Deleted 6 years ago
This will probably stay a solo project for the forseeable future, I work with a team for my day-job, and it's nice to have a code-base all to myself for the evenings.
I haven't decided, funding-wise. I don't want to pull a bait-and-switch, but some sort of funding would allow for hardware purchases to support porting to different platforms, or hiring an artist to do the visuals justice. I'm leaning towards keeping the base game free, however.
[Copy from dev post comment for visibility]
Hey just saw your post after watching Nookrium's feature. Really cool game and I love and respect the strong vision you seem to have.
Wondering if you can explain a bit more your vision on the future of this game. I really like the fact that you blend a city building rts with a greater open world. Really had an awesome 'mount and blade' kinda feel to it when I saw military groups being sent out to different maskling encampments.
After reading about a future introduction of nobles, really seemed to have alot of potential in terms of politics with nearby settlements and trying to make your newfound civ survive as part of a greater world.
Looking forward to future updates and your thoughts! Cheers!
Caveat: This is subject to change, and not set in stone.
Bronze Age will be "finished"when you can grow from your first 7 citizens to an entire Empire. A dozen major cities, linked with trade networks, and a total population in the thousands. You will deal with the several races of local tribes through both warfare and diplomacy. There will be rival empires along your border, with which you can trade and wage war. Armies in the hundreds will clash on the battlefield. Charriots, spearmen, archers, and auxilaries pledged by friendly Maskling (and other) tribes. The gods themselves will take interest in your empire, as your priests invoke their favor.
TL;DR: Civilization and Dwarf Fortress had a baby, delivered by Factorio, and they named it Bronze Age
sounds great what you are planning.
Will you also aim to publish your baby on steam?
Your plans sound very solid and I am looking forward the progress of this project. Even with simple graphics it convinces with its unique charme of the great RTS games back in the 90s :)
Do you have any ideas about economy and resources? The idea of different major cities offer great potential of strategic resources and their trading and distribution all over the empire and potential allies for support ;)
I'm aiming for Steam evenually, when it's more feature complete.
As for resources, 1.3 will introduce Copper Ore that is only found in some areas. Over time more location-dependent resources will be added. I'll need Tin at least, it'd be silly to have a game called Bronze Age without the ability to make bronze.
yup for that I was aiming, will there be bronze in this game ;)
The mining for the metals and to produce bronze offers some good ways to increase the possibilitys of trade and of the production tree.
Btw, I encountered some lags in late game, I focussed on one town and expanded it, now it seems a bit laggy when I want to place buildings.
Is it some optimization bug or is my PC telling me that it is getting old?
no prob, it is always nice to make some internet searches especially for such interesting topics.
Atleast my search showed that the ppl of this time were not so primitive as ppl might think.
Trade was rly a big economical factor, especially this ship showed that trading routes connected already most regions of europe, north africa and mesopotamia. Seems like our ancestors were already some pretty busy ppl ;)
I have a small suggestion.
Right now I when you build a pasture your tribesmen walk around the entire map trying to find pigs and while doing so are excellent scouts. I would suggest a building like an explorers hut where one tribesmens job is to just walk around the map and instead of walking towards the next pig he should walk towards the next "black" square.
A custom tileset is fine. I'm not sure how you would go about integrating it. BronzeAge uses monogame, and the tilesets are processed through the monogame import pipeline. The imported files can be found at "Bronze Age\Content\tiles". I suppose if you imported your own files you could just replace them there.
What sort of tiles did you want to replace? Some of the tilesheets have a more complicated format than others.
Hej Commodore
I wanted to ask if you are going to plan to enhance the terrain generation? I know you mentioned in your planned features more fertile soil etc.
But will you also implement maybe dessert as the opposite, or island biomes (to play similar to the island culture of crete)?
Also something I was wondering, how far you want to increase complexity of resources. Like mudbricks atm can be produced everywhere. Will you change that towards, that it can only be produced close to a water source?
I know I am asking a lot of detailed questions :D
But I must say that the possibilities of this game are rly fascinating with the bronze age, so hopes are flying high with a lot of ideas ;)
Funny you mention terrain generation, as I went a little overboard while adding copper ore last week.... Long story short, 1.3 will have a brand new terrain generation algorithm, which should add some nice variety. There are deserts, savannah, highlands, mountains, grasslands, and forests. More biomes are likely to be added in the future as well. It also produces the occasional island as well.
1.3 will introduce resources that only appear in certain biomes. Copper ore and stone only show in mountains and highlands, while fertile soil only shows in grasslands along rivers. I don't want to make that restriction with mudbrick, since pretty much everything requires it.
that sounds like a great step, looking forward to it :)
Yeah I know it would restrict the production. But wouldnt it be more challenging to start with wooden buildings as it represents an easy start and to achieve Mudbricks as a higher "tech" or wealth level? I was a bit bored so I checked the web to get an answer how common mudbricks were. And depending on location it was not the most usual construction material.
Egypt for example had depending on the area wood or mud but as a high level stone buildings.
But Babylon had only wood and mud, Stone was not so interesting for them.
Will the river be open for trading routes later on? like an alternative for roads? ;)
yeah true, regarding the process mudbricks are easier than wood. I was expressing it wrong. I meant that mud is in reality also dependant from the environment. As I said, Babylon could use it in large quantities, with two rivers in the area and a hot climate it offered the perfect solution for buildings. Also with burning mud/clay to ceramic it had a good point. In Egypt and Crete it was different. So they changed to wood or combined wood and mud as material.
So Rivers are a great place for the future :)
Well I can imagine that ships will take a while to implement, take your time :D
Someone mentioned optimization above somewhere --- I think part of the optimization problems during construction rest with how big the object is that you are constructing. It seems that later on the more large objects that you have built the slower it becomes when you want to build another. It doesn't seem to effect houses (2x2) as much as it does farms (5x5).
The game also seems to slow the larger of a population you have either wandering aimlessly or looking for work. If it isn't something implemented already, could some of those citizens who are idle be idle inside of a house? Like walk to it and close the door and stop being processed as an entity? Or could a worker limit not exceed a certain number. Right now you're allowed to make everyone a worker and that makes everyone look for a job to do -- maybe "workers" could be split into groups? Farmers, Bakers, Lumberjacks, etc, that can't increase beyond X amount determined by how many buildings of that type you have. Would that help with the number of people trying to do a certain job?
One thing I've noticed also is that Storage is just put wherever they feel like putting it. I have many storehouses near wood, farms, and bricks but those storehouses seem to have any assortment of items in them. Would it be beneficial to have specialized storehouses for each type of item? I was waiting for the little peons to finish getting a surplus of food before they could continue building and they were running to the storehouses far away from the ones I put near the bakeries and farms to store their food and wheat when those nearby storehouses were not full.
But all any all I'm amazed at how active the development on this is and I'd love to see where the game goes in the future. The game already has a lot more features and depth to it than I thought it had initially and it's going to get even better down the road. There's so much potential in this.