I spent a few days prototyping a turn-based tactical RPG, a genre I’ve grown to love. X-COM: Terror from the Deep hooked me when I was a kid, and only later did I truly come to appreciate it. It’s great to see the genre making a comeback with titles like The Banner Saga and X-COM: Enemy Unknown.
As a proper tactical game, players choose their actions turn-by-turn: moving, attacking, or guarding. During the computer’s turn, the AI identifies the nearest player character and moves in to attack. The battle ends when one side is defeated.
The prototype has a functioning turn-based combat system on an auto-generated grid.
Grid-based is the tried-and-true approach, so that’s where I started. I quickly blocked out a level in Blender using a tile set. Through code, the game computes a node grid for visualization and pathfinding: it calculates the level bounds, divides the area into nodes, and initializes all nodes high above the level. For each node, it raycasts downward: the first surface it hits determines where the node is placed.
A visualization of raycasting downwards per grid cell and placing nodes.
These nodes serve as the foundation for the rest of the game logic. They enable A* pathfinding between points and allow the game to check whether a character can attack by inspecting surrounding nodes.
If I find some time next week, I’d love to create some graphics and add more features. For now, it’s just a prototype.