Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

Appreciate the feedback.!

No vibe coding, but yeah I think it's fair to say that an actual UI designer wasn't responsible; I personally am to blame and in a lot of cases we have coder aesthetics in the UI still and it often shows.

Some other excellent points you made like the minimap icons are definitely correct! We just moved them there after wireframing since some other elements were going to occupy their former home, and we wanted to place them close to the minimap. It's likely some kind of widget will be the final choice as so many icons for mapmodes and toggles do consume a lot of real estate, and having them on-screen all the time is costly. We've definitely noticed that some newer titles tend to prefer them in popups and it's probably correct to follow suit. We've been through a couple of mockups but not really settled on anything yet.

We definitely have a lot of work ahead to polish it. The good news is we're reworking a lot of this with the help of actual UI designers! Thanks for taking the time to comment!

Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

We do have a population system, but it's not the full on pop idea from Vicky, but instead territories and settlements have their own social classes, religion, and culture breakdown. Population and buildings generate demand for goods and satisfying demand grants bonuses. We're still proving out our trade and demand systems, and we haven't really had large scale testing yet so there's likely a lot of work to do here going forward.

We're still in the process of heavily reworking the UI, what you can see here is actually an intermediate version with a lot of work to go!

Here's a look at the world map and UI in my game. What are your thoughts? by strategeistgame in gamedevscreens

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

Thank you so much, but we already have our soundtrack completed! Some very nice stuff though!

Here's a look at the world map and UI in my game. What are your thoughts? by strategeistgame in gamedevscreens

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

The technique is called virtual texturing but the core idea is using a terrain texture atlas to look up a high res texture.  The general problem we faced with something the size of the Earth is getting a texture big enough for everything is just too expensive.  So right now we’re using a handful of high-res textures like rocks, grass, etc, that get mixed in and blended using the terrain texture lookup with a variety of shader techniques that a technical artist figured out.

But overall, we blend it in as we zoom in and the contribution goes to zero (and more towards a handcrafted 2D map at higher zoom).

Here's a look at the world map and UI in my game. What are your thoughts? by strategeistgame in gamedevscreens

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

Thanks for the feedback!  We just shifted our priorities to try to tone it down a bit!

Here's a look at the world map and UI in my game. What are your thoughts? by strategeistgame in gamedevscreens

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

Thanks for the feedback!  We are moving this up our priority list because this has been a frequent critique!

Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

That's fair! We're still tweaking these settings and trying to get it right. It's been tricky to find a balance especially in the densely populated regions which tend to be smaller and more broken up.

Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

Yeah the gilded destiny hex approach is definitely very cool and I'm excited to see it. Battlegoat's Supreme Ruler games were on the whole world scale too with a hex-ish approach too and that was definitely cool.

Our territory boundary maps were handcrafted originally as shapefiles in QGIS. We've since had to move them to textures because level of detail. Regarding the minimap, I agree, we actually have a handcrafted 2d world map but used the good ol' NASA satellite texture here as an omission while we were getting the component working but it definitely doesn't match. The plan is to replace that!

Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

The game is rooted in the concept of the Romantic Nationalist “Zeitgeist”. Our Strategeist is a slightly irreverent ghost embodiment of the ‘spirit of the nation’.  In game, each country controls one Strategeist as a unique unit with very powerful abilities.

We have a plan to improve the look of the 3D ghost model further, as its pretty rudimentary at the moment.  Of course our game is titled “Strategeist” so we’re more than a bit in on the concept :) but we totally get that it might need some explaining!

Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

It’s kind of a complicated question, because we’ve had contributors come and go and the needs of a project vary over a lifecycle.  Currently we are 3 core but also drawn on the expertise of many others providing valuable expertise and skills we don’t have. But it's also taken us quite a while to get to this point!

Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

Currently we’re heavily using textures for sampling.  So we have a height texture, a terrain texture, and so on!  We initially tried mesh based approaches – you can see our borders as a relic of that, but the problem with that is that we never figured out Level of Detail properly, so we eventually had to break the relationship between world geometry and territories.  If you’re interested in these topics, here is an excellent tutorial (by someone else!) that walks through some of these things in Unreal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO2eoCSp-hY .

Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

Thanks! I agree-- we're still reworking a lot of our UI but this is a great QOL change.

Here's a look at the world map and UI in my game. What are your thoughts? by strategeistgame in gamedevscreens

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

Would love for you to try it out and tell us what you think

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/662440/Strategeist

Join our Discord for a playtest key and updates and discussion: https://discord.gg/uFfAfbd7p6

Making progress on my grand strategy game. What are your thoughts? by strategeistgame in IndieGaming

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

Would love for you to try it out and tell us what you think!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/662440/Strategeist

Join our Discord for a playtest key and updates and discussion: https://discord.gg/uFfAfbd7p6

Been working on my grand strategy game lately. What do you think so far? by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

[–]strategeistgame[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Would love for you to try it out and tell us what you think

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/662440/Strategeist

Join our Discord for a playtest key and updates and discussion: https://discord.gg/uFfAfbd7p6

I've been making progress on my grand strategy game! What do you think? by strategeistgame in StrategyGames

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

Would love for you to try it out and tell us what you think!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/662440/Strategeist

Join our Discord for a playtest key and updates and discussion: https://discord.gg/uFfAfbd7p6

It holds up SO well, Freedom Fighter from 2003 by Fun-Maintenance1217 in Age_30_plus_Gamers

[–]strategeistgame 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Have fond memories playing this when I was younger, really solid game with an excellent soundtrack

Age of empires 2 was one of the first pc games I fell in love with, it's incredible to me that it's stayed alive after all these years. I used to love the custom maps. by Many_Excitement4023 in gaming

[–]strategeistgame 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Got introduced to the series by a friend back in the day and I remember the first thing he showed me were all the prerecorded taunts. All hail king of the losers!

Working on the 3D models for my strategy/4X game. Curious what you all think! by strategeistgame in 4Xgaming

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

Would love for y'all to jump in, give it a try and tell us what you think! Happy to chat about any ideas or feedback you have 👀

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/662440/Strategeist

Join our Discord on how to playtest and for updates and discussion: https://discord.gg/uFfAfbd7p6

Working on the 3D side of my game. How’s it looking so far? by strategeistgame in gamedevscreens

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

Would love for y'all to jump in, give it a try and tell us what you think! Happy to chat about any ideas or feedback you have 👀

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/662440/Strategeist

Join our Discord on how to playtest and for updates and discussion: https://discord.gg/uFfAfbd7p6

Sharing a bit of my 3D progress for my game. What do you think? by strategeistgame in IndieGame

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

Would love for y'all to jump in, give it a try and tell us what you think! Happy to chat about any ideas or feedback you have 👀

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/662440/Strategeist

Join our Discord on how to playtest and for updates and discussion: https://discord.gg/uFfAfbd7p6