(I still haven't decided if it's Medal Metal or Metal Medal)

I've been plunking along at this project, primarily on enemy pixel art. The Waste is a dangerous place after all, so it has to be populated with an array of creatures. I have to thank my pixel artists friends for helping me along--you all know who you are. Anyway, I'm a bit over halfway through pixeling the static enemies I have planned to inhabit The Waste, and that's disregarding recolors and rehashes. Just now I finished going back through and adding more contrast, which seemingly improved most of the sprites in terms of readability.


(18 of 32 planned static unique enemies)
I'm still sorta slow, but I think I've gotten a bit better. Progression goes top to bottom, left to right, so crab, bigger crab, worm, bigger worm, etc, next column.

I mention 'static' in describing these enemies in that you'll be fighting robots as well, which will be similar to you because they have a chassis and can have a wide assortment of parts composing their weaponry, mobility type, etc, making them none static.

As for combat itself, I have a lot in mind. Not only will parts be determining what you attack with and how well you evade and aim, but they'll be determining your capacity for storing data (experience) and software (algorithms that alter your performance), rate of data accumulation (how fast you earn experience), rate of data analysis (how fast you can spend experience), how often you act, and more. As for how players go about building their robots, that's up to them and their success, which depends partly on the number of medals you have for a specific sector (OMG), in finding/trading/building/buying parts. I intend for this to be fairly random and I also intend to keep part purchases to a minimum.

Each chassis, think of it like an empty computer case, of a robot will have a different assortment of modification points and external parts will have to fit onto specific modification points. Some parts will fit any type of modification point as well. Joe might build his Junk Chassis robot to be completely decked out with a couple weapons, but that would leave him without defensive or utility parts. Dave might rely on a single weapon, a physical shield, and a repairing utility part that he was able to cobble together. Joe would have more options offensively but Dave would have greater survivability.

At the moment I'm thinking combat will follow an Active Time Battle system like you may have seen in Final Fantasy 6, only instead of waiting for your turn, you'll store up points for actions. A simple weapon might cost you 5 points where firing a rocket may cost you 15--more if you take the time to aim/lock on.

Expect a lot of junk, a lot of tinkering with said junk to find how you like to build your robot(s), and making choices on what parts you want to build first.