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[PsycheMac]

Game
Structure of Reign is a turn-based government godlike strategy game in which the player designs and runs their own government and keeps it legitimate for as long as possible. Design an efficient government to solve societal issues that emerge from the country's populace. The domestic citizens and other foreign countries react to the government's decisions by praising and allying or revolting and attacking its institutions. Craft regime styles that can be anywhere on a spectrum between totalitarian/democratic, secretive/transparent, conservative/progressive, big government/anarcho-capitalist etc. Relinquish control of the government by creating private institutions or filling government offices with people that have their own self interest.

Gameplay Features

• Ability unlock trees which allow for more advanced tactics
• Regional and national governance structures
• Buildings which solve issues and others that make that process easier or allow for more options
• Government officials with stats that change their effectiveness in situations
• Military and space exploration
• Procedurally generated political parties
• Economic class system
• Web of real world issues which have policy options that chain into other issues
• Topics like energy, health, education, etc that can be bolstered or obstructed which have gameplay consequences

Development
I have worked on this game for some years by myself. The game is generally playable but needs more content and a tutorial. There are plenty of abilities and features which are not finished yet. 90%+ of the art you see is original art done by me and a little bit of it is licensed images that I've modified to fit my game's style. My most recent progress has been replacing all the placeholder art with closer to final art for the game. Most everything will get more polished in the future but for now it is good enough to illustrate the game.





Latest



Devlog Updates
-Rocky Terrain
-Swampy Terrain
-Waterfalls and Improved River Generation
-Pixel Perfect Buildings and Improved Terrain Art
-Disasters
-Government Power and Legitimacy/Landscape Normal Mapping and Updated Ocean Texture
-Advanced Solving Techniques/Protesters
-Less Creepy Government Building Connection Art
-Military Protection/Text-based Game Symbols
-Updated Logo
-Resolution Settings and River System
-Placement Graphics/Screen Shake/Bringing Arms Back/Appoint Official Menu
-Error Tool Tip/End of Turn Event Scrolling
-Improved Shaders and Tile Resolution
-Government Building Anthropomorphism
-Improved Desert Biome/Region Expansion
-Shader-based Shadows/Fog of War
-New Game Mechanics/Regional Boundaries/Update Government Buildings

[Madamin_Z]

Looks good! Keep working on it.

[nathy after dark]

This isn't generally my type of game but something about the main logo really captures my attention. And the art overall is looking like it'll be good! Can't hurt to follow, maybe I'll learn something by scoping out my overlooked genres!

[PsycheMac]

Looks good! Keep working on it.

Thank you for your response and encouragement!

This isn't generally my type of game but something about the main logo really captures my attention. And the art overall is looking like it'll be good! Can't hurt to follow, maybe I'll learn something by scoping out my overlooked genres!

Thanks a bunch! That is very high praise to me. Id love this game to cross audience borders and be interesting to people who don't normally play strategy-esque games. I see you have SLC Punk written on your profile and this game definitely has a punk attitude even if it is not quite visible in the current screen shots. Im also glad that the logo drew you in. Im happy about the way it turned out. I may add a couple things in the future like try out some bronze statues on the sides of the stairs.

[Think Inside The Box]

Love these type of games (SimCity, Transport Tycoon). As you said graphics (especially title screen) needs a little bit of polish, but other than that it is a very interesting concept. Keep up the good work.

[PsycheMac]

Love these type of games (SimCity, Transport Tycoon). As you said graphics (especially title screen) needs a little bit of polish, but other than that it is a very interesting concept. Keep up the good work.

Thank you! Yea everything is going to need a pass for more detail and some of the things like the forests were pretty quickly created. For the logo Im thinking of modeling out the pixelization of the text as bricks to make it more interesting.

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Rocky Terrain

Here is another update. Just added rocky areas to the terrain generator. Going to make another version of the rocks next to add more variety.

[PsycheMac]

Swampy Terrain

Been working on the terrain generator a lot. Added swamp/deltas around the rivers and rocky areas can now blend into the forested areas. Also did some reworking of the terrain generator as I had found a major bug in it.

