Dev Diary 63 - Finite Infinite Resources

June 23, 2024 · 3 min · Vsevolod

Glad midsommar! Here is the first summer blogpost :) It brings lot of new cool things since the last update! Most notable are Finite Resources and Procedural Forest Types. Read more in the full post.

Finite Resources

After I made player borders to stay permanently (until an enemy takes over them), a lot of slight gameplay annoyances were solved. This allowed to return a feature Colossal Citadels had long ago but was removed because it just wasn’t fun. The feature is that resources (trees, stones, etc) can run out after gathering them a few times.

For example, you can’t infinitely chop one tree. That means you have to move deeper into the forest. When player borders were “unclaimed” new groups/towns were separated involuntarily, confusing the player a lot. Now the borders stay forever and there is no mess with group separation; finite resources encourage exploring the map and searching for better resource types.

And of course it didn’t make a lot of sense to extract 999 wood from just one tree. Maybe if would make sense for wolves from a wolf lair, though…

Procedural Forest Types

Remember procedural ores?

As a continuation of PROCEDURAL EVERYTHING design pillar progress, I also made procedural trees! So, now there are forest types and tree types that are unique for each playthrough.

Forests now not only have different trees, but also vary in their growing patterns (some forests are more “chunky”, the others are scattered around).

Pre-made resources are still here, and, in fact, more common than the procedural ones. I try to invert the pattern of pre-built resources being rare and cool and procedural ones being common.

Different types of woods, stones, etc, have different stats and you might want to select specific ones when producing your weaponry to achieve some insane stat combinations that will help you in winning.

Content

There is a bunch of new things, such as Phantasms, who will possess your troops when they are low on spirit, a bunch of new Understandings. One specifically notable things is removal of one feature for early game (and an option to get it back via an upgrade). Now you can’t place multiple movement orders at the same time from the start of the game. This decision is made to make learning curve a bit more bearable for the new players (the movement system is quite unconventional comparing to other strategy games, so there should be as few confusing things as possible, and UX of placement of multiple movement arrows was often misunderstood on playtests).

Changelog

This changelog is not long, but meaningful:

  • finite resources
  • procedural forests
    • procedural tree and wood types, including visuals and names
  • non-procedural resource types don’t have an additional random modifier anymore
  • blood crystal is now mineable
  • it can be used for medicine
  • medicine category for healing
  • new invader monster: phantasm
  • new spells: possess, dominate
  • new Understanding, “environmentalism” (get wood and some other resources without destroying trees)
    • default for elves
  • new Understanding, “Coordinated Maneuvers” (place multiple movement orders at the same time)
  • new opinion axis - “On military service…”
  • can’t place multiple movement orders by default now. You can have only one (unless you get “coordinated maneuvers”)
  • many tutorial improvements
    • now they are blocking other actions
  • updated steam store page description
  • fixed bugs
  • added some new bugs and a memory corruption…