Curious Dynamics

Terra Randoma @terrarandoma.bsky.social [ View ] May 30, 2024 at 12:00 UTC

We’re thrilled to be the official #TurnBasedThursday host once again 🎉

Calling #GameDev and #IndieDev, share your awesome #turnbased game 🎮 below! Don't forget to use the hashtag 👆

Calling all gamers, support the participants:
🔃 Repost!
❤️ Like!
💬 Comment!
✅ Wishlist!

10 replies 18 reposts 21 likes

Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 30, 2024 at 15:30 UTC

Excited for your release, @terrarandoma.bsky.social! Happy #TurnBasedThursday :)

Here's a snippet of gameplay from Folk Emerging, the prehistoric 4X I'm making

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 30, 2024 at 15:27 UTC

Here's some raw gameplay footage from my prehistoric strategy game 🔥
In the early game it's all about exploration, gathering enough food, and finding your niche 🏜️
#gamedev

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 29, 2024 at 18:10 UTC

oh interesting, that sounds cool

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 29, 2024 at 18:03 UTC

oh neat! I'd love to hear more about it when you get to that feature. what can you share about what you have in mind?

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 29, 2024 at 15:33 UTC

this current #gamedev trend on the 𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖈𝖊 is actually a great marketing exercise for distilling one's game down to 4 unique selling points of increasing importance

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 29, 2024 at 12:26 UTC

I use randomized notes with higher weights placed on certain notes in the scale (in this case, D Dorian #4) I also want to try adapting the scale to the music being played, which could be neat

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 29, 2024 at 12:11 UTC

Check out these melodic on-hover sounds I've added to the buttons in my prehistoric strategy game 🎵

It's a tiny nice-to-have but feels fun 😊 They're exaggerated here to be more audible, in the game it'd be more subtle
#gamedev #gamemusic 🎮

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 28, 2024 at 14:21 UTC

You can consume multiple Food sources in my stone age strategy game 🔥

Each species offers a different amount of Food based on your people's skills, and as you progress you have more diet points to distribute between species 🍎🌾🐇

#gamedev #indiegame 🎮

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 27, 2024 at 21:24 UTC

true, although it's definitely my goal to make things as accessible as possible while retaining that's interesting about them, so it'll take some time to get the balance right

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 27, 2024 at 20:56 UTC

hmm ok thanks for the feedback!

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 27, 2024 at 20:41 UTC

thanks, does the tooltip feel clear enough in your opinion?

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 27, 2024 at 15:13 UTC

Experimenting with modifier batches that get applied one by one, hoping it doesn't overcomplicate things.

Here, Food from Bamboo is first modified by climate type, a river bonus, and foodweb stability; then species population size modifies the final value
#gamedev #indiegame 🎮

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 27, 2024 at 11:38 UTC

It's also interesting to model the biodiversity of different climates by limiting the number of species in each foodweb. For example, tropical climate foodwebs have higher biodiversity and show 12 species, while arid climate foodwebs have lower biodiversity and show 8 species

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 27, 2024 at 11:38 UTC

Previously I hadn't explicitly articulated the design constraints of the foodwebs, so it was a useful exercise and makes it easier to reason about balancing and expanding them. Now I have a better idea of how many species of each type are needed to enable a range of playstyles.

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 27, 2024 at 11:37 UTC

I've tweaked the foodwebs & tech tree in my prehistoric 4X to ensure each climate can support every stage of evolution of the hominid diet:
🍎fruits (early game)
🐇small animals (after butchering)
🐘large animals (after coordinated hunting)
🌾staple crops (after agriculture)
#gamedev 🎮

1 replies 1 reposts 4 likes

Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 16, 2024 at 10:18 UTC

Each nomadic band in Folk Emerging accumulates climate XP based on where they migrate each year.

At certain XP thresholds they unlock bonuses that help them adapt to that particular climate 🏜️🌳🌧️

Every choice matters!
#gamedev #indiegame 🎮

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 15, 2024 at 16:36 UTC

i love my random name generator, it's got some zingers

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 15, 2024 at 11:00 UTC

I've added sub-pages to the band details UI in my prehistoric strategy game.

The Ecosystem tab now has separate sub-tabs for:
♻ Foodweb (local organism populations)
🐺Species XP (diet + domestication)
🏜️Climate XP (accumulated based on migration)

#gamedev #indiegame 🎮

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 14, 2024 at 16:36 UTC

thanks! I like the cross-hatch approach, feels like it fits the setting

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 14, 2024 at 15:31 UTC

Made the "not visible" cross-hatch texture stick out from under the solid "not explored" dark tiles so there's a neat little transition zone #gamedev 🎮

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:09 UTC

It's far from perfect and these are all still placeholder textures, but I'm quite happy with this general approach for blending 2D hex tiles. Less hexy, more sexy? 🤔 9/9🧵

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:08 UTC

Adding more irregular blending between land tiles (in the red zone) got things looking less hexy and more painterly🎨 Here's the same landmass with the old blending VS the new 8/

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:08 UTC

There are 64 unique rule variants for land tiles, but I only needed to create 8 sprites, since the SW, SE, and E directions always have an extension (they're always an "underlay"). With some scripting in Unity I can map each sprite to the appropriate rule, making it easy to iterate. 7/

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:07 UTC

However, each land tile can have a different climate, and can border sea on any of its 6 sides, so the extensions outside its own boundaries need to be handled carefully. Here are a couple of failed experiments with randomized colors before I got them to play nice 6/

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:06 UTC

Water tiles are on a separate layer above the land, so they cleanly cut off the land wherever the coastline starts. Here is a water tile for comparison, smaller than land tiles, and the resulting shape of the coastline, with land extending out as far as required 5/

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:06 UTC

So I extended each land tile sprite to cover a much larger surface than before. The blue outline is the tile's actual size, everything outside that is for blending. Due to Unity's Tilemap renderer Top-Left sorting, the green area goes under other tiles, the rest goes over 4/

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:05 UTC

I wanted coasts to be rounder & smoother, and I also wanted coastlines to be controlled by sea rule tiles, rather than have them be an extra sprite on top. However, this would require land textures to extend out of their own tiles to wherever the coastline starts. 3/

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:05 UTC

My issue with the blending in the previous thread was that the tiles were still very hexy. I wanted to enable more irregular shapes and blending, especially around coastlines. 2/

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 13, 2024 at 15:04 UTC

Continuing my previous thread on hex tile blending 🎨

Here's a simplified flat map as an example of the final result, and I'll cover how I got there 🧵1/
#gamedev 🎮

1 replies 1 reposts 3 likes

Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 10, 2024 at 14:17 UTC

for now this color mountain also seems to work well enough with more polar climates like taiga & tundra ⛄ next up I'll need to check out Unity's Rule Override Tile class that enables creating variants of the same rule tile, so I can add snow-capped mountain variants 🏔️

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 10, 2024 at 13:59 UTC

decreased saturation on the mountains so they're less of a focus

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 10, 2024 at 13:19 UTC

added mountain rule tiles so they flow together when adjacent ⛰️🏔️⛰️
🎮 #gamedev #indiegame

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Curious Dynamics @curiousdynamics.bsky.social [ View ] May 09, 2024 at 16:05 UTC

this latest wave of crapto spam bots on twitter is hilarious. I just love their weird names and hashtags, feels like Vogon poetry:

$blorgify #SnorkleBard $jankblip, flairdrop, #ShartificialGloop

who or what comes up with this stuff?

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