Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well.
I wanted to outline my plans for Glory of Rome in 2022. I've transitioned out of early access and into a full release. I've been really grateful for all of the people who've reached out and provided feedback and support since going into early access.
Since releasing the game initially I've managed to flesh it out considerably, releasing the African and Gaul campaigns, along with a whole host of other quality of life features.
Full Game Release
As part of the roadmap I've switched the game into a full release. It's gotten to the point where I'm really happy with the game and how it plays overall. I'll be able to market the game more efficiently now and hopefully bring in some more players.
2022 Content Plan
I've got a range of content that I'm really excited to release for you guys. Even though the main Roman, African and Gaulish campaigns are finished, 2022 will be a great year of free content that rounds out the Glory of Rome experience. Here's a quick summary for what's ahead.
Grand Civic Projects (Wonders)
The Grand Civic Projects system has been in the works for a while and when released will see you undertake a range of new missions across the Empire.
Grand Civic Projects are massive unique buildings that you will be tasked to create by the Senate. These buildings require an enormous amount of resources, requiring the collective industrial might of a large settlement to power. To start a civic project you will lay the foundations and collect resources. As you collect the requires resources, the project will upgrade, requiring the collection of additional resources and an influx of new workers to continue development.
These civic projects represent the largest public works in the Empire. To complete these you will need to hone your industrial skills to create them in the allotted time by the Senate.
Additional Buildings - Gaul & Africa
Both the Gaul and African campaigns are complete and I feel are well balanced. However, I still feel that certain buildings become bottlenecks in the development of your resources. To Alleviate this, I plan on introducing a range of new buildings to help streamline the creation of your goods.
These new buildings are not meant to replace the existing industrial buildings, but to supplement their operation. For example to create Rustic Bread in Africa, it requires the collection of Millet, Sorghum and Barley. A new Combined Field which will be a large 4x4 zone building will take several workers and produce all of the resources needed. Allowing you to man a single building to handle these resources.
The creation of these new buildings will let you opt for more expensive, efficient buildings to alleviate bottlenecks. This could include large mines, larger storage yards with greater capacity or more specialised artisans who can create several resources at once.
Challenge Mode
A new exciting game mode that I've been planning for a while. You'll start by choosing a culture and time limit and your aim will be to accumulate as much Prosperity as possible.
What's Prosperity?
Basically prosperity is a measure of your settlements success. Your goal will be to create prosperous settlements and prove to the Senate that you are the best administrator out there!
How is Prosperity Earned?
Everything you do in your settlement, from creating residences to generating and storing resources will generate a portion of prosperity.
Here's a summary (though not exhaustive) list of ways you will earn prosperity
- Creating and upgrading dwellings (earning more as the dwelling upgrades density)
- Creating resource generating buildings and ensuring they are sent to another location
- Boosting your finances (both in terms of overall currency and monthly income)
- Providing civic services to your citizens, with larger and more complex buildings generating a higher rate of prosperity
What's the best way?
Since everything will revolve around prosperity, you might be wondering whats the best way to generate it? This will what I'll be focusing on. I want there to be several ways of creating a great stream of prosperity.
You might try upgrading your dwellings as fast as you can, or creating a massive industrial system to generate bulk resources, or take on additional missions from the Senate to prove your worth. I'm planning multiple ways you can earn this currency to make it highly re-playable.
Leaderboards
When your time is up, you'll see an assessment of your prosperity and your score will be uploaded to the Steam Leader-boards system. There's going to be a range of boards to measure your success, from seeing who earned the most prosperity to who earned the highest income to who created the largest, most developed city.
Revised Senate System
The Senate system was originally introduced to give you a way to interact with the Senators of Rome to request assistance in exchange for favour. This favor was earned through completing Senate Missions.
This system has been removed with the launch of the Roman re-design and will be created from the ground up to be a more interesting and impactful system.
The idea behind this system will be that you will accumulate Glory as you play through the scenario. This will be a reflection of the development and growth of your settlement. Creating highly developed residences, having a strong financial position, providing a range of civic services and completing senate missions will generate glory for your settlement.
This currency will be used for Favors from the Senate. There will be a full in-depth break-down later but for now know that these favors will help you greatly.
Performance & Optimisations
Optimisation has been one of the hardest things to try and improve. Large settlements, especially when you reach 500+ citizens can start to impact the framerate. This is mostly due to every citizen having a range of activities they are trying to do, each of which will need to calculate a path to their destination, collect their resource and then travel home.
It's my goal to get to 1000+ citizens at a stable 60FPS. To achieve this I'm going to deeply investigate a range of options to improve late game performance. While there are already LOD (level of detail) switching when you zoom in and out, and also a series of graphic changes behind the scenes. I'm going to see what else I can do to boost performance across the board for you guys.
Switch Release
I've been looking into the possibility of creating a Switch port for the game. I feel this type of game would do really well on a handheld system and if the UI were adjusted and the performance fully optimised it could be a great game. I'll be looking into the feasibility of this towards the end of Q3/Q4. it's also going to depend on how well I can optimise the CPU performance for the game.
Limits & Considerations
Glory of Rome has been an amazing project for me over the last few years, and over time I've been releasing updates to continually improve it. I've heard all of your feedback and wanted to address some FAQs and comments.
Save System?
When I designed Glory of Rome, I planned for it to be a game where each scenario takes between 15 to 45 minutes. After each scenario you unlock the next and continue through the campaign, each of which becoming increasingly difficult.
I've looked at retroactively introducing a save/load system but it would require an almost full re-write of every aspect of the game. I know that some people will be disappointed at the lack of a save system but I would much rather focus my efforts on adding new content and systems to make the game more enjoyable. When you beat a scenario the next scenario in the campaign is unlocked. You can come back any time and play the next scenario.
Balancing
I'm continually going over the 3 main campaigns and adjusting the balance to optimise it. Every time I roll out a series of changes I play through all of the scenarios to confirm what I'm asking time wise is feasible. I'm always looking for more feedback however if you're running into balance issues in the campaign
Performance
I've noticed on larger maps and games the performance can get a little rough. I'm always on the lookout for performance gains and hopefully as I release new patches ill be able to improve this.
Bugs & Issues
I'll be continually releasing patches to address bugs and issues I find. I've managed to resolve a range of bugs but there's bound to be more, that's just the nature of this being a single developer project. Of-course, if you find issues and raise them on the discussions page I'll address them.
Thanks for all the support last year and I'm hoping 2022 will be the best year yet!