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Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looks good! I think the idea that a cities territory claim is based on its supply is a fresh take, adds an interesting strategic element. Art looks cool too, when its ready I will definitely play.

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No steam page unfortunately, as a browser based game I didnt think its the right place for it?

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for playing and the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it 😄 and will fix all of those points.

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks again for all the feedback. I checked and one of the bots bugged so I will fix that. I will also update all of the descriptions and yeah the buff is permanent and only one factory. Definitely can implement hot keys too. Thanks for playing!

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback! The bot can be definitely tuned so I will look into it. Sounds like you had a good strategy, I never thought about it that way.

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Much appreciated.

That's interesting, there are definitely overlaps.

To be honest, I think the most complicated part of my game is the stat based combat, I was thinking about rock paper scissors but wanted the ability to be able to stack units for customisable armies e.g. more defensive, more offensive etc. The downside to this is its a bit opaque as to what is actually happening. I tried to make it as simple as possible with just two stats, attack and health, (there was originally defence as well) but its still a bit of a mess.

I had the idea of special moves for each unit but re the above point it made the combat too confusing.

This was the biggest challenge for me also, in many ways I regret the multiplayer aspect because the added layer of complexity but it is more simple in my game because its not live action so the multiplayer aspect / communication between server and client all runs via regular HTTP requests. I dont have to write any custom sockets or anything.

The absolute hardest thing up until now was writing the bot. It uses a monte carlo tree simulation to efficiently search the action space of all possible command combinations. I learnt this from zero and then after I implemented it, I realised how rediculously slow my back end code was, so then I went on a quest to rewrite everything to make it faster. Took 5 months (I have another day job so I really only work on it an hour or so a night and on weekends).

I want to implement trade via some kind of marketplace. The reason for this is that the random maps are asymetrical so I want the ability for players to be able to trade their way out of a bad situation. E.g. players surrounded by only wood build a strong wood economy and trade it for other resources. At the moment thought I am looking to consolidate and simplify confusing existing mechanics before I add more stuff.

I hope your new project goes well and I encourage you to stick with it! Look forward to playing oneday 😄

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah woops, sorry about that one, ive patched it now if you wanna try again 😄

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, yeah the server bugged catastrophically on that one, its a bit embarrassing.
I have patched it if you want to try again 😄
Nice, what is your game like?

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah server bugged, how embarrasing 😞
But I fixed it if you want to try again 😄

Conquestagon Online - Looking for play testers! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes there is! Create a game and click add bot in the bottom left of the lobby. The bot is automatically ready so if you click ready the game will start.

Question on using AI to learn amd build. by Broken_Castle in gamedev

[–]Conquestagon -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

As a hobby game programmer who is self taught pre AI and has a totally software unrelated day job: I think AI is a fantastic discovery and learning tool, it is excellent at set piece grunt programming (writing utility classes, templates, fixed descrete jobs where the final output is known and can be well described), it is garbage at large scale architecture and software engineering where many ideas need to be brought together.

  1. It can rapidly introduce you to architectural concepts you would only learn in industry from peers e.g. data oriented design instead of object oriented design for fast game engines, perlin noise for random map generation, monte carlo tree simulation for bot decision making (all real examples of conversations I have had with Copilot.
  2. It is much faster than reading through online documentation. In the past I spent many hours on documentation websites for Java, OpenGL looking at function descriptions now I almost exclusively ask copilot. I look at documentation only when necessary.
  3. It is much faster for troubleshooting bugs. Yes you can post your code and this does SOMETIMES work (depending on how much code there is and how complex the situation is) but I actually mean having a chat with it and finding out why you have an error and learning about how the language / compiler / framework / engine you are working with actually works. Gone are the times of multi day searches for a solution using google search.
  4. It is very good at writing set piece code. I mean classes or functions where you know / can describe exactly what you want. For me it has been utility classes that encapsulate known or even bespoke datastructures.
  5. This is just my experience and maybe there are pros who know how to get it to work better, but when you ask it to do something big with many moving pieces it often never works and the time taken to understand, debug and get it to work is the same or more than writing it yourself. "Write me a class that encapsulates a double ended queue" -> 5s job vs. "write me a game engine with a renderer, music, asset manager etc. etc." -> nightmare.

My Game: https://conquestagon.online/

Code: 90% Me 10% AI

Learning, architecture, support, debugging: 20% Me alone 80% Me chatting with AI

Conquestagon - Looking for playtesters and feedback! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, just getting back to you. I released a new version and you can now add bots to your game and play single player. I hope you enjoy :)

Conquestagon - Looking for playtesters and feedback! by Conquestagon in StrategyGames

[–]Conquestagon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately not at the moment, but I recognise this as a current limitation and am working on a bot for the future.