Dictator: Rise of the Third World

[Mopean]

Hello! This thread is for the game 'Dictator: Rise of the Third World' a game in development by me and a good friend of mine, Travis. The game is a Turn-based Grand Strategy game with
elements from SimCity, Minecraft, Civilization, and Paradox games (like Hearts of Iron or Victoria). The objective of the game is to take your Third-World country and over the course
of several decades, make it into a middle power or superpower. You will have to manage the food security of your people, their education in order to create a strong, specialized work
force, you will have to deal with political instability, ethnic struggles and civil wars, as well as foreign interventions and invasions (against you or staged by you!), make sure
you get elected again and guide your nations economy and technological path, as well as diplomacy with other nations and commanding, equipping and deploying your armed forces to
project power to any part of the globe. In multiplayer you'd try to compete with every other third world power to see who becomes a superpower first.

Naturally I figured I would post a thread about it here, as it is in the same genre as Civilization games (at least as far as strategy goes) and I figured there would be some interest for it here.

The game follows an Isometric style of gameplay with 3 views/modes: The City view, the Country view, and the Army view, which let you directly manage your city, country, and military
respectively.

Features:
- Build your own cities!: Bored of the standard Civilization routine of building city improvements and not being able to see your beautiful city the way you wanted it built? Now no more
of an issue. Enter the city view where you can manage your cities like a miniature SimCity. Population points will allow you to use more tiles (maximum 20 tiles) and each tile allows
for 4 buildings - but make sure you provide for the growing needs of your people before you decide to build other things!
- Manage your nation's industrial capacity!: Everything costs something. To get these materials you must either produce them yourself or buy them from other countries. Buildings, weapons,
upgrades, infrastructure and other improvements don't only cost money - they also will cost you in steel or other refined goods. Your nation's economy can either suffer or thrive
depending on world prices.
- Manage your nation's political structure: Determine everything from whether eating Ramen noodles past 2:30 PM on Sundays is illegal to handling corruption and other political aspects.
Choose from historical and fictional figures to take seats and roles within your government, each with their own bonuses or penalties they could provide you with.
- Build armies and conquer and destroy: Amass foreign or domestically produced weapons and train troops to engage your enemies. Unit variety and tactics are essential in the Army view.
Fight with everything from Third-World minimally trained militia to highly advanced stealth destroyers and precision weapons. Keep your army's morale, organization, equipment, and
ammunition all up-to-date to ensure maximum combat efficiency.
- Be the most noble, freedom-loving president or the most ruthless dictator: Crush your people's spirits with your Secret Police... or give them free housing and free healthcare
and reap the benefits. Repress your people's love of speech or freedom of religion or the press, isolate them from the rest of the world and teach them that you're their only hope,
or work to increase your people's consciousness, intellect, and quality of life. The possibilities exist to be as cruel or kind as you want to be.

How can I help?
There are 4 categories which we need help in. The one most in demand at this point is: ...
The first category is coding. If you know anything about GML or even just Delphi and C++ (meaning you'd have an easy time with GML) then step right in. The coding director/leading
programmer is myself, Le Pix , the one who wrote this post.

The second category is art and graphics. If you can draw people, landscapes, buildings, or icons for things then you've come to the right place to exercise your talent. We will
provide to you a template to follow to help you to stick with the planned art style of the game. The lead artist and graphics director is Travis, presently my only
other full team member. If you want to join the art team than I don't really have much to say to you - Travis will be your "boss," at least in the way that he could distribute
the workload and decide what fits his vision of the art style and what doesn't.

The third category is research. If you can't help with anything else but have loads of time to spare(or that area of history is your expertise or area of study anyway), one thing that
is desperately needed is research into the mid to late 20th Century conditions of the playable countries, including social and political issues, military strength, major cities, major
exports and imports, government system and even things like minority groups and living standards. If you want to research I will provide a list of the playable countries and what
information is missing for them. You can choose at your own will what you want to look into.

