Thanks Tomodev for your detailed feedback.
FYI, this version was focused on doing maps and making tiles and water look better visually. So a lot of the UI stuff that was added in last update and other gamefeel & QoL issues haven't been looked at yet.
Options and Credits are placeholders for now. Folks do seem to complain about this, so I think I will definitely move some options into this by the next update.
As for fullscreen mode, the coder previously wanted to add it after some specific selection feature was in. Then we both just forgot about it. I just had a chat with him and there's nothing preventing us from adding it in the next version. lol
We have yet to add keyboard controls to much of the UI yet. We will probably add that alongside customizable hotkeys.
One of the core features of my game is that I want a map for every inch of the planet. Feels like a pie in the sky, but we're actually pretty close to making it a feasible thing through map generation. I stopped at 109 because I felt it was enough for batch 1.
There is a list for the maps, but there's also a 'world map' selection screen where you can browse the world map and click on parts of the map to zoom into and select the part of the world you want to play. I think in future I will make the world map interface the default and have the map list on one side of the world map or something like that. It's currently kind of clunky and needs improvement so the map list is the default.
Franz josef land 17-1 #2 is a typo on my end. I just checked the map list Excel spreadsheet. They are named according to province and subdivision they belong to in real life. All the arctic provinces are huuuuge, so there's a lot of maps for them. We're working on the Arctic maps first because those biomes are barren and easy to make. The names will become more varied as we move south because the provinces will become smaller. Map names with numbers at the end will be rarer as we move into more settled territory.
Color selection order and default settings I think we could change into something a bit more 'gamey'. Does 'blue' for P1, 'red' for P2, 'green' for P3, and 'yellow' for P4 sound good? Maps are generated as 4 players as a max by default, although there can be more.
Only one faction for now. I want to have it fully completed before moving on to hammer out the second one.
The Tech Tree is just a grid with tech tiers on one axis and production buildings on another. We just added that in the previous version as well, we haven't added any visual polish to it yet.
I think the scrolling issue will go away once we make things full screen.
What do you think about the build menu though? Currently we have three things displayed: 'things you can build', 'things you can't build because you don't have enough money', and 'things you can't build because you don't have the tech.' I'm thinking it might be better to hide all the 'things you can't build because of tech', since the tech tree is accessible in-game anyway.
As for the build order of the vehicles, I don't think we're going to change that right now. In future we will add hotkeys to help build things faster.
There is no real AI right now. In fact this version with the maps just added the infrastructure needed to add AI in the future.
Pathing is the core problem of the game right now, one which we are taking about 2 months time to fix right now. Increasing unit response time and improving path smoothness and unit object avoidance are all things we're working on right now. See the new Object Avoidance right here: https://twitter.com/GamesBreakfast/status/1566827073003352066
As for why Jeeps and all vehicles rotate in place. This is a trade-off of the path finding. In order to have bigger maps with amphibious and navel units in future, we need to simplify the pathing objects. So they all just pivot in place. We had very complex navigation in earlier versions, but that did not fly with the complex and large maps we wanted.
Building animation is something we would like to do, but currently do not have the time and resources to do. We're going to redesign some of the production buildings. The vehicle depot is the oldest and lamest buildings of the whole bunch and its getting replaced.
Yeah that HEMTT thing is also a typo, I just fixed it in the internal dev. Thanks for spotting it. The HEMTT is cheaper than the Stryker, although it is more expensive than the JTLV light transport.
Gathering points are for later. It's something that is doable and we have plans for.
Yes, all vehicles have a single 'driver', for the sake of our sanity, we're pretending that all vehicles only need the one driver. It makes leveling them up, giving them abilities, and transferring them from one vehicle to another in the future easier. They encompass all the functions of the vehicle. I will not add multiple different crew types for single vehicles and aircraft. In future, when ships sink, I might add a bunch of 'sailors' that you can save for a small monetary bonus, but all the abilities and experience will be given to a single 'captain'.
The economics of the game has yet to be tweaked, kind of can't until the path finding is fixed and supply trucks can gather supplies reliably. The Supply Dock is not infinite by the way, so you need to seek out new ones eventually. Also, in the future, I will also give the player an option to get supplies from specific points on the edge of the map. These will be infinite, but obviously will take longer to gather. Early game will be about the supply dock nearby, mid-game will be about fighting over other ones on the map, and late gate will be about securing the edges of the map to ensure the flow of supply.
Unit path finding response time is something we're trying to improve right now.
For the zoomed out view, we currently haven't found a comfortable limit to how far away it should be. We might limit it a lot more once we add a full map view into the menu.
This is developed on the Love2D framework. Not 100% engine-dev, but close.
We have added some context-sensitive selections in the sidebar menu we'll add more once we feel the layout of the sidebar UI is mature.
Yeah, there is a lot of work to do.
So, the thing with maps is that I am purposely making them very big to test the limits of our path finding and how the gameplay feels on the big maps. I've heard the maps are 'too big' many times, and their size makes the game really chug. So, all in all, the it's highly likely that maps in future will be smaller. The current maps are based on 0.5 degree longitude and latitude squares, which are about 56 square km at the equator. We might have to shrink that down to 0.25 degree squares instead. Making them smaller will obviously mean I have to make more of them to cover the entire globe.
We've spent 2 versions focused on things other than actual gameplay and QoL. One on new UI, one on the map making and tiles. So the next update will be on improving QoL and gameplay.
Thanks a lot for your huge in-depth feedback. I appreciate it very much.