Hi yall👋 You can play my games here: mohammed-kapiel.itch.io/ You can join my Discord server here: discord.gg/hm73DZqauK You can subscribe to my mailing list here: mohammed-kapiel.mailchimpsites.com/ My Godot Template: github.com/Mohammed-Kapiel/Mohammed-Kapiels-Godot-Template
Making your first game a grand strategy is um, certainly a choice XD. It's an incredibly difficult genre to learn game development with because most grand strategy games are built from the ground up. There are plenty of tools to help you learn to make a shooter or a platformer, but strategy games are another beast entirely.
Lesson learned 😂 But I did have experience with game dev, but it was just a couple of game jams and a couple of projects I worked on but weren't solo. Even then it was too big of a challenge at that point, but a genre and style of game I'd love to go back to soon enough when I have the skills, confidence and maybe team necessary.
This was very valuable. Thank you for sharing your experience, Mohammed. There's actually a solo developer doing a Cold War themed GSG. The game is called Espiocracy. You might want to check it out. The game has a smaller scope compared to other GSGs and it kinda works I think.
Thank you so much 😊 I've seen Espiocracy, and am very excited about it, always happy to see more GSGs. I agree, I do think that focusing on a certain aspect limiting the total scope is a very valid and commendable way of managing it. I would love to play and analyze it once its out, maybe it can give me a push to resume or restart my game after. Also didn't know that a solo dev was making it, thank you for that insight, it's honestly impressive and I wish them the best.
Yeah, unfortunately I have made similar conclusions myself, although my issue was years of project jumping. Now I have a tested and well known concept for smaller project in the works with a clear goal, even a storyboard, which is a first for me. But so far I'm very happy with the project and the story I want to tell with it, so fingers crossed. But I do have a friend who really on developing his own 4A-Space game, akin to Stellaris and others with full on mod-support and everything. Like you've mentioned, he also has perfectionist tendencies. I've hinted a lot at him that he should start small but he has a thick skull and I can't/want to stop him. I can only hope that, unlike myself, he'll does not need years to come to learn the lesson. Anyway, I wish you good luck with your projects. Happy developing!
Thank you so much 😊 I wish you and your friend the same 🙏 Sadly some lessons are hard to teach, we just need to experience them ourselves. I knew the advice before starting, but I think the issue was that "start small" means vastly different things for different people. Honestly as long as you and your friend are happy, then you can't go wrong.
Maybe you can join an existing team. When I was younger I also participated in Indie gamedev, and a lot of people run interesting projects. Developing a whole game, especially such a complex one, is really a lot for a single person. Anyway, thank u for the video and I wish u a lot of success with your other projects!
That is a very good call. I would love joining a team, or building one and hope that either case in time I can achieve that. This is sort of my "dream game" so I hope I can come back to it in the future and maybe then can have some helping hands that share my vision. Thank you so much 😊 I wish you the best with your endeavors as well 🙏
From what I can tell, your biggest problem with your project is that you did not know what your game was. You had vague ideas: Modern age, not real world, map game, random maps, economy... but these elements are not a game. Games involve players making interesting and consequential decisions to achieve a goal in the face of resistance. None of the ideas you talked about actually amount to a GAME. So you spent huge amounts of time on programming problems: making a map generator, generating random provinces, making economic models... when there was no game concept to focus your ideas and direct you to where your attention really should go, so you wasted tons of time on difficult and aimless programming projects. You invested 90% of your time in areas that represent maybe 5% of a player's experience. You wanted to make a map game. What are the key ingredients of a map game? There are maps, they have provinces, players own provinces, those provinces have attributes (military units, population, economy, etc.) that can change (including who owns the provinces). That's a map game in its most distilled form. MAKE THAT GAME. MAKE IT INTERESTING. I believe that in the game I just described, there is no element you could remove and have a