Dev. Diary 1. Introduction and the future.

Hello, world!

My name is Yevhen. I am Ukrainian game developer currently residing and studying in Switzerland. You can check out more information in my main page yevhenkozlov.com

AI Improved :>

It's a dev. diary about my game which I slowly starting developing now - Corporates. It's an ambitious idea about a 4x/grand strategy game which revolves around corporations executing the role of governments. The closest reference would be Cyberpunk corporations. It's some kind of mix between the modern world and medieval orders which can become possible with more and more weakening role of governments in lives of people. It's a some kind of experiment which in the end can produce a really fun to play game with unique and meaningful experience.

I currently develop it alone. I dedicated myself to its goal and the development can take a really long time as I want to create the best grand strategies experience. It's possible that especially with these diaries I can find someone who would be interested in developing this game together, but unfortuntely referencing my experience I can't propose you any professional game development company experience as it is working extremely bad on the enthusiast basis. Only what I can propose is a share, but as the effort in the game development can differ, I can't propose anyone a fixed share, and this share will be defined in the end probably just by me rating your effort. So I don't recommend anyone to participate only for money, but if you will have the same dedication as me and would be able to trust me in my choices, then of course we would work together. But in this current case I value anyone who could help me with development, but, please, don't expect anything from me as it's not possible at least for now to establish economical relationships (providing money basically).

I also encourage you not to espect the release. I am a human and do it receiving nothing (at least in short-term). I am alone (at least currently) and have really much work to do also searching some money at least for simple living. I will make some Patreon or something like that to give you an option to support my journey as soon as I will make more updates, but again everything can happen in my life and I may not be able to continue the development, but I undestand what I am doing, I expect how much I should realise and I will be trying to simplify my development by using an engine, different tools and assets. Also I created this blog for many reasons, but partly because I want to create a kind of obligation for myself not to stop developing and I hope as it gets more updates, more people will be following these diaries.

To the current state I don't have any significant developments yet, but I can say what I chose to work with:

I chose Unreal Engine as a game engine - tho I am developing a strategy game it could be much easier to select any this kind of specific game engines, but unfortunately I don't know any of them public. I know that Paradox Interactive have their game engine which I personally find the most suitable, but at the same time I don't like current division by provinces as it eats a vast part of content (maybe it can be changed simply, I actually don't know, but it's not a public engine what complicates the possibility to develop on this one). I also don't want to create any hex provinces as I feel it's unesessary simplified. *(More about it you can read below). But also what I like in Unreal Engine is their Nanite Technology. It creates so cool opportunities to create detalised cities which is just necessary in this game.

*In the current realisation especially with references to medieval times and the nature of corporations - I chose buildings-based provinces, but they will not be actual provices, it will be buildings which you probably will be able to place anywhere in the world, but distant ones will not make any actual sense to place (I mean if generally it's not an emptly location), because you will have other corporations-competitors nearby you wich can actually do something with your building (conquer, destroy or any other possible activies which will be defined in the future). So this will encorauge you to think more about reasons why you do that and then naturally to survive in that harsh world you will be probably thinking about the best opportunities, and even more it enables natural reasons maybe to recolonise some territories or expand into them, and with possible supply system mechanic it can also define realistic opportunities to colonise (more like nearby territories or overseas). Tho colonisation in the modern world is not really possible (in classical sense), but it will be more similar to expanding buildings on free territories what in some kind of sense is colonisation. It also possible to "colonise" some cities making its areas your area of influence, but it will be better to talk about that as distinct mechanics which I will write about later. I recently found very interesting video about this topic.

Currently I am searching ways to realise procedural generation. Unreal Engine 5 have some possibilities to do so, but unfornutaly I can't say that it's really a tool which creates in one minute like in the real world landscape. And understanding that all the tools I checked ask money for their use, in some kind of sense I should reinvent the wheel. After I finish with a good enough landscape generation for my game, I will publish this asset for free to make life of game developers a bit easier.

I think for now that's it, see you later!