The glorious Evolution of Master of Mana - Big Update over the years - Soon (tm) on Steam

[Sephi]

It is a very good question. You just try out stuff. Some strategies will work and some won't. It is more about the process of creating these strategies. I find this process really fun. With time you will get better but the more important thing is that you are having fun. And of course you don't have to minmax. You could decide to roleplay and play a leader or a faction with a certain worldview and base your decisions on that.

 

[Covr]

Very good progress! It is impressive how much has been done since 2023, amazing.

I have a couple of comments, might be useful based on my experience (almost 10 years of IT project management/delivery of software):

-It is about time for you to set up your company(if you don't have one already) or selfemploy and put the game officially on Steam/GoG/Epic. You need a legal entity to do this, you surely know this all. You need to trademark the name of the game, the world, etc. It costs a very little but for 4X games market is rather small and audience needs a lot of time to discover hidden gems like this.
-you need to start getting wishlisted on Steam and this is also time consuming
-This might also help you to find a proper publisher. I know that right now you are probably kind of against it, and you are right! But there are still some good people there who won't interfere with development giving the space to focus on important stuff. See Esoteric Ebb development history. Keep in mind that vast majority of publishers would just rip you and don't go with the first one that have reached you. Unless it's hooded horse or raw fury Localisation, better art and promotional activities are the most valuable areas to help you with. Usually translation to 3-4 extra languages (Chinese and Spanish especially) might boost the sales by 50%, see early announcements by Brad on Elemental:Reforged.
-AI animation - don't overdue this, I can't be as distracting as the lady with a sword gif. However the second gif (warlock?) was really good. There's a vast group of ppl that will absolutely hate you for using any AI art in the game and you should just ignore that and be prepared for a shower of **** from them.
-You should work more on worldmap screens, especially these resource icons with black backgrounds, they does not fit all not and could be considered as repulsive. Do you have a full worldmap (I mean the main game screen, where you control your units, see resources, etc) with full UI? Nevertheless, resource icons needs to be smaller, maybe with a oval shape? I assume that armies would be a 2D static images - just a face of a leader is not good enough. This should be a full sprite, because that's what ppl are used to. Shields of Loyalty did it almost right recently, as for the low/no budget game. They've even managed to animate the sprites, maybe that's the place where AI could help you.
-This might sound subjective, but unless you have all major features implemented you should not focus a lot on details or finetuning things that work right now. I feel you are focusing too much on AI, small improvements to terrain, minor diplomacy efforts while there's no full UI or general presentation of the game. I think your priorities are right, but sometimes you get drifted off by some new cool idea to implement instead of focusing on boring basics. This is very common for one man projects and difficult to overcome.

Out of curiosity - what's the engine and tools you are using to develop this?

 

[Sephi]

Thanks for the feedback, I use mostly unity, visual studio, blender and paint.net.

I will set up a company at the beginning of next year. Unfortunately I cannot register as selfemployed in my country for game development. Currently working on the in game help / tutorial / advisor / pedia. That's the last major thing that needs to be done before putting a demo on steam.

Right now I am just experimenting a little bit with AI Animation. Some is good, some is bad, some is confusing/distracting and some is plain weird or gives you nightmares .The models should get a lot better in the next years. Sadly I cannot try out Sora 2 yet. I will probably make the whole leader animations toggable anyway with a video option.

I worked on the traderesource display on the worldmap since I last posted them. This is how they look currently, the background is a bit transparent to make it less dark.

The way I have developed the game is that I implemented a major feature, then finetuned it, then implemented the next major feature etc. I have seen too many projects where the finetuning is done at the end and then they run out of time and nothing was finetuned. At this point the game is feature complete. I might implement some smaller features to spice up the lategame later on as I playtest the game more. The worldscreen UI is done, it looks like this. Screenshot is a few weeks old but It should give you the idea. Notifications to the left, Resouces and Worldmap at the top. Empire overview with different tabs/views at the right. Screen buttons at the bottom. I would like to improve the minimap at some point.

