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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · 1h

Even more map edits, because I got carried away.
#indiegames #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog

Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · 6h

Using the latest map edit tools to try to prettify the map a bit.
Conclusion: more and better assets needed, but good enough for now.
#indiegames #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · 7d

Painting textures, grass and elevation. Map editing tools are now almost complete. Next I'll have to put them to good use and try to make a pretty map.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · 14d

The world is no longer flat! ⛰️
Next week I'll try to add ground texture painting.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · 21d

A genetic algorithm style tournament! :)
Alas the melee unit's issues are more because of bugs rather than value tuning.

Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · 21d

Trying to improve melee units AI. There are still some that sometimes hang around doing nothing while their friends are fighting for their lives. 🤖⚔️🤖
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday #sologamedev

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · 28d

More gamepad updates. 🎮
Special cursor, more pronounced move confirmations, updates to the (still ugly) radial menu for building stuff.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Sep 13

Testing gamepad controls. 🎮 Still need a lot of tweaking but the basic actions you need to do a fairly simple.
Also improved mini map!
Approaching the point where the full gameplay loop will be pretty much ready for playtesting.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Sep 6

The beginnings of a minimap 🗺️
I need to find a way to efficiently draw all the trees there too.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Aug 30

New building that I'm calling an "Amplifier" for now. Unlike the Tower it won't allow for summoning of units, but it will generate twice as much Mana.
I'll later upgrade the visuals of all buildings, but lets make them exist first.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Aug 23

Increasing the time step for gameplay to test AI. Still more chaotic than I'd like. Some behind the scenes refactoring will be needed before it can be improved further.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #devlog #rts #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Aug 9

New cursor, clicking and camera panning UI feedback. 🖱️
I should really get back to doing gameplay, but it's time for some summer vacations 😎
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #sologamedev #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Aug 2

Some UI explaining which element is strong against which.
And some more selection circle effects.
More unit coordination and AI work for next week. 🛠️
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jul 26

Decals on the ground for selection circles.
I finally got rid of the debug circles that draw on top of everything.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #devlog #rts #screenshotsaturday #sologamedev

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jul 19

Updated the building UI - now with a radial menu ⭕
Also units now have elemental types and deal more/less damage depending on the opposing element. 🔥⛈️
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jul 12

When your trees are only meant to be seen from top down. 😅
PS: also working on more UI stuff, but nothing interesting to show so far.
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #gaming #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jul 5

Well by "blocked" I don't mean "collision" exactly.
More like - "if I take this path, will I encounter more enemy units than I can handle" kind of thing.
So if the AI believes it can beat the opposition on a given lane (with reasonable loses) it might consider doing so to get to its ultimate goal.

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jul 5

No, the nodes shown in that clip are the "macro" nodes that the AI uses for decision making.
There is a simple grid path-finding with A* happening on the unit level.
But the faction AI needs to reason using a more "lane-based" approach. As in - is this whole "lane" blocked by enemy units.

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jul 5

I was only coming up with some pretty difficult flood fill algorithms and decided to postpone making them dynamically generated.

Some mechanics where you can destroy the environment (trees, cliffs, etc) might appear in the future and the AI should be able to adapt though.

A problem for future me 😆

1

Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jul 5

Yep! Hand placed for now at map editing time.

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jul 5

Fiddling with stb_truetype to get it to draw Bulgarian Cyrillic characters 🔤 It's hardly an essential feature at this point, but better to make sure it can be done, before there are too many strings in the game. 😀
#indiegame #indiegamedev #gamedev #rts #devlog #screenshotsaturday

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jun 28

Added some new UI features. Texts can now have words with different colors and icons for stuff like resources and elemental types can be inserted in there as well. 🔤
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #screenshotsaturday #rts #devlog #sologamedev

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jun 21

Computer controlled forces becoming a bit more coherent. (I'm afraid to say "AI" so that people don't think it's somehow an LLM :D) Performance dips are becoming noticeable. I'll need to do an optimization pass when I'm happy with the behavior.
#indiegame #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #rts #devlog

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Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jun 18

It could be more prevalent in games if they are a non-live service - ship it and be done with it kind of software.
Sure there will be a few patches after launch but with some games you can really just move on after a few bug fix releases. Hence less worries about maintainability.

Kaloyan Kaludov @kaloyankaludov.bsky.social · Jun 14

Debugging movement issues involves lots and lots of helper lines and circles. 🛠️
#indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev #screenshotsaturday #rts #sologamedev #devlog

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