[PsycheMac]

Waterfalls and Improved River Generation

For a while I haven't had any transition for mountains that begin rivers. I've now added waterfalls which solve this issue for me. Mountains now will generate waterfalls if they begin rivers. With this new addition I thought I'd post some gifs to show the landscape off in motion. The first one shows a close up of the waterfalls and second shows the terrain generator in action!

I've also made improvements on how rivers are generated. Instead of wildly swerving around the landscape, they make their way to the nearest ocean coastline. The deserts have also been modified to have more accurate lighting details. The sand dune sprites have been polished as well.

[PsycheMac]

Pixel Perfect Buildings and Improved Terrain Art

I noticed the mountains and buildings were looking a bit blurry so I spent some time making them be pixel perfect on the screen without any image blur filtering. Now they are much more crisp and clear. Unfortunately I can't do the same for the rest of the landscape as it is rotated away from the camera little bit so it causes some artifacts when the image filtering is taken off.

I've also fixed the beaches to have omni directional ripples. Before they had ripples going in one direction which was inaccurate as the ocean should push the sand in many different directions.

I fixed the trees on the mountains to match the rest of the forests in the game. The mountains were not standing out as much as they should so I added some snow on top of them to make them pop. In the future, this snow amount will change depending on the season it is in the game.

[PsycheMac]

Disasters

Thought I'd stop working on the landscape for a while and make art for the things that destroy it! I've been working on making the disasters look better and more engaging. Since I have been working so much on the landscape, I'm now able to have the disasters occur in the correct biomes.

I've added forest fires which only occur on fully forested areas and I've added hurricanes that strike on the shorelines. In the future, I'll make the hurricanes move around the map each turn and travel towards the country territory via the oceans from the edges of the screen. This will make them more realistic and also create a feeling of an impending problem that the player must deal with.

[nathy after dark]

Love it, tbh. I don't play a lot of sim games so maybe natural disasters are a genre staple but this is the first time I've seen it done.

[PsycheMac]

Love it, tbh. I don't play a lot of sim games so maybe natural disasters are a genre staple but this is the first time I've seen it done.

Thank you! Yea I'm hoping to make the disasters feel even more destructive by having them modify the environment in their wake. For example, I'll have forest fires leave dead burnt trees behind afterwards that will slowly grow back. Disasters already destroy your buildings if not dealt with in a timely fashion.

Disasters aren't a usual thing in most strategy games as they are usually military based. Apparently Civ 1 had disasters but then they discontinued them until they were brought back in a Civ 4 expansion. I never played that expansion so I haven't seen them in action. I should probably check that out.

[PsycheMac]

Government Power and Legitimacy

I've added more government powers into the mix, each with their own special mechanics to help run the country. Currently there are 5 powers. These can be combined in any way desired to make organizations with more or less power. That's 31 different building combination icons for each building style ! More power in a single organization will tend to have higher consequences for actions it takes, although it is able to do more.

I've also added an actual lose condition. It's been weird to work on this game for so long without one but I finally figured out how I wanted it to work. When your government's legitimacy goes to 0, the player loses and must start a fresh new government. Legitimacy is hurt by losing important government buildings and personnel. It is gained by solving problems and keeping the country running.





Landscape Normal Mapping and Updated Ocean Texture

I can't stop working on the landscape since I want it to look as beautiful as possible while I show development screenshots of the game . I've now added some normal mapping to important landscape features to have them exhibit more advanced lighting effects. I've also made a new ocean texture in a fractal program I enjoy using and updated the ocean shader's motion.

[tankorsmash]

First off, the landscape art in this is beautiful man, holy crap. Plus its procgen too.

That "Design Government Org" UI and how it changes the name based on the choices you've made reminds of a neat feature in Dungeon Siege 2 where as you levelled up it would dynamically name your class based on your choices. Wholly different game but still same sort of vibe.

Would you describe your game as a sort of turn based Tropico, in that you're you vs your people? You mentioned a few other games but it sounds a lot like Tropico but zoomed out, haha!

[PsycheMac]

First off, the landscape art in this is beautiful man, holy crap. Plus its procgen too.

