 Last week I officially announced my next miniatures wargame ruleset, Earth vs the Invaders: Asymmetric Atomic Age Scifi Wargaming. You can check out the Beta Quickstart guide at my discord. Earth is a miniature agnostic game so you can use whatever miniatures you want to represent the various factions. They've been kept open-ended enough that there's a lot of room for creativity. And while the Human Forces faction is depicted as being from 1950's America (to fit the game's cinematic inspiration), there's nothing to stop you from throwing invaders at a more modern or WWI era military. Earth is also unique in its central Reinforcements system, which is a key part of each of the game's scenarios and allows both players to respond to a dynamic battlefield by bringing in the right unit at the right time. For this reason, it's helpful to have a "sideboard" of units to give you some more flexibility during the game. However there's no need to go crazy at the start and order five copies of every single unit (although we're all wargamers so who am I kidding). The purpose of this article is to help you get your armies started for the release of Earth later this year (don't quote me). The game was designed with 15mm figures in mind since many of the Invader models could conceivably be massive at 28mm. Some scenarios also involve a terrain component that could get expensive at 28mm. However, mechanically there shouldn't be anything stopping you from playing at 28mm, as long as you can clearly tell which direction a unit is facing for the purpose of movement and making attacks. In this article I'll stick with 15mm options; if you do testing in another scale please let the community know on Discord! Each faction's units are broken down by their level. In Earth, for most scenarios, Level 1 units can be deployed at the start of the game whereas Level 2 and 3 units usually can only be brought in on turns 2 and 3 respectively. The points cost of units increases along with its Level as well, so you will generally not need a ton of Level 3 units in your back pocket. In most 1 on 1 games of Earth, you will deploy 72 points worth of units throughout the game. So after listing units and discussing manufacturers, I will give a sample "list" of a bit over 72 points to get you started. No miniatures manufacturers are sponsoring this content or even know I'm writing about them. These companies are just what I have collected myself and can recommend. Human Forces Human Forces are essential to every game of Earth vs the Invaders as they are the brave men and women who go toe to toe with the worst baddies the universe can throw at Anytown, USA. Thankfully there are a ton of options out there for this faction since the equipment used by 1950's National Guard (or at least in 50's scifi movies!) is WWII era technology. Units
*Note about Level 1 Earth Forces: In some scenarios the Human player is allowed to start the game with Level 2 units, so they're not strictly necessary to start playing. So if you've already got a 15mm WWII army you can get going right away. Hillbillies and Police are a lot of fun to see on the table though and are also dirt cheap to bring in! Battlefront Miniatures and their Flames of War line is just about a one-stop shop for this faction. One "Rifle Company" box will provide enough Commanders, Rifle Teams, Machine Gun Teams, and Bazooka Teams for large 2-on-2 games of Earth.  Flames of War tank boxes probably have too many tanks since they are pretty expensive to bring in. Their jeep and truck boxes can be a good buy though. For one off vehicles, I suggest checking Etsy. There are some sellers there who do resin vehicles you can buy individually. Flamethrower teams are another item I had to get 3D printed. For the non-army units like Hillbillies, Police, and Hazmat troopers, take a look at Khurasan or Rebel Minis. Sample Starting Force: 4 units of Police 2 Troop Trucks 1 Commander 4 Rifle Teams 1 Jeep 1 Machine Gun 1 Flamethrower 1 Bazooka 1 Tank Total Points: 98 Giant Insects From the radioactive desert they emerge - gargantuan insects of nightmarish proportions! Giant Insects are a great opportunity to raid the toy section of the dollar store. They have the least amount of unit types in the game and are generally the most elite, fielding only a few monsters at a time. Units
As stated before, toys are going to be your best bet for this. The best ants I have found are from Archie McPhee and I use the red ants from this box as Spitters.  For Flyers and Soldiers, I have "liberated" a plastic wasp and some giant rhinoceros beetles from my daughter's toy box. Check your $ or £ stores. Sample Starting Force: 5 Workers 2 Flyers 2 Spitters 1 Soldier Total Points:86 Flying Saucers Strange meteor-like objects streak across the night skies, only to descend as colossal metallic discs of eerily geometric design! The Saucers and the various weird travelers within are a great excuse to collect some very cool minis. Scout Saucers are a staple, and any infantry reinforcements must be deployed out of the Scouts. Units
