Tornadoes, Production VFX, and a Long-Overdue Update

It’s been a while since the last dev log update. Over the past couple of months, development continued steadily, but most of the work landed in areas that didn’t immediately translate into neat, post-sized milestones. This update is a good moment to summarize where things stand.

The focus this time was on production feedback, visual polish, and introducing the first active AoE ability.

Production Feedback & VFX

Unit production now has dedicated visual effects, making it clearer which unit is being created when production starts. This is mostly for better visuals as units were already performing the “production dance” in the production phase.

Alongside that, I refactored the entire production VFX system. This isn’t something noticable directly during gameplay, but it significantly cleans up the code and makes it easier to extend production effects later without everything turning into spaghetti.

(There was also a small fix related to fleeing units behaving incorrectly - not particularly exciting, but necessary housekeeping as it was causing the game to freeze even with only 30-40 units in combat.)

First AoE Ability: Tornado

The biggest gameplay addition in this update is the first area-of-effect ability: the Tornado.

The Tornado is unlocked via a special D16 die, created by fusing a D12 and D20.

It affects combat clusters by applying physical forces, disrupting positioning rather than dealing raw damage. This makes it less about direct destruction and more about control, chaos, and timing. I’m still considering whether I should “lock” the cluster combat for the duration of the Tornado AoE effectively preventing the combat from resolving.

To support this ability, I added:

• a casting range indicator
• a targeting cursor that clearly shows whether the selected location is valid
• visual feedback when the player is aiming outside of the allowed range

The goal here was to make the ability feel powerful but also readable and fair - you should always know why something did or didn’t work. I still think it’s too weak - there’s no additional damage so with overwhelming forces and no reinforcements this ability will not change the battle outcome.

Visual Update: New Dice Models

Dice units now use new models with face numerals instead of purely abstract markings. This improves readability at a glance and reinforces the “physical dice” identity of the units, especially during dense cluster combat. Very time consuming (especially with D20 which needed 20 numerals, each manually adjusted) and not that readable with 100 units on the screen but I just felt that with the main focus on dice I can’t cut any corners here.

Overall, this update was about connecting systems that already existed: production, upgrades, combat effects, and visual feedback. With the Tornado in place, the upgrade system finally includes something active and expressive, not just passive stat changes.

Next, I’ll be continuing work on additional upgrades and abilities; with the core systems functional I can focus on some physics-based effects that are more beneficial during the cluster combat exchanges.

More updates soon - hopefully with less of a gap next time.