Astro-Realpolitik Project

Progress logs of a space empire strategy game.

[zuberoan-blog]

Former Insomniac designer Mike Stout takes shares a useful rubric for judging the depth of play mechanics, including checks for redundant ones, in this in-depth design article, which contains examples from the Ratchet & Clank series.

[zuberoan-blog]

Progress Log #5 - 1st Mar 2017

Astro-Realpolitic Project

More programmer art for today. This time there is an alien with a weird wrinkly mouth and a dinosaur-like alien who is wearing an outfit inspired from Renaissance mercenaries.

[zuberoan-blog]

Progress Log #4 - 1st Mar 2017

Astro-Realpolitik Project v.0.1

I have decided to work on implementing some kind of economy next. From what the economy looks like on the planning board, it is gonna need an overlay where individual species are selectable. I thought that species should have some sort of picture accompanying them in map mode selection. Thus, I made some programmer art placeholders.

[zuberoan-blog]

Progress Log #3 - 25th Feb 2017

Astro-Realpolitik Project v.0.1

Colonization Update

With this update, the player can now establish colonies on distant stars. The implementation required a lot of background infrastructure work. Such as, map overlays, context sensitive menus, buttons and click detection resolving.

@cuhrayzeedev asked a question:

How are going to be those map overlays? Something like physical map, political map, etc?

In spirit, yes. At my current stance, something as general as “political overlay” will not be a thing. A map overlay which only displays nations cannot really show anything in this game. This game complicates the notion of what it means to be a single country. The closest of what comes to a single country, in this game, are the lowest level polities, which will function like smallest administrative regions. And actual ingame countries will be made up of pacts, unions, hegemonies, tributaries, vassals and etc between those polities. However, those ways of organizations can result in polities, which in a way are a part of one country and in another way are a part of another country or are partially autonomous.

Different overlays are going to detail the organizations of different polities amongst other things. Below are few example overlays that are gonna be in the game ... I think:

Economic Overlay - Displays economic stances between polities. Polities that have formed a Benelux style economic bloc or some other kind of commonwealth, will look like a single polity on this map and economic interactions can only be done with the bloc as a whole and not with members. However, members of a bloc on this map overlay can be independent in every other aspect or, for example, can be subjects of different empires. A union like EU would appear as a single country on this map overlay.

Military Alliance Overlay - Displays who is allied to whom. Some polities can also have military unions between each other, which combines their military capabilities. Military unions would be displayed and act like single countries as far as war is concerned. Map is color coded to show who will join a war against you or with you for each military polity you click on.

Technology Overlay - Shows the spread of base technologies across the map and displays pacts and embargoes which affect the generation and spread of technology. A special selection will also show the spread of revolutionary techs through the galaxy. However, the way the technology works, is a story for another Progress Log.

Did you get your answer? Any other questions?

[blackshellmedia]

Better Understand Your Game Through UI Flow Diagrams

Better Understand Your Game Through UI Flow Diagrams

User interface flow diagrams (UIFDs, for the purposes of this article) are a way to visually represent the screens your video game will have and how the user is going to get from one screen to another. It’s a great tool in software development in general, but it can also be very revealing about how to structure actions to get to the actual game play. Developers do not usually like documenting,…

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[zuberoan-blog]

Here’s a friendly reminder for yesdevs to not forget to document your UI (granted there is something to document).

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Progress Log #2 - 15th Feb 2017

Astro-Realpolitik Project

Since the last Progress Log, I have made way towards implementing a colonization mechanic. However, it turns out that I still need to figure out what I actually mean, by “colonization mechanic”. Since, I still need to think about the specifics of colonization, I decided to just make a button, which is called “Colonization” into the context where it will most likely be.

Context sensitive menu - when user clicks on one of the stars, a grey circle pops up. This is the menu - it will contain buttons to all the actions that can be performed with the star or something related to it. It will also contain information about stars. Whenever I get around to implementing map overlays, different overlays would feature different options for the same star. At least I think that they will.

Button - buttons are now actual classes, which means that implementing extra buttons in the future will be a bit easier. Perhaps, I will convert the displayed stars into buttons aswell some time in future, since they behave a lot like buttons.

[zuberoan-blog]

C# Console RPG: Development Diary #1

There is another game I am working on, besides Astro-Realpolitik game. I started this project a month or so back to be a backup title to fall to if I should feel a bit burnt out with the space game.

C# itself calls the Command Prompt Interface by the name “Console”, so that is where this game got its name.

Also, I am writing a world editing/creation program for this RPG. Ironically this world editing and creation program is in full color as opposed to the Console RPG.

[zuberoan-blog]

Progress Log #1 - 12th Feb 2017

Astro-Realpolitik Project 

(This game has no name yet, there is only the project name.)

Manifesto v.1.0

Ditch the conventions of board games - Many computer strategy games still follow the conventions developed by board game designers to combat the natural constraints of playing on a board and players having to resolve turns themselves. Board game conventions I seek to avoid:

Concept of player - board games have should only feature as many empires ingame as there are players playing the game. The non-player empires are usually simulated with simplified logic and logic and don’t really play a huge role when compared to player empires.

Board Pieces - the best way to “juice” up a board game has been to put some sort of play pieces into play that the players can touch with their own hands. Such an approach works for players, since humans have natural affinity to understanding how to use play pieces. However, a game that is 99% AI, the game must be, by its nature, easier to play for AI.

Simplified stats - In board games, players are the one’s who have to solve the turns, therefore solving the turns should be as easy as possible. A computer game doesn’t have that limitation. Turn resolving is exclusively handled by the computer. I still have to use my best judgement to not go overboard with that.

Not cloning the Master of Orion formula - Many space empire games have derived their design from the original Master of Orion 1&2. When the mold is questioned, people cannot imagine a space empire game being any other way. Features I would seek to avoid:

Ship design - MoO games had it as a fun little side-game. Many space empire game enthusiasts find it essential to the whole experience. I don’t. I don’t hate on it, but I disagree with the sentiment that it is a core aspect of a space empire game. Thus, this game is not gonna have anything even close to designing ships.

Personally commanding fleets and armies - This feature is very closely related to the board game “juicing” method to have board pieces for the players to move around. This game will feature exactly zero amount of control over one’s military operations. Commanding fleets and armies in a theater of war is a whole game in itself. Thus, it does not belong into this game. (Although a separate game exclusively about commanding a space army is not out of the question for the future.)

Tech tree - Most games which feature the possibility to make technological advancements, usually have a tech tree, tech branches or smth similar. I don’t have any specific personal grievances against this system as it is, however I am sick to my stomach due to most games only portraying tech advancement using tech trees. There are other ways, and I seek to implement one of those (I already have some designs I am working on).

These are not the only points of this project’s manifesto. These are the first things that came to my mind.