Games Hex Hold - City builder, RTS, Ecosim

Hex Hold is a medieval themed city builder-RTS hybrid set in a dynamic environment, in this thread I'll post updates, answers questions about the game and etc.

Check out the devlog and everything about the game here
Check out the video devlog on youtube here

 

So I made the first entry into the youtube devlog, I started on working on a proper showcase video, but I'm holding off on it until I get some more stuff done in the game.

Sorry in advance about the audio quality(i'll get a pop filter and learn how to do noise reduction) and general production value, I'm still learning how to edit videos and how to present stuff (doing it in a second language sure doesn't help), a thunderstorm started during the recording(we're having some rough weather around here) so there's some extra noise from that and sadly a power cut in the middle and the end, that's why the video kinda end abruptly, didn't have much to add to justify recording another segment.

 

Working on the temperature model, combining it, the water cycle and the wind model all into one model, most of the work is done, while testing stuff out it started creating some cool geometric shapes and what not.

Quick video before the first "serious" entry into the devlog, a hydro thermal vent in a blank ocean in a basically* infinite world, what you're seeing is the temperature as the background in blue-red and the wind as arrows to indicate the direction(bit hard to see when zoomed out) and the strength is indicated by the color (dark-weak, green-strong)

*map isn't infinite but it's big enough relative to the test to be threated like it is, also map edges are not walls, there is "communication" with the "outside" world (stuff can comes in & out) so it's not like a radiator in an insulated box.

 

Damn, making a serious script for a public devlog video that captures the attention of you, the viewer proves to be as nearly as much work as the game!

While I'm working on that, i've cleaned up this thread and created a devlog over at blogger where I'll do the detailed written devlog and a sort of wiki for what's in the game.
I've also started creating some videos:
a standalone demo of the wall system (here)
a showcase of all terrain textures currently in the game (here)
timelapses of the climate simulating (V1, V2, V3)


The wall and terrain texture videos are part of this post, the post about the climate time lapses is still in the writing room - but there is some info in the youtube descriptions.

Thanks for reading!

 

New post on how I created the climate simulation on the devlog
https://hex-hold.blogspot.com/2021/03/creating-climate-simulation.html

 

Nice, I'll check it out in a little bit

 

Well, there is a bit of reading there.
I will do probably, when got spare min.

But I suggest add some pictures to the climat post, to keep more interesting and allowing to understand, what part of discussion is reffering to.

 

There are a few link at the end to videos, I wish I had pictures from the start, but I wasn't recording my development back then.
Future post won't be all text, don't worry!


If something isn't clear please tell me and i'll explain and try and make the post clearer.

 

Your links in the blog are broken.
They not pointing anywhere outside the blogger.com.
Regarding older pictures, you can just grab some from videos that you made previously.

 

Oh gee, thanks for letting me know, I've fixed them now.
I swear I tested them after posting and they worked... btw the formatting on the blogger post editor is really wonky, maybe I gotta learn how to work with it.

And I don't have any videos that are from when I was just creating the base for everything, the first video I recorded was just last month.

 

So today I was working on the wall system, made improvements to the UI and made the walls have individual height from the terrain.

(extra extra) read all about it: https://hex-hold.blogspot.com/2021/03/working-on-wall-system.html

 

How do you deal with walls on sloped terrain, and are you planning on walls of different heights?

Hopefully you've got a murder hole animation planned

 

Well, terrain only slopes on connections between hexes, the center of the hex (the place an individual wall takes) is flat, the connections between walls are going over sloped/terraced terrain, they don't change the terrain itself, they go over it like this:

that's literally half of what the last post is about, lol
maybe I wasn't so clear when I added the "from the terrain" at the end.

I'm hoping to get everything from shooting arrow to pouring hot water/sand (they didn't use oil like in the movies - it's way to expensive!) down the murder hole, the biggest combat aspect I'm designing around are sieges, not open field warfare.(that's gonna be there too, don't worry )

 

What I actually meant was like wall upgrades. A more expensive wall might be taller, which might have better protections against a siege, or provide better distance for arrows coming from defenders on the walls, etc.

