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[bacon]

I feel like it has been mostly a rite of passage for Unity devs to have to roll their own Tilemap system (see most of my dev posts ) but it looks like Unity may actually have a baked in solution now:





I'm planning to give this option a test go and see how it works. I don't think it has "support" for isometric stuff yet, but it does look like you can make tilemaps at runtime, so if this is a better solution, I'll probably switch to this. I'm also fighting some tile rendering issues in general right now, so something that "just works" would be really nice.

[bacon]

Small little update! Been working aggressively on map render code, and just recently got full 16 tile bitwise tilemapping in as well as the ability to do map wide animations of terrains. This is all using the GPU now as well so it's super fast! No idea how well the Unity tilemap stuff benchmarks but needless to say I'm glad I spent the time to work on my own solution and come out with a pretty good result. Here's a little look:

[Palm]

Oh man. I have a really soft spot for games like this (though I was never any good at them!) because of Advance Wars growing up. I actually think I saw the really early workings of this in 2015 on Tumblr and it's cool to see how different it all is now. It's really looking great and will be following along for sure. What are you guys doing for music?

[bacon]

Oh man. I have a really soft spot for games like this (though I was never any good at them!) because of Advance Wars growing up. I actually think I saw the really early workings of this in 2015 on Tumblr and it's cool to see how different it all is now. It's really looking great and will be following along for sure. What are you guys doing for music?

Haha wow yes I did used to post a little bit of it on Tumblr back then because that's where I thought the gamedev community was. But yes it has definitely come a ways from then (GMS to Haxe to Unity!). But yeah, glad you're interested! I'm definitely trying to channel some of that advance wars love, but want to also make this be its own thing. There are some pretty core systems and ideas I haven't talked about yet, so the advance wars interest is kind of a starting point, but in reality the game is more like Advanced Advanced Wars haha.

In regards to music, I actually have a composer working on tracks for the game in parallel to my development. We haven't settled yet on a sound of the game, but he sent me some stuff recently that sounds really good so we'll see!

[Palm]

Dope! I'm excited to see (and eventually hear) more! Will be watching closely!

[bacon]

I've moved on a bit from graphics to start sprinting on gameplay work, but wanted to share a little experiment I did! Unity's new versions allow for 32-bit vertex indicies, which means the total number of a verts allowed on a given mesh just dramatically increased! Though I plan to have large maps and wouldn't necessarily implement them this way, I decided to just flip a few switches in my map generation stage to leverage new large indices and see if the game holds up. And it did! With older Unity versions I could max out at maps about 100x100 tiles large. With the new vertex changes, I was able to produce maps 1000x1000 and still have a more than performant framerate (70fps+). Here's a little gif of the test:



Where this starts to fall apart a bit is if the tiles are animated, so I still plan to do some stuff where I intelligently break the map into smaller meshes so each mesh can animate independently instead of needing to edit one large mesh every frame. Another solution would be to only ever use one "static" mesh and just update the UVs as you move the camera, but this may result in what looks like "fixed increment" panning, and I want something that feels smoother. Anyways, hope you all enjoy!

[bacon]

Hey Everyone!

I've launched a website for the game (and revealed the game's real name, Cantata)! https://www.cantata-game.com/. Head there to see some peeks of the COs for the first time! I'll also be around at GDC this week if anyone wants to meet up and say hello!

I've been sprinting towards making the game just generally look+feel better, especially after having gone to Indiecade a few weeks ago an fielded people seeing the game in public for the first time. So that means more explicitly showing supply lines, adding in sounds, adding in better UI, adding in animations, adding in more terrains, etc.

Here's a new screenshot showing off some of that:

[doghouse]

There's some useful information in this thread that shouldn't be overlooked.  Thanks for sharing that.

Your game is looking pretty cool, too, good stuff!  :D

[bacon]

There's some useful information in this thread that shouldn't be overlooked.  Thanks for sharing that.

Your game is looking pretty cool, too, good stuff!  :D

Thanks! Obviously let me know if you want to also know about anything else. I was basically working on map graphics for a while and finally went to add polish, but want to get back to more dev posts post-gdc. I want to do a big one on the map rendering.

Also, here's a better gif of that screenshot:

[ColePowered]

Really like the look of this bacon! That art style is like a mix between Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Advance Wars. I really admire the depths you've gone into here with the development blog.

What's the story behind the name?

[bacon]

Really like the look of this bacon! That art style is like a mix between Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Advance Wars. I really admire the depths you've gone into here with the development blog.

