Cataclysm: Fall of The Cog (WIP): Page 7

Cataclysm: Fall of The Cog (WIP)

xyz

Been working some more on the visual side. Added clouds. At first I was thinking to use them as a gameplay element but turned out it's annoying when cities are obscured. So they'll be just a visual addon. It works better when they are additively blended. It's less "realistic" but it lets the player have the full overview of the map.

Also added a generated bump map for the coastline as well as some abstract normal map on the water. Can't really get water to look watery enough without some sort of pseudo-volumetric rendering. People are producing amazingly looking planets these days but I'm not sure I want to go there with this project. I'm beginning to think that using standard assortment of cheesy effects may eat out the initial quirky look.

Tried to color element cards so they match the planet palette; water = sea color, earth = land color... may keep it that way.

Anyway, I'll leave the visuals to soak for a bit and then revisit them at a later point, possibly in a more systematic way. Next few steps I'll focus on rounding up the gameplay. Gotta beware of the feature creep :)

cybereality

It looks like Earth!

xyz

I made screenshots of better looking color schemes :) But a lot of the times, for reasons yet unknown, the output is ugly-ish magenta-green combination. Will have to do something about it.

jbskaggs

I cant see the images move,so in static form its difficult for me to see what is happening in the top image.

jbskaggs

@xyz said: Spent the whole day working on Cog portrait generator. I first prototyped a relatively simple modular system in the modeling program, based on some of the sketches posted earlier. Then the thing was built in Godot.

So here's some garden variety of Cog planetary middle management:

Reminds me of Kevin J Anderson's the Saga of 7 suns series.

xyz

@jbskaggs said: I cant see the images move,so in static form its difficult for me to see what is happening in the top image.

Yeah, I wouldn't expect anyone could figure out what's happening without prior hands-on experience. There's also a possible land-sea contrast problem on that particular planet for people with color blindness. The two colors' values are very close. I'll deal with stuff like this in another iteration later on.

Reminds me of Kevin J Anderson's the Saga of 7 suns series.

Not familiar with Saga of 7 suns. Does it contain any Cog overlords? Or a city or two? ;) To be honest, I'm not much of a sci-fi fan. My involvement with it stops at, I don't know, Star Wars. Not playing many strategies either. Yet ironically I ended up doing a sci-fi themed strategy project. With an unfamiliar engine. What could possibly go wrong? :D

xyz

If anyone is interested, you can check out the prototype. It was a 7 day effort. Only basic gameplay is there. No meteors, no environment bonuses, no satellites, no spherical planet... and disasters are executed only after you place them all. However, it's a fully finished game. The key mechanic of combining is there.

https://nenad2d.itch.io/fall-of-the-cog

The rules are detailed in the description, and bull headed in-game assistant dispenses some (not) useful advice.

jbskaggs

@xyz said:

@jbskaggs said: I cant see the images move,so in static form its difficult for me to see what is happening in the top image.

Yeah, I wouldn't expect anyone could figure out what's happening without prior hands-on experience. There's also a possible land-sea contrast problem on that particular planet for people with color blindness. The two colors' values are very close. I'll deal with stuff like this in another iteration later on.

Reminds me of Kevin J Anderson's the Saga of 7 suns series.

Not familiar with Saga of 7 suns. Does it contain any Cog overlords? Or a city or two? ;) To be honest, I'm not much of a sci-fi fan. My involvement with it stops at, I don't know, Star Wars. Not playing many strategies either. Yet ironically I ended up doing a sci-fi themed strategy project. With an unfamiliar engine. What could possibly go wrong? :D

Yeah it kinda does have cog overlords-ish things. Its a huge series.

jbskaggs

@xyz said: If anyone is interested, you can check out the prototype. It was a 7 day effort. Only basic gameplay is there. No meteors, no environment bonuses, no satellites, no spherical planet... and disasters are executed only after you place them all. However, it's a fully finished game. The key mechanic of combining is there.

https://nenad2d.itch.io/fall-of-the-cog

The rules are detailed in the description, and bull headed in-game assistant dispenses some (not) useful advice.

Great Ill play it when I have time to focus on it :)

cybereality

It's really fun. It makes a lot more sense after playing the prototype.

Erich_L

I have been looking forward to this so long. I finally figured the game out enough to beat hard, then at the last turn at the last place to plant disaster- a flower of sweet forgiveness bloomed and shattered the hearts of men and touched the grace of god.

xyz

OMG, 355 years @Erich_L? How many generations of innocent cog replicants suffered under your reign of terror? :) Anyways, congratulations! It's not easy to beat it on hard difficulty.

