A Clash of Colors

Welcome to A Clash of Colors! This is my little submission for the PIGSquad Finish Your Game Jam

The rules are the game are as follows: each turn, you choose an action for each unit on your team. Right now, you can either choose to attack an enemy unit, or heal one of your own units. Healing a unit is only possible if you have a health potion, which you lose upon using it. You may either heal yourself (that is, the unit doing the action), or another teammate.

You can also choose to attack an enemy unit. This is where color comes into play. You choose an opposing unit, and then a "position" to attack them in. This is a red, green, or blue attack. When you attack, you roll a dice and the opponent rolls a dice. This is a 255-sided dice you role. If your roll is greater than the opponent's, you do damage, with a chance of a critical shot. On the other hand, if the opponent has a higher roll, your attack fails and nothing happens (except now you can't use that unit until next turn). There is, however, a small chance that they can land a counter attack and do damage to you!

So what is the significance of color? As I mentioned, you choose either a red, green, or blue attack. These come from the fact that colors in computers are described by a mixture of three primaries: red green, and blue . This is called the RGB Colorspace, and it is used to represent colors in computers (Note, I am significantly glossing over the richness of color spaces and color representation in computers). Consider the color Cornflower Blue (The unofficial color of game development):

It has a red value of 100, a green value of 149, and a blue value of 237.  Now what is the relevance of this to units in game? Consider this reddish-orange unit, as seen in game:

This fearsome knight has the following stats:

red: 242

green: 100

blue: 25

Now suppose he attacks this loathsome orc:

His stats are:

red: 165

green: 247

blue: 52

Now, suppose the knight attacks the orc in the red position. This means that we will modify the knight's roll by adding the red channel (in this case 242) to it. So his roll will be a random value from 0 to 255 plus 242. The orc's roll will be similar, except we modify his roll by the green channel (in this case, 247). So the orc's roll will be a random value from 0 to 255 plus 247. Why do we choose the green channel? The rule for this is:

red attacks green, green attacks blue, and blue attacks red.

This is the long and the short of A Clash of Colors' rules. I will now discuss what I did for the game jam.

Finish Your Game Jam 2021 After Action Report

I confess that my final product is not much. Due to school and work, I had little time to complete much for this game. Nonetheless, I am very happy with what I did, although it is not ready for a first release yet. When the jam started, my game had the following:

• No animations or effects beyond very simple ones. When a unit attacked or healed another unit, there was no visual queues communicating this to the user.
• No AI. The AI opponent would simply yield its turn.

However, with the conclusion of this jam, I have added:

• Units will now move to the unit they are attacking or healing. That is, it plays a small simple animation to communicate to the user what is happening.
• There is now a deadly AI opponent. The AI uses minimax search algorithm to choose the next best move to make. As of writing this, I have yet to beat the AI in a game!

There's still a ton to do. But much of the core game loop is done. For the future, I want to add some of the following things:

• Better graphics
• Ability to quit and cancel attacks
• Improve the algorithm for the AI.
• More visual feedback about units and what they are doing
• Some kind of open world exploration system like the original Final Fantasy
• Perks and/or a card system
• Some kind of inventory system

Nonetheless, I am very happy with what I have. Here is a video demo if it in action: