Settle The World - inspired by Colonization

[TCD]

The title music sounds great

[TheoTheoderich]

Created the first in-game help pages for the city.
More time-consuming than expected.

[ Show youtube player ]

[TheoTheoderich]

Working on the combat system....it's still a long way to go.

Now attacking units can have a "flanking" bonus and the defending unit can have a "supporting" bonus.
In addition, the defender can get a terrain bonus.
For example, hills are easier to defend than grassland.

And the amount of muskets is used as some kind of "hitpoints".

[DisasterIncarna]

still liking the updates

[Paulthetall]

Originally Posted by TheoTheoderich

Working on the combat system....it's still a long way to go.

Now attacking units can have a "flanking" bonus and the defending unit can have a "supporting" bonus.
In addition, the defender can get a terrain bonus.
For example, hills are easier to defend than grassland.

And the amount of muskets is used as some kind of "hitpoints".

Great work so far! Love it how it's improving.

[mirthturtle]

I loved playing Colonization as a kid, but it hasn't aged so well with its treatment of Indigenous people. The whole point of the game is to massacre them and steal their land, just like what actually happened? It's almost impossible to play a peaceful game; you'll walk over a special encounter and automatically rob a burial ground, etc.

Since you're re-imagining the game, I urge you to consider making these mechanics more nuanced; give the player more choices, or just not include this genocide at all.

[TheoTheoderich]

@mirthturtle
I knew about this discussion.

My game will have some native tribes later in the game.
Fighting against them will be possible, but you do not really need it in my game. The map is larger as in the old game Colonization, so you do not have to steal land from the natives, because there is enought place for up to four players to settle.

There will be some burial grounds or sacred grounds in the game, but they have another graphics image as the abandoned villages, so you can avoid them easily. And if you move on it you will be asked if you really want to search for loot. That is the plan.

The game is not so much advanced that i can have natives in the game.
But i like the idea that you can trade with the natives or learn from them like in the original "Colonization" game.

I you really want it you can attack all native tribes, like you can attack all human players. But you do not need to do this.
I am not sure about how it will be implemented in the final game....the whole game is still work-in-progress at the moment

[TheoTheoderich]

Update on the land-unit combat system.
Not very well balanced until now...
Sorry for my bad english.

[gimbal]

I would probably call it militia instead of soldiers.

"a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency".

But unlike Colonization this game does not seem to have a trained soldier profession so I guess it's fair game.

[TCD]

Interesting combat system. Looks quite Civ/Colonization inspired, but I can spot some differences. Looking forward to try the game when it's done

[TheoTheoderich]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I would probably call it militia instead of soldiers.

"a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency".

But unlike Colonization this game does not seem to have a trained soldier profession so I guess it's fair game.

Your thoughts are good

I have veteran soldiers (kind of trained soldiers) in the game...but so far they are not unlocked. First the battle system must work with "normal" soldiers.

A few month ago i had militia units (untrained soldiers) in my game. But i removed them, because it took too long time to have soldiers was no fun.
So i decided to mix this two units. The result are the soldiers unit where every colonist can be equipped with muskets and became a soldier.

Planed for the game is that soldiers can became veteran soldiers by getting combat experience or beeing trained in a city by an other veteran soldier.

[TheoTheoderich]

The BlitzBasic-Jam 2022 is over now and my game Settle the World is submitted there via my project page at itch.io.

Now I have to wait two weeks until the jury and the players have evaluated all games that have been submitted there (until then I can't change any files there or even upload a new version).

You can download the unfinished demo version here:
https://theotheoderich.itch.io/settle-the-world

The version is quite buggy, not really self-explanatory and many of the planned features are not yet included at all....
....but it can be quite relaxing for a while to build up some settlements.

