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[kamac]

So I've got chopping down trees to work. Once you order a peasant to go chop down a tree, he'll keep chopping down trees till there are no more trees in the nearby area (~15 tiles from the original tree left&right). Once he chops down a tree, he'll go and store the wood near the statue. In the future I'll probably add some storage building, so if you mine some precious resource far away from your base, your peasants don't have to run too far.



There is a bug with Unity not sorting objects once you break a batch (which in this case is me hovering my mouse over a tree -> changing tree's shader to a highlight shader). I'll have to find a solution to this.

Next up I'll most likely be working on adding a way to gather gold, which probably will be by mining it. Also probably some world generation, depending on the way I choose for the gold to be gathered.

So, see ya then!

[kamac]

Back with another update.

Decided that I should give more attention to fighting, since that's what the player will spend most of his/her time doing. This made me add several new things:

Team colors

I've added 12 team colors that will allow you to distinguish your units/structures from your enemies'. Also redesigned peasant a bit to make room for these team colors.



Barracks

This structure will allow you to recruit melee units, such as peasants with forks, milita or knights. I haven't made it so that the construction site covers the whole thing yet.



As you can see there are team colored flags on barracks. I plan on adding stuff like that to every structure so you can tell what's yours and what isn't.

Knight & Selecting multiple units

I've added the mighty knight (probably the strongest melee unit you can get from barracks), and worked on controls (what left click and right click does), to make sure you could move your units without accidentaly telling them to cut down a tree or attack a structure (LMB is the attack/action/deselect/select button, while RMB is always used to move). I also added selecting multiple units at once, and controlling them.



Attacking enemy units

I worked on fighting system, and made the knight be able to strike down your enemies when ordered to. I also added a Settlers IV esque spirit flying towards heaven when a unit dies.



What's next

I've made a lengthy todo list of what I need to do to get closer to a playable thing. There's stuff like adding in a mage/arcane tower where you'll recruit mages, towers, improving world gen, adding more units etc.

Obviously I have to pick one thing, and I might just go for adding more units & working on mages.

[TheArtistJiii]

Interesting Concept. Like one commenter noted earlier, the aesthetic reminds me of kingdom. The rts aspect also reminds me of kingdom, though i'm not gonna go and say this looks like a kingdom ripoff. That would be a disservice to your game and kingdom.

From what you laid out in your plans for this game, its a bit more ambitious with the amount of content you want. Lack of varying content was something i thought held kingdom back(I still thoroughly enjoyed it though!). Your Game so far looks very appealing and gameplay ideas sound very promising. I hope your stay true to your vision, because i would love to experience this when you finish. Any chance of a public demo in the far future? Thanks.

[kamac]

Hey mesh, thanks for an insightful comment!

I do have plans to add fun stuff between settlements, that will hopefuly add depth and content to the game. Stuff like short mini-dungeons with traps, or random swamps with a witch or two. For now the concept is to lay out some special items in those special locations, so that the first settlement to obtain those may give them to a unit to make it stronger and more unique. But it's a concept.

If that's not enough, I might start adding a scenario mode (like they have in Warcraft 3, for example), because I have a few cool ideas for it - but that's only once I have everything else done and the game is fully playable with randomly generated maps.

I hope your stay true to your vision, because i would love to experience this when you finish

Whether I stay true to my vision depends on whether the vision turns out to be fun! But nothing looks like it won't work at the moment.

Any chance of a public demo in the far future? Thanks.

I can't rule that out, but since the game is in a very early stage right now, I don't know what content could be put into such a demo. Long story short: I'll be looking into it much later into the development.

[swipefaststudios]

Awesome project, love the pixel art and the game concept! Is the map infinite or just a certain size?

[matheavyk]

The game looks promising! You probably will not avoid comparisions to Kingdom, but that isn't necessarily bad. It is a kind of a game style to explore by developers making new games like it. I find your approach to RTS a nice way to explore the idea.

[kamac]

Awesome project, love the pixel art and the game concept! Is the map infinite or just a certain size?

Thanks, it's finite (hence max 12 settlements at once), and the size can be specified upon map generation. Currently I'm testing stuff on 512 tiles wide, which still feels quite big, but the map can be up to 4096 tiles wide, althrough I don't think I'll ever need to go that far.