You have a lot of options for this faction, and my first stops would be Khurasan and Alternative Armies who both have expansive 15mm scifi ranges.  Khurasan's Itu'a Swarms, I'd multibase the little guys  Adorable Alternative Armies greys from my own collection Sample Starting Force 3 Scout Saucers 1 Saucer Commander 4 Saucer Infantry 1 Mechanoids 1 War Saucer Total Points: 87 The Culture Displaying a insatiable, virus-like drive to consume all organic matter, a mysterious bio-mass rapidly assimilates any unlucky vegetation or creature it engulfs. The Culture is based on a number of tropes like The Blob, Body Snatchers, and a couple more. I've done the least playtesting with them so far, so they are the most likely to have changes before the launch of the game! They'd make a great project for the sculptors and kitbashers out there since they're so, well, weird. Units
 Giant Amoeba from The Angry Red Planet As far as miniatures go, this one's a scratch builder's dream. Go crazy with Green Stuff. The 15mm manufacturers listed in Flying Saucers should also have some weird stuff that could work here too--in particular I'll probably use Rebel Mini's zombies as the Replacements. Sample Starting Force: 5 Large Blobs 2 Mind Melters 2 Replacements 1 Giant Amoeba Total Points: 84 As always, check out the Beta rules and let me know if you have questions in the Small Batch Discord.
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There's not a lot of info out there for indie wargame designers, and so this article intends to shed light on my experience releasing my first game, Bronze Shield, Silver Coin. I'm going to go over the steps I took during the design and playtesting steps, preparing for launch, and post launch results.  Designing and Testing According to Google Docs, the first drafts of BSSC began in November 2023 and I released the game in November 2024, so almost exactly a year of writing and development. The game's working title was Misthios and one of the first steps I did was to write down the "core principles" of the game. This is a step that wargame designer and youtuber Vince Venturella suggests to help you understand what you want players to get out of the game. The original principles I had in mind were for a much more narrative type of game with lots of random tables (a la 5 Parsecs and 5 Leagues by Ivan Sorensen). If you've played or read BSSC however, you'll know that this original conception is quite different from the finished product. I'm fine with that and still consider it a success--I'm a big proponent of "finding the fun". After playtesting several iterations, I made a conscious decision to focus on what I was finding most interesting in the gameplay (tight, brutal combat and the intricacies of the Intrigue system) and focus less on the original conception of a RPG-lite game.  Original principles doc My next step was to outline out the entire rules doc, or at least what I could imagine needing at the time. Not filling in anything, simply listing out the section headers something like this, based on what I knew I would eventually need to make a working game:
As soon as I had just enough rules that the game wouldn't "fall over" as soon as I set it up, I got it to the table to test myself.  Guess what--it did fall over as soon as I set it up, but that's OK! My first few playtests were just me by myself playing both sides. After it was no longer embarrassingly broken, I coerced a friend to play with me (thanks Reid!). I asked him what he liked most and least about the experience. After the mechanics were starting to feel good, I tested with some other friends. I sent the working doc to a couple friends who had not played before and asked them to walk me through the game, in order to understand if my writing was understandable and the mechanics made sense to someone reading them for the first time. This is as close to true "blind" playtesting as I was able to get to. Optimally you would send your ruleset off to a pair of players and then be a fly on the wall while they try to figure it out. Because of busy schedules and finite friends this is hard to accomplish in "real life". In addition to testing with friends I brought the game to a local wargaming convention and got a couple of strangers to test out the game with me. Wargamer have a lot of opinions so I highly recommend this even if you don't implement every change!  