Fire
I added a new disaster to the game: Fire. It took longer than I anticipated but I'm quite pleased with the results.
Warning: Flashing lights. Gifs in this blog may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy.
Burn It Down
When a fire type disaster occurs in Critias Empire, it will spread flames over a number of adjacent tiles based on the presence (or otherwise) of vegetation and how the land is being used (i.e. are there any buildings on the tile).
This makes vegetation in the game, like forests and scrubland have a greater meaning than just giving slight bonuses or penalties to production and build costs. As well, fires create a subtle risk to concentrating buildings together, which is in tension with clustering buildings to get bonuses. Conversely, unlike other disasters, the player can see the relative risk of a fire when building their empire without having to get their oracles to make predictions.
Ashes
I also tidied up the temporary tile modifiers system in Critias Empire, adding an "ash" modifier that gives previously burned land a bonus to food production for a limited number of turns after a fire.
This might not sound like a big deal but i'll use it for a number of other disasters and features, so glad it's now in the game. A fair amount of code tidy up came along with that, especially with how disasters work, which again should make a good foundation for implementing future disasters.
There's still a few more things to do. I need to source some sound effects for one thing, and also add a setting to turn off lightning flashes for photosensitive players. Plus test everything works, especially save and load working, both with fire disasters, and also old save files made with earlier versions of the game not causing issues.
Tempus Fugit
Even just getting to this point with fire disasters took me far longer than I anticipated. Around 3 and a half weeks, which combined with a trip to gamescom means it's now the start of September and I've still yet to implement the rest of the planned disasters. Some of which themselves will require some tricky reworking of existing code.
Probably, releasing by the end of September would be a very optimistic timeframe at this point. Nevertheless, the game's development has good momentum right now, so my plan is to press on with making the remaining disasters and Gods, then on to balancing the "main" game, as mentioned in previous blogs. I should at the very least have a new version of the demo released by this time next month.
In the meantime, if you have any criticism or feedback on the current demo, or have encountered any bugs, please drop a message in the feedback thread or grab my ear on whatever social media you see me lurking around. It's always helpful to hear your thoughts!
P.s. The cover image for this month's devlog is a crop of Hubert Robert's Fire in Rome painting. Hubert Robert is a big inspiration for the art of Critias Empire. His capriccio paintings are part of a movement that broadly romanticised ideas about the ancient greko-roman world through European art.