Hello,
this week Microcivilization celebrates 2 years since it's beginning. I was thinking it's fun to look back at my early days progress.
Day 1
Deciding between Unity and Monogame I chose Monogame as a framework to build this game since I already made previous small projects in it and it always reminded me about the good old days of making games in Borland Pascal. A moving person sprite. Much wow.
(Notice the sprite is still the same as we have now. There was not a single pixel change in the Pop's animation until today)
Day 4
Things grew in all directions. We have huts, 2d movement, UI and most importantly fonts. Fonts were the hardest to get working. Also this was the day I began to hate making UI in Monogame.
You can also see there was a hint of some backend logic about construction/agriculture.
Day 8
This one about a week old - as shown in one previous update - it introduces the 'main button' concept. In this phase i still wanted to make the resources storage-based instead of the 'civilization-like' construction progress system we have now.
Day 22
Three weeks in existence. The mighty Yin and Yang buton style arrived. Game still had storage of food and wood for free selection, but there was also initial concept of government switching as well as research tree. There were also first three slots for workshops. Initially there were supposed to be only three workshops for you to build out of several. The choice of which three you have was meant to be your build for the cycle.
In this phase I had no conception of crises, risks, combat or heroes.
Day 50
Fancier tech tree that is actually a tree. More details on the UI making the overall shape of the screen to materialize.
In this phase the huge problem was to design the interface panel while having no idea what will be on that panel. Each week introduced a new feature with its own new UI element leading to complete reshuffle of the main screen layout, rethinking all decisions and often huge scope creep. I still had no idea how real pixel art is done.
But all this was still very very far away from the final game shape...
Everything Fun is done. Unfortunately
I am pleased to announce that all major features of the game's first Tier are now done and 'only a huge heap' of minor features are left. That heap should hopefully be resolved within next two months time.
Last week I have finished the Scenario 1 for the first Ascension Tier (or Chapter) which will conclude the first meta-cycle of the game progression. Here's how the Tier 1 is currently designed:
In the first run, you will only have Neolithical technologies available. After ascending you will have the option to unlock Classical era technologies. So your second run you can build from Neolithical up to Classical.
This way meta progression will unlock Historical Eras one by one extending your tech tree for each future re-run (we could say these ascensions are the 'main story'). This will culminate with a Scenario (aka a Boss Fight) where you will need all the best heroes gathered so far. Scenario will have different difficulty levels, separate tech tree, separate rules. It's designed as a challenge to test if you're ready for the bigger game.
After this 'boss fight', you will progress into next Ascension Tier which will progress in a similar fashion except with new game concepts, better Hero drops, higher levels, new Lotus types, new Crises and a completely different Scenario in the end (more on Tiers another time).
The very rough estimate for Tier 1 is noted as 12 to 48 hours - keep in mind that this is just for illustration so you have a vague idea how big the first chapter is designed to be. The numbers were made by extrapolating recorded demo playtimes and combining with extra technologies and extra ascension runs so for majority of players reality might be much faster or much slower.
There are currently a few optional upgrades there including World Wonders blueprints which can affect playtimes significantly and this set of optional upgrades is going to grow in the future.
Demo vs Early access builds
Within next few weeks I will take a short break from main game development and create a long deserved update of Demo. Mainly to address some balancing issues. My hopes are also to include some quality of life updates and bugfixes.
However my main focus now is to drive the main game branch into a stable pre-release stage and eliminate all risky gaps and defects. Next two weeks will be therefore aimed at various medium to small finalizations and a ton of boring stuff that is now necessary to complete (I don't look forward to it :) )
That's all for now. Have a nice day,
See you next time.
Ondrej