Disaster Optics
Throughout the game's life, the disasters in Critias Empire have been limited to earthquakes and the terrain shifting they induced. As cool as they are, it's time to add in more different disaster types, which is the focus of this update.
Eerie Silence
It's important that the player knows when a disaster is imminent. Not only so they can prepare, but just as importantly, to give them a sense of tension and anticipation. Already in the turn before a disaster, the music changes from baroque/romantic classical music to an eerie ambient background track. But that can be easy to miss if music volume is turned down, as can other signals such as the disaster countdown turning red.
To fix this and add extra immersion, the map now gains a grey pall, the seas turn a stormy grey and the clouds that fringe the game map turn to brooding thunderclouds. All in the turn before disaster strikes.
In the turn immediately after a disaster, the clouds and seas remain dark, while the lighting intensifies to reflect that the world is suffering the aftermath of disaster.
Then Boom!
Nothing says disaster like a volcano. Especially when we have the very real historical eruption of Mount Vesuvius, that famously destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, as dark inspiration. Ironically that eruption helped preserve and inform much of what we know about the ancient Mediterranean world today.
In fact, the cover image of this update is of a later (probably fictionalised) eruption of Vesuvius, by painter Joseph Wright of Derby, which matches the broadly Romantic art movement style of much of the art of Critias Empire!
In terms of how volcanoes affect the game, clearly anything in the path of the volcano or the lava streams it sends are going to get destroyed without intercession of the Gods. I.e. spending prayer points to relocate those land uses and buildings in the turn immediately after the disaster. Just as how it currently works with earthquakes that leave cities, farms, mines etc underwater.
I would like to at some point make separate shield and stratovolcano disasters. The latter would rain down ash and send out pyroclastic flows, rather than flood the land with lava streams. However that will have to wait for later.
What's Next?
For the time being, I'm going to concentrate on updating the steam store page screenshots and making a new trailer. There's also still a bit of tidying up the volcano code to do.
I'm also going to stop making predictions about when a demo or the game will be released. This month I was hoping to work on Critias Empire much more than I was eventually able. Suffice to say, there will be a demo at the point where I feel the experience can really shine and give an authentic flavour of what the final game will be like.
To that end, I also aim to begin a new round of balancing before the end of May, and will most likely be more of a fine tuning of the existing balance rather than anything radical.
As always, if you have any feedback or thoughts on the game's progress, do get in contact or leave a comment!