Game Projects

Basics

1+ player turn-based strategy game. Has a few things that distinguish it from other games in the genre:

Heavily simplified mechanics -- low amounts of resources, building types, and so on so it's distilled to a very basic gameplay foundation.

Decentralization -- Resources have to actually be logistically shipped around, they don't just go to a central "bank" from which they can be used. This is part of why the mechanics are heavily simplified.

Complex Automation -- Instead of moving things around yourself, there's a heavy focus on automation. You can still track where things are or make adjustments but the automation takes out a lot of the labor-intensive parts of the game. The automation here can be conditional or can multi-task, allowing for some pretty customizable gameplay.

Loose technology -- With the use of Labs you can research whatever kind of upgrade you desire to bend or break the game systems as much as you like. More on that in that section.

World

The map uses the Continent Creator project (will have a post for this separately). Terrain generation is procedurally-generated and based on sculpting algorithms developed in shatterloop, with terrain variety based on the adjacents system developed in the mapgame project. The goal is more interesting terrain that makes gameplay more challenging.

Each tile will look quite large (for easier clicking), maybe 64x64 (or smaller on mobile. The map display lets you pan around the world and a menu area will let you look at various things in it. Should be 16x16/32x32/64x64/etc to be pixel art standardized.

The world should wrap around itself in all directions. The Continent Creator project keeps continents from smushing together at any of the edges, so this won't be a problem.

The actual size of the map/planet can vary by design -- adding players to an existing world should expand along one of the nonad seams to generate new continents according to the other dimension. Maybe having explicit greenwich lines would work best.

The world terrain isn't actually stored anywhere -- it's top-down procedurally generated in Javascript as needed. Like with the map project, CD and shatterloop only changes are saved. This allows for very large maps (which I might want).

Resources

extremely simplified, by design.

Wood -- build buildings

People -- used to build things, research, scout, as workers or soldiers, etc

Food -- feed people, or allow more people to be born.

Iron -- used for advanced buildings and weapons.

Other resources are obtainable as tech upgrades happen, either on a one-time-use or rolling use. Their names and locations are largely procedurally-generated. Maybe will do it in a shatterloopian way and require specific terrain combinations (provided they exist).

Buildings

Buildings occupy land tiles and do various things. You can also build additional buildings from an existing building, using whatever resources are in it.

Castle -- Starting building, doesn't do anything but allows you to send out scouts and build additional buildings.

Farm -- Lets you harvest food from land more effectively.

Village -- Reproduce people more effectively.

Outpost -- Send out scouts more effectively.

Port -- must be built on the edge of water. Lets you transport stuff over water via boats and also build boats.

Sawmill -- Lets you harvest wood more effectively. Requires metal.

Barracks -- Converts people into soldiers. Requires Metal. See combat section.

University -- Research your free tech tree to your heart's content. Requires Metal. See research section.

Quarry -- Extract various procgen materials like metals, oil, etc. Requires Metal.

Factory -- Convert resources to other types of resources. Requires Metal.

Building a building requires wood and maybe metal. It requires people in order to build it, and the production rate is determined by the amount of people that live there (so if you send builders you start out with some at least).

Actions

Each building has 3 actions you can do with it each turn. Actions include:

Sending out scouts to explore land tiles. See Scouts section.

Gathering resources from scouted tiles. Inefficient, but you have to start somewhere. See Gathering section.

Building a building on scouted land. See building section.

Shipping out any resource contained within them, including people. See the Transport section.

Whatever the building intrinsically does, like extract metal or do research. The Castle doesn't have this option. See the appropriate sections there later on.

Actions that have units of things (like resources or items of research) count each type of unit separately and have no limits on quantity. So you can ship out as much iron as you want but shipping out wood too requires an additional movement slot.

Land

Land comes in one of several varieties:

Plains -- Good for food, easiest to travel through.

Forest -- Good for wood, medium hard at travel.

Mountain -- Good for metal, hardest to travel through.

Water -- Starting out, can only traverse with a boat and has no resources.

Each land tile also has a variety of procgen properties, which are maybe splayed out in a sculpted way. These make various building types more effective in some way or easier to upgrade or w/e. They can also have various resources with a percentage resource effectiveness -- the basic types are above but the actual amounts vary a lot. Land tiles also contain procgen resources scattered in a procgen way.

Scouting

You only know what the various percentages are and tiles do and can only use or build on them with the Scouting mechanic.

