Feedback Friday #159 - April 2-5, 2021

It's Feedback Friday once again!

Want free design feedback for your work-in-progress project?

Then you've found the right thread! Feedback Friday runs from Friday to Monday every week.

What To Show

• Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play > everything else
• How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)
• Post a link to a playable game, preferably WebGL. If you don't have a playable game, post something substantial, not just text.

How To Ask For Feedback

• Be concise.
• Specify what you want feedback on and what you don't.
• Resist the urge to write an immediate defense. Take the time to understand their points. Remember that your friends here are taking time out of their busy schedules to help you for free.

How To Give Feedback

• Be positive. There's something of value in every game.
• Focus on the design, not the designer.

Feedback Friday #158 is here.

 

Tacking on to the post on last weeks thread, I finished the building system and finalized the layout/footprint a couple of buildings, you can check it out here: https://hex-hold.blogspot.com/2021/04/finishing-wall-building-systems.html

You can see a lot of pictures at the end of the linked post, I'm aiming for the ability to build very compact (although the world is huge!) and OCD-friendly, but all the pieces should be place-able in a more "chaotic" fashion

Not sure what to ask in particular, but how do you feel about this style of building(both the buildings and the wall system)?

Any flaws (regarding the design goal or any) you identify in the layouts?

Do you think the "simple" solution applied to the river constraints is sufficient, or would I have to improve to system to be directional? (all about it in the linked post)

 

Is there a reason why the buildings' footprints do not extend to the edges of their hexes?

From an RTS perspective, what purposes do the buildings serve? Does each building serve a sufficiently unique purpose?

Do you have a playable version where we can experiment with placing buildings?

 

I'm not sure what you're referring to, are you talking about how the house doesn't take up the full hex colored in yellow (in the image below)?

There's two types of "territory ownership" (for lack of a better term), shared and exclusive.
And each part of the building can have a different ownership over his tile, the exclusives(colored green) can't share the tile with other buildings and the shared(colored yellow) can overlap with other buildings.

From an RTS perspective.. you have the walls & towers that offer defensive & offensive capabilities, you need to train your soldiers and war engines with specific buildings

But in general the game is mainly a city builder, so they serve to many functions to list, haha
Housing for citizens
Medical facilities for citizens
Resource gathering - foresters, mining camps, crop fields, etc.
Resource storage
Resource processing - butcher, bakery, blacksmith, forge, woodworker, armorer, etc.
Education facilities for citizens
Firefighting
Police

But safe to say that no building will just be something taking up space, everything will do something.
Maybe some stuff will just be there to look nice, like statues or whatever - but not just filler buildings.

I will have one soon, the current test builds are pretty old by now, they don't even have the new climate sim

 

Yes, I was asking why they didn't take up the full color hex. Thanks for explaining. It'll be interesting to play a build when you have a new one.

 

They seem oddly futuristic, but that's probably only because of the current lack of detail. I presume you intend to give those things a more detailed texture.

Multiple different models of the same type is something typically done for houses.

 

The look is most likely just a greybox for the footprint, it's not the final geometry, just the footprints. they don't have any detail or textures yet.

I think what's throwing you to futuristic (besides the greyboxing) is that I didn't do a roof on the houses yet?

Don't think those are all the model I got planned, those are just a couple i sketched out to test the system, I got tons more planned with a lot of variation

 

Yeah not just for the houses, but for all the models they're grey and smooth. I'm sure they'll look totally different with textures.

 

Haha, fast enough to get another one in!
Made a minimap, you can see it here: https://hex-hold.blogspot.com/2021/04/creating-minimap.html

How do you guys think I should display the terrain elevation on this minimap?, I don't have a single idea.

 

Do you really need to convey elevation on the minimap?

 

No, but it would be nice to do some indication of it.

Altough when terrain changes elevation it shows a rock texture, and you can see that on the minimap..

 

Let's continue the conversation next Feedback Friday. If you have a playable, that would be even better!

 

That's the end of this Feedback Friday. Join us next Friday for more free design feedback!