely evaded.

There is a great deal of freedom of choice in attack commands. While the most basic is right-clicking a foe, sometimes that becomes implausible. Introducing the manual cast, also known as the ground cast. All warrior’s most basic spells can be forcibly cast on a desired spot on the ground. In addition, there are multitudes of spells that allow the same action to occur. Why is this important? Well…

Simply casting spells at foes, especially ones that actively move, is an almost guarantee all your attacks will miss...

Instead- what if we incorporate some additional logic into it? If we can time our attack correctly, we can successfully cast a spell right when the enemy walks over that spot, damaging the enemy, as desired.

Area-of-effects are much more devastating. Not only do you have to dodge the spell, you also have to dodge its explosion after the matter. It becomes increasingly important the precision at which you begin to dodge, because you now need to cover a lot more ground than prior to truly evade.

In addition- area of effects have the added mechanic of hitting more than one warrior. Meaning, you’ll need to be even more on your toes to ensure all your warriors do not get hit, not just one.

Thank you for viewing our post! Support and interest for the project has been rapidly growing ever since we began posting here, and we're incredibly grateful for all the wonderful feedback so far! We hope this project interests you as much as we love developing for it, and please look forward to more updates coming in the very near future!

If you’re brand new, consider checking out our trailer and overall description of the game here: https://www.indiedb.com/games/moonrise