Welcome to the pre-alpha dev log of  "Virtueror: The Virtual Conqueror" a Real Time Strategy game featuring original game mechanics and a graphic style I call "neo-retro". I am working on this as solo developer and in my spare time as I have a day job, even if I am doing my best to guarantee a steady progress, which basically means I work on it every day, no matter what!  

The game will feature 4x (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) and RPG elements, but I am going to write more about those in the future, when the main features are implemented.

The project is still in early stage, but I am confident that I will get to the 20% pretty soon. Right now I am working to get to a first alpha release and I hope I'll be able to get there by the summer.

That's why I thought that now was a good time to create this blog as I am starting to put together enough content to show something, but I am so far from the end that I can benefit from comments and feedback of anyone that might want to be involved. I should probably mention that for this game I am going to go for an open development approach and soon I will start to invite people to join me on this journey on Discord.

From now on expect weekly updates in this blog. I will also update this first post to signal the most relevant changes and news.

WISHLIST & FOLLOW

SCREENSHOTS

MAJOR UPDATES

• 15 Apr 2021 - Dev log video: adding defensive structures, more new UI and a bigger map
• 04 May 2021 - Web blog is up
• 19 May 2021 - Dev log video: adding map navigation, new units and basic combat
• 06 Jun 2021 - New blog post and some big news
• 08 Mar 2020 - February 2022 dev log update

MINOR UPDATES

• 22 Apr 2021 - Production and marketing news
• 30 Apr 2021 - Join the open development
• 10 May 2021 - A special video to celebrate the 100 YouTube subs
• 29 May 2021 - New screenshot

LINKS

• Newsletter - sign up to get major updates by mail
• Youtube - where I publish video dev logs and where I stream live development
• Twitter - where I publish minor, more frequent updates
• LinkedIn - like Twitter, but more professional ;-)
• GitHub - source code of the game

It's time for my first video update since starting this dev log!

These are the main features I am presenting in this update:

• New UI - I have been working on the UI and I designed the new buttons to control units and buildings. They might not be final yet, but I think they look much better than the old gray placeholders! Let me know what you think after watching the video.
• Defensive structures - this is just the beginning of a something that will be in development for a long time... but it's already possible to build walls in game! The design system is to improve, but it's already possible to build complex walls that automatically adapt to to the planned design. For example segments become a corner when 2 walls meet.
• Bigger map - the map I used so far was only 20x20 cells and it was fitting on a single screen. It was convenient for development, but I wanted to start to show more as this game will also be about exploration. For this update I created a 40x40 map, but I am aiming at maps that are going to be much bigger than that. I just need to implement map navigation/camera handling to get there, but that's what I am going to work next!

I need to decide on what else of the following 2 features I should focus the next few weeks of development:

• 1- defensive structures. Introducing upgrades for walls and towers.
• 2- new units and attack mechanics

I am asking the same question at the end of this video and I would love to get your feedback on this, so let me know what you would pick leaving a comment on YouTube or here.

See you next week for a new update!

As a solo indie developer I have to do more than coding and designing game mechanics and new graphics, I also have to take care of production and marketing.

Recently I focused especially on these other sides of game development and I wanted to share with you a couple of important results from my efforts.

About the production department, I am proud to announce that I am now registered as Steamworks partner.
That means that I can finally start to work on the Steam page of Virtueror!

My goal is to have a page up by the end of May, but I'll try my best to get it done even before that. I doubt I will have a trailer since day 1, but nothing is sure yet.

You might be asking what about an itch.io page? Well, I am working on that too of course... ;-) and I am planning to publish it on the same day the Steam  page goes live, if not before that. I will try to plan a date in a week or two, so follow this dev log to find out more.

I also achieved a tiny victory in the marketing department.
Since yesterday my YouTube channel, where I post all my dev log videos, passed the first meaningful mark: 100 subs.

I know that's far from impressive, but considering that is all organic traffic and that my game is still in very early stage I am pretty happy with it.
If you want to support and follow my development you can subscribe to my channel and help me pushing that number even higher. 

I always planned to involve gamers in the development of Virtueror and that's why I created a Discord server and invited a few people I know when I started to work on this game.

Now I am getting to the stage where I can finally open the doors to even more people!

If you like Real Time Strategy games and if you would like to influence the development of Virtueror, you can join me in this journey by signing up here.

After doing that you will receive an email with an invite to join the Discord server (check your spam folder if you don't receive anything within 5 minutes).

There you will be able to:

• vote development choices
• suggest new features and changes
• propose ideas and discuss them with other members
• get exclusive updates before they are shared on social media and forums
• get access to the design document and task tracker to always know the current status of development
• enjoy all the memes shared in the #off-topic channel 

All that in preparation for the first alpha build that will be available only to Discord members in early June.

Make sure to sign up soon as tomorrow (Friday 30) we are going to vote for the initial Steam capsule and that will be your first chance to influence the destiny of Virtueror!

Feel free to reply to this post if you have any question.