To scout, you send out scouts as one of your actions. Just pick how many people you're sending and click a tile to send them there -- it'll tell you how long it'll take and show their path. The amount of time is based on the distance limit (probably 7 or combine rise+run or whatever makes the most sense) and the kind of terrain you're crossing (plains are easy, mountains are difficult)

The more people you send out, the more land gets scouted between where you start and where you scout to. So if you send 5 people along a diagonal path that contains exactly 5 tiles, all that land will be scouted. Send 1 person (the minimum) and only the destination will be scouted.

Whenever they arrive back, the tile(s) will be indicated somewhat differently. Once a tile is scouted, it can have resources gathered or a building can be built on it. You can also view the tile to see percentages/bonuses/etc and it'll be available in various other trackers if I build them.

Gathering

Once a tile is scouted, you can Gather resources on it. Gathering requires People at the very least, but works better if you also send Tools. Tools can be built at a Castle from wood, wood and stone, or iron (upgradeable in this way). Building a specialized building is even more effective, but requires a lot of resources that are used, whereas Tools can be transported around like any other resource and reused.

Gathering takes time depending on the type of resource and tool efficiency - basic resources are almost instant, while metal or oil takes longer and procgen resources take the most time. The number of people you send doesn't decrease the amount of time but it does increase the yield.

When you tap a tile you're Gathering fro, you'll see the resources that have been collected and the number of people and Tools there - the number of Tools has to be at or above the number of people for maximum efficiency. You can then transport those resources back to a Building by sending them with people.

Gathering tiles can be automated in the same way Buildings can, for example you can automatically gather on it and then send resources back when you get enough. Back at the Building you can send People back to the tile to help out some more, or if theyre reproducing a good bit, send out a percentage of them, which will send out more People over time.

Building

You can use any Building to build any other Building, however this is probably inefficient. Castles and Outposts give you bonuses on movement speed to a construction site and make it take less time to build as well.

Buildings also have a limit on the amount of resources they can hold other than their specialty (like sawmills can hold an infinite amount of Wood), whereas Castles and Outposts have no limit. They're therefore good places to store resources and stage operations.

There is however Tech that can bypass these limits, as the Tech tree is freeform and unrestricted provided you have the resources for research.

To build a building you tap the first building, tap "Build", pick the type, tap the tile, and assign People. If you have the resources required they'll automatically be allocated to transport as well.

Building takes time, but this can be sped up by sending more People. Construction Tools also make sense to boost the speed.

Building yield can be improved by sending additional People, with the exception of Villages - that's a fixed rate depending on the tile's conditions and the number of people in the Village to generate more People.

Villages are the only way to create more People, who are essential to everything else. You start with enough people in your Castle to bootstrap the process at least.

Ports and Boats

Because of the generation system, the world map is made up of multiple continents separated by water. Players start on different continents, so the only way to win is to be able to go over water. Additionally there are useful tiles in water and also special procgen resources.

To make use of this you need Boats, which can be made at Ports.

Ports are a building type that can only be constructed on the edge of water, though the type of water doesn't matter -- can be rivers or lakes (though the latter is probably useless).

Ports allow you to construct Boats from Wood, Cloth and a certain amount of People - cloth has to be constructed at a Factory from Cotton or Leather. Cotton can be harvested from a Plains very inefficiently or grown on a Farm. Leather is a factory product of Deer, which can be harvested from a Forest but are unfarmable without OP upgrades. Which one you choose is up to playstyle or the procgen splay of plains (for building Farms) or Forests (for gathering Deer).

Boats are essentially just resources that are used when transporting stuff over water. There's no limits to what you can transport, but the number of Boats will increase the speed of movement.

Boats can only transport stuff to Ports, or they can be used to Build Ports. From the Port you can then transport resources around or Build additional buildings as needed. Ports also have the Build bonuses that Outposts and Castles do.

Pylons

Because I like game mechanics that thoroughly break games, there's a Magic system that you can access with the Pylon building type. Magic affects every other system in the game, often to ridiculous effects (like turning swathes of land into Forests or whatever), however it's costly to set them up and power them.

Pylons have to be given a particular Spell and are then locked to it unless changed. Spells are learned but in order to learn them they have to be discovered.

