Siege Scape Devlog #2: Building Blocks, Card Power, and a Touch of Chaos!

(Date: April 11, 2025)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Siege Scapedevelopment log!

It’s been a productive period since the last update, moving beyond initial setup and diving into the core systems that will make Siege Scape tick. We've laid down some crucial building blocks, expanded the card system, squashed some tricky bugs, and even started adding a dash of unpredictable fun!

Laying the Gameplay Foundation

The heart of any card game is, well, the cards! A major focus has been getting the fundamental mechanics working. We now have a functional Deck, Hand, and Discard Pile system. Cards can be drawn, shuffled, and discarded, with the player's hand visually represented on the HUD.

Crucially, for those who enjoy strategy and potentially sharing cool scenarios, we've implemented a seeding system. Using Unreal Engine's RandomStream tools, every run can now be tied to a specific seed (either randomly generated or input by you!). This means that card draws and other random elements (more on that later!) can be perfectly reproduced – great for sharing challenges or analyzing specific runs.

Expanding the Arsenal: Power Cards Emerge

Not all cards will be buildings! We've introduced a distinct new card type: Power cards. Separating these from Building cards allows us to give them unique behaviors. The framework is now in place to play Power cards directly onto placed buildings. While the initial implementation was just the connection, we've already added a basic Damage Buff Power card that increases a target tower's damage. Expect many more interactions like this! We also added a foundational Arrow Tower building card with defined stats.

Buildings Get Smarter (with Data Assets)

To manage all the different towers and their stats effectively, we've shifted to using Data Assets. Each building type now has a Data Asset defining its core properties: name, base damage, range, attack speed, cost (for a future Gold resource system!), visual look (card texture and building mesh), etc. This makes creating new towers and managing their stats much cleaner.

We've also added placeholder systems for Levels, EXP, and an EXP Modifier to buildings. The idea is that towers will be able to gain experience and level up somehow, potentially allowing players to customize their stats further, but the exact mechanics are still brewing!

Introducing... Chaos Mode!

Sometimes, you just want things to be a little unpredictable. For players who enjoy high-risk, high-reward scenarios and a touch of gambling, we've started implementing Chaos Mode! When enabled, this mode will take a building's base stats (defined in its Data Asset) and randomly modify them based on the current run's seed. That baseline 5-damage tower might hit for 4.2 or 6.3 depending on the seed – you'll have to adapt to potentially underpowered or overpowered defenses on the fly!

Adventures in Bug Squashing

Development rarely goes perfectly smoothly! We hit a few interesting bugs:

• A nasty issue where the deck size would zero out if non-Building cards were shuffled back from the discard pile. Thankfully, this type recognition bug is squashed!
• A comical amount of time spent debugging what seemed like a complex data issue, only to realize I was accidentally overwriting data myself by exposing a variable for testing. A good reminder that sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one!
• Fixing a bug where clearing the selection of a building placement preview accidentally destroyed the associated actor. This broke the deterministic logic needed for seeding. The current fix involves caching the actor based on its hand position, but the long-term plan is much more robust: giving each card a unique, seed-generated ID and using that for lookup. This will ensure towers stay linked to their specific card instance, even after deck shuffles.

Lore Foundations Solidified

Alongside the technical progress, we also had a very productive session fleshing out the core lore and history of the Siege Scape world, including the origins of card magic, the role of Soul Essence, a major historical catastrophe, and how the game of Siege Scape itself emerged. I'll be posting the full narrative alongside this devlog for those interested in the backstory!

What's Next?

The focus remains on building out the core gameplay loop. Key next steps include:

• Implementing more Power card effects.
• Refining the seeding system for placed towers using Card IDs.
• Starting work on the basic resource (Gold) system.
• Continuing to iterate on the building stats and potentially the EXP system.

It's exciting to see these systems starting to come together! Thanks for following along. As always, feel free to drop by the Discord or follow on Twitter to stay updated!

• Follow on Twitter:
• @SiegeScape
• Follow the Devlog on Itch.io: https://spawnslilhope.itch.io/
• Join the Discord Server: https://discord.gg/s8v279aB 
  
  You can read the lore on my website at: Spawns Gaming