That "Design Government Org" UI and how it changes the name based on the choices you've made reminds of a neat feature in Dungeon Siege 2 where as you levelled up it would dynamically name your class based on your choices. Wholly different game but still same sort of vibe.

Would you describe your game as a sort of turn based Tropico, in that you're you vs your people? You mentioned a few other games but it sounds a lot like Tropico but zoomed out, haha!

Thank you so much! I played Dungeon Siege 3 and didn't remember seeing that. Maybe it was only in 2. That's sort of the idea of it. To let the player know what type of building they are making in the context of the game. Also adds a sort of educational spin on it.

It's funny you mention Tropico. I completely forgot to put that in the list of games like mine even though it is probably the most like it out of any of the ones I listed. I should probably edit it in there. Also Tropico has natural disasters and I didn't mention that in my previous comment about disasters in games either.

Tropico is focused on being a strategy game where you are a sort of psuedo-dictator growing a Cuba-like country and trying to bring it out of poverty/gain independence. It has a lot of breadth as far as how you want your country to run with the constitution and other policies. But I never felt like any of that had that much depth. The game to me is more focused on bringing your economy up and aligning with different factions.

My game is the player vs their people, so that is a similarity.  Although it is very much focused on designing a government power structure and deciding how officials get into the government and who they are. There's an idea of losing control of the government based on who is in it because of official's own agendas not aligned with yours. There's also a huge network of policy decisions that snowball into other issues based on the player's previous choices. You don't embody an El Presidente like in Tropico. You are more of a force of will, like if the ghosts of the founding fathers of America continued to try to design and run the country but could lose control of various organizations and people who had agendas different from theirs.

[Josh Bossie]

This is really interesting. I have no idea if this is your intention, but I would absolutely love to see this type of thing in the classrooms. In highschool civics we learned about government types in all sorts of different ways, and playing a game would have been killer

[tankorsmash]

Thank you so much! I played Dungeon Siege 3 and didn't remember seeing that. Maybe it was only in 2. That's sort of the idea of it. To let the player know what type of building they are making in the context of the game. Also adds a sort of educational spin on it.

Here's a list of them http://ca.ign.com/faqs/2002/dungeon-siege-titles-guide-365846 seems like its based on your highest skill. As an aside, DS3 was nothing like the first two, so if you've got patience for old games, definitely check them out.

[PsycheMac]

This is really interesting. I have no idea if this is your intention, but I would absolutely love to see this type of thing in the classrooms. In highschool civics we learned about government types in all sorts of different ways, and playing a game would have been killer

That is exactly what I want to try and do with this. I want it to be a fun educational game on how government works and open people's minds on how to think about making a different government that's more effective than what we currently use. Although I don't want the game to be too simulationy like Europa Universalis. Im trying to ride that line of it being easy to play but also accurately and secretly teaching people. My dream is to have this on school computers just like we used to have Oregon Trail on computers back in the day.

There are a few things that are not completely accurate. For example there's a treasury for your whole country and none for the different regions/states that you have. In real life, each region would have it's own treasury that is separate from the federal treasury. I may change things like that to be more accurate in the future based on feedback.

Here's a list of them http://ca.ign.com/faqs/2002/dungeon-siege-titles-guide-365846 seems like its based on your highest skill. As an aside, DS3 was nothing like the first two, so if you've got patience for old games, definitely check them out.

Thanks for that list. I can see how something like that would be exciting because it changes your class to sound more kick ass as you progress your character's stats. I may try and incorporate that more in the game to give a feeling of getting stronger with your government and the people in it. For example I think I'll change the title of individual officials in the government as they gain more power and authority.

[bigosaur]

Not the type of game I would play, but I have to say the terrain generation result looks pretty good. I think people who are into these types of games would love it. I mean look who ugly Factorio looks compared to this and it's a huge success.

[PsycheMac]

Not the type of game I would play, but I have to say the terrain generation result looks pretty good. I think people who are into these types of games would love it. I mean look who ugly Factorio looks compared to this and it's a huge success.

Wow thanks a bunch! If this game was as successful as Factorio that would be a dream come true.