Hey RTS fans, Cicadian here to give you an update on current development plans for Eudora and talk about the huge patch that just went live.

"Deerbell spokespersons continued to deny rumors of continued weapons tests involving off-world missiles capable of leveling entire armies in seconds."

First of all, I want to thank some people missing from the credits. Thank you to everyone everyone who participated in the DOS Games Jam, and especially Michael Klamerus. I also want to thank Ellian for starting Devtober, since the original concept work for Eudora was done during Devtober of 2019. Another person missing from the credits was Hyohnoo, Eudora was designed originally using just their mail24 color palette. Lastly, I want to thank Amit Patel for their outstanding tutorials and documents that helped me understand A* and graph theory.

Separately, I should also thank the people at OpenRA for dedicating themselves to enhancing and modernizing the classic RTS games Command & Conquer and Red Alert for newer players. And as a special side note for any fans of these two games that aren't already aware, EA released a remastered compilation of these games! They have listened to fan feedback and a lot of the original staff have been influential in the development, we should be in for a treat. Plugging an EA product is kind of wild but so is the rest of 2020...

This is the first, and possibly final, content patch for Eudora, so the "Shareware Demo" status is being removed! You may still download it for free, however Eudora now has a suggested donation price of $2. There is a lot of stuff I wanted to add, but Eudora ended up feeling too derivative. I would love to make another strategy game, either a sequel to the Eudora concept or something new entirely. I want to draw inspiration from other underappreciated strategy games such as KKND, Men of War, Hard Vacuum, Total War, Battle Isle, etc.

In the meantime I'm in charge of art on our other project, Xenolith, so be sure to check that out! I also plan on posting a follow up system design post on how some of the features in Eudora were implemented in the future.

Hope you enjoy the update!
Cicadian

Update 2.0.0 (06/19/20)

Fixed Pathfinding*

• Harvesters returning with grain and groups of moving units no longer get stuck.
• Harvester logic is slightly improved, and they will return to their home refinery. If they have no home refinery, it is whichever refinery is closest. If you tell a harvester to return to a specific refinery, that will be the harvester's new home.
• Please note: when moving groups, units may stop in place because they couldn't find a suitable position to move to. While this behavior is fixable, I left it in as a reminder of how horrible the pathfinding in C&C was. If I missed anything else, let me know.
• * Units still get stuck on buildings on rare occasions. Selling the building, or putting a unit near it, usually fixes this, but it is nowhere near as common as before.

New Enemy AI

Basic enemy AI has been added to the CPU commander(s). The behavior rules are at the bottom of this post. This should provide a decent challenge while maintaining a bit of a safe startup time for less skilled players. I tested the AI extensively and found it somewhat challenging, if you would like a greater challenge (or find it too difficult), check out the cheat codes below.

"Don't look so surprised, commander; and don't look for your EVA, it can't help you now."

New Maps

You can now pick from 7 different maps using a new interface on the startup menu. You can also pick your team color here.

• Roque Bluffs (1v1): Rugged coastline, the original map from the prototype. You start off with a construction yard.
• Bar Island (1v1): Winding shoal, you start off with an MCV and four flame tanks.
• Forest City (1v3): Heavily forested, you start off with a construction yard.
• Haystack Mountain (1v4): Large mountain, you start off with an MCV, rocket tank, and two gunners.
• The County (1v5): Rivers and bridges, you start off with an MCV and a small army.
• Moosehead Lake (1v1 Stealth): Body of water going down the middle, you start off with 5 engineers and 1 commando. You cannot build anything, but can capture enemy buildings.
• Acadia (1v7 Survival): Forest valley, you start off with a base and a large army, but no construction yard or granaries and can't build MCVs. How long can you last?

Control Groups

• You can now set control groups for your own units. Hold left-control and press one of the 0-9 keys to assign a group to your currently selected units
• Pressing the same group number twice in one second will center the camera onto the first unit in that group

GUI

• Added 9 new team colors, including two special Xenolith faction-styled themes. Only a subset will be chosen by CPU commanders.
• The GUI has been updated to reflect the absence of Air and Naval units by making the other production tabs larger
• A kill counter has been added below the resource counter

Improved Unit Balance

• MG Nest is now more robust
• RPGs now have a longer reload time and do slightly less damage
• Rocket Tanks do slightly less damage
• Tanks and Turrets now do 50% damage to infantry
• Flamethrowers now have a shorter reload time and do more damage
• Cheaper infantry have much less health, while more expensive ones have more (with the exception of the engineer)
• Buildings all have significantly more health
• N2 Weapon is much stronger and has had its targeting radius corrected
• Weapons used by units and towers now reload when not targeting anything
• Added 2 special vehicles only enemy commanders can build, these can be unlocked with cheats

"It's a lie, all of it, Deerbell wouldn't slaughter children."

Extended Music

• The original 3 short tracks, "Creep", "Silver" and "Hills", have been extended slightly to be 1 minute each
• Another track, "Telemetry", has been added
• The soundtrack is now available for download

Cheat Codes

Type these codes while holding left-shift, let go of shift to activate the code.
If you misspell a word let go of shift and hold it to try again.
When you enter a code correctly, you should hear a voice.