playable game. So make that first. Everything you worked on, you could do without. Map games don't need random maps to be games. Their economic models can be as simple as "1 pop = $1" (or you can attach a dollar value to a province; no need to even have pops) and they'd still be games. You can still have a map game with ZERO unit variety; ten soldiers beat less than ten soldiers. MAKE THAT GAME FIRST, MAKE IT INTERESTING, AND START BUILDING OFF THAT. You can add the more complicated stuff later, but not until you have your core gameplay down solid. I also recommend you not do any programming in the beginning and make a paper prototype first. Paradox games are really political sandboxes where players interact with the system to achieve self-defined goals. Gather your friends in a room, draw a map on a whiteboard, and be the GM of the game you think you want to make. See what they do; what goals do they set for themselves? What do they think they need to use to achieve those goals? Where is their attention focused? What's fun for them, and what is not fun? (This could also be a PBEM game where you make a map in MS Paint, keep stats in an excel spreadsheet, players send you orders via e-mail, and you update manually accordingly.) Basically, build out a theory of fun for the type of game you think you want to make before you type ANY code. When you go back to code, again take the attitude: what is the one feature on my list of potential features that's absolutely needed to make this a fun game? Small teams can certainly make complicated games that people enjoy: that's Dwarf Fortress. But you cannot approach this as a programming project. This is a game design project, and game design is a skill entirely separate from programming. So work on your design skills to prevent this from happening in the future. That includes reading books talking about game DESIGN (rather than game PROGRAMMING).
Whilst I 100% agree for a viable game, I must admit at the time I didn't care for people playing my game, in a way my focus was looking at the game as a programming challenge/problem over being a "Game". My number 1 lesson is to fail quickly, i.e. prototype the bare minimum needs as you mentioned and find the fun before starting production.
Hi yall👋
You can play my games here: mohammed-kapiel.itch.io/
You can join my Discord server here: discord.gg/hm73DZqauK
You can subscribe to my mailing list here: mohammed-kapiel.mailchimpsites.com/
My Godot Template: github.com/Mohammed-Kapiel/Mohammed-Kapiels-Godot-Template
Making your first game a grand strategy is um, certainly a choice XD. It's an incredibly difficult genre to learn game development with because most grand strategy games are built from the ground up. There are plenty of tools to help you learn to make a shooter or a platformer, but strategy games are another beast entirely.
Lesson learned 😂
But I did have experience with game dev, but it was just a couple of game jams and a couple of projects I worked on but weren't solo. Even then it was too big of a challenge at that point, but a genre and style of game I'd love to go back to soon enough when I have the skills, confidence and maybe team necessary.
This was very valuable. Thank you for sharing your experience, Mohammed. There's actually a solo developer doing a Cold War themed GSG. The game is called Espiocracy. You might want to check it out. The game has a smaller scope compared to other GSGs and it kinda works I think.
Thank you so much 😊 I've seen Espiocracy, and am very excited about it, always happy to see more GSGs. I agree, I do think that focusing on a certain aspect limiting the total scope is a very valid and commendable way of managing it. I would love to play and analyze it once its out, maybe it can give me a push to resume or restart my game after. Also didn't know that a solo dev was making it, thank you for that insight, it's honestly impressive and I wish them the best.
Yeah, unfortunately I have made similar conclusions myself, although my issue was years of project jumping.
Now I have a tested and well known concept for smaller project in the works with a clear goal, even a storyboard, which is a first for me.
But so far I'm very happy with the project and the story I want to tell with it, so fingers crossed.
But I do have a friend who really on developing his own 4A-Space game, akin to Stellaris and others with full on mod-support and everything. Like you've mentioned, he also has perfectionist tendencies. I've hinted a lot at him that he should start small but he has a thick skull and I can't/want to stop him. I can only hope that, unlike myself, he'll does not need years to come to learn the lesson.
Anyway, I wish you good luck with your projects. Happy developing!
