Windows Your Country Needs You! [Demo Updated! 11/05]

HighlandCoo

Member

Hi Everyone,

Introducing.. "Your Country Needs You!"

10 second description
Set in the great nation of Puritania, you must direct the resources of your country to ensure the greatest number of our brave and valiant soldiers can be sent to face (and defeat!) the guns of our enemy - the vile Hedonites!

Details
There are 3 screens, a "nation" screen where you decide what regions of your country to dedicate to what resouce - Farming, Mining and Recruitment. A "City" screen where you take the resources from the Nation and convert them into items for the battlefront, before sending them to the front via air. And finally the "Front" screen, where you direct your units and fortify your trenches to ensure maximum destruction.

The aim here is to manage the chaos, National regions will protest or become weary and will need to be managed. Factories, transport and Power need to managed efficiently in the City, and the front needs to controlled to ensure supplies from your city are allocated correctly amounts your frontline units and your special abilitiies are correctly deployed.

Objective
Capture all of the enemy trenches to win the game!


Short Gameplay GIF

Screenshots





Do please let me know what you think, all feedback will be gratefully recieved!

Thanks for reading! I'd love to respond to any questions or comments, you know what to do![/Spoiler][/Spoiler]
 
Last edited:
G

Guest User

Guest
1) it's adorable that cows are called coos in scots, i didnt know that so thanks
2) game looks great! suggest getting some nice big static screenshots so we can see the different screens in detail, but otherwise everything looks quite fantastic.

are there going to be different types of soldiers, emplacements, and armored cavalry (or regular cavalry, idk) that you also have to decide upon strategically and allocate resources to make equipment for or is it a case of pushing out as many of those little blue dudes as possible?
 

HighlandCoo

Member
1) it's adorable that cows are called coos in scots, i didnt know that so thanks
2) game looks great! suggest getting some nice big static screenshots so we can see the different screens in detail, but otherwise everything looks quite fantastic.

are there going to be different types of soldiers, emplacements, and armored cavalry (or regular cavalry, idk) that you also have to decide upon strategically and allocate resources to make equipment for or is it a case of pushing out as many of those little blue dudes as possible?
Looks great so far. Lots of love has gone into it.
Thanks Guys!

I'll get some proper screenshots up once my screens are not made of my own, horrible, placeholder art. Right now they raise more questions than they solve you know? :)

The idea is to have different unit types, like infantry, armoured, artillery. Eachunit deploys different little men to the battlefield - like soldiers, tanks, etc. Each unit also gets a special abilty, like mortars, flame throwers, gas, howizters and so on. Units and their abilities will be upgradable.

Depending on what they are, units will need to be supplied with different resources from your Nation/City, for example infantry need soldiers and food, but Armour will need Fuel and Metal. Im still working out the supply chains for this.

The next thing is the static trenchs, they get machine guns, sandbags, barbed wire and mines. Ive not yet decided what to do with trenches.. maybe to have slots you fill with things or make them placeable resources like buildings? No idea yet. Currently only machine guns and sandbags are "in" so Im seeing how they play for a bit.

The whole build/upgrade cycle will also apply to city buildings and national regions.

Ive been playing with better quality GIFs.. see an example below!


 
D

DirectShift

Guest
Looks amazing, loved the idea.

Graphics are ok, hehe.

Will there be a Demo?
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Will there be a Demo?
Oh definitely, as soon as I get all the placeholders and debugging cleared up, add some basic sound, add a few quality of life things like tooltips, hint messages and a help screen for controls etc.

No idea when that all might happen, I keep getting sidetracked making the machine guns go more "dakkadakkadakkadakka"... :)
 

HighlandCoo

Member
I promised screenshots as soon as I had replaced some of the placeholder art, here you go!

Screenshots
This is "The Front", its where the everything you produce via "The Nation" and "The Capitol" gets deployed against the enemy.



This is "The Capitol", where resources produced in "The Nation" get converted into items and delivered to "The Front" via air.



This is "The Nation", your country is divided into Regions and you need to allocate each region to producing something you need.
 

Morendral

Member
Looks neat, I like the concept. The trench warfare thing looks like a nice way to liven up what the player needs to do. The ground look good so far, too. I'm interested in trying this.

Also this is super nitpicky of me and not really relevant, but the in game date doesn't jive with having airports, aerial supplies, etc.

Keep up the good work
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Also this is super nitpicky of me and not really relevant, but the in game date doesn't jive with having airports, aerial supplies, etc.
I feel the same, I cant decide whether to switch to trains as the mode of transport between the Capitol and the Front, but then I have issues about how I render that without the trains having to drive through the Capitol grid.

Alternatively, Im considering a bit of a Diesel-Punk theme for the game which would allow me to have clockwork helicopters and steam-powered mech suits and the like. Can't decide though as I think you really need some skill to implement that properly.

All the art work is placeholder, in fact putting these screens up has been interesting as when I scrunch my eyes up all I see is a muddy, dull grey/brown mass. I would like some more _pop_ from the backgrounds and effects. Watch this space.

A playable demo will be up ASAP, Im keen to let everyone else start breaking the game in new and excisting ways so I can spend my free time fixing it lol.
 