A simple Tabletop Simulator mod I used for testing with remote friends Layout and Prep for Launch In June I bought the Affinity suite to start setting up the book's layout in Publisher. Up until that point the rules had lived as a Google Doc, which is far easier to edit. I highly recommend putting off layout as long as possible as you iterate on your rules. Affinity took a bit of getting used to. I am a digital designer "by day" so some of the concepts were familiar but I've never done print work or book layout. The software has a learning curve but if you've ever used complex creation software (video, audio, graphics), it's very approachable. If you're planning on publishing through Drivethru/Wargamevault, they also have templates that will get you going pretty quickly. I also want to shout out Icarus Games, a Youtube channel with a seriously helpful guide for getting started with game layout work. Find the video here. I went with WargameVault because they cater to wargamers specifically and also offer Print on Demand, as it was important to me that players could buy a printed copy. I play from printed books pretty much exclusively (pdf expansions are OK sometimes I guess) and so this was a necessity for me. I also do NOT want to deal with shipping or storage or anything like that myself--I went into this project as an extension of my wargaming hobby, and am trying to keep it fun. In the months leading up to launch, I started a spreadsheet of media and content creators who I thought might be interested in the game (everything from the print magazine Wargames Illustrated to Youtubers with a couple hundred followers). I also paid close attention to how other releasing projects were being advertised online and read articles about how video game producers prepare their product for launch (since there's really not much info on tabletop games). I created a sharable press kit in Google Drive with the following:
As launch got closer I tightened the list of publications and content creators to a shorter list that I:
I ended up reaching out to ten news websites, only one of which shared an article (wargameterrain.blogspot.com). I contacted two wargaming magazines (Wargames Illustrated and Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy), who definitely appreciated the press kit and both graciously published reviews for BSSC. In the future I will reach out to these publishers sooner since they have the longest turnaround times. I contacted them 1.5-2 months before launch and it really should have been more like 3-4 months. I sent an email to 17 youtube content creators, several of which replied, with two publishing videos as of this date. Special thanks to World of Wargaming and Modelling for Advantage. I'm not really expecting more content at this time, it's a huge time commitment to create videos and most are doing it for the love of the hobby. Community Building Even early on in the design process, I wanted to start building up a community of gamers who would be interested in BSSC. I decided to host my community on Discord because it's the social media I'm most comfortable with and because I was inspired by being a part of Ivan Sorenson's amazing Discord community (amazing except for the brussels sprouts haters). On my discord server I also had a link to a "quickstart" version of the rules that I made sure to explain as a beta version. Downloading the quickstart was the incentive for folks to join the server (which is a much more committed act than, say, "liking" a Facebook post). I posted pics of my own painted minis in wargaming communities on Reddit and Facebook and mentioned that I was painting these for a game I was writing. I focused on Facebook pages dedicated to Ancients and Skirmish wargames. I put a blurb and a link to my Discord. These were communities where I was already active and sharing my paintjobs for other games and projects so this came very naturally. I didn't do Instagram, Twitter, or anywhere else because I don't use those services. I did open a thread at Lead Adventure Forum about the game. Slowly my own Discord community grew and by the time of launch I had about 80 people who had joined because of their interest in the game.  Since I have no life I also created a Youtube channel of my own last year, and posted battle reports of games that I enjoy. This grew to around 250 subscribers by the time I posted a flipthrough video and a how to play video for BSSC. Publication and Results On November 14, 2024 I released BSSC and posted in the same communities that I had shared my painting pics in. I published the rulebook flipthrough on Youtube the same day and made sure it was in the Wargamevault description for folks to get a better look. With 20 sales on the first day, the game rocketed to the number four spot on the Bestselling Titles list (which should tell you that Wargame Vault is kind of a sleepy shop most days).  So here's the business part--like I mentioned before, I consider this part of my wargaming hobby and my goal was to make some beer money! I decided to stick to around a $20 price point, in the range of some wargames books I consider similar in page length and "value" (whatever that means): Osprey's blue books and Snarling Badger games. I also wanted to make about $10 per purchase, which aligns with my "beer money" goal. So I priced the Softcover/PDF combo at $20 and after paying for the book to be printed and giving Wargamevault their cut I make $11.03 per book sold. I priced the PDF by itself at $15 and make $10.50 for each sale.  Sales in the first 30 days In the first 30 days I sold 76 copies, with the vast majority being in the first three days after launch. 57% were printed copies versus 43% PDF only.