What's the story behind the name?

Thanks for the kind words!! I need to update it more but unfortunately I've recently just been in the morass of UI re-design & implementation (picture below). In terms of the name, it's something I came to after a while of thinking. I actually wanted to initially call it "War Machine" until I found out about the tabletop RPG by the same name.

The idea for Cantata came out of thinking about a name that would encompass not only the battles happening that I'm designing, but a name that could encompass someone's mod of my game that made it the best WWII sim or best Star Wars sim or whatever. I tried to think of what a metaphor could be for a single battle, like what if a battle was a "drawing" or it was a "vision", channeling a lot of Metaphors We Live By. I landed on the idea that a battle could be a song, or maybe just a single voice, singing. Cumulatively, all possible battles are a collection of voices singing, or as that arrangement is actually called, a Cantata. I've grown to really love the name and really think it captures the feel of the game.

Also, new UI work!

[flex$]

man UI work can be such a bummer to me but i like what you've done. everything is looking real tightly produced, appreciate how much work you've been putting in to the back-end here, really feels necessary to create a smooth tactical experience. keep going strong.

[Seriously Unserious]

This looks like a really promising game. Looks like you've put a ton of work into it since you first posted it here 2 years ago. I love the graphical style you're going for, too. IMO I've been seeing way too many current games coming out with a bleak, dystopian look lately, so this should be a breath of fresh air when you're finally ready for a first public release.

I see you're progressing to having a website to help promote your game. I'd be happy to help you work on building that out more and help you turn that into another place where your fans can to to follow your progress and possibly build your own community around your game too.

[bacon]

man UI work can be such a bummer to me but i like what you've done. everything is looking real tightly produced, appreciate how much work you've been putting in to the back-end here, really feels necessary to create a smooth tactical experience. keep going strong.

Yeah man it's a big drag haha, so thank you for then nice words. It also feels like "the good work", because it's so important for the player in strategy games and most strategy game's approach to UI is to basically completely ignore it and not try to design it well. I definitely want to make it something that the player feels like actually has some thought into it as well as an actual hierarchy of what's important/what's not, so I'm excited to watch players interact with it. I also haven't really talked about the core mechanics of the game anywhere, but part of the hassle with programming the UI is that some of the things I'm trying to convey aren't typically done in strategy games, so I have to figure out new paradigms around that.

This looks like a really promising game. Looks like you've put a ton of work into it since you first posted it here 2 years ago. I love the graphical style you're going for, too. IMO I've been seeing way too many current games coming out with a bleak, dystopian look lately, so this should be a breath of fresh air when you're finally ready for a first public release.

I see you're progressing to having a website to help promote your game. I'd be happy to help you work on building that out more and help you turn that into another place where your fans can to to follow your progress and possibly build your own community around your game too.

Two years! I can't believe it has been that long haha. I know this little devlog has been trucking along but so surprised it has been two years! And it's also crazy because I haven't looked at some of the gifs from what I was originally posting. It's cool to see the game start to look like those initial concepts. And yeah I'm very excited about how "bright" the game is in it's art when it's all said and done.

If you're interested in helping me out with the web stuff/community building, definitely DM me!

Also, because you mentioned the website I realized I've never posted any of the CO art here! So here's a small taste. Head to the website to see a few others

[Seriously Unserious]

Send DM.

That guy looks like a hard core drunk! Good artwork.

[bacon]

Send DM.

That guy looks like a hard core drunk! Good artwork.

Cool looking now! And he isn't so much a drunk as just a general shithead. He's the incumbent general over a fleet of ships in one of the game's major factions. Think like a "young king" narrative. He's also just one of nine total COs, which I'll start posting over time

[Seriously Unserious]

Send DM.

That guy looks like a hard core drunk! Good artwork.

Cool looking now! And he isn't so much a drunk as just a general shithead. He's the incumbent general over a fleet of ships in one of the game's major factions. Think like a "young king" narrative. He's also just one of nine total COs, which I'll start posting over time

I see. Looking forward to seeing the rest of them.

[bacon]

Starting to round out a lot of the UI work I started. Got stuff in and properly interacting, which means it's almost finally time to go back to core game work.

[Seriously Unserious]

Awesome work. Looking forward to when I can try the game out for myself.

[Sustrato]

Did not expect that direction for the UI, but it looks slick.

The name totally fits too, sounds almost like 'tarantula'. Maybe those spider bots are Cantana models?