Morendral

Member
I feel the same, I cant decide whether to switch to trains as the mode of transport between the Capitol and the Front, but then I have issues about how I render that without the trains having to drive through the Capitol grid.

Alternatively, Im considering a bit of a Diesel-Punk theme for the game which would allow me to have clockwork helicopters and steam-powered mech suits and the like. Can't decide though as I think you really need some skill to implement that properly.

All the art work is placeholder, in fact putting these screens up has been interesting as when I scrunch my eyes up all I see is a muddy, dull grey/brown mass. I would like some more _pop_ from the backgrounds and effects. Watch this space.

A playable demo will be up ASAP, Im keen to let everyone else start breaking the game in new and excisting ways so I can spend my free time fixing it lol.
Trains are good, they will get you relatively close to the front. WW1 saw the gap from train to front filled by horse and increasingly cars, which were relatively new back then. Personally I don't care for stream punk, but it's not my game. If you did want the train, it wouldn't have to necessarily go right through anything, it could go between tiles, or it could run along the edge of the screen or something.
 
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DirectShift

Guest
Hey!

I've played it.

I have one big problem: I don't understand the game... at all.

Please, make a tutorial or something, introduce the concepts slowly (one screen at a time for example and then interconnected) at least that's my opinion.

Oh, and when I was playing, I pressed "esc" and then "quit to desktop" and this happened:

https://imgur.com/a/9kNY50m

Seems fun however, but like I said... I don't understand it!
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Hey!
I've played it.
I have one big problem: I don't understand the game... at all.
Please, make a tutorial or something, introduce the concepts slowly (one screen at a time for example and then interconnected) at least that's my opinion.
Oh, and when I was playing, I pressed "esc" and then "quit to desktop" and this happened:
https://imgur.com/a/9kNY50m
Seems fun however, but like I said... I don't understand it!
Hey thanks for your comment! Especially thanks for the screenshot of your error - its an odd one - I can't replicate it. It's looking for a global var which points to a sound file. All those vars are set when the game starts, so I'm not sure how it got into a state where the var no longer exists. Its been added to the bug list and I'll keep an eye out for it.

A tutorial is a _must have_ I was worried about spending too much time on it before the majority of features are in, for example I still need to add research and government screens... but I think its reasonable to expect some instructions otherwise my feedback on the actual game will be very thin eh? :) Watch this space.

There are "hint" messages which appear, and you can press H for a little screen with some descriptive text, were they no use at all?

Cheers!
 

Morendral

Member
I've been working on implementing Tanks into the game and I hit a bug you might all like to see.. I can't decide if this is terrible, or the coolest thing I've ever seen. :)

It's a really cool effect but I don't know what it could be used for other than a linear Target for artillery
 
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DirectShift

Guest
Hey thanks for your comment! Especially thanks for the screenshot of your error - its an odd one - I can't replicate it. It's looking for a global var which points to a sound file. All those vars are set when the game starts, so I'm not sure how it got into a state where the var no longer exists. Its been added to the bug list and I'll keep an eye out for it.

A tutorial is a _must have_ I was worried about spending too much time on it before the majority of features are in, for example I still need to add research and government screens... but I think its reasonable to expect some instructions otherwise my feedback on the actual game will be very thin eh? :) Watch this space.

There are "hint" messages which appear, and you can press H for a little screen with some descriptive text, were they no use at all?

Cheers!
Oh yeah I saw the hints! and I applied some of them (make roads for bringing packets) but still didn't work, and I didn't understand how exactly the actions I made affected the gameplay.

That's the main problem, I didn't know what was happening, although I threw some bombs here and there haha!
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Update!

The work continues, Ive added tanks to the game, which add interesting balance issues. I see them as a mid game unit, but Ive not added the "gating" to prevent users just building them from the very first day of the war. All things in good time I suppose.

Im going to stop there and only have infantry and tank units for now (planes, etc later), and work on
- Basic Tutorial
- Adding a special ability for tanks (infantry units get a mortar... cant think what to give the tank units thats not too similar to a mortar? Perhaps change the name of mortar to "artillery", give it to the tanks and give Infantry something else??)
- Adding unit "gating" for example - cannot recuit a new unit unless the front has sufficient resources to create it (ie: You need 50 soldiers at the front to create a new unit)
- Added research and upgrades and politics.. all 3 of these are huge features with their own screens. So they will probably come after I finish the 3 other milestones above

And the obvious general polishing and bugfixes as I go.

Wish me luck! have a great weekend everyone!
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Demo Updated!

- Added tutorial screens (work in progress)
- Added Tank Units
- Added Nation Region "Ore Mining" (produces ore)
- Added City Building "Steel Factory" (takes ore and makes steel)
- Added City Building "tank factory" (takes steel and produces tanks)
 

Morendral

Member
Just a couple of thoughts

You can have both mortars and artillery. The reload time on the artillery can be much higher, but the blast radius on the mortars would be much smaller.

Some ideas for the tanks
They could provide cover for infantry
They could speed over trenches past enemy lines and attack from the rear
They could attack with multiple machine guns in all directions
They could use cannons with a similar effect to artillery
Etc etc
 
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