News:

Welcome to World of Banished!

Main Menu

Ostriv - a new city-building game in development

Started by yevheniy, October 01, 2016, 07:03:07 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 3 Guests are viewing this topic.

yevheniy

Hey there! My name is Yevheniy and I am developing a city-building game named Ostriv. I really like Banished and I hope the people here would like my game too.


Here are some key features of my game:

– detailed economic simulation and human behavior
A player has no direct control of citizens. People in game act like people: they have their own motivation, needs and skills. Citizens will take jobs only if they are satisfied with them (or they are desperate). They can sell goods and services to each other on the local market. Wealthy citizens could start their own business in your town and hire other people. You will need to influence your city by means of setting prices, taxes and various policies. Each decision will certainly lead to some reaction of the society.

– transport
For more effective resource transportation inside the town or for outer trade you will need vehicles. Carts and wheelbarrows could be built by a local carpenter or to be bought from outside.
The breeding of draft horses and oxen is also required to move resources as well as for cultivation of fields.

– unrestricted building placement
There's no any kind of grid or angle restriction for placing buildings. Any building could be placed on any angle. Building on slopes is also available.

– roads modeling
Dirt roads are formed in a natural way at places, where people move the most. You can build paved roads for more comfort and better aesthetics, but they'll be used only in case of reasonable placement.

– dynamic seasons change

– a unique visual style inspired by ukrainian architecture and way of life

The game is still in development, so more features are coming. Also the visuals are to be improved as the development goes on.

Adding some screenshots in attachments. See http://ostrivgame.com for more info and screenshots. Would like to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions about my game!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ostrivgame/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OstrivGame
IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/ostriv
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/OstrivGame/

Now on Steam Greenlight:


Whoyou13

wow, are you like? a one man game developer? this is good, but please include conflict to other cities to conduct war if necessary; Nice

yevheniy

Sorry, but the combat is really out of my plans. I would like to concentrate on peacefull city development. That's what really in the mood of someone who lives in 200km of an actual war.

Whoyou13


yevheniy

Quote from: Whoyou13 on October 01, 2016, 08:24:18 AM
are you open for your game to be modded?
If the game succeeds and a lot of people would request modding support, than I'll definitely take this to account. What I can say now is that modding for Ostriv wouldn't be easy because of an amount of effort needed for a single building to work. There's advanced construction animation system, doors, navigation, and a lot of different texture maps and utility models for each object in game. But, still, it remains possible)

Whoyou13

animations? wow, I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for sharing this.

Paeng

Quote from: yevheniy on October 01, 2016, 09:08:41 AMWhat I can say now is that modding for Ostriv wouldn't be easy

While I can do very well without the combat option, I think that a building sim without modding support is not really bound for success. Just look at the available ones - be it Banished with its small but fine modding community or Simcity with a huge one for more than a dozen years, or others of this genre... where would they be without modding?

Town- or City builders have a huge hunger for new models, added functionality and individual solutions - more than a developer can ever think of or produce out-of-the-box... in my (not so) humble opinion  ;)
[i]Heads are round so thoughts can take a turn[/i]
[color=teal][size=8pt]Editor's Choice [b]here[/b][/size][/color]

yevheniy

Okay, let's take a windmill for example. It consists of 6 moving parts. The wings are rotating according to the wind speed and direction. When the wind changes, a miller uses a lever to turn the windmill body to the wind. When the windmill is not used, the wings are disassembled a bit to stop them rotating. Also there's blurred sub-model to show on high game speeds (because otherwise it looks very unrealistic). Also there's a door for the miller to get inside. All these parts are moving together along with navigational nodes, along with hidden utility model that specifies floor elevation to position agents on ground correctly. Also there's a special node for birds so they won't fly through the wings and a special occupation polygon determining place near the windmill where no buildings could be situated.
Oh, I almost forgot. There's a special model in wich there are building parts used by workers during construction, so it looks really like they are building it, not just hammer the ground and it magically appears.
And, yes, the wind could be obstructed by some other building near the windmill.

The thing with modding (as we know it) is that all the improvements are mostly visual. At the contrary - when I add a bench model to the game, I want to make my citizens sit on that bench when they are tired, I want them to talk to each other while resting on a bench. My goal is to make my cities look alive and beliavable. And after 2.5 years of making so I still don't understand why developers refuse it and just leave this task to modders giving them rather limited tools to just modify visuals. I know Banished cities could look really butifull with a lot of visual mods, but it's just for screenshots; nothing in game actually changes. But I really need to thank all Banished modders: I've learned a lot of useful information about what gamers want from the city-builder.

My point is that I want to engage the community in development and just include in game all the things that are missing. And these things won't be just visual.
What's your opinion (humble or not) on this?

Whoyou13

Superb thinking about what city building is, and very realistic about citizen's act and nature's condition. Whatever good that you may think that will make your game very well in development, just continue it.

Pangaea

Looks and sounds like an interesting game, with more focus on creating a lively or dynamic city/town than in other city builders. Having modding support would of course be grand too, but I understand the main focus at this stage is to complete the game and hopefully turn it into a success. Keep up the good work.

Hope it will be available on GOG, or some other place than Steam at least, because I won't be buying anything from that lot.

Paeng

Quote from: yevheniy on October 02, 2016, 07:45:52 AMMy point is that I want to engage the community in development and just include in game all the things that are missing.

Well, I did not doubt your abilities  :)
And I do like your take on immersion.

QuoteI still don't understand why developers refuse it and just leave this task to modders giving them rather limited tools to just modify visuals. 

I can only speak from my point of view - as a simulation player, modder and moderator for many years... And my experience tells me that no single person or group can think up all the possibilities that a community (of any size) can think up within the blink of an eye...  the wish-list will grow, rather explode, with each new player that enters the game. Before you know it you're sitting on hundreds, soon thousands of request for this building, this mechanic, this texture, this climate, from general things down to the nitty-gritty details...

Banished is a bad example for this - the mod kit is rather shabby, indeed... there are much better mod-kits out there, and definitly not limited to just modify visuals  ;)


Anyway, just wanted to enter my vote for mod support...
I'm looking forward to see a playable version of your game - I'll definitely give it a try!  :)
[i]Heads are round so thoughts can take a turn[/i]
[color=teal][size=8pt]Editor's Choice [b]here[/b][/size][/color]

kid1293

Sounds like you really have thought about this.
Why not add a scripting language early in development
for possible use in modding later on?
Could make some of your decisions easier instead of
hardcoding everything.

RedKetchup

> > > Support Mods Creation developments with Donations by Paypal  < < <
Click here to Donate by PayPal .

DesoPL

I guess something like that i missed in Banished. Some Ukrainian style buildings etc.

yevheniy

Yeah, I know it very well - modding can be really fun thing to do just as itself. My entry point to game development was Half-Life modding back in 2003. The interesting thing about that is that their SDK was a whole lot of game & utils source code. And that became the main reason for me to start learning C++ :D
So, I think maybe I'll just reveal the part of source code when I finish, and anyone would be able to do absolutely anything out of it. Maybe someone will start learning C++ because of that and create some good game eventually) Btw, I'm not sure if any other game had greater modding community than HL.

As for scripting, I don't want to even try, because there's no doubt that it would reduce overall game performance since we talk about massive scenes with hundreds and thousands of agents.

But now let's just imagine ourselves gamers, not modders, and try to create some really good city-builder as we want it. I really want you to remember all the things you always wanted but never had. There's a lot of things so easy to implement but everyone just shy to ask :)
I have a lot of ideas in my strategy.txt but there's still could be some elephant in the room I don't see.