The game looks promising! You probably will not avoid comparisions to Kingdom, but that isn't necessarily bad

Well kingdom made sidescroller water popular (I admit that's where I took the concept from, too), so it's easy to connect the dots here . Though the difference with their water and mine is that kingdom uses a more 3d-esque water with perspective projection (or faking perspective projection), while I use fully 2d orthographic water. Small difference.

I find your approach to RTS a nice way to explore the idea

Hah well hopefuly I can push the genre forward

[kamac]

Wow each update here seems to take more and more time. Or it's just me being lazy to make a post when I have something done. I think I should be making a list of what I changed between each entry here, so I don't have to spend time finding that out every time.

I've spent some time, pondering over how's the first mage group gonna look like...

Introducing the ANCIENTS

I made some wannabe concept art for these guys to help me figure out better what are they, actually.



Obviously the art style which I'm going with in the game at the moment doesn't let me do all of that detail, but I did my best. I might end up using a digitalized version of these as an avatar for story mode, if I ever choose to add it in.



I decided to give the younger ancient a helmet-esque thing to cover his face. It'll make him look more badass, but the reason was mostly because I'm using heads as icons when recruiting, so no head can be too similar to the other, and it was looking a bit too much like a peasant.

I plan on having two units like shown above for each mage group. Each unit will have different spells available to them.

For example the younger ancient will have more offensive spells, will be more durable and faster, while the older ancient will have more defensive and support spells, will be weaker and slower.

Mage tower

Next up I got 'round doing the pixelart for this key building. You'll obviously recruit your mages there.



Some magic

Then I finally got to work on some simple magic, and added in the auto attack projectile-spell for ancients.



As you can see it's purple. I like purple.

ANGRY PEASANT

This dude was in for a while already, but I'll document adding him for the sake of it.



He's the weakest melee unit, but a fast one. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HIS ROLE AS A CHEAP SCOUTING UNIT.

Next up

Whew that was a lengthy one. I plan on doing whatever I noted down as important in my todo list:

1. allow multiple select even when hovering over building
2. make game pixel perfect
3. add hp bars to owned/allied mobs (show hp over head if it changed)
4. switch from float to ints for hp
5. add missing sfx

I'm kinda concerned with 2nd one. I'll probably have to change ortho size depending on screen size... Or add black bars in. It'll be the toughest one.

I'm gonna enjoy making weird noises into the mic on the 5th one. Though I might have problems with synthesizing some sounds for ancient's magic.

... and then I'll probably start adding some more advanced spells for young ancient and the grandpa ancient.

[Davi Vasc]

Though I might have problems with synthesizing some sounds for ancient's magic.

I don't know what you use to synthesize stuff but I would suggest using Absynth 5. Its the best for synthesizing weird unrecordable stuff in my opinion.

[kamac]

Though I might have problems with synthesizing some sounds for ancient's magic.

I don't know what you use to synthesize stuff but I would suggest using Absynth 5. Its the best for synthesizing weird unrecordable stuff in my opinion.

Thanks for the suggestion, but 200€ seems a bit steep for a poor student!

I'm a bit green when it comes to synthesizing stuff. Maybe I'll just record a weird noise that's close to the thing I want, and then edit it a lot.

I'll get it done one way or the other.

[kamac]

Been almost a month since my last post, but I didn't want to write anything till I had all Ancient spells done.

Well, I still haven't done them all, but I'll probably wrap them up in a few days. Meanwhile I can show what's done already, and write about my idea for statues.

STATUES - HISTORY

A long time ago different species of aliens with unknown motivations came and shared their knowledge with promising students, thus with time different schools of magic were created. But- people's reserves of inner energy that is the source of all magic, couldn't come close to any of the cosmic masters', with most students struggling to cast the simplest spells. That forced the masters to come up with an alternative - people would raise their master's statue that'd channel his or her energy to it, which would then in turn be drawn by the students.

Basically a statue has energy points, represented as floating balls around it. Any spells cast costs energy from statue, and energy regens with time.

THE ANCIENTS' MASTER

This is the concept art I've done for Ancient's Master:



And this is how it looks in game (I decided to ditch the hair):



ANCIENTS' SPELLS

offensive mage - young ancient:

Name: Ancient Charge
Desc: Cast a condensed ball of energy, that upon contact with enemy, explodes dealing magic damage to both foe and ally alike. Powerful, but double edged sword.



Name: Raise Undead
Desc: Summon an undead, good enough to atleast stall the enemy.