However, it should be doable in far less moves but you need to be really careful to consistently squeeze maximum damage out of your cards. People tend to miss the fact that a disaster circle only needs to touch the city to cause the damage. With clever placement, a lot more cities can be reached than it seems at first. I think the record for hard is 8 years, but you need to start with favorable conditions and have some luck in card draws. The draws are pure rng so it can screw you badly sometimes. In 3d version a proper deck is simulated.

xyz

I took a short new year's break... Happy new year to everyone!

Added a new mechanic. Still testing it out so no animations yet. Cogs can now launch cities into air. A floating city will get the symbol X and become unreachable for any disaster. Even meteors can't hurt them. Their levitation is powered from the ground by a number of energy pylons scattered about. To bring the city down, the player must destroy all pylons that power it. Each pylon has only 1 hitpoint and can be placed on land or sea.

cybereality

Looking much better.

xyz

Still a bit all over the place but it'll get there eventually. I'll do more visual work once the planned gameplay features are in place.

jbskaggs

I played it and it reminded me more of battling cancer tumors than city annihilations. Maybe you could release a cancer version? I only lasted 39 years before I died0- but it is the perfect game while waiting for something or someone.

Megalomaniak

the energy(?) lines from the pylons and satellites are perhaps too similar? And something looks off about the clouds, not quite sure what tho. Too uniform perhaps? But other than that looks good.

Erich_L

@xyz said: OMG, 355 years @Erich_L? How many generations of innocent cog replicants suffered under your reign of terror? :) Anyways, congratulations! It's not easy to beat it on hard difficulty.

Hah no I added a 5 to see if you’d notice. I’m a troll at heart I’m afraid. It felt pretty rewarding to beat it on hard. Had to lose a game first tho. I’m not sure how I feel about your new color palette. The thing is you’re going to feel good when you add colors, but I don’t feel like you’re doing it in a very meaningful way. IMO the way you’re adding color is detracting from different opportunities to use colors... (since you already have the skills) I’d use the colors in a more visually interesting way- maybe having something to do with the powers - the cards - or perhaps the cog growth.

You know what would really look cool is if the world was shaded really nice and realistic but the expanse from the cog made the world monochromatic, that would be really cool.

xyz

@Megalomaniak said: the energy(?) lines from the pylons and satellites are perhaps too similar? And something looks off about the clouds, not quite sure what tho. Too uniform perhaps? But other than that looks good.

The lines have different animations. Satellite connection flows continuously while pylon lines are more like transient pulses. Hard to tell from the static screen. I had them thicker to differentiate but they looked ugly. It's not final anyways. I'm still testing the mechanic. Connections may go into cities in the end instead of pylons...

And yeah, the clouds are just provisory. I'll do something similar to ground shader - mix several multi-octave noises of different visual character to break uniformity.

@Erich_L said: Hah no I added a 5 to see if you’d notice. I’m a troll at heart I’m afraid. It felt pretty rewarding to beat it on hard. Had to lose a game first tho.

You've got some mad photoshop skillz bro :)

I’m not sure how I feel about your new color palette. The thing is you’re going to feel good when you add colors, but I don’t feel like you’re doing it in a very meaningful way. IMO the way you’re adding color is detracting from different opportunities to use colors... (since you already have the skills) I’d use the colors in a more visually interesting way- maybe having something to do with the powers - the cards - or perhaps the cog growth.

There's no new palette, or any palette for that matter. All recent colors are output from the same generator whose operation I left mostly unchecked, except for basic land/sea value contrast. I change a rand range or two from time to time just to see what it'll produce.

I'll deal with color design when all gameplay elements are in. Then we'll see how much of color is needed for function and how much will be left for prettifying. My preferred option is still monochrome or near-monochrome. The drawback is that there is no difference in chromatic feel of the planets. If I'd want to include some kind of mini-campaign where planets go one after another or are shown side by side on a selection screen then single color planets don't have much appeal and don't feel "different" enough.

You know what would really look cool is if the world was shaded really nice and realistic but the expanse from the cog made the world monochromatic, that would be really cool.

I had an idea that they spew some kind of pollution or something like that. But didn't ponder it further. Anything "realistic" would be out of scope of this project though... and, frankly, beyond my abilities.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Keep it coming. I'm always taking notes.

cybereality

@xyz said: I took a short new year's break... Happy new year to everyone!

Everything looks perfect and finished except the icons on the left. They are two low contrast and hard to read. The orange one for Earth looks about right, but the others are muddy. I like having different colors for each icon, but maybe make air pure white, water a nice light blue, etc. I think this would read better and also make it pop.

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