Dev Diary #019 - After Intermission Hi and Welcome to this weeks Dev Diary! Unfortunately this week I don't have any pictures to show for the progress, as I have not been able to make any prototypes this week. I have, how ever, been doing research on the various ways that the text could be done, and it seems that pursuing full 3D texts is the hardest option here, which has made me lean towards faking the 3D effect with caustics. Since the "Announcement Bar -project" has taken such a long time, this might be a necessary sacrifice to speed up the process. Instead of talking about the "Announcement bar -project", I will be revealing some goals and plans regarding the mobile game project. The Plan In General The game will take place in an ancient time, before any recorded history, which gives a plenitude of creative freedoms. The ideas I'm having has been largely inspired by the oldest stone structures found thus far, one of which is Göbekli Tepe, that dates back to more than 12 000 years ago and the re-discovery of the Richat Structure, also known as the "Eye of Africa", which looks geologically a lot like how Plato described Atlantis - what if there really was a much older high civilizations before the Sumerians, that was destroyed by some huge local or global cataclysm? Not a new idea by any means, but it is interesting to think about, how things might have panned out before any recorded history. Without taking any part in if it is true or not, it does allow your imagination to go wild with ideas. The early goal is to make a playable, simple prototype, which is expanded from the core mechanics, which are; The game is 2D or 2.5D, with a fixed perspective, similar to all the other popular RTS video games. You manage and command your units by selecting them with a tap. You build buildings by selecting what you want to build and tapping where you want to build it, most likely grid based placing. You need to gather resources in order to construct buildings and fund the training of your troops. Pretty basic stuff. How ever, the interesting part is where I'm planning on going with this game, step by step; Making a PC version of the game; -> With improved graphics and flexibility in managing everything. -> With an eventual goal to add the ability to link your Mobile save to your PC game, allowing you to play your saves where ever you go. Expanding the game mechanics; -> From a simple RTS to City-Builder RTS, with functioning economic mechanics. -> Adding RPG elements to the game (in which the most comprehensive hooks for the game will be designed in) -> Building a diplomacy system for the game, in preparation for PvP elements. -> Making a balanced PvP system, that would make sure that beginners are not steamrolled or have to pay them self's sick in order to not be steamrolled. I have several ideas to combat this issue, some of which have not been tried in any other PvP game that I know of. -> Find a way to add user friendly and extremely affordable micro transactions, that does not make the game pay-to-win (which is a serious problem in my opinion), but pays for the development of the project. and many further developmental plans with ambitious goals, which I would like to hype about endlessly, but shouldn't. One thing I need to say about them as a hint; The ultimate goal is to go beyond City-Builder RTS RPG, where you can choose to be one of your soldiers and level him/her up as your avatar in the world that you created. This might sound like a grandeur mishmash of really difficult ideas to pull of, but I like to dream big - you might not succeed in it, but at least you tried and learned something along the way. No matter how big of a dream you try to follow, even in failure you can walk away wiser than you were before. Either way, you win something. One thing is for certain though - I will need a lot of help to get to where I wish for, with this project. The development of the horror title will continue at the latest once the first commercially viable version of the mobile game is released. That's all for this time. Thank you for tuning in and I'll see you on the next one! And as always, you can check out every possible mid week announcements about the project on these official channels; • YouTube • Facebook • Twitter • Discord • Reddit • Pinterest • SoundCloud • LinkedIn • https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Hi and Welcome to this weeks Dev Diary! Unfortunately this week I don't have any pictures to show for the progress, as I have not been able to make any prototypes this week. I have, how ever, been doing research on the various ways that the text could be done, and it seems that pursuing full 3D texts is the hardest option here, which has made me lean towards faking the 3D effect with caustics. Since the "Announcement Bar -project" has taken such a long time, this might be a necessary sacrifice to speed up the process. Instead of talking about the "Announcement bar -project", I will be revealing some goals and plans regarding the mobile game project. The Plan In General The game will take place in an ancient time, before any recorded history, which gives a plenitude of creative freedoms. The ideas I'm having has been largely inspired by the oldest stone structures found thus far, one of which is Göbekli Tepe, that dates back to more than 12 000 years ago and the re-discovery of the Richat Structure, also known as the "Eye of Africa", which looks geologically a lot like how Plato described Atlantis - what if there really was a much older high civilizations before the Sumerians, that was destroyed by some huge local or global cataclysm? Not a new idea by any means, but it is interesting to think about, how things might have panned out before any recorded history. Without taking any part in if it is true or not, it does allow your imagination to go wild with ideas. The early goal is to make a playable, simple prototype, which is expanded from the core mechanics, which are; The game is 2D or 2.5D, with a fixed perspective, similar to all the other popular RTS video games. You manage and command your units by selecting them with a tap. You build buildings by selecting what you want to build and tapping where you want to build it, most likely grid based placing. You need to gather resources in order to construct buildings and fund the training of your troops. Pretty basic stuff. How ever, the interesting part is where I'm planning on going with this game, step by step; Making a PC version of the game; -> With improved graphics and flexibility in managing everything. -> With an eventual goal to add the ability to link your Mobile save to your PC game, allowing you to play your saves where ever you go. Expanding the game mechanics; -> From a simple RTS to City-Builder RTS, with functioning economic mechanics. -> Adding RPG elements to the game (in which the most comprehensive hooks for the game will be designed in) -> Building a diplomacy system for the game, in preparation for PvP elements. -> Making a balanced PvP system, that would make sure that beginners are not steamrolled or have to pay them self's sick in order to not be steamrolled. I have several ideas to combat this issue, some of which have not been tried in any other PvP game that I know of. -> Find a way to add user friendly and extremely affordable micro transactions, that does not make the game pay-to-win (which is a serious problem in my opinion), but pays for the development of the project. and many further developmental plans with ambitious goals, which I would like to hype about endlessly, but shouldn't. One thing I need to say about them as a hint; The ultimate goal is to go beyond City-Builder RTS RPG, where you can choose to be one of your soldiers and level him/her up as your avatar in the world that you created. This might sound like a grandeur mishmash of really difficult ideas to pull of, but I like to dream big - you might not succeed in it, but at least you tried and learned something along the way. No matter how big of a dream you try to follow, even in failure you can walk away wiser than you were before. Either way, you win something. One thing is for certain though - I will need a lot of help to get to where I wish for, with this project. The development of the horror title will continue at the latest once the first commercially viable version of the mobile game is released. That's all for this time. Thank you for tuning in and I'll see you on the next one! And as always, you can check out every possible mid week announcements about the project on these official channels; • YouTube • Facebook • Twitter • Discord • Reddit • Pinterest • SoundCloud • LinkedIn •

from GameDev.net http://bit.ly/2E9yH17