I’m a solo dev making a small strategy game in unreal. Unreal isn’t typically used for making grand strategy games especially however it works well in my case as I’m going down a different route to most.
Ascendant Dawn is a game where the player leads a nomadic tribe with mechanics like population management, diplomacy and eventually city founding. In terms of similar games it is sort of a mix between Mount and Blade along with Europe Universalis.
Most of the game’s basics are written in C++ as there are a lot of code that deals with a lot of game statistics which is if nothing else far easier to write in C++. Built upon that is a blueprint system that calls functions and does simpler tasks such as interface with UI. I’ve found blueprints to be essential to allow for rapid prototyping to get to the right solution. One of the biggest channels was creating the procedural settlements which randomly create buildings out from a central point via a tile system then a wall can be generated around them, though the building’s can still sometimes look slightly odd because of how they are aligned to the ground.
The most annoying bug I ran into was during the battles the structures used to keep track of the armies would be removed by the garbage collection system causing a crash which meant I had to change that to an uobject. There’s still a lot of work to do but I feel the game has a good base.
Below are some dev blogs and a video showing some very unfinished mechanics though it’s a bit more representative of gameplay. I’d love to hear any feedback anyone has.
This is really cool!
I am working for Paradox Interactive as a Technical Artist, so it is super cool to see someone working on a strategy game in Unreal Engine. I wish you the best with the series and game!
I’d say you’re doing an astonishing job thus far! It’s always impressive to come across a solo dev taking on a project such as this. Ascendant Dawn is well thought out! You’re leaving no proverbial stone unturned. (I can tell by your Blueprint spaghetti LOL!)
How does a player go about choosing the settlement names? Are they preloaded into the game, or can you name/rename your own settlements? Is there an ability to merge a settlement with a neighboring settlement for resources or defenses? If a player chooses to steal, sack, or raid an area, does this result in a war? What are the consequences?
Thank you so much for sharing Ascendant Dawn with us! I look forward to what wonders you will implement next to carry the game forward.
The settlement names are all pre determined for the AI however the player can name their settlement. There’s no ability to merge settlements but that might be a good idea especially since settlements can theoretically sprawl to the point of visually merging. since I’m mostly focused on the first phase of the game right now instead of the settlements some of the stuff isn’t fleshed out.
If the player attacks the AI it will respond by considering the player an enemy, so baring them from trading and if it has armies they will attack the player. Same sort of goes for nomadic AI. The diplomacy side the game is something I’m working on right now and it’ll allow the player to pursue options with the AI.
LOL!)