The fourth category is testing. If you can't contribute directly or lack the time to research, than maybe playtesting is right for you. The key to making a good game is to play it.
Constantly. And that will be your job. You will be granted access to possibly unstable beta patches with new, possibly buggy features and encouraged to do whatever you want. It may
sound like all fun and games but screenshots are to be provided of strange occurences or things we didn't make note of that should happen. Good testers will make a nice list for us.

If you can't do any of the 4 above, then there is a fifth way you can help, and that's just by posting in this thread and supporting us, because there is no better motivation than to
see that others like what we're doing. Don't be afraid to criticize, but make sure its constructive and helpful.

 

[Mopean]

Screenshots(Extremely Early Alpha):

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[Faceboji]

Hello, I'm Travis, the main (and currently only) artist for the game. What we need is people who can make people, landscapes, buildings, or icon graphics. The art style is somewhat similar to games like SimCity 2000, but without color or alpha channel limitations. I also add noise to everything to give it an old-game feel and to make gradients flow smoother. If you understood what I just said, then you can probably help out.

 

[Maniacal]

This isn't a game development recruitment forum. You've come to the wrong site... multiple times since I've already seen this post elsewhere.

 

[Mopean]

The goal isn't really to recruit - just to discuss the game and how its going. If this is the wrong place for that then I apologize.

EDIT: If people want to help, they have that option. I do know of specific places where I could seek recruitment. This is not to recruit - this is mere discussion and a place for interested people to watch development and, if they wish, contribute in some way. Felt the need to clarify.

 

[Maniacal]

Well if that wasn't yout intention then you shouldn't have made half of your post a recruitment message, it just made the game description look like a bunch of far fetched ideas that will never see the light of day (hopefully it will, of course, since it sounds like a really neat idea). I'm just very suspicious of advertisements.

 

[Mopean]

That is a valid point. I mainly threw that up to entice volunteers, as I find that giving them a nice description of what they might want to volunteer for would be preferable to just inviting them in. That's why it says "How can I help?" as opposed to something like, "Join our effort!"

Regardless, I will take note of this next time.

 

[Mosher]

This game looks really cool. Piloting a third world nation into a place of power and respect in the international community has been something I've been looking for in a game recently I haven't been able to find. I'll be following this closely.


Bon chance!

 

[Mopean]

We've worked hard yesterday and today to bring the City View, in which the first functions of the alpha will start to take shape. We can already place 3 different types of buildings (generic brick apartments, serve no function yet) and the city screen is looking quite sharp in general

Spoiler The City View of Managua, Capital of Nicaragua :

Spoiler Selected a building to place :

Spoiler Placing said building :

(I wish you could see my cursor, so it'd be more believable. I'm not lying here. )

With this function having been implemented, all there is to do is make the buildings cost resources and money and have them give something back, and the city view is ready. Also, there's gonna be lots more buildings - those buttons at the top should give an idea, and 'Buildings' is divided into three (Military, Economic, Political).

'Special' buildings are really special things, that become available mid to late game and have powerful effects but may be difficult to acquire due to your third-world status (and once you do have them, everyone else already will have more of them most likely.)

 

[Nintz]

Looking good so far. I'll be following this thread at least if you post updates here.

 

[Arrow Gamer]

Hmm. Seems like Tropico, but turnbased.

 

[Mopean]

People tell me that - I've personally never played Tropico (I've watched it be played and I know what it is, though). It was partially inspired by the same sort of idea, but it's on a much bigger scale than Tropico, with an actual military system and more in-depth diplomacy.

However in the game's early formation, it was aiming to be more or less a turn-based tropico with the focus on a real country as opposed to a tiny city on an island. But as that was found to be too simple, and I appreciate complexity, we stepped it up a bit.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

In Tropico there are actual citizens who walk and work, so the concept here is different.

I like the idea here. It seemed a bit complicated to me at first, because of the cities, but after re-reading the line about population points and "20 tiles" consciously several times, I'd say now it is not at all