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[Yrgkala]

Jõudu tööle. The grass, bridge & trees are excellent, but I think the cliffs should be completely black and the tipis should be cleaner:

[Eigen]

Thanks for the comments!

You had me at angry beavers.

Most badass animal there is. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Very excited you started making a game out of this!

I'm very excited too, I can barely keep my pants on

Jõudu tööle. The grass, bridge & trees are excellent, but I think the cliffs should be completely black and the tipis should be cleaner:

Aitäh. The antialias effect is pretty neat, I'll keep that in mind, but I'm not sure about the outline. Unless I add outlines to everything else as well, it doesn't quite work.

Looks nice, I'm looking forward to seeing how it will play.  The whole 'pick a team of settlers, then go and start a colony' thing gives me a nice dwarf-fortressy vibe, although I'm guessing from the fact that it's turn based you'll have more control over the individual settlers?

Yeah but it's not that much about settling down or building a colony than exploration and survival. I'm not sure how the turn-based thing plays out because a lot of times it's just you and your characters on screen and nobody else to give the 'turn' to. But having turns (which is basically one day) gives meaning to the characters stats, as in how many moves you can make in a turn, etc.

I've been thinking about other game-mechanics as well. I think I should give the explorers-natives interaction more emphasis. First of all, the native people speak a language your characters don't understand. It'd be all symbolic and your challenge is to figure out, if the symbol means "go away, stranger" or "you are welcome here" by obeserving the context. Then you could exchange stuff and even get some tribespeople to follow your party. But if you don't feel like decrypting symbols, you could take an polyglot/scholar but otherwise utterly useless type of character along to the journey. Your choice.

Regarding exploration, I'm not sure how to keep things interesting. Basically there is only terrain, trees and water. Should there be temples with treasures or burial grounds where you could loot stuff from and traps around them or what? Or occasional underground caves you could go and explore but what's there to look for? It's not a group of robbers or treasure seekers but explorers but then again, who'd leave a treasure behind …

I do have an idea to justify treasure seeking and looting. What if you'd need the treasure to fund your next exploration. You'd start out with a little wealth and that hires you a small (and not very skilled) crew with not much equipment to take along. If you return, the King or whoever donates some gold in addition to the treasures you found, so that you could hire a better crew and better equipment to go explore larger maps for longer time. So the game would basically contain levels, which you'd need to progress trough. That would work I think.

Devlog 2

* Sorted map objects
* A ship with explorers in them. You do everything in the game being one of the characters. To move the ship, you select the captain and order it to sail to where-ever. The arrow shows the location of the selected character.
* Massively better GUI event handling
* (Un)explored map drawing

Next up: Pathfinding to move the ship (done) and disembarking when near some land.

[namragog]

You should have not Native Americans, but an UNKNOWN CULTURE

[Eigen]

You should have not Native Americans, but an UNKNOWN CULTURE

Actually it's not about any specific nation, the tipis are just somewhat iconic and recognizable so I thought I'd use these. That's probably why you thought it was Native Americans. But UNKNOWN CULTURE ... I like the sound of that!

Here's quick and short video of the ship moving around using A*. The diagonal sprites are missing so it looks weird in some directions. In fact, the whole ship is very much WIP at this point (and drawing it from any other angle than the side is a pain)

Link for YouTube video

[namragog]

Wow. That video blew my mind. 

I love everything so far. I hope there shall be an UNKNOWN CULTURE.

[ninto]

The gameplay reminds me of the computer game Age of Empires, haha. Anyways, this looks pretty neat.

[Franklins Ghost]

Looking nice and takes me back to playing Pirates on my old Amiga which is always a good thing

[keo]

impressive dood!

[sabajt]

i get a nice vibe from this. simple and clean, yet warm and inviting.  keep it up, i really want to play this!

[Eigen]

Thank you!

i get a nice vibe from this. simple and clean, yet warm and inviting.  keep it up, i really want to play this!

It's funny how you get a 'warm' feeling from these colors. For me, the green feels a bit cold and distant. I'm not sure why, because green is supposed to be a warm color.

[oyog]

Regarding the question of encouraging exploration-

Suppose you had different kinds of rare resources (metals, spices, sugar, furs, etc.) that could be discovered as you're exploring.  You could then build an outpost to claim the resources.  Outposts consume basic resources (forests, plains become farms), attract settlers and grow into towns.  The cycle would continue till towns grow into cities(if their are enough basic resources in the area).  Town growth would basically be autonomous with minimal interaction from the player.

The player would be able to buy (tiered?) upgrades based on the size and rare resources of an outpost (horses for increased movement?, furs, sugar, guns can be traded with locals?) in exchange for (treasure? furs? undiscovered resources traded with locals?)

I imagine something like playing a game of Sid Meier's Civilization or Colonization from the perspective of one of the units (specifically explorers/scouts). You can observe the game being played around you, but the only influence you have on the nation is exploring, designating rare resources and trading in towns.

All of this is heavily based on Colonization's New World theme.  I imagine it would work relatively well for other scenarios though.  Depending on how much combat you want in the game an alternative scenario could be something like the Conquistadors, with little focus on outposts and growth and more focus on combat and looting er, treasure hunting.

And of course, I'm fantasizing about the game I'd like to play based on what I've seen and read in the thread so far.  I have little idea how much more work would be involved in developing what I just described or if it's even in the same direction you plan on taking the game.

[Eigen]

Thanks for the brainwaves.

I like the idea of outposts and them growing into towns and cities, I mean it's the kind of game I've always wanted to make. There's something inherently cool about the Civ/Col concept. That said, I think it's out of the scope of this game, at least in the current stage. Once the game develops and I get a better feel for it, this might just be added. That concept would work best if there was one huuuuge map where outposts would be like save points from where you could get supplies and crew to go further.

I do want combat but as a mean of protecting yourself from all kinds of hazards not a necessity.

Thanks again for the ideas. Once the basic game-mechanics are in place I can start trying different things out.

Devlog 3

* Stuff now moves in turns. You have a certain number of moves you can make each time.
* Animating sprites (waving flag on the ship eg.)
* Characters can now get off the ship and move on land. No walking animation yet.
* Fixes in object sorting (Don't know what was going on in there ..)
* GUI additions: Widgets now have a content source delegate which points to an object telling what this widget shows (for labels, menus and so on). Makes life easier, especially for menus which may have very dynamic content with lots of variables to take into account.

Next up: A way to get back on the ship, character stats and inventory and use of tools (to cut the forest down to forge paths).

Here's a screenshot showing the new character sprite, without an outline unlike in the mockup. It's small but not too bad I feel.




A new video can be found here (shows the characters getting off the ship and going about). Also, near the end of the video there's a quick look how the game looks in grayscale as I toggle the sprite coloring on/off.

[Quarry]

Delicious content, I liked the new character - looks more like a settler

[tchassin]

To encourage the player to keep exploring , you could for example make rare resources attract people from higher classes and with better merchants.
For example, collecting fur could attract skilled cloth/armor merchants with higher quality items.

[IndieGamesDig]

Really dig the color-scheme, has a very "solid" feel to it, if that makes any sense.

Plus, you're supposed to be traversing wild, unexplored territory; having a cooler, more distant feeling color-scheme seems appropriate for such areas as you'd be exploring them with some trepidation.