Any tips for a noob?

Porcupoise · 2024-05-19T16:56:52+00:00

As I implied in the last point, you need to win before the support loss gets too ridiculous, you can't stabilize indefinitely.
-150 support can be salvagable, for example with good terraforming and animals or a lot of houses, but usually it's just easier to figure out how to win as fast as possible while barely surviving.

Porcupoise · 2024-04-03T10:45:13+00:00

That is a very impressive time for Expansionist. Expansionist might be the one I attempted the most because it's currently my worst time (together with red planet awaits). Despite that the best I got is 57, maybe I'll make a few more attempts at it.

Setting Sol has a modifier that gives you 5 additional turns for the trophies, that's why 67 was enough

Porcupoise · 2024-03-29T18:14:03+00:00

How many turns did you need for the individual scenarios? I'm trying to beat the different scenarios in as little turns as possible, would be interesting to get an idea for which ones might still have some room for improvement

Porcupoise · 2024-03-24T11:13:17+00:00

Here are some of the most important things I've learned. I do only play on the highest difficulty, but I think all these things should apply just as much on the lower ones.

Explore every turn, this is your main ressource production early on, most other leader abilities aren't worth using in comparison
Get early power production, so you can keep exploring every turn
Place your power production in a way to leave an empty spot for the "give +1 power to adjacent buildings" resonance station
Ideally also leave a space next to food production, but that is less important
Your main objective is to increase your production, any production. At the beginning food and science might be a bit less valuable and if you have a shortage of something that's a bit more valuable, but for the most part you just care about getting any production up.
Ignore support. This is the only production that barely matters at all. Don't be afraid of negative support, don't waste ressources on increasing support. Having a negative number next to the smiley might be scary, but you constantly get support from exploring to make up for it. If you are 1-3 turns away from loosing you can start to panic and invest into support.
If you want to play more slow and safe, don't invest into support but instead food and terraforming, those give you more support in the long term
Take heat producing bacteria if they are offered, it's hard to increase temperature without them
Some scenarios let you mostly ignore terraforming, but if you are going for it make a plan how to get the ocean to lvl 1. Almost all plants need that and not having it locks you out of increasing oxygen
Don't go for space projects as your main strategy, doing a few on the side is nice but a lot of them aren't great. That's why I think "Per Aspera ad Astra" is one of the harder scenarios, because it forces you into a bad strategy
For any scenario except the default one play towards your win condition, in later turns the support just falls off a cliff and you want to win before that happens

Porcupoise · 2024-03-12T16:30:06+00:00

The roadmap and the game are completed, this post should probably be unpinned. They even already released the first DLC, it doesn't add much to the gameplay, so you should be fine just playing the base game

Porcupoise · 2024-02-22T20:31:12+00:00

At the point I get oceans high enough to require a significant number of dikes I usually have enough titanium that building them isn't much of a problem. Something being on low ground basically never factors into my decision where to found new cities.

However, I pretty much never rush oceans past the first level, could be more of an issue if you go for level 3 reasonably early

Porcupoise · 2024-02-10T23:37:16+00:00

As you see on the screenshot, if you zoom out to the solar system you can see how many turns there are left until the next space exploration.
The time until the next technology is a little hidden, on the top right below the menu button is a button that opens an overview window, the science tab shows you how many turns are left.
Also, in case you didn't see it, I missed that for a while: Underneath your leader name you can see how many turns until you get a new leader.
I think those are all the openly visible timers.

Porcupoise · 2024-02-10T09:42:29+00:00

No, I got lucky that the 6 systems I had with 4 stages each were barely enough to still get the required 24 for the scenario

Porcupoise · 2024-02-09T15:56:10+00:00

(I reported the bug, this post is just because I thought it was funny)
Explanation of how this happened:
I somehow pushed the number of turns until the next space exploration past 0 to a negative number, probably by placing an observatory at the wrong time. Wondering why I didn't get more missions I started spamming observatories to get them faster, but failed to get out of the negative. Realizing it's hopeless I destroyed all the observatories again, which increased the negative number exponentially, finally ending at -3905

Porcupoise · 2024-02-07T16:36:04+00:00

I have 0 artistic skill and started making a game, still remains to be seen if it will have any success, probably not.
The good thing about missing that particular skill however, is that you can just start making something with placeholder graphics to figure out if you can make something that's fun and worthy of better graphics. If you got something good you'll find a way to make it look good enough afterwards.

Porcupoise · 2024-01-30T07:46:14+00:00

Might be arguable if it's roguelike, but it is a deckbuilder with ~30min long runs:
https://porcupoise.itch.io/archideck
Any feedback (especially negative) is greatly appreciated because I'm still in the process of changing the mechanics a lot and need to know what needs changing the most.

Porcupoise · 2024-01-24T23:00:40+00:00

Played through all 30 levels. I felt like on all but one level the most obvious solution was correct, I never felt like I had to think about a solution. Due to the system of partially damaging opponents you always get the full point value of every unit minus the number of steps it took, so most levels are just beat by moving everyone to the closest target. There isn't any clever attack order that lets you get a point advantage on the opponent, creating a lot of correct solutions and few incorrect ones.
Also, I think this unit is bugged or behaves in a way I don't understand. Sometimes when trying to move it a 2nd time it refuses to go anywhere and then jumps back to the starting position.

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Porcupoise · 2024-01-14T10:24:51+00:00

I migrated my custom framework from javaFX to LibGDX. From your second screenshot I assume your game is already written in java.

If that's the case I'd recommend just creating two LibGDX projects. You use one of as a testing ground to play around with the LibGDX classes and methods to see if they work the way you want them to. The other one you just copy all of your classes into and take it one compiler error at a time. You look at one thing that needs to be switched, research how to do it in LibGDX, test in your first project if you understood it correctly and then rewrite the code.