Single-player is possible, but without trading partners / other players not so fun, but works.
Your Amiga / WinUAE should have the following equipment:

• 1 MB Chip RAM
• 4 MB Fast RAM
• Harddisk
• min. 68020 CPU (with 68000 it seems that game saves can't be loaded anymore...still has to be checked)
• Kick-ROM 3.x (so far only tested on 3.1)

Please have a look at the ReadMe file before testing.

You can load an existing savegame to get a look at a more advanced game.



If your Amiga is too slow to generate new maps, you can also load "presets".
Presets are pre-made maps to play with.
Preset 1-3 are for one player
Preset 4-6 for two players
Preset 7 for three players
Preset 8 for four players


The Presets part is not really finished. At the moment you can not change you name or the number of players.




After some time of playing, bugs can occur, such as workers who no longer mine resources, or are suddenly duplicated.
Here it can help to save and reload the game.

I would be very happy about feedback, what is still wrong or could be improved

[Reynolds]

Congratulations for your project. Looks really advanced. Downloaded it, hopefully will be able to give it a go soon.
You mentioned that it's development will not stop just because the competition has ended. I'm curious how it will be extended, what new features will be added.
What I got in my mind are two things, one is regarding the still pictures like the title screen. I'd use more colours or dithering to make colour transitions more soft, or use more colours where it can be done. Even I'd tr high res graphics too, and Foundation's (Or Settlers II on Mac) looks really good, but it wouldn't bother me if the game would remain in std low resolution. Other thing is if the game uses double buffered screen? Maybe it is only me who feels it a bit ... less comfortable to see the game how redraws the gfx during movement. But these are just my thoughts.
Respect for all your effort.

[donnie]

Great looking pixelart!

[TheoTheoderich]

@donnie Thanx

@Reynolds
Thank you very much.

Yes, development of -Settle the World- did not end with the BB-Jam.
New features will come later, in the next weeks i will mainly fix bugs. Because of the stressful coding in the last week bevor the BB-Jam ends i did not had the time to play the game or to find bugs.

Then i will have to complete the most important "core" element of the game, the citizens happiness. It is hard to keep your citizens happy, but it is important to keep them happy to unlock new buildings (already build in).
But the part with the elections is not ready at the moment. This will be a lot of work and testing....

The title screen was made before i found out how the Retro Image Tool (tool.anides.de) is working....
It was made using the Midjourney AI engine and has its own colour palette of 24 colors (8 colors are shared with the game (for the frame around the image).
May be i will change it later, for the moment i like this picture as it is

About doublebuffering....I tried it...really!
Scrolling with the cursor keys looks horrible without doublebuffering.
BUT....i do not have any free Chip-RAM for this.
I still need to have a "buffer" of free Chip-RAM for the features which comes later during the development.
So i think it will not be possible to have DoubleBuffering with my game.

[TheoTheoderich]

Made a short "Tutorial" for the beginning of the game:
[ Show youtube player ]

[Reynolds]

Originally Posted by TheoTheoderich

Made a short "Tutorial" for the beginning of the game:
[ Show youtube player ]

Great, I'll watch it. Tried out the public version lst night, it was fascinating.

Thanks for all your effort.

[TheoTheoderich]

Even though the BlitzBasic-Jam 2022 is over now, the work on "Settle the World" continues.
I had planned rivers in the program code from the beginning...but I never thought that the implementation would be so difficult.
I've been working on it for a week now and it's progressing very slowly.

Rivers are supposed to be an important game element and therefore have to be integrated into the game "early" (later is always more difficult....).
Rivers increase the moisture value (and minimally the temperature) of the surrounding squares. This can be very positive for farming in desert areas or grasslands, but can lead to more swamps in wet areas.


Unfortunately, river placement is still sub-optimal, sometimes it winds far too often and sometimes it doesn't end in the ocean. The many turns then lead to very, very wet areas....I still have to put in some work into this feature....

[Reynolds]

Amazing work, really.

[Havie]

This is really impressive and for me could be the judges pick. I can see this coming in a big box with an impressively thick glossy manual.