Yeah, part of the idea came from Screeps. However I had a problem with Screeps and it's the onboarding. It feels like you have to build a lot of code just to start playing. Which is it's own niche of course, but I wanted the onboarding experience to be more incremental.
I'm a very quick-feedback-loop interactive developer so I kinda struggled with that.
I'd like people starting with my game to start where they feel comfortable. If they want to go directly into full coding and automating they can do that, if they want to start playing, get a feel for the game and automate incrementally they can do that as well. In Screeps you feel like "Immunity will end in a few weeks, hurry up, rush to something so you don't get destroyed" and I want to avoid that feeling if that makes sense.
I think factorio really nailed this, almost everything you want can be done manually first. You start mining coal yourself, then start incrementally automating more and more as you understand how materials flow in your factory. I want a similar feel.
This is also why the first part I'm building is the sandbox where you can edit units, spawn them, play with them and debug them all from the same screen, it serves both to refine the development loop and to help me build the basic unit behaviours.
Another thing I wanted to do is bring a bit of a lower level programming. Closer to a Zachtronics game, where you have a simplified microcontroler-like architecture and a nicely written datasheet-like manual you can print and browse at your convencience.
MarceColl|1 year ago
I'm a very quick-feedback-loop interactive developer so I kinda struggled with that.
I'd like people starting with my game to start where they feel comfortable. If they want to go directly into full coding and automating they can do that, if they want to start playing, get a feel for the game and automate incrementally they can do that as well. In Screeps you feel like "Immunity will end in a few weeks, hurry up, rush to something so you don't get destroyed" and I want to avoid that feeling if that makes sense.
I think factorio really nailed this, almost everything you want can be done manually first. You start mining coal yourself, then start incrementally automating more and more as you understand how materials flow in your factory. I want a similar feel.
This is also why the first part I'm building is the sandbox where you can edit units, spawn them, play with them and debug them all from the same screen, it serves both to refine the development loop and to help me build the basic unit behaviours.
MarceColl|1 year ago