Thank you so much 😊
I wish you and your friend the same 🙏
Sadly some lessons are hard to teach, we just need to experience them ourselves. I knew the advice before starting, but I think the issue was that "start small" means vastly different things for different people. Honestly as long as you and your friend are happy, then you can't go wrong.
This is why it’s important to make a static map firsts which you should have done one of earth and then expand to other generation
That is definitely a way to go about it, but overall I'd say my main mistake is not starting with the most simple possible prototype first.
Thank you for sharing your experience! Wishing you the best of luck in your current project.
Thank you so much 😊
Maybe you can join an existing team. When I was younger I also participated in Indie gamedev, and a lot of people run interesting projects. Developing a whole game, especially such a complex one, is really a lot for a single person. Anyway, thank u for the video and I wish u a lot of success with your other projects!
That is a very good call. I would love joining a team, or building one and hope that either case in time I can achieve that. This is sort of my "dream game" so I hope I can come back to it in the future and maybe then can have some helping hands that share my vision. Thank you so much 😊 I wish you the best with your endeavors as well 🙏
Love the Background music
Hey as a massive grand strategy fan. It was a really interesting video.
Thank you so much 😁
The original game you were making really did look interesting though, its a bit of a shame.
I honestly love the genre and really want to get back and try again. Maybe not now, but hopefully, in the future, I'll be able to make it a reality 🙏
From what I can tell, your biggest problem with your project is that you did not know what your game was. You had vague ideas: Modern age, not real world, map game, random maps, economy... but these elements are not a game. Games involve players making interesting and consequential decisions to achieve a goal in the face of resistance. None of the ideas you talked about actually amount to a GAME. So you spent huge amounts of time on programming problems: making a map generator, generating random provinces, making economic models... when there was no game concept to focus your ideas and direct you to where your attention really should go, so you wasted tons of time on difficult and aimless programming projects. You invested 90% of your time in areas that represent maybe 5% of a player's experience.
You wanted to make a map game. What are the key ingredients of a map game? There are maps, they have provinces, players own provinces, those provinces have attributes (military units, population, economy, etc.) that can change (including who owns the provinces). That's a map game in its most distilled form. MAKE THAT GAME. MAKE IT INTERESTING. I believe that in the game I just described, there is no element you could remove and have a playable game. So make that first.
Everything you worked on, you could do without. Map games don't need random maps to be games. Their economic models can be as simple as "1 pop = $1" (or you can attach a dollar value to a province; no need to even have pops) and they'd still be games. You can still have a map game with ZERO unit variety; ten soldiers beat less than ten soldiers. MAKE THAT GAME FIRST, MAKE IT INTERESTING, AND START BUILDING OFF THAT. You can add the more complicated stuff later, but not until you have your core gameplay down solid.
I also recommend you not do any programming in the beginning and make a paper prototype first. Paradox games are really political sandboxes where players interact with the system to achieve self-defined goals. Gather your friends in a room, draw a map on a whiteboard, and be the GM of the game you think you want to make. See what they do; what goals do they set for themselves? What do they think they need to use to achieve those goals? Where is their attention focused? What's fun for them, and what is not fun? (This could also be a PBEM game where you make a map in MS Paint, keep stats in an excel spreadsheet, players send you orders via e-mail, and you update manually accordingly.) Basically, build out a theory of fun for the type of game you think you want to make before you type ANY code. When you go back to code, again take the attitude: what is the one feature on my list of potential features that's absolutely needed to make this a fun game?
Small teams can certainly make complicated games that people enjoy: that's Dwarf Fortress. But you cannot approach this as a programming project. This is a game design project, and game design is a skill entirely separate from programming. So work on your design skills to prevent this from happening in the future. That includes reading books talking about game DESIGN (rather than game PROGRAMMING).
Whilst I 100% agree for a viable game, I must admit at the time I didn't care for people playing my game, in a way my focus was looking at the game as a programming challenge/problem over being a "Game". My number 1 lesson is to fail quickly, i.e. prototype the bare minimum needs as you mentioned and find the fun before starting production.