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[JobLeonard]

Working on the systems to enable gameplay programming in the engine. Here's a Pong demo that I made to test it out - this standalone "mission" is about 100 lines of Python!



Make no mistake, I'm making an RTS, not Pong I just want to be able to be able to create a lot of different, varied missions with numerous scripted interactions. This is just one example to test how achievable that is.

Will be publishing the script on GitHub and dropping a new devlog soon ~~!

oooh, an RTS game! Those are rare these days, following!

[epermyakov]

New episode of the devlog is live now:





I talk about adding tasks/coroutines to the Python scripting API. Also about how I implemented a couple of visual effects and a Pong minigame using the new tasks/coroutines. Trying to show how this style of coding can be a good approach to expressing gameplay logic.

The content is catered towards more of a gamedev audience so I think some of you guys will enjoy it.



Here's another sneak peak of something from the video - a rudimentary day/night effect. Cheers!

[epermyakov]

Uh, almost forgot. RTS games have base-building right? Yeah, right. It's coming 

[JobLeonard]

Yes milord


zugzug

[epermyakov]

More progress on the building mechanics. Soon enough, the peasants will be doing some real work.

It's actually crazy how complex this interaction can get. Like, if the peasant is interrupted or dies while on his way to build the "marked" building, the building should disappear - unless there are other peasants also going to build it. Oh, and if someone steps on the "marked" building area before it's "founded", we should cancel the building. Because we wouldn't want to make the area under it non-pathable before someone actually gets there to build it...

[JobLeonard]

Oh yeah, combinatorial explosions are very hard to tame, because each option multiplies with each other option. You gotta think algorithmically and almost in terms of "Big O" to work around that

[epermyakov]

Finally wrapped up with the base-building mechanics. Here's a showcase of the generic "build" effect. It's something straight out of 2002 ** ahem ** -- having great "retro charm".



Devlog talks about all the complexity of the mechanic and the stuggle I had to overcome to get it implemented:

[epermyakov]

More progress. Polishing and making it super-stable. Got a questing system up. Aiming to get a playable demo on Steam soon.

[epermyakov]

Updated the OP with some new (more recent) screenshots. Finally got my demo out on Steam. Missed the whole indie festival event and the exposure I could have gotten from it, but c'est la vie.

Still, it's an important milestone. Forced me to fix a couple of long-standing bugs ("get clean" so to speak), and actually take immediate steps towards creating gameplay.

Demo on Steam

Anyways, I hope some of you guys check out the demo. This is basically the first time I'm getting other people to try out the game. The gameplay loop isn't finalized. This first version of the demo is more of a tech demo and showcase of some of the mechanics rather than a true vertical slice. I tried to make it as vertical as I could though.

I'm hungry for feedback. Will be happy to hear any and all thoughts regarding the demo. First impressions, what you liked, what you didn't like, if you think this game has any potential whatsoever.

[JobLeonard]

Well, I'm on Linux so unless you add that version to Steam I can't test it!

(I know, I know: in theory I can build it from scratch using the GH repo. It even has some nice instructions)

But looking at the steam page description I can give you some feedback on that at least!


Overall I like it, but I think you might want to reconsider how the project comes across to someone who discovers your game purely through steam. Let me explain.

This is clearly a very personal project, since you even mark it as "Eduard Permyakov's Everglory", like an auteur. One way to look at it is that you're very open about how much of a passion project this is to you that you just want to share with the world, which is cool! Another one would be that you're arrogantly thinking that your name is a mark of quality, as if you're a really famous author ("Sid Meier's something something").

Now, based on your devlogs and given that this is a fully open source project I'm inclined to go with the former (why give something that takes this much effort to write away unless you're really passionate about it?). However, we have to think from the point of view of someone who discovers your game through Steam. They don't have that contextual knowledge. The Steam description page is the first thing they will see.

Most likely, people will think this is made by some game studio with a bigger money/manpower budget than you have (you know how the internet works: the number of idiots who won't read developer: Eduard Permyakov, publisher: Eduard Permyakov will be disappointingly high). People have different expectations of big game studios, indy dev studios and individual developers. If you can avoid that people will unfairly compare you to a big studio with infinitely more budget and manpower that saves everyone a lot of grief, right? So it's worth trying to manage those expectations a bit more.

To take one extreme example: imagine if you start the description with something like "Hello, I am Eduard Permyakov and I'm really passionate about RTS games! That's why I decided to build one of my own, from scratch!" Just straight up go first-person in the description announce this is a one-man project.

In a similar vein:

Single-Player Focus
Embark on a legendary journey spanning over 20 missions that take place on meticulously-crafted maps full of diverse quests, mysterious secrets, custom mechanics, and scripted interactions.
Storytelling and Worldbuilding
Explore a mystic world inspired by the history of medieval Russia. Fight off hordes of Mongolian Orcs and foil the sinister plans of the magic-wielding Teutonic Knights.

This sounds really cool, but none of those missions are ready yet, right? So I would add that this is planned content, and that this is a first public demo of an open source project asking for feedback.

[epermyakov]

Well, I'm on Linux so unless you add that version to Steam I can't test it!

(I know, I know: in theory I can build it from scratch using the GH repo. It even has some nice instructions)

But looking at the steam page description I can give you some feedback on that at least!


Overall I like it, but I think you might want to reconsider how the project comes across to someone who discovers your game purely through steam. Let me explain.

This is clearly a very personal project, since you even mark it as "Eduard Permyakov's Everglory", like an auteur. One way to look at it is that you're very open about how much of a passion project this is to you that you just want to share with the world, which is cool! Another one would be that you're arrogantly thinking that your name is a mark of quality, as if you're a really famous author ("Sid Meier's something something").