Name: Magic Hazard
Desc: Throw three grenades of condensed energy, capable of damaging enemy structures greatly, and enemy units alike, albeit with lower damage.



Name: Ancient Alteration (ULTIMATE)
Desc: Transform the caster into an ancient avatar.

After transforming into an ancient avatar, you have two skills - raise undead army and ancient slash:



support mage - old ancient:

Name: Teleportation
Desc: Instantly teleport to nearby of any of your units



Name: Ancient Armor
Desc: Cover your units in magic armor that reduces both melee and magic damage received



There will be two more spells for support mage, but I'm still working on them.

You won't be able to use ultimate spells right away - you'll need to upgrade your statue first. Both offensive and support mage will always have one ultimate spell. Also, I probably won't be showing the remaining two support spells in this devlog - it's cluttered with spell GIFs enough already

What's next?

I'll finish up the remaining spells, then I'll start adding more buildings, a way to mine gold & stone, then either AI or the stuff that'll be between settlements like caves & mini-dungeons / swamps. Once the game's playable, I'll start adding more mage fractions.

Finally, I encourage () you to follow me on Twitter if you'd like to see the remaining two spells, or just be always up to date.

[kamac]

Yo. This time it's a less packed, but earlier update.

Gold Mines

You can build a gold mine only if it contains two gold ores. Gold ores are placed so that every settlement can build one gold mine near it's statue. There's also an additional place for a gold mine between every two settlements.



To mine gold, you need to assign at least one peasant to a gold mine. The first idle peasant is assigned. Just like after chopping wood, a peasant after mining gold will bring it to your statue.



Gold is used to build new structures and recruit units.

Day & Night system

It's mostly cosmetical at the moment, but opens up possibilities for the future, eg. it could be useful for the campaign, or some random events during the night.



I have yet to add some lights in settlements during the night.

[kamac]

Aloha. Time for another collective update.

Lights at night

I've added torches that light themselves up when night begins.



There is a problem with the way Unity's lighting works in 2D. Big sprites aren't being lit the same way small sprites are. You can see that on the new Mage Tower sprite:



Lighting barely affects it for some reason. Whether that's my fault, or Unity's, I'm still uncertain.

Defense Tower

I've added a building that'll help you sleep at night



It's still all a bit unbalanced. Right now it's barely able to scratch a knight.

Upgrade wooden house to an inn

If you're running out of people points™, you can upgrade a wooden house to an inn.



AI

This is a big one. Every settlement has an AI that runs on a separate thread. I decided that if everything was to run on the main thread, I could have trouble with FPS later on. Though I must say that sometimes it's a big pain in the ass to manage all those locks (and Unity3d isn't helping either).

At the moment AI is able to build stuff, and it kinda knows when to build what. I've also touched on recruiting units, but it's in a very early stage yet.



AI also knows how to manage peasants. At the moment it's just trying to fill all gold mines with max workers, and have atleast one peasant chopping down trees.

[kcbanner]

This is looking awesome. Very cool fog of war implementation, I might have to steal that...

[kamac]

@kcbanner, Thanks

Been a while since last update. That's because I was working mostly on fixing bugs and making AI behave better than a two year old would.

So the AI is pretty much functional right now. I'm definitely not done with it, but it's playable. It can build, manage peasants, recruit and manage armies, and throw spells.

I've decided to remove summon undead and teleport skills, leaving each mage with 3 spells. They were of little use, and too many spells was hard to manage.

Settlement distribution

From now on, map is generated with settlements distributed in pairs, like this:



Which means that when the map starts, you'll have one opponent to fight. As the game progresses and settlements fall, AI will look for the next closest settlement to attack. If you're not quick enough to defeat your first opponent, you might find yourself struggling against attacks from two enemies.

Desert biome

Desert biome has little trees, making it hard to build multiple structures.



I might add more gold ores in desert biomes. That could be a nice reward for the lack of wood.

[kamac]

New stuff

Greenlight

Mages'n'Peasants is on greenlight now!



Small stuff

I've redone build menu. It now looks like that:



If you select some units and press ctrl+[number] (eg. ctrl+1), you'll assign those units to that group. Then, to select that whole group, you can just press that same number button.



Now energy left is not only represented by the balls floating above statues. It's also in your menu.



Custom lighting system

I had to implement some kind of my own lighting system. Unity's lagged with too many lights.