 

That's exactly what I did, I made the walls have a height per segment you can edit.
When the city builder is gonna come further along it'll cost you construction time (both labor and not having a functional wall while construction is taking place) and resources to do.
the extra height will provide extra range for shooting and extra protection because it's higher, that's the way it works with everything that changes the entity height (terrain too)
the extra size of the wall will give it extra hit points

You also have battlements to upgrade the walls like machicolations(aggresive upgrade) and crenellations(defensive upgrade), i'm planning on adding a wood roof too to add even more arrow protection.

 

Working on greyboxing some buildings and finishing the building system.
mainly figuring out the building layouts but I'm trying to give them some geometry as well.

small houses in rows:


medium houses in a cul-de-sack(?) kajigger-whatchamacallit



something with a waterwheel (like a grain mill)


couple of towers:



fishing dock: (mandatory fishing licenses only - no lollygagging!)


those are all places manually in the editor, not though the game building mechanics yet, I'm first sizing them up and aligning them to the grid and everything to help me finish the building system.

The building system currently only takes other buildings and elevation into account when buildings, I need to start adding a whole bunch of stuff to the building coord system, all of this stuff is per "buildCoord"(map hexes) and most buildings are more than 1 hex

• building height - for vision/attack range and climate interaction
• required surface height(water/ground) relative to center hex - currently only same height is allowed
• terrain type constraint - terrain can be soft/medium/hard, some buildings like stone quarries can't be placed on soft terrain
• min/max water depth - to allow (part of) the building to be only on land, only on water in a given depth range or both
• river constraint - can be built on river or requires a river to be built
• min/max wall connection height - the wall system now has variable height, at what heights can they connect to this part of the building?

I pretty much got how it's going to work figured out, the only tricky thing is the river constraints.

Because the rivers are directional, and taking that into account in the buildCoords is a real hassle (not impossible, just a real headache) I think I'm just going to check if a river exists in a tile, I can always update this part later on.

What this means though is that placing building like the waterwheel can be a bit awkward, take the above waterwheel picture for example - what I did here is require 3 tile of river in a row and blocked them on either side, forcing the river to be strait where the wheel is, if the side building was not there the wheel could be place on a zig-zag river and the wheel placement won't make any sense.

Again, think I'm just gonna work with it like this for now, maybe later on I'll update this to be little smarter.

I think I'll let my decisions sit for a while before implementing them though, don't wanna finish this and then have an epiphany right after. I'll work on some more models for now.

 

I'm curious, are you creating these building models in a 3rd party application (blender, etc), using pro builder, or creating them directly via code?

 

The walls and terrain are all from code, the buildings, animals and plants are made in blender

 

New post about finishing the wall and building systems, lots of pictures included!

https://hex-hold.blogspot.com/2021/04/finishing-wall-building-systems.html

 

Amazing work ,i admire the details, climate details and how everything acts together is just pure joy hehe !
I would like to play this with a modern city so i can have more trouble haha of managing carbon dioxide produced by the city and so forth.... Was you thinking giving the game a timeline of sort of an progress or a goal for example if player starts in medieval time and for a goal has to reach some futuristic city?

 

Thank you very much!

You won't have global co2 levels per se, but you will have similar impacts on the climate.
One extra thing i'm planning on is adding generic air/land pollution that acts like the clouds/salt, it will be generated by cities(in a manner like you suggest) and fires(buildings and plants)

There won't be a timeline, i'm trying to stay away from the classic "era" progression, you will have tech research and natural resources as locks to "new and better" stuff.