Thanks for mentioning Shields of Loyalty, I did not know that game. They use a few interesting technique, I might have to buy the game for some proper "research" .

 

[Covr]

Thanks for reply - the Worldscreen looks really nice, I like a lot of information and brownish colour palette. Some minor nitpicks and comments:

-The label with city name, population (15?) and something else/growth (57) - yellow font on yellow/beige background is not a good idea. I've saw that screen on my phone display and could not read the name properly. Similar with notification - grey on yellow, not that easy to read.

-What's the huge number near the cities list (e.g. Fallsden 40750) - is it pop number? is it really needed?

-Minimap is cool Old Panzer General/Fantasy general style!

-Do you plan to have visible roads on the map? Or large forest areas? Ruins? It looks barren now to be honest.

-Where's the next turn button?

 

[Sephi]

yes, the city overview display with "Delaward" is horribly outdated and needs a complete remake. The yellow color is very bad and in general it has too much of a comic style vibe. It's like 5 years old, I will cook up something better soon. The huge numbers at the cities are the population.

At the moment the mapscript does not have any beautification logic that adds little details at the end. A 1-tile forest or hill or lake here and there would go a long way. On the minimap the darkgreen area is a large forest that does not fit on a single screen. something like this.

The button at the bottom with the circular saw blade is the next turn button. When you push the button to end your turn the saw blade spins until the next turn starts.

 

[Sephi]

The new city overview display is done

On the left is an icon that represents the faction/race living in the city. The number is the population in the city, it's just there for immersion like population numbers in civ1. On the right side is a mini portrait of the leader of the empire that owns the city if it is owned by an empire. the mini portrait will show different emotions that depend on your relation. Instead of an abstract defense power value it now shows the amount of fortications the city has. Fortifications are basically free units if you defend the city in a tactical battle. The number of fortifications a city has depends on the defense power of it.

 

[Blake00]

Looking a good mate.. I really gotta share this project with my Master of Magic communities.

With that in mind I recommend you update your OP at some point with your best/latest stuff to ensure lurkers visiting the start of the thread see just how far you've come.

If you wish to preserve the original post then you could always shove in a horizontal line [ hr ] [ /hr ] and put some new sexy stuff above line and keep the original starting out OP post beneath it.
.

 

[OzzyKP]

Looking good!

I recommend adding commas for the population numbers. 57,224 is clearer than 57224.

 

[Sephi]

Looking a good mate.. I really gotta share this project with my Master of Magic communities.

With that in mind I recommend you update your OP at some point with your best/latest stuff to ensure lurkers visiting the start of the thread see just how far you've come.

If you wish to preserve the original post then you could always shove in a horizontal line [ hr ] [ /hr ] and put some new sexy stuff above line and keep the original starting out OP post beneath it.
.

Thanks for the recommendation. The ugly old desert screenshot had like 2.7k views, some people gonna be in for a surprise next year when they see the trailer. I have added a screenshot of how the desert looks currently and kept one of the old screenshots. It looks better in motion with the sandstorms. I should probably add some more screenshots soon to make it easier for readers to keep track of things.

 

[Sephi]

Looking good!

I recommend adding commas for the population numbers. 57,224 is clearer than 57224.

Thanks, I have changed population display and everything that has a similar size like housing and unrest. The separator used will depend on the windows culture settings, so en-us gets a comma and fr-fr gets a point for example.

 

[Blake00]

Thanks for the recommendation. The ugly old desert screenshot had like 2.7k views, some people gonna be in for a surprise next year when they see the trailer. I have added a screenshot of how the desert looks currently and kept one of the old screenshots. It looks better in motion with the sandstorms. I should probably add some more screenshots soon to make it easier for readers to keep track of things.

Yeah definitely stick the trailer there in the OP as well when it's ready! Also once you've got that trailer I'll def do a shareathon.

 

[Sephi]

I had to redo the mountains because of the new heightmap system and I had an idea how to make longer mountain ranges more interesting. Before it felt quite repetitive.

 

[Sephi]

I have added a few more screenshots to the second post of this thread.