Basically, the new system takes in "light sources" and renders them to a separate texture. Here's how a scene looks with it's corresponding "lights texture" (in the upper left corner):



Then, every lit object is looking up it's pixel on the above texture, and lits itself accordingly.

You shouldn't be able to tell the difference from Unity's lighting system, and now everything runs smoothly.

Priests

I've added new mage faction - priests. Here's how the statue and it's mages look like:



Out of the more interesting skills, Offensive Mage (man priest) has Apocalypse:



And Support Mage (priestess) has God's Eye (it nerfs anybody it's looking at, save for allies):

[TheWanderingBen]

Just saw this devlog but read every one of your posts -- excellent updates! To the point, with plenty of images, but still showing real progress.

I'm even more interested in your project since you're a fellow solo dev

Continued luck, especially on the Greenlight approval! Just voted Yes for you 

[kamac]

I'm glad you like it!

Continued luck, especially on the Greenlight approval! Just voted Yes for you

Thanks

[kamac]

Took a small-ish break from deving, but I'm back now.

First things first, Mages'n'Peasants has been greenlit! Getting greenlit nowadays is pretty trivial though. I didn't really have to do anything other than to put the game on greenlight.

Nevertheless, getting greenlit is quite motivating. I've already done some simple steam integration into the game (only to the point where I can call steamworks API and get results).

Changes to gameplay design

I've decided that I don't like how the current design of a big map with several settlements spread around it into pairs works. There are several problems with it.

- If there are only two settlements left -- very distant from each other -- units will have to walk an outrageous amount of time to get to the enemy.

- The game was too linear, and it felt like there was barely any tactic element to it.

- There were no limits to how big your base could get. This could've been either good or bad, but it would've required some more thought to it.

So, to solve these problems, I've decided to split the map into islands. One island per settlement. Below is an image of how big I plan for each island to be.



Now, to get to your enemy (or perhaps ally), you have to build an Island Portal. For now I've put it's price at 50 gold, which requires some work to gather, and it should increase the time till you can start attacking your enemies.

Here's how a portal works (still a bit buggy, but it's getting there):



The first thing to do after you build a portal is to choose the target island for it. Once that's done, you can change the side to attack the island from at any time. If you choose left side, your units will be teleported to the left edge of the target island, etc.

Changes to fights

I find the current idea of melee units lining up to fight a tad unfair. This way you could send 1 melee unit to stall a much larger force, while in a truly two dimensional RTS that one unit would be easily overwhelmed.

To fix that, I plan to add a damage buff to the first unit fighting. The buff would be the higher the more of your melee units would be lined up.

Settlement building

I think that there's not enough "building upon" during a match. Currently it all boils down to placing barracks and mage tower as soon as you can, and you're set. You don't have to build anything anymore.

I'll have to fix that. I plan on adding more buildings (such as smithy to upgrade your melee units), more upgrades to existing buildings, and perhaps more units (I'd like to have some of them flying).

Afterword

Lots and lots of stuff I have to fix/add that comes to my head. I'll have to sort through it and pick most vital ideas.

[kamac]

And here we go again.

New Fighting system

Before I got around to trying to fix the old fighting system (units lining up to fight in melee), I had decided to try out a completely different approach. Basically, I removed lining up, and introduced knockback upon hit, which currently is calculated by comparing attacker's attack damage with target's armor. Here's what it looks like:



Much better, I think. It still requires some tweaking (perhaps I'll shorten attack animation time, so units don't overlap as much), but it's already looking way more functional. And fun.

Since knockback varies, stronger units will be able to knockback weaker units quite far, without being knocked back themselves.

Smithy

First step toward introducing more "building upon" in settlements. This building allows researching better weapons and armor, increasing your melee units' attributes respectively.



The upgrade stages are iron, steel and adamant.

Gates

These took me the better part of the time to get to this update. Gates can hold up to three units on their walls, and allow you to stall the enemy before he reaches your statue.


Placing gates (you can rotate gate's direction by pressing R)


Mages defending a gate


Gate breaking down

Recruiting multiple units

It wasn't in before, but I decided I should add it in. You can now queue up more than one unit to recruit.



That's it for this update. With the new fighting system and islands, I feel much more confident in the game's gameplay. Next up I'm planning on adding a "creatures den" building, where you'll be able to recruit mythological creatures respective to a mage faction (eg. a cyclope).

I'll also most likely add a library building where you can research spells for your mages (basically unlock their respective spells, instead of getting them all for free).