In the first 30 days I netted $821.33. My total costs for creating the book were:
I hope this has been helpful to any aspiring game designers and has given you a better idea of what to expect and what strategies might help you self publish your own games! Now go join my discord  Since releasing my game Bronze Shield, Silver Coin, I've received several questions on where to get fitting miniatures to represent your mercenary warband, including your Captain and Second-in-Command. Bronze Shield, Silver Coin is an Ancient Greek mercenary skirmish wargame playable with between 8-12 figures a side. It is miniatures agnostic and the rules are flexible enough to accommodate almost any Ancients figures you'd like, including those from other parts of the Mediterranean and beyond. All the basic weapon types are represented, including hand weapons (swords and axes), two handed clubs and falx, and the ubiquitous spear. A serious consideration when equipping your troops is whether to equip them with light or heavy shields. In ancient combat, a soldier's role was defined by the type of shield they carried so I placed great emphasis on shields in the rules. Light shields (such as animal skin or wicker shields) were used by low status skirmishers. These troops are cheaper to hire to your warband but the shield only gives them an edge when defending against missile weapons. On the other hand, the famous bronze-plated hoplon (the round shield that gave hoplites their name) provides great protection both from missile as well as melee attacks, at an extra cost. Bringing a Captain or a Second to a fight with no shield is an option (you will see an example from my Phoenician warband in the pic above) but you'll need to carefully allocate the special abilities of the character to make it work. In this case I've given the Second the bodyguard ability to protect the shield-less captain. Good for role-playing a leader who is less of a front line fighter but bringing a shield is always the more optimal choice.  From left to right: New Victrix, old Victrix, Wargames Atlantic, Footsore, Bronze Age With shields out of the way, let's talk manufacturers. There are a ton of figure companies that have lines for ancient Greece (and surrounding regions). I'm just going to talk about companies that I have used for my own collection. Victrix For your money, Victrix multipart plastic kits are absolutely the best way to fill out your mercenary warband. These kits are great value and there are a variety of kits to build every kind of soldier you can hire in Bronze Shield, Silver Coin. Victrix has been producing kits for many years so they have some different options. Now for the purpose of a warband-sized game like Bronze Shield, Silver Coin, Victrix kits are huge! The kits I'm talking about here contain between 48 and 56 figures which is enough to build at least four warbands! There is an alternative to buying the full kits though, and I'll talk about that after I go through some options.  Victrix's latest Greek kit, their updated hoplites, seems tailor made for skirmish games. They are dynamic and full of character. If I had to recommend just one kit to get into Bronze Shield, Silver Coin, this would be a good one. You could put together four full teams, although your weapon choices would be limited to swords and spears.  Victrix has a variety of older hoplite boxes (Theban, mercenary, Spartan, Athenian) and these kits are a little less dynamic in the poses but still great. I mix them (and their bits) with the newer kit with no issue. Each of these kits have basically the same weapon and armor options, but there are different helmets and some special command bits (like the Spartans get some cloaks). So there's no reason to go crazy buying a bunch of different sprues from this series just for Bronze Shield.  The unarmoured hoplites sprue (or full kit) on the other hand is a great option for getting some variety in your warbands. I decided not to distinguish between levels of armor in the Bronze Shield rules but it's fun to mix and match armored and unarmored hoplites for a more "rag-tag" appearance. If you buy the full kit, you also get archers which makes this a pretty good "one box" Bronze Shield, Silver Coin option.  