Fantasy 4X strategy (no name... yet)

[Aurioch]

Hello

I hate writing introductions, so I'll keep it short and simple:
I'm Computer Engineering student and an (aspiring) hobbyist indie developer. Aside from my love for (obviously) video games, my other hobbies are playing piano and writing short stories, with Pen and Paper Roleplaying included. I have 3 projects ongoing, but unfortunately, thanks to burnout and lack of motivation, all of them are shelved. For now.

Right now I'm working on a 4X game which currently has no name yet, heavily inspired in certain mechanics from both Civilization and Pandora: First Contact. However, unlike those two, the idea of a plot is to be put into a fantasy world (kinda like Master of Magic), with factions being various races with different strengths and weaknesses. Each unit will also be customizable, with the choice of weapon often dictating a "class" of unit. There's also an experiment with a research system I'd like to try, but what exactly it is, I'll keep it a secret for now.

For videos of game in action, please check out my Twitter, where I try to post things at least once a week. I don't know if it's possible to embed videos here; if it is, I'll edit the post.

Screenshots of current development phase:



What's done right now is unit command card (together with move, attack and worker orders functional), city screen (with unit production, resource overview, and citizen management), basic combat, day transition cycle (day, dusk, night, dawn) and equipment changing (with 3 "classes" avaiable: Settler, Worker, Warrior). Progress is going slow as there's no lore yet so that I can properly work on units, buildings and research system, so I'm trying to find minor tidbits here and there that I can work on. One of those is learning how to model so that I can prepare 3D assets.

Just a side note which might be interesting: originally, this wasn't supposed to be a game since I have 3 currently frozen projects (combinations of burnout and lack of interest). It's just something I made on a whim when, after reading one blog post about procedurally generated maps using noise algorithms, I wanted to try it for myself. After 10-15 minutes of work, I got my first result:

and from there, it just... kinda became full-fledged project.

In any case, every feedback and question is welcomed. I'm sorry I don't have a playable demo or anything more concrete, but the game is in early phase of development. I'll try to supply one as soon as I can.

Thank you for reading!

[Jubal]

You can embed videos via YouTube using the bbcode YOUTUBE tag (or if you're using the WYSIWYG editor, just find the YouTube button up the top).

And welcome to Exilian, of course! As a historian & fantasy geek I'm very happy to help with lore production/ideas if that'd be useful, and I'm always game for playtesting and tinkering with early stage projects if that'd ever be helpful. The game sounds a good spin on the genre, and it looks like a pretty well rigged up starting point so far - the interface is certainly a quarter mile better than I usually seem to end up building for anything already, though I'm a pretty terrible UI designer.

What're you using in terms of languages/code base for it, out of interest?

[Aurioch]

Thank you

All videos I have are uploaded on Twitter, which I found more practical when I do a lot of small videos (shorter than minute and a half). I could upload them on YouTube, but I'd rather have something more... substantial there.

I'm writing the game in C#, using MonoGame as a base library and supported by MonoGame.Extended library (to avoid reinventing the wheel) and GeonBit.UI (for user interface). Both of those have saved my time immensely, especially GeonBit.UI which comes with 2-3 interface skins, complete with all the necessary assets, so I didn't have to draw anything myself. A huge time saver... and it looks good.
Other than that, everything is on 0$ budget, so unit (temporary) sprites are taken from Kenney, and everything else is hand drawn. So yeah, pretty standard programmer art

As for lore ideas, thanks for offer! It will certainly help to have someone to throw my ideas at and see what sticks, especially when I start designing units/buildings/research to fit the lore. Problem is that I'm fired up, but at the same time am not sure how much I'll be able to implement... after all, ideas are cheap, but putting those ideas into something concrete is not.

[Jubal]

Yeah, that makes sense - I don't think we can embed twitter videos here, I could look to see if there's a mod that allows us to embed whole tweets if that'd be useful for people at some point.

And fair enough - I know very well the zero budget feeling, I've gotten increasingly good at getting round it though all my projects still suffer from Programmer Art Syndrome! Things like Eric Matyas' free soundtrack library really help though

And sure; I think often "write a general lore, then work out a progressive plan for building up what's in game brick by brick" is often a good strategy. My problem is that I often never stop writing the lore and the game never goes anywhere, that said...

[Aurioch]

I know for Eric's library, been using some tunes in one of my previous projects (which is close to completition, can link if interested). More or less I'm snitching such things, or make em myself. Minus is that what I make looks subpar, plus is that I learn new things ^^

And heh, I know that feel when it comes to lore, especially when new ideas start surging up and you simply can't stop ^^

Also, to try and minimize the effects of programmer art (and because I'm horrible when it comes to 2D art), I've slowly started to transition to 3D and learning how to model things with Blender. I usually make better things if I have a base to work with, rather than making it all out of my head.

EDIT
Here's what I whipped up quickly, grass texture thanks to Eric Matyas ^^

[Jubal]

Nice! I should've learned to do basic 3d stuff, unfortunately I currently have a lot of other new computer skills and two languages I'm supposed to be learning.

And yeah, feel free to make extra threads for other projects

[Aurioch]

Well, a small update...

Sadly, there's no much progress. I managed to set up the basic 3D world, but the performance was abysmal (camera was stuttering around), so I went to rewrite it properly using shaders.
And after struggling with it for like 8 hours and only recently realizing what a dumb mistake I've made, I managed to get the ground terrain on order... and what's more important, have the whole thing run fast. Then I went to write a decent lighting shader... ambient light, diffuse light, etc. (especially emissive light which I've used before to simulate water tiles) without any knowledge about it.

And the result?




(Gotta joke a little about myself X) )

[Jubal]

Well, it's a better foray into 3d than I ever managed! And the shader's clearly doing *something* which is a good start, just gotta work out what to tweak now

[Pentagathus]

This all sounds rather dank my good dude.

[Jubal]

This all sounds rather dank my good dude.

Note for the uninitiated: this is probably the nicest welcome Pentagathus has ever given anyone on this site over the past nine and a half years

[Aurioch]

This all sounds rather dank my good dude.

Umm... thanks, I guess?

Note for the uninitiated: this is probably the nicest welcome Pentagathus has ever given anyone on this site over the past nine and a half years

Ah, that explains it. Still... erm... yeah, I'm still not sure how to react XD

In any case, I've made a lot of progress (I hope), and this time I decided to make a video about it instead of screenshot, since it's more visible that way. There's still a long way to go...

[Jubal]

Nicely done, that looks excellent - it's improved very rapidly!

[Aurioch]

A small milestone, but still a milestone: this weekend I reached 50 followers on Twitter. Which is kinda 30 followers since I started working on current project.



As for the progress, right now, to reach the point where 2D version is, I need to finish city tiles, hot spring tiles, and 3 units. Modelling is going painfully slow, especially since my machine has problems with overheating.

[Jubal]

Nice Exilian's account hit 500 recently, which is pretty small still, it's pretty hard to grow twitter accounts I find... not sure how most people do it, beyond maybe posting more. I guess some folk buy followers too but that always feels a bit pointless.

Overheating is a pain - what sort of machine are you using?

[Aurioch]

Overheating is a pain - what sort of machine are you using?

Right now it's Asus K53S laptop, and after opening it, it's apparent that I need to replace the vent as it doesn't dispose hot air efficiently enough anymore. It either turns too slow or is completely stopped.

Well, at least I got my bachelor degree now, so I have week or two to fix all the things (I'm planning to get my desktop PC back in action) until my master's course starts.