• "FRICOT" - gives 10,000 grain to all commanders
• "NOFREAKSONTHEBEACH" - unlocks Autocannon Tank for the player
• "PEACETHROUGHPOWER" - unlocks Flame Tank for the player
• "SMARTPHONE" - reveals map
• "PLAYSTONEKEEP" - toggles player commander units and buildings invincibility
• "SECONDIMPACT" - N2 Missiles have double the radius and massive damage, requires you to have an Uplink to activate
• "MOTOGUZZI" - toggles units move faster
• "GRINDER" - toggle player build times being quartered
• "BRAINFREEZE" - toggles CPU commander AI
• "BOMBARDMENT" - ...
• "SEVENBRUTALYURISVSMYWIFE" or "HARDMODE" - CPU commander production and attack timers sped up, disables cheat codes, can't be used if any other cheats were used

Bug Fixes

• Fixed crash when losing a building that was needed for a current production order
• Fixed power plant smoke rendering over shroud and GUI
• Fixed build place sound on map load
• Fixed loud build sound for buildings that can be set as primary
• Fixed voice lines playing on pre-built structures on game start
• Fixed new construction options voice playing at same time as N2 Weapon Established
• Fixed "N2 weapon established" playing if you already had an Uplink
• Fixed building placement issues (to prevent further issues, you cannot place buildings near moving or enemy units)
• Fixed unit move queues not being cleared on new orders
• Fixed crash on startup if you skip past the screen too fast
• Fixed an issue that caused units to permanently focus on a target
• Fixed an issue that caused units to shoot themselves sometimes
• Fixed commandos and engineers being able to capture walls
• Fixed crash on losing production building
• Fixed no refund on losing production building
• Fixed repair not toggling off when building at full health
• Fixed Commando opportunity firing on vehicles
• Fixed sell price for all buildings, it is now 1/4 the build price
• Fixed being able to use the minimap to move the camera when under low power
• Fixed many memory leaks
• Fixed vehicle death using infantry death sound set
• Fixed Rally points drawing when building is being placed
• Fixed turrets functioning without power
• Fixed crash when commando using C4
• Fixed crash when issuing orders outside map boundaries
• Fixed tank turrets not rotating properly on move orders
• Fixed unbuilt turrets shooting at current location when attempting to place them over enemy targets
• Fixed radar/production tab glitchyness when any building was destroyed
• Fixed cursor having wrong sprite when targeting enemy
• Fixed cursor having move sprite when selecting a building that cannot be given orders
• Fixed enemy base having low power on first level
• Fixed crash when building unit with no primary building (destroying primary building now sets another building as primary)
• Fixed MG Nest using power
• Many, many more minor fixes and obscure crash fixes

Adjustments

• In the case of multiple CPU commanders, you must destroy them all in order to win
• Hospital now heals more but at the same speed
• Building repair now costs slightly more and heals more
• Mouse cursor now has pointer sprite when over the sidebar
• Added background to healthbar to increase visibility
• Removed many CPU commander units from original prototype map Roque Bluffs
• N2 weapon now has Hold/Ready sprites when in the appropriate state
• The game no longer ends as soon as any input is detected on game over state, it will wait 3 seconds before accepting input
• Build times are doubled when under low power
• Improved unit targeting system by introducing chasing, retaliation and opportunity fire
• "Unit Lost" voice line now has a brief pause before playing
• Toggling a tool now deselects your current selection
• Improved performance slightly to offset the addition of AI, though the game is more performance-intensive on the whole
• Balanced power usage for all buildings

Cut features

The following features have been cut.

• Silos and resource caps
• Power toggling
• Air units + Stratoport that builds them. Anti air turrets and units
• Naval units + Shipyard that builds & repairs them
• Some unique land units, including the Flak Truck and APC (their cameo graphics have been reused if you unlock the autocannon and flame tanks)
• Repair Depot which can repair units
• Paratroopers and airdrops
• A lot of general design stuff that was way out of scope for a game jam and can't possibly be covered here in detail

AI Rules

1a) Every 15 seconds, pick a random infantry from a weighted, tiered list to produce. If the production building for this unit is missing, pick another unit. If there are sufficient resources, remove them and make the unit instantly at the appropriate building, if not, pause timer and pick another unit to build until funds are met. These units are added to the CPU commander's attack group list. If the attack group list has more than 14 members, do not produce a unit.
1b) Every 30 seconds, do the previous, but for a random vehicle.
2) Every 2.5-4 minutes (per commander, not cycle) order all units that do not have a target from the attack group list to attack a random unit or building belonging to the player commander.
3) If the target unit/building is destroyed, this unit picks a random target and goes on a rampage.
4) If the unit is shot at, switch targets to the attacker.
5) Every 4 units produced increase the tier used in the unit production list by 1. There are 6 tiers.
6) If CPU commander has low power, double unit build timer.
7) If CPU commander has damaged building, repair the building for the standard fee.