I could go on about Victrix options forever but I'll limit myself to just one more kit, the peltasts, javelin men, and slingers. This opens up your warband options to peltasts, whose javelins allow them to move and then immediately shoot. Peltasts can also be flexibly equipped with either light or heavy shields which further increases their flexibility. Speaking of light shields, this kit is a great source that you can use on either peltasts or to create lightly-armored spearmen or swordsmen. Buying sprues If you're just starting out with ancient Greek miniatures and not sure you'll be doing army-size games in the future, buying individual sprues can be a great way to save money (and space in your "pile of opportunity"). It also lets you better understand what's in each kit before you order a big bag of 56 models! I've bought individual sprues from the US-based SprueDude in the past and been impressed with the customer service. His inventory sells out sometimes but he stocks all the kits I've mentioned so check back often. https://spruedude.com/collections/victrix Wargames Atlantic Persians  WGA's Persians box is a great buy for building a Persian warband. You get a huge variety of weapons (spears, swords, bows, and warpicks). There are light and heavy armors and light and heavy shields to mix and match. Footsore  Footsore do an amazing range of Greek characters to go with their Mortal Gods game. They make excellent Captains and Seconds with their commanding poses and interesting weapon loadouts. These are metal miniatures so might take some getting used to if you're used to plastic. The only reservation I have about these minis is that they have separate hands. I'm not a fan of multi-part metal models and I've already had hands pop off during games. Bronze Age Miniatures  Bronze Age "Amazon" flanked by two Victrix skirmishers Bronze Age Miniatures is a one-man operation from the US who produces characterful metal miniatures perfect for Captains and Seconds in Bronze Shield, Silver Coin. He even has a selection of women characters in his "Amazons" line! They are 32mm so some of them are tall, but hey--they are heroes!
There are more options than these when it comes to 28mm ancient Mediterranean warriors. One of my goals with Bronze Shield, Silver Coin was for each player to find their own unique place in ancient history, so be creative, go forth, and build your warband! Buy Bronze Shield, Silver Coin on Wargame Vault  I'm happy to announce my first published wargame, Bronze Shield, Silver Coin, is now available for purchase on Wargame Vault in PDF or Paperback. Bronze Shield, Silver Coin was started in 2023 when I was searching for an Ancients skirmish game to scratch a certain itch and couldn't find it. There aren't many games set in Ancient times that only utilize a couple sprues of models (most in fact are large army games) and I was also looking for a game that would let me use my imagination, let me carve out space for a couple characters and a warband that could adventure in the Ancient Mediterranean. My main influences were the video game Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (still the most fleshed-out Ancient Greek video game experience ever made) and tabletop games like Frostgrave and Pulp Alley, where the focus is on customizable characters.  I read a number of history books to gather information, the most impressive being the excellent Ghost on the Throne by James Romm, which covers the details of Alexander the Great's death and the start of the Successor period. This is one of my favorite periods in history for the rich characters, sudden betrayals, and shaky alliances. Historical persons like the Illyrian warrior woman Cynane and the ruthless bounty hunter Archias only confirmed that I wanted to make a game that focused not on the huge battles, but on the small campaigns and dirty deeds of the mercenary forces during the period.  The more I learned about the period, it was the frequent betrayals (such as when an entire army changed sides due to loyalty to Alexander's mother Olympias) that inspired the Intrigue system, which uses a deck of cards to represent bribery, shaken troops, and the fickle nature of the gods. This quickly became the "killer feature" of the game, setting it apart from other warband level skirmish games. The combination of the Intrigue system and the deep focus on maneuvering let me know that I was headed in the right direction. Games of Bronze Shield, Silver Coin are short, 6 turns, and each turn becomes a rich puzzle that both players are trying to solve. Should I bid for initiative? Which of the opponent's characters can I attempt to corrupt with the Intrigue cards? Where do I consolidate my power? When do I go for the objective?  I hope you will check out Bronze Shield, Silver Coin and enjoy it. The historical "fog" that separates us from the Ancient world gives us a great excuse to create characters and stories to inhabit it. I certainly already have ideas for places to take Bronze Shield next. A solo campaign based on Xenophon's Anabasis was pulled from the rulebook to continue development. I also have ideas for geographical expansions (such as 4th century BC Italy) or new eras (Trojan War anybody?).