It will all be medieval with a bit of fanatsy mixed in, but I'm hoping to make it mod friendly so you will be able to plug in a mod to make everything look modern/futuristic (I have a couple mods planned myself, but first i need to make the game support it)

 

Yeah true , you already have plenty of stuff in the scene that can produce co2 starting from animals, and who knows what trapped in the water, amazing possibilities, and even if you stay with salt it is great to see how it influences the environment(lets be honest majority of the player will not be scientists so roughly doing things even per your own logic and knowledge and faking something would do equally good job for the players).

Yep its generic seen many times that era progression but with your setup of environment influencing the player and player influencing the environment , era progression gets new twist, it would hit harder and have more sense then a regular era progression without your detailed environment simulations ) . But nice thing is any sort of progression as you mentioned even if locked into one timeline can benefit from your eco sim

Just few more questions , does the player modify terrain at any moment or he makes the map and then it can be only then played?
Can you have continents/islands shifting(merging and separating), by looking at your systems it seems you can pull it out easy.

I am also on the way of making dense alive planet with that feel of volumetric density of even microbes, bacterias, insects, gases, electrical and electromagnetic charges temperatures and weather influencing all my machines and other lifeforms back and forth and in between and plenty more stuff but i'l do just newbie approach to everything and fake it , and with that said looking at your systems i feel intimated/scared ahahhahaha .

 

haha, you won't have to be an ecological scientist to understand the effects of things, all in all it's a pretty simple (relatively speaking) ruleset that is inspired by the real world to give player a correct intuition as to what's going on (IE wind coming from the sea to the land will make the land wetter)

I think you misunderstand what I meant, though your play in the game you will go though sorts of "eras", but in the form of going from a small town to a major city, all the while starting up new industries and trades
not from starting with stone/wood houses and ending up with futuristic town though tech milestones locked behind some population/research gate

Currently the terrain editor is what will be in the map editor
In the game itself(this is not implemented yet) you will be able to terraform, but not in a direct manner - you'll have to issue build orders and you construction workers will have to carry this task just like any other building construction.

In one of the early prototypes I creates I simulated faultlines that grow hard terrain(rock) that erodes to soft terrain(sand) and is carried by water, made for some pretty cool stuff but I couldn't scale it up to the sizes I want, also wasn't very stable to play on, haha

I guess that in the current setup if I divide the map into distinct land areas I can shift them around every so often to simulate that, but the timescale for the rest of the game isn't really aligned with this.
Cool suggestion though!

haha, fear not my friend - it's just a lot of small things coming together, just take it one step a time and don't just throw things in without thinking through them
the biggest thing is the climate sim, and it started out very humble and evolved over months to become a monster basically on its own - at some point I swear it just told me what to do with it!

 

Thats really great making it intuitive , also i am personally happy to hear this will be more then a sandbox.
I did understand you but it seems i didn't type it properly since i didn't managed to point out in my text where i mean "timeline era" against "era progression" , it is all good tho , cheers hehe. We was on the same page anyway .

I cant think of any single video game that has proper detailed environment systems(+that is not an sandbox) so that's why i like your project. Worst of all video games that dedicated exploration video games don't have it and yet they trying to sell the subject of discovering, exploring and science.

"don't just throw things in without thinking through them" - absolutely true, and thanks for encouragement!

 

Working on a minimap, check it out here: https://hex-hold.blogspot.com/2021/04/creating-minimap.html

 

Okay, so here's a build you guys can play around with, I attached a file with some instructions on the controls, in-game tutorials will come a little later on, if anything is unclear please shoot me up a message here or on the discord.

@Joe-Censored and @Antypodish, if you guys are on an ultra-wide this version should fix the UI, but other than that it's the same as what I've already sent you.

The main focus of this build is the building system, the next big step is to finally do some real work on the city builder itself so stay tuned!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LAEDOp4WR58UOWgnRsm2vGJsXHVYrkZ1/view?usp=sharing

 

Another build, mainly UI changes and fixes.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1palqQN6wrjhe3bKtImWD2fowYcN0e-LN/view?usp=sharing