I published a new dev log video to show the main new features I added to Virtueror in the last month of development:

For this month they are:

Map navigation - that's something I previewed with a GIF in a post from a couple of weeks ago. Now you can see it in action on video.

New units - now it's possible to create different unit types and each has its own attributes, RPG style. There's also a new dedicated dialog to do that:

Combat and shooting - I implemented some very basic combat and shooting mechanics. There's still a lot to do, but it's nice to start to see some more interaction in game!

Yesterday I spent most of my day playing my game and taking screenshots for the upcoming Steam and itchio pages.

I wanted to share with you one that I am probably going to use:

It's been pretty time consuming, also because I only have 1 test level at the moment and showing different things has been pretty challenging, but I managed to get 6 decent screenshots in the end (after taking about 40...).

I also coded a few little debugging features that will help me in the future and I started to think about game balancing and spotted a couple of new bugs.
Overall it took more than I anticipated, but putting all together it's been a good step forward toward my long journey!

The fact that I am posting this update on a Saturday night at almost 1am should give you an idea about how busy my week has been...

On the bright side I have also some important news to share, but let's start with the update.

Early this week I have published a new monthly dev log recap on the blog of Virtueror. This one covers the progress I made with my game during the month of May.

One of the latest new features is defensive towers:

You will find more details and also a new bug of the month in the blog post, so I'll leave you to it.

I mentioned some important news and here it is...

The Steam page of Virtueror has been approved and it will go live soon, on the 9th of June:

I know this is just one more step of a very long journey, but it feels like things are getting real now and it's scary and exciting at the same time!

That also means that the itch.io page is almost ready and it will go live on the same day (if not sooner). Ill make sure to post an update when it's live.

I am happy to announce that Virtueror is now on Steam!

I would appreciate any feedback you might have on my page and I hope you will wishlish and follow it if you like what you see.  

I have also managed to bump the completion tag to 20% thanks to the latest effort in development. I will probably show you something new in my next post.
Obviously there's still a lot to do and I know well it will not be easy, but I am excited for the progress so far.  

The itchio page will be live very soon as well. I just need a bit of time to check everything is fine and to make it public.

The itch.io page of Virtueror is now live and I hope you'll like it... ;-)

From now on I will use the blog of the page for all major updates, but I will keep posting minor updates here now and then.

I have recently introduced a new building in Virtueror: a radar startion.

After you conquer it, you have to connect it to your base to activate it. That's a core mechanic of Virtueror as I have already shown you when I explained how resource mining works.

In the future it will also be possible to build it with your units and to expand its range with upgrades.

If you want to find out more about this game check out its itchio page.

I have posted a new roundup update that covers all the news and all the progress from the month of June.

You can check it out in the game dev log and feel free to post any comment there or even here if you prefer!

You probably know this already, but... indie development is hard, especially if you have a day job.

Recently I have been struggling to do much in terms of development and marketing and as result in the last 3 weeks I did less than what I used to do in a week the previous month.
The main difference is that this month I didn't have any day off from work and I also had to put some extra hours into my day job because of a deadline.
That, combined with temperatures up to 35C/95F for many days, kept me too tired to do anything relevant.

At least things are looking better now.
I spent the whole weekend working on 2 new features (that I am going to show you soon) and I took 1 day off per week (starting from this one) for the rest of the month.

I also put up a poll in my game Discord server to ask if people wanted to try the game as it is now or in 4-6 weeks to have a better experience in terms of gameplay.

Not everybody voted yet, but it's clear what people prefer and that's what I am going to do.

If you want to follow my progress from close and if you would like to influence the development of Virtueror, you can join my Discord server too.

Despite the slow period, I have been working on some new features recently.

Now defensive towers are fully working and they start to shoot at enemies as soon as one is in range.

Another new feature is that when objects are hit they emit small particles.
Keep in mind that GIF compression is not really making justice to the animation, but I promise things look better in game.

Currently I am working on some improvements for the in-game UI, in particular I am focusing on the actions panel that allows to control units and structures.
I will post more as soon as I finish with that.

Now that I can post again I can reassure you that the development of this game was put on hold last summer because of several personal reasons, but it has restarted last December and it's now proceeding at full speed!

I wrote a blog post about what happened and after that I also posted a dev log for December 2021 and one for January 2022.

This should be enough for catching up with the development.

From now on I will use this forum for minor updates, but make sure to follow me on itch.io and to add Virtueror to a collection to get notified of the next dev logs.

As pre-announced in my latest dev log, I am pondering if using procedural generation for the maps of Virtueror or not. I also asked to the people in the Discord server of the game what they think about it.

Click on the image to see the options, then feel free to join us on Discord or to comment here if you want to express your opinion.

It's March and I published a new dev log here on itchio that describes the progress I made during the month of February.

The main news is the creation of a map editor, even if for now it's at a very early stage and its features are extremely limited...

The editor will be fully integrated with the game, so everyone will be able to use it to create new maps.

Other changes involve the addition of a new unit, new in-game UI elements, more work on some RPG features of the units and a few of other minor changes. You can read the full details in the dev log.

Feel free to post your comments or any question here or in the dev log page.