Spells can be found on volcanoes in the ocean so there's a limited amount that can be learned without more players. To learn one, you send a boat there with the purpose of Learning the spell there or something like that. These require some difficult combination of resources, but you do at least know what the Spell is once you've discovered it. Volcano tiles can't be used for anything else - islands are instead what you're looking for for resource gain or high building efficiency.

Once you unlock a Spell, you just have it and can assign it to any Pylon you want. There's a menu that shows you the spells you've unlocked and their limits.

Crystals

Crystals are used to both upgrade spells and cast them. They can be mined from islands or Mountain tiles less effectively.

Pylons can only hold People and Crystals. The number of People there determines how long upgrading or casting spells takes. With Crystals you can upgrade a Pylon's spell without limit (which affects the spell locally) or cast the spell if you have enough crystals for it. The better the spell is (based on upgrading), the more Crystals it costs.

Since the magic system ties into every other system, it can absolutely break the game and allow you to become very OP. This is by design. It takes a heck of a lot of resources and work to get to that level however.

Goal

In a one-player game, around half of the obtainable spells will be the Dodecaverse spell, which creates a portal somewhere on the map (usually far away from your Castle) that when you send people through it will make them escape the dimension and you'll win.

In a multiplayer game your goal is instead to conquer the other players. It's assumed that after that there's enough resources for your people to leave so it still ties into the story/lore.

Combat

Combat requires Soldiers, who can be created from People at a Barracks building. Soldiers are a homogeneous resource like any other, however their efficiency can be upgraded without limit via Labs. In a one-player game you don't get Soldiers or Barracks or their Labs.

Soldiers can be moved to an opponent's Building tiles. If there are Soldiers there they have to first be killed, then the Building itself will start to take damage. If other soldiers get there while this is going on, they'll have to be fought before they can attack the building again.

Buildings can be repaired, but only while there are no enemy soldiers there, who have to be fought first.

Buildings can also be Fortified to gain more defense - this requires Iron and Stone and doesn't have limits. There are however nasty spells that can break down fortifications very effectively.

Once a building's defense is done, that building becomes yours as well as any People or Resources in it. Therefore winning a key building can absolutely turn the tide of a war.

When all of an opponent's buildings are captured, you have beaten them. If you capture their home castle, they can still exist however you'll know where all of their present and future buildings are located. So fortifying your Castle and keeping Soldiers there is kinda essential.

Actual Combat

Combat is very straightforward. Starting out, each soldier has 1 attack, 1 destroy, and 1 defense. Every turn a set of soldiers is on enemy ground they'll deal damage to themselves in a sane way, then deal building damage according to the destroy stat. These stats can be upgraded at a Lab without limit, and affect all soldiers regardless of where they are. Doubling a soldier's attack remotely during an ongoing battle can turn its tied. There are also Pylon effects that can increase their stats temporarily or permanently or make them harder to hit or whatever.

Pylons are visible to all players and whatever they're targeting is also visible -- opponents can therefore see that you're targeting something and react accordingly, though you could be bluffing with weak spells and no intention to follow through. They can also tap their own tiles and see Pylons that are targeting it.

Pylons can be captured like any other Building. If an opponent captures your Pylon, they get to use the local spell there and also learn the spell more generally. You don't lose the spell itself however, only that particular local one.

Ship Combat

Ships can hold Soldiers and it's possible to move your ship onto an enemy ship. They do not have a defense stat - as soon as you've cleared the enemy soldiers out or if there aren't any, you capture a ship and it and its resources become yours.

Tile Combat

You can also attack staging grounds where opponents are building something. You can't attack units that are in transport unless I switch to more of a land vehicles system for moving resources around (which probably makes more sense). In that case it would go the way Ship combat does.

Food Scrapping

I'm scrapping the food system. There's not a lot of point in it, and it just complicates the game too much.

Vehicles

Having Vehicles rather than transporting units directly makes more sense from a logistical standpoint. It also allows players to attack one another's transports in a saner way.

My main issue with installing this is how complicated it makes unit management - vehicles can carry different resources but also extra people to improve workload (or stats which are upgradeable/downgradeable with people resources) so this makes it so tiles can have multiple things on them that aren't named or referenced effectively, then there's issues with transporting groups as well and resource costs *for* vehicles. However they do make more sense than the old system, so this post is my attempt to fix those issues.

Vehicles are more of a placeholder for units that are being transported or camps in the old system rather than a separate entity. It might make sense to call them "Convoys" instead.

Creating them should be free, and you can create them from any building since all you're doing is using them as transport. Additionally they shouldn't cost anything in upkeep.

