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[PsycheMac]

100% thumbs up for the arms

Thanks! They may need some more work to fit them in better but I like the atmosphere they create.

Error Tool Tip

I've been working on a lot of useability features to display more information about what is happening. There are plenty of complex interactions happening in the game and the player needs to be made aware of them. A great side effect of working on this is that it also helps me understand what is occurring in the game more easily. So it's been useful as a debugging tool.

One of the features I added is an error tool tip and highlight that displays if there is a reason an action can't be made.



End of Turn Event Scrolling

I also made a feature which scrolls the camera around the map and shows all the important events that are occurring when the next turn button is pressed. This helps the player understand what events happened as a consequence of advancing the game.

[tankorsmash]

How's this coming along?

[PsycheMac]

How's this coming along?

Thanks for checking in! It's been going really well. Been spending a ton of time working on the graphics and art style. It's a lot of back and forth between different ideas but I think I'm honing in on something that works well.

Improved Shaders and Tile Resolution

What I've mostly been working on lately is improving the art rendering and style. I've made the shaders more advanced by adding normal and specular information to make the game look more realistic. I also increased the tile resolution size from being 64 pixels to 128 pixels. This allows me to add a lot more detail into the art.

I've been experimenting with different stylistic themes. So far I've been edging toward a more fantasy/metal style which anthropomorphizes the issues and government buildings. I hope it makes the game more engaging and brings in an idea that all the actions taken in the game are being done by people which make up society and the government. I feel like just having static looking objects is more unassuming. The metal style reflects the darkness that is in the game as the actions your government can take can get brutal.

Soon I'll post a gif of the anthropomorphized government buildings.

[PsycheMac]

Government Building Anthropomorphism

I've been trying to match the government buildings into the new fantasy anthropomorphized style. It's been difficult to add faces that look dark and disturbing without being too creepy. I feel that the face version of these buildings help to tie the idea of the arms in better. Before it seemed a little to disconnected for there to be arms coming out of the buildings.

[s_harriton]

Hey Mac! How is development coming along?

[PsycheMac]

Hey Mac! How is development coming along?

Hey, its going great! Been mostly working on art and the fidelity of the art assets but now going back to implementing more gameplay elements to make the game closer to being playable.

Improved Desert Biome

The desert assets I had hadn't been updated to the new higher resolution texture size so I spent a lot of time redoing all of them. While doing this I tried to make them look more compelling and match the new fantasy style. I also added some mesa sections to the terrain generation to reflect mountainous regions within the desert. The oasis is currently a stand in and will be more fleshed out later.



Region Expansion

I have not been happy with how the game gives a territory for the player to use as their country. Since the inception of the game it has just randomly generated a large country with regions for the player to work with. This was uninspiring because it didn't allow the player to build their own country from scratch as much. One of the most fun aspects of strategy games is starting from nothing and building something great from that. With this in mind, I've created a country territory expansion mechanic which allows the player to expand their country across the map. They can also choose not to expand and there are benefits and consequences from choosing either route.

The first gif shows the region expansion mechanic in action and the second shows the improved flag graphics which use a shader to wave it in the wind.

[s_harriton]

Looking good!

[nathy after dark]

I really hope you can make the arms thing work. It has so much potential to be the most bizarre and awesome visual innovation in the genre, never give up!

[PsycheMac]

Looking good!

Thanks!

I really hope you can make the arms thing work. It has so much potential to be the most bizarre and awesome visual innovation in the

genre, never give up!

Thank you! The arms are a permanent fixture in the game at this point. I found a way to make them work thematically and stylistically which was what I was originally having trouble achieving. I won't give up on it!

Shader-based Shadows

I could not quite get Unity's shadows to work in the game properly. It required too much set up to have the background plane be angled correctly and also have the tiles be staggered to match the angled plane. I have since set up the background and tiles to be completely flat which makes the development of the game and tile sorting so much easier. I wasn't liking how objects on the ground looked like they were floating because they didn't have any shadows. It was off putting and irksome. To fix this, I had to resort to writing my own shadows into the shaders. At first I didn't think I would know how to achieve this but I somehow figured it out and so now there are shadows! They are "faked" in a way but I think the effect is achieved.



Fog of War

Pretty much every strategy game has to have fog of war! With my new territory expansion system I required a way to hide the landscape around the player's territory so that they expand into the unknown. The effect I had in mind is slowly swirling storm clouds to reflect the current gloomy fantasy style. So I wrote a shader to achieve this effect and I'm pretty happy with it! I think it is cool looking without being too distracting. It also shows a little bit of the terrain underneath so that it can give a hint of what terrain is ahead.

[PsycheMac]

New Game Mechanics

I've been taking a lot of time to develop game mechanics so I haven't had a lot of pretty art to post here. Some of the things I've been working on are proper lose conditions, the ability for government organizations to have connections between each other(like requiring approval for policy decisions), and creating bureaucracies. I've also reworked a lot the government powers(like judicial, legislative, etc) to be more distinct and interesting. The game is becoming much more well rounded as far as how it is designed.

Regional Boundaries

I've also worked on creating 3 different flags which separate the 3 possible regions that can compose the player's country. Once there are political party symbols, those will be placed on the flags based on what party a region prescribes to. The color of the flag will change based on the color of that particular political party which is customizable by the player.



Updated Government Buildings

Here are updated versions of the government buildings and all their possible combinations based on the choosable government powers. Each power category has a look associated with it and adding more powers to a building will add more features to the building. The bottom right building is the corporate building which represents the private sector. This image shows the buildings watching the player's mouse as it moves across the screen.



Here is a bonus image of one of the updated government buildings and its arm which grabs policy issues.