 Lt. Col. Dr. Mike Snook (who is a badass in his own right) was commissioned by Perry Miniatures to write an introduction to the 1883-85 Mahdist War in the Egyptian-owned Sudan. His book is primarily focused on the battles but also gives a fairly good overview of the context of the war. If you're totally new to the period (like I was several months ago) I'd recommend a couple of the videos by The History Chap for a 10,000 foot introduction.  Snook's book is aimed at wargamers and for this purpose it is indispensable. It contains maps, orders of battle, and the author's photographs of the battlefields. It also collects numerous sketches from eyewitness reporters such as Melton Prior. In fact this is the best collection of war correspondent sketches from this conflict that I've found. Michael Perry also contributes around 40 detailed color illustrations of various soldiers in uniform.  The author's descriptions of the battles are vivid and there are tales of heroics and blunders sure to inspire hobbyists. Numerous first hand accounts from participants are quoted and used to provide a comprehensive view of the events. The author gives justice not only to the British and their allies but also the Mahdist forces, who fought fiercely for a variety of reasons.   For those interested in the details of the Gordon Relief Expedition, I also highly recommend Beyond the Reach of Empire by the same author, which is a voluminous tome that dives deep into the Nile expedition. It not only provides an in depth look at the strategy and logistics of the expedition, but zooms in to events of courage, incompetence, and ferocity both along the way to Khartoum and at the battles of Abu Klea and Abu Kru. The book also provides a deeper understanding of Wolseley's failure to rescue General Gordon.
 As I work on my Ancient Greek mercenary skirmish game, Bronze Shield Silver Coin, I knew that cypress trees would be necessary to make an immersive Greek table to play on! I didn't find any tutorials that I loved so I set about experimenting. To my surprise I found a way to make great looking trees with no flock needed, and pennies worth of supplies.
I started by hot gluing some 1/4" dowels onto 3mm "sintra" board bases (it's a pvc product commonly used in sign making, can be cut with a craft knife and doesn't warp!). I then used some miliput to further reinforce the dowel.
Working in strips, I took aluminum foil and, after crumpling it, hot glued it piece by piece onto the "trunk", shaping it as I went. I did my normal basing techniques of PVA glue, small rocks, and sand.  Next I primed the trees with rattle-can, brown for the bases and a dark green for the leaves. You may need multiple coats from different angles to hit all the exposed shiny foil.  I slapped on some brown and khaki colors on the bases, working up to a light drybrush of cream.  Then did a drybrush of a yellow-green on the leaves. And that's it! Very quick and easy cypress trees that can be used in any Mediterranean environment.  Bronze Shield Silver Coin: Ancient Greek Mercenary Skirmish Wargaming is a ruleset I'm writing. Follow along at our discord!      A big part of my day job is making sure that I run designs past people before releasing anything. I almost inevitably learn a ton from just a few sessions (the UX industry standard is 5 testers). An important part of my design strategy is to get builds into people's hands early and often. So far I've tapped some friends for feedback and this example shows how that feedback translates into design iterations.  The original search AI I sent a couple friends a link to a test build and jumped on separate Discord calls to get their reactions. I had them share their screens and encouraged them to speak out loud about their experience and specifically whether the guards were behaving in accordance with their expectations. Observing my friends play and getting their feedback, a persistent theme was the guard's searching behavior was not working the way the players expected. Rather than a systematic search, guards just kind of ran about randomly, as in the clip above. In fact, they were programmed to do just that: run around systematically. I was unsure how exactly to create a search behavior that would be scalable and work in different environments and levels so I looked into some other stealth games for inspiration. In this (rather funny) example of enemy search AI in Metal Gear Solid 2, the guards have particular places they search for the player in a way that seems believable (except for the hilarious bug at the end). They check behind objects and in containers where the player can hide. This system most likely relies on designers manually setting up each room to tell the AI where the door is, what objects to search behind, and what lockers to open. I decided to set up a test using similar, manually placed points of interest.  In the above example, the green rectangle is the Search Area and the green circles are the search waypoints. When a guard is alerted near the Search Area, he goes to the closest waypoint then begins a search at each of the waypoints until his awareness level drops to 0, at which point he returns to his patrol. Here's a clip of the guard following this behavior after spotting a dead body.   