When a convoy creates a building on its tile, the convoy disappears. You'd have to then create a new convoy to go somewhere else.

Naming them "Trucks" probably makes more sense - it explains their role better.

Trucks can hold anything, as they're transporters of resources. However they can only carry people and one resource type each so automation chains work better. They can hold whatever amount of that resource you want though - any attempt to tackle that mechanic leads to tile complexity.

Trucks can be formed into a Fleet by moving a truck onto another truck tile. You can then move the entire fleet at once, or split individual trucks off at any time.

Trucks act like ships - you can attack them and board them if you have more standing soldiers than them at the end of combat. The tiles don't merge, you have to park adjacently, which could lead to some interesting terrain tactics.

Convoys can also be attacked, though ill need to do that carefully to avoid complexity.

Trucks can build on the tile they're on exclusively -- this then prevents the truck from being able to move and will eventually lead to it being scrapped.

Trucks have a Crew stat that can be upgraded by adding people to it or downgraded by removing people. They need at least one person to drive it. Having more Crew lets them build or gather more effectively.

When trucks enter a building tile they unload all their resources there all at once but keep their crew. You can load them with set amounts of cargo, but not unload them, as that would add complexity, to automation particularly. You can however both unload and load and then move again easily, so the automation makes more sense.

Building Trucks

Tap a building tile

Tap "Build Truck". This requires one person and nothing else.

Tap an adjacent tile to place a truck there.

Crewing and Loading Trucks

Tap the truck, or alternately tap a building with an adjacent truck to reach this menu.

Add crew and cargo. You can set an amount of cargo, but note it has to only be one resource type. People are not cargo, they go into the Crew instead.

From here there's a link to go back to the building's menu and another one to go to the truck's.

Truck menu

Tap the truck. This will show its info.

Move to - tap a tile and it'll tell you how long it'll take to go there and show a direct path if it's possible. Tap confirm to place the orders.

follow path - lets you give it an entire path. Not sure on the UI Of this but should be easy and also not too tedious.

Cancel move - if it's currently moving to a tile this will appear and let you cancel it.

Change path - if following a path will let you change the path via that editor or delete it outright.

Unload - if adjacent to a building and has a cargo, will let you unload its cargo.

Load / Crew - if adjacent to a building and has no cargo, will let you access those features. Letting you add crew to existing cargo would introduce too much complexity.

Scrap - if adjacent to a building, will unload and dump its entire crew into it and then erase itself.

Build - will let you build something on your existing tile and turns the truck into a Project tile. More on that next.

Construction tiles creation

Immediately renamed it to be more clear.

A construction tile is a building in progress. Doing this will scrap the truck and put its cargo and crew into the tile. As long as it doesn't acquire additional resources or begin the building process you can "Cancel construction" and turn it back into a mobile truck.

Trucks in convoys have to first be separated out and placed adjacently, so convoys can only build adjacently, not on their existing tile.

IMPORTANT HERE AND ELSEWHERE: Convoys can dump their entire contents to buildings or construction tiles or maybe other convoys. They can trade trucks with convoys as well. Need a section on them really.

Construction tiles

Construction tiles count as Buildings - you can add additional resources from other trucks. You can also dump crew to the project or load them up. There has to be one person left however.

The construction tile menu will show you the resources there and let you build it into whatever you want (if you have the resources needed).

Building takes time, but can be sped up with more people being there. Once done it becomes a building tile.

Gathering

Trucks can either be transport/building or gathering, never both. So they need a different name, like Tractors or whatever.

Tractors can't build, but they can harvest the tile they're on. Unlike trucks they're a bit more flexible and can hold multiple resource types, however they can only unload at the building that built them, so you can't use them as a transport workaround.

They also probably have a range, which makes sense and reinforces that idea.

Tractor Menu

Move to / follow path - identical to trucks.

Return home - goes back to the building they originated from, following a straight path. Tractors that return home don't have movement constraints but can't have this order canceled. There's some tech bringing them home effectively. They could maybe theoretically be on different continents even, might be interesting to explore.

Unload - like trucks but unloads all resources.

Gather - gathers resources of one type only at that area. Crew improves efficiency while Tools improves amount. Best to keep it consistent.

Tiles can get depleted over time while gathering there - having a specialized mining building can make depleted tiles useful again however they still have resource limits eventually.