Now, based on your devlogs and given that this is a fully open source project I'm inclined to go with the former (why give something that takes this much effort to write away unless you're really passionate about it?). However, we have to think from the point of view of someone who discovers your game through Steam. They don't have that contextual knowledge. The Steam description page is the first thing they will see.

Most likely, people will think this is made by some game studio with a bigger money/manpower budget than you have (you know how the internet works: the number of idiots who won't read developer: Eduard Permyakov, publisher: Eduard Permyakov will be disappointingly high). People have different expectations of big game studios, indy dev studios and individual developers. If you can avoid that people will unfairly compare you to a big studio with infinitely more budget and manpower that saves everyone a lot of grief, right? So it's worth trying to manage those expectations a bit more.

To take one extreme example: imagine if you start the description with something like "Hello, I am Eduard Permyakov and I'm really passionate about RTS games! That's why I decided to build one of my own, from scratch!" Just straight up go first-person in the description announce this is a one-man project.

In a similar vein:

Single-Player Focus
Embark on a legendary journey spanning over 20 missions that take place on meticulously-crafted maps full of diverse quests, mysterious secrets, custom mechanics, and scripted interactions.
Storytelling and Worldbuilding
Explore a mystic world inspired by the history of medieval Russia. Fight off hordes of Mongolian Orcs and foil the sinister plans of the magic-wielding Teutonic Knights.

This sounds really cool, but none of those missions are ready yet, right? So I would add that this is planned content, and that this is a first public demo of an open source project asking for feedback.

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

Did you try to install the demo though? It's available on Linux (*cough* "slash SteamOS"). I uploaded the Linux binaries to Steam as well, and I believe on the store page it says Linux is supported. I've been running the game on my Linux box via Steam.

So try it, if it's not too much hassle! I'd love to get a confirmation that it's running on Linux (for someone else).

In the demo, there is one mission that takes about 10 minutes to beat. You also get the map editor and all the Python scripts to hack around with if you want. Hence, this is a "demo" and not the final product. A demo is a sample of the final product. The game is not yet released, and I think most people understand that a demo is just a small sample portion of the final product.

I hear what you mean about going in heavier with the "one man project" angle. You've got to not overdo it to the point where it's cringy though, "like I'm one man and I need to eat, please donate to me!!1!1". I'll think about how to sell the story and manage expectations a bit more in the description.

[JobLeonard]

I believe on the store page it says Linux is supported

It didn't show it when I opened the page though... I'll try again later

I'm at work now, but I'll make a note to try this out somewhere this week! :D

I hear what you mean about going in heavier with the "one man project" angle. You've got to not overdo it to the point where it's cringy though, "like I'm one man and I need to eat, please donate to me!!1!1". I'll think about how to sell the story and manage expectations a bit more in the description.

Yeah, def. a tricky balance to pull off, I don't envy you!

Good luck!

[epermyakov]

Resource gathering mechanics are in the works! Soon enough, this will be "officially" an RTS.

[epermyakov]

Released another quick devlog showcasing the current demo gameplay and reflecting on the gamedev journey. Enjoy.

[epermyakov]

Moving the resource gathering mechanics along. At this point, it "works".

Notice that every storage site has its' own resource count. More about that later... 

[JobLeonard]

Oh, local storage instead of global storage? That sounds like an interesting take on the economic sim aspect!

Will there also be semi-realistic supply lines for feeding the troops out in battle?

[epermyakov]

Oh, local storage instead of global storage? That sounds like an interesting take on the economic sim aspect!

Will there also be semi-realistic supply lines for feeding the troops out in battle?

Yeah, these are my thoughts. To spice up the classic RTS formula a bit with a pinch of ideas from simulation/city-builder games.

Not exactly in the way that you mentioned, but I am working on an aspect of supply chain management. For example, to build a building, you first need to get the required resources for the building to the build site. Later, to train units, you need to bring appropriate resources to the training grounds.

From a game design perspective, I think this adds three things:

    1. You need to plan your base such that the distance from the resource to the building "consuming" the resource is minimized

    2. Some resources may be far away or in a dangerous place. In order to make use of them, you need to either migrate or set up a dangerous supply chain

    3. There may be some "luxury" resources hidden around the map. Using them can get you some powerful tech. But to make use of them, you need to extract them and transport them safely back to your base

Anyways, these are my first ideas on the matter. I'm going to talk about it more in depth in the next devlog. For now, I need to finish implementing the other aspects of this mechanic. Transporting from place to place, with some degree of intelligence and automation.

[epermyakov]

Yet another debug visualization. These things are a must though as the game becomes more and more complex. Otherwise you can spend unbounded amounts of time trying to understand some interaction that occurs occasionally...

[JobLeonard]

Hah, yes! Thanks for sharing, I love technical screenshots

My first thought is a probably useless "oh dear, make sure the Big-O of whatever algorithm those circles are involved in is less than quadratic!"

[epermyakov]

It's less than quadratic.

I use a quadtree for spatial indexing of all the units. So, I am able to make range queries in log(n) time. The overall logic per-frame for finding the combat target is n*log(n). When I do stress tests with 1k+ units, I see it chewing through some CPU time.

Definitely room to optimize it more. One basic thing I thought of is to make "bins" that keep track how many units of a particular faction are currently in that bin. Updating the bins is almost no cost (do it when I change an entity's position). Then I can quickly discriminate between large sections of the map as not needing to do target finding logic.

It's not a priority right now though. The performance is adequate for what I'm doing. Need to focus more on getting all the mechanics in, polishing, producing assets.

Speaking of that, here's another quick tease:



This is leading into the resource-transporting mechanics I was talking about. A pinch of city-building and management gameplay added to the true and tried RTS dish, if you will. 

(P.S. I will put tooltips on all the stuff)