Many gamers, myself included, use a variety of controls to play PC games. The two control devices I decided to support right from the beginning are the keyboard and mouse as well as the Xbox controller, which Steam data reports as the most popular gaming controller by a large margin. Thankfully Unity makes it easy to support multiple control setups simultaneously, but I wanted the user interface of Sneak 'Em Up (working title) to also adapt in real time to the user. To do so I created a script which detected input from either the keyboard or an Xbox controller. This script then sets a global variable which other objects in the game reference. This global variable acts as a signal telling the rest of the game whether the last input made by the player was made on a keyboard or an Xbox controller. Button prompts show up several places in Sneak 'Em Up's levels. Most obviously, they appear on the HUD UI, reminding the player which button is responsible for using equipped weapons and items.  Prompts also appear above the character's head when they are close to an interactable object such as a body or a switch. And finally, button prompts can exist in the game level itself as a "sign" during the tutorial. In the future, button prompts may also be seen in dialogs, when characters help explain how to play in the early tutorial levels. Putting this all together, the control manager script described above sends information on the player's last input to all these systems, giving the player real time contextual prompts that make playing intuitive.   Waiting in the grass for a guard to pass by. Awareness is a key feature of enemy AI in Sneak 'Em Up (working title). Once a player is detected (see the last post), the guard's awareness "meter" fills (there's no visual meter for each guard's awareness but this is something I plan on testing eventually). Awareness starts at 0 and goes to 100.  The script that handles Awareness. Both the detection system and awareness system are designed to be target-agnostic--in other words, the AI does not solely respond to the player. This is to allow for emergent or systemic gameplay, in which the player manipulates the game world indirectly. The AI for each character is seeking out, not just the player, but anything that is suspicious, alerting, or on a different "team." The player will be able to use this to their advantage by arranging for opposing factions to fight it out, luring wild animals near enemies, or perhaps mind controlling enemy guards to cause mayhem. The rate at which awareness raises is based on several variables. Visibility (formerly called Size) is a variable on every character or notable item in Sneak 'Em Up. Highly visible objects, like the standing player character, raise awareness faster than small objects such as a pack of cigarettes tossed to lure enemies. To mimic human sight, the target's speed is a major factor in awareness as well. Finally, distance to the target raises the awareness rate exponentially. This way, if the player runs up on a guard standing around the corner, the AI will go to 100% awareness almost instantly, but a distant player will cause a slow creeping awareness.  The AI's suspicious state. Each enemy type has a "Suspicion Threshold" and an "Alerted Threshold", which define at what Awareness level a character will go check out a suspicious sight, and what level they will become alarmed and search the area. An alerting sight that the enemy identifies as a character from another team will be met with hostility.  A "playground" level built for testing. Enemies on the right have a different variation of the AI script than enemies on the left. One way to test and tweak my AI was to build a "playground" level where I could test enemy detection and awareness at different distances and with the player character in different states such as prone or hiding in tall grass. Initially enemies had a detection area that was circular in shape (see the enemies on the left in the above screenshot). However, through playtesting my own levels and watching users try the game out, I realized that the enemy was often able to see the player before the enemy was even on the screen, causing frustration for players.  In the illustration above, the grey rectangle represents the aspect ratio for the vast majority of PC game players' monitors: 16:9. With a circular detection radius, guards who are to the left and right of the player work as expected, meaning they can't see you from off screen. However guards above or below your position can see and attack the player from off screen, which feels frustrating. The solution, after much tweaking, was to make the detection shape a capsule shape:  Even though a player's expectation is that guards see in an even circle around them, this caused a lot of frustration and instead, a capsule shaped vision area feels more fair to the player.
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Raymond WeilacherThe official blog of Small Batch Miniatures Games Archives
February 2025
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