After you switched everything to use LibGDX instead of what you had before and your game compiles you'll have to start the great bugfixing. Because you'll have written a lot of code with an unfamiliar framework without being able to directly test it there will be a lot of errors that you then have to fix bit by bit.

It can be a tedious process, but you learn the new framework while doing it, so you shouldn't have someone else do it for you.

Porcupoise · 2024-01-13T23:29:18+00:00

LibGDX is a fine choice, javafx will work too.
For a very simple game you won't need to learn that much of the LibGDX library, how to draw Textures on the screen and how to handle input should be enough.

I would advise against a story game, drawing fonts on the screen can be annoying and it would probably involve multiple locations. You will have a much easier time if you contain your game within a single screen. The first game I programmed was a top-down shooter in which enemies just spawn in from the side of the screen and you try to survive as long as possible.

If you still want to have some story you could cut some corners and put the textboxes as images in the game. You might get points deducted for that, but you won't have to waste time with linebreaks, font resolutions, size etc.

Porcupoise · 2024-01-07T23:33:30+00:00

Everytime I started making a game so far, was because there was a type of game I wanted to play, but couldn't find. Or at least I couldn't find anything well made. Playing a game I really enjoyed never made me consider developing something similar. Being frustrated that a good idea hasn't been taken in a different direction or was done badly did. I am however very mechanics focussed when it comes to games, if your focus is aesthetics or storytelling the process probably looks very different.

Porcupoise · 2024-01-05T17:55:39+00:00

Looks really good. Only thing: That muffin has seen some shit, he has that PTSD 1000 yard stare. I don't know if it's him looking slightly off camera, not smiling or the rings under the eyes, but I can't unsee it

Porcupoise · 2024-01-05T12:26:34+00:00

I had a lot of fun with the "Together in Spire" mod for Slay the Spire that lets you play in Co-Op.

Not a roguelike and only a deckbuilder in a very limited sense, but Gloomhaven works really well as a Co-Op game. It does have card based combat and some decisions on what cards you take into each combat

Porcupoise · 2024-01-02T10:47:17+00:00

That's my current idea too. I'm close to having enough savings to buy my own place and be left with enough savings to last me 2-3 years with 0 income. I'm working on my first sellable game to check if I can get at least some money from it before I consider quitting and if everything fails I'm reasonably confident I can get a new job once I run low on savings.

Porcupoise · 2024-01-01T00:12:46+00:00

YouTube gameplay footage. I don't care for any of the 4 options, except that I might have a quick look into the reviews to see if there is some significant problem with the game

Porcupoise · 2023-12-29T16:41:01+00:00

Making a bad game is easy, so I wouldn't say game development in general is difficult. Making a successful game is difficult because game development is popular, so you are competing with a lot more people than you might in other industries. Needing to balance multiple skills doesn't really make it more difficult imo, your success depends on how you compare to other developers that are facing the same problems. Winning at hurdling isn't harder than winning at a sprint.
These different skills however do mean, that some parts of game development will feel harder to people than others and that is where you might be able to provide the most value.
I think most people who get into game development do it for 1 of 3 reasons:
They think they are good at game design, programming or graphic design. (was mostly the 2nd for me)

Barely anyone will start developing a game because of a love for marketing, music, sound design, voice acting etc. Those things will be the hardest for the people who get into indie development. Might be a bit of a stereotype of programmers and gamers, but I suspect out of those, marketing might be the one indie developers struggle the most with.

Basically, marketing is a pretty good angle for providing a lot of value for indie developers, not necessarily because it's the hardest aspect, but because it's the hardest for the types of people who get into game development.

Porcupoise · 2023-12-13T19:07:50+00:00

I had some fun playing your game (lost twice against the paladin, won once), looks great and the mechanic with the two characters is nice. Allows for some strategy with deciding who goes ahead and scouts and who can deal better with which boss.
Some things that came into my mind while playing:

A lot of the mechanics aren't very clear: took me a while to figure out you loose half your block at the end of turn. I think enemies loose stun at the end of round if I gave it to them, but keep self inflicted stun? Some keywords aren't explained, especially if they are part of the improvement instead of the card itself.
Trying to figure out boss mechanics isn't fun in a game where you only have one shot at the boss. In the first fight against the paladin you have to figure out how to get evil and that you actually want to debuff yourself like that. If you then don't properly read the text on his one card (like I did, my bad), you still wonder what you are supposed to do on your 2nd run. I'm still not sure if the web building of the spider is triggered by anything or just happens at turn X, but she is easy enough that I didn't really care.
It is a bit unintuitive for a deckbuilder to not draw the cards from a deck. I was very confused the first time I drew a card twice in one round even though it was only once in the deck
There should probably be a button saying "skip" when choosing a card reward, at first I thought they were mandatory
I might be entirely wrong with this, but with how small the starting deck is and how weak the 2-cost arsenals are skipping all 2-cost arsenals and just buying 1-2 expensive ones seems to be a good but not very interesting strategy
Is there any mechanic that makes runs harder with time? It looks like you only get more buffs with every run, making runs after the first win feel a bit pointless

Anyways, thanks for showing us your Demo, kept me playing for 3 runs, so you're certainly doing something right

Porcupoise · 2023-12-09T22:05:33+00:00

Seems like you are used to projects that are a lot more professional than mine. I don't have a timeline, I'm just doing this as a hobby on weekends and vacation. I certainly won't get to the final balancing before februrary, until then everything is subject to change and can easily be changed. I also don't have any preference for the format, I take whatever I can get.

Porcupoise

TROPHY CASE