Load / crew -- identical. Also lets you load Tools if you have them (or keeps a faded menu if you don't for UX).

Soldiers changes

Soldiers are a resource like any other except don't count as a loaded resource. They are produced at barracks but can be moved wherever.

A building that has soldiers and a vehicle adjacent to a building that has soldiers will have a "Load Soldiers" option that lets you do exactly that. Soldiers don't count as Crew, they're exclusively for combat. They also don't count as a resource, so you can have Crew, Soldiers *and* a cargo. Similarly Tractors don't unload Soldiers automatically, that's a separate menu.

A vehicle with Soldiers can attack other Vehicles or buildings. This works like those systems do (like ship warfare).

Armies

A building with Soldiers can make an Army adjacently. Armies are more flexible than vehicles:

They can merge or divide up whatever way you want.

They can load into vehicles or buildings.

They have movement debuffs but are a bit faster than vehicles normally.

They can't carry resources but don't need them. They're just collections of soldiers.

Ship Changes

Ports still build ships adjacently.

Vehicles or armies adjacent to a port that's adjacent to a ship can enter that ship and vice versa - ships connected to ports basically act as a complete unit, and this can maybe chain with other adjacent ports.

Ships can carry Resources (Container Ship), Trucks (Truck Ship), Tractors (Tractor Ship), or Armies (Battleship). Names pending obviously. These are separate types of ships.

Container Ships can carry any amount of any kind of resource, like Tractors. They can unload at any port. They're very flexible, the downside is that they can't do anything else and they're limited to water tiles and ports. Good way to transport mixed resources around easily however.

Container ships can also pull in resources from Islands and Volcanoes, which is important since they're not ports (or I guess they just could be a special type of port that can't make ships).

Truck Ships can move any amount of Trucks around, including Loaded trucks. They can drop them any land tile, not just at Ports. They can't pick them up from anywhere, they have to be adjacent to a Port. The downside is they move more slowly.

Tractor ships work similarly. Tractors dropped off at different continents can still be sent home despite the water barrier. Hand-wavy sci-fi tech.

Army ships also work similarly. Armies can also split while on the Ship and move to conquered ships, though Soldiers probably can too. Army ships can also attack as though they were an army, which can be devastating on coastlines. Also army bonuses are better than soldier bonuses.

Ships can't harvest materials or build directly, they have to drop off Tractors or Trucks, who then create a construction project there. Probably the sanest approach is to limit it to specialized buildings for Islands and Volcanoes that act like Ports but can't build ships. Maybe Colonies and Research Stations respectively.

Since ships can hold multiple Trucks or Tractors this means they can move around, dropping them off to conquer the seas and pick working Tractors up again.

Cost and Gameplay Progression

Given the improved Vehicles system and Armies and such it makes sense to up the cost of stuff in the game so you're actually creating Resources for some purpose.

Vehicles cost resources to make, however can be disbanded for their exact cost.

Armies cost a good bit because of their flexibility.

Buildings are obviously expensive.

Boats as well, particularly Truck boats as they allow access to other Continents.

The end goal of a single-player game really just requires ships, so they're probably harder to construct there.

With multiplayer games, the combat aspect means Barracks and Armies (and Battleships) would be harder to construct. Since there's none of them in 1p, then this is just intrinsic to these units.

Research will eat up a lot of resources to make the game play smoother or faster.

Factories are probably pivotal as they're the Crafting system in the game. Pylons/etc probably require lots of advanced materials.

Resource production will be tricky to balance; it's a good thing there's a single-player mode to iron out the issues.

Actual Gameplay Progression

I see it going something like this:

Start out with a castle on a continent somewhere with some resources and People.

Send scouts out to discover useful tiles.

Create vehicles to harvest those resources.

Make factories to refine them.

Use the refined materials to make trucks and/or specialized buildings to get more materials, which means more refined materials.

Refining further, you can make Ports and Ships.

With 1p your goal is now to find islands and volcanoes. So a 1p game probably doesn't have other Continents.

With those you can escape the world.

A multiplayer game at this point is about sabotaging other ships and beginning to colonize other Continents, making war with them as well. All of this requires more and more resources.

This progresses until there's one player left.

There might be a 1p war mode with hostile AIs. Idk how the AIs would act or if that's even a worthy technical goal. Could be stupidly complex. If the base game looks like the above though and they don't mess with the magic system too much, wouldn't be too hard to set up.