Important 2

If you haven't read my previous "Important" post from a month ago, please do it now. If you have, then here is a short list of the emotions I experienced while working on this new thing over the past two weeks, so you can better understand what I will be talking about:

*ahem*

a... aaaaaaaaa... AAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAaaaaAAAAA!!! AAAAAAAAAAA!!! AAAAAaaaa??? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAsdfhgsdjfbeubusdgfuegfffaaaa!!! aaaaaaaaaa... A? A! a... A! A! A-a-A-aAAA! a...

Now I can tell you about that new thing.

When I wrote that first "important" post, I had everything prepared in my head. But then I asked myself the question: "Why?" What is the point of this? Why should I do it? Why would people be interested in it? In Her Light at least has the ending: people can enjoy what the Scribe and Narrator tell about Meorenell and then see the end of their story. It is not the world that stuck in a perpetual existence just for the sake of content. But the new thing... it has no ending... I can't give it an ending. I'd feel guilty choosing the ending... That was the first time I thought I should abandon the new thing and just keep my focus on IHL... but after some days later, an idea occurred to me. And so, I decided to try something. And make it so the people will choose their own ending. I decided to try doing this:

https://x.com/StoryAroundHole

Now you understand why I felt those emotions. Because my daily routine is this: turn on the computer, do something, scream into the celling for five minutes, do something again, scream again, look at tiddies on twitter for an hour... because time flies when you're looking at tiddies..... do something, cry with joy that it finally works... cry again because something doesn't work... cry again because another tutorial says the previous tutorial is inefficient and following it makes me stupid. AAAAAAAAAAAA!

What kind of game would it be, you ask? Well, I had some options like... a SUPER REALISTIC MMO WITH 1000000-PLAYERS RAIDS AND WITH SUPER REALISTIC SURVIVAL MECHANICS AND WITH SUPER REALISTIC BASE BUILDING... but, It will be what I play the most and what I'm most disappointed with: turn-based grand strategy and 4X.

Age of Wonders 4, Total War Warhammer, Endless Space 2. These are the games with the biggest hour counts in my library. This genre is also a better fit for this new world. Also, there aren't many indie games in this genre for now, so the competition will be lower. I like them, but there are also a lot of things that disappoint me in them. I want to try to improve some of these things in my game (I will talk about this in the next post. I already wrote that section, but this post would be too long to read if I included it, so I've removed it).

In general, the game will look something like this:

The world map will be in 3D. The assets will be in 2D, giving the world a 2.5D appearance. After all, I know how to draw, and it will be faster for me to draw a fancy tree than to model one. The map will be divided into provinces, and play similar to Dawn of War: Dark Crusade or the Lord of the Rings: the Battle for the Middle Earth, but with a single capital for each faction to upgrade and care for, like in any 4X.

The battle maps will be in full 2D. Grid-based combat, but with some uncommon for grid-based combat freedoms, based on my experience playing Rogue Trader. And, as you can see from one of the recent tweets, I'm also considering pre-drawing maps instead of using a pure tileset approach. Two things to keep in mind. One, I don't want procedurally generate maps. I don't like them. It was a nice thing when it all started, but these days any procedurally generated maps in any game gives me little pleasure. This is one of the reasons why, for example, I got bored very quickly with Valheim, but enjoy Enshrouded. Two, I've recently replayed some older RPGs, like Nox, and they have some cool pre-rendered map pieces; I want to replicate these aesthetics in my game. Besides, I will be able to reuse some 2D assets between the world map and the battle maps.

But here comes the big BUT: the art style. This will be one of of those big decisions I will have to make. It surely should be a simple style, for easier creation and any future changes? But how simple? And in what way? What shapes? What lines? What colors? aaaaAAAA!!!! I have a huge pile of unresolved decision-making here, already twenty pages of various notes: unit types and their mechanics; factions and their mechanics; general mechanics. Here. There. That. This. No! YES! AAAA!!!! me brain hurty

Additionally, I also want to put more work into interactions with the key characters. Or, more accurately, the interactions these characters have with the player. Games like these often feel lonely. Like just a game about getting bigger numbers before your enemies, without any real characters. The diplomacy system becomes just another screen with numbers, and the eyes ignore anyone in there. My game won't feature deep diplomacy: besides a couple opportunities to make a temporary peace deals, each kingdoms is by itself. I want the player to anticipate the next banter with enemy generals, where they'll say, "haha! Our queens' tits are bigger than your queen's head! haah!" But between these small exchanges with the enemy, the main focus should be on the player's advisors, unique for each factions, with unique personalities. Through them will be delivered news about the daily affairs and life within the player's kingdom. The best option would be to have advisors react to specific player decision (constructing an important building, recruiting new unit types, completing a powerful research, etc). It can also be used to introduce new upgrades and small features after certain dialogues, something like "Sup Warchief! For never skipping my dialogues, I have developed a new training program for our warriors! I called it "Tongue Wrestling". If you approve it, they will train every day, and their morale will improve! You can join too... rrrawr". And now you have a new unexpected but useful secret research available.

This should create the feeling in the player after constructing a large magic tower that it isn't just a big yet forgettable boost to their magical resource, but it is something that inspires awe in citizens. And when an advisor speaks, she doesn't just say useless things. Doing so should make the player feel attached to the kingdoms and their advisors, want to hear how the people praise their great leader, and care about them more than just the numbers in a strategy name. Of course, to get this right, the pacing and quality of dialogues also needs to be right. Overdoing it can have the opposite effect: rather than anticipating new dialogues, the player can get more annoyed by the images of advisors popping every turn to say stupid time-wasting things.

I really wonder if I will get it right, and people will put me on the same level with such great people as YanadereDev, and PirateNation who worked for seven years in Blizzard... After all, I have heard they are very well respected solo developers.

This is where this post ends. The next one will be about what I've already mentioned.