Working on the prototypes (now on the society stage), I got to thinking about the move from society to industrial. And basically the way things are shaping up now the society stage begins with the player placing individual buildings for continuity with awakening stage. So that got me thinking that the change from society to industrial could zoom out the game more and switch from individual building management to managing entire cities as single things. I think that would make a pretty natural transition point to full cities. This isn’t exactly correct as civilizations were widespread even before industrialization, but that would be a pretty natural point in the game to switch up the gameplay.
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Are we talking about building cities like we could in Cities Skyline or Simcity?
If that so I guess the widespread can still be a thing if AI could develop its own city somewhere else on the planet.
Anyway I like the idea of a smooth transition from one stage to another instead of a black screen fade and a popup saying “hey you have evolved again now you can forget what you’ve done before and just play another kind of game”
Personally I am of the mind that this should happen in the transition between awakening and society instead.
My reasoning being that awakening is a stage where no proper society exists yet, and your “tribe” will mostly just be a family unit of your species that shares knowledge between each other. While you may learn to build structures and craft tools over the generations, the game is ultimately still centered around the player and their family.
Building the society center represents a point where multiple family units work together to form a society, and the march of progress and evolution will no longer be centered around the individual level. Thus the player’s awareness expands to encompass the society as a whole.
If it’s continuity you are worried about, the mechanic of placing and building structures may not be specific to the awakening stage. It’s personally reasonable for creatures to be able to construct nests of varying complexity, and even things such as dams or “wells”.
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I was thinking that it’d be better to conserve the continuity between awakening and society stage. Because in awakening the player can already tell other members of their species to collect resources and make simple buildings. Then in society stage the player would still see all the buildings they’ve placed and members of their species running around they could command.
That would be a stark contrast to later where entire cities are one thing where the player just clicks what buildings they want to construct and entire armies are represented by a single unit on a map.
So you guys would prefer to remove the player placed structures when entering the society stage and just represent a settlement as a single thing on the map where the player selects things to build? Like I said I think that would be a more jarring change. Instead when going from society to industry, we can just zoom out the camera a lot more so that the individual buildings are really tiny on screen. I think overall with the game that place would be more natural and smooth to put the cutoff between individual buildings and just representing cities as single things.
Just to be sure we are on the same page
Society stage = age of empires/populous 3?
Industrial stage = civ 5?
If thats the case, I think its a great idea. Since it makes each stage more distinct from one another and also adds a more fluid transition from controlling a pack of creatures to a family unit of intelligent beings to an organised civilization and then finally entire cities/nation states with large populations
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But, yes. That’s my idea that the player will be in control of a small number of units initially to make the jump smoother. And can still place individual buildings and command single units.
Right now I’m working on the actual transition, in which the camera smoothly goes from a third person view to the strategy view focused on the society center. Once the camera has moved the screen blanks to black and fades back with the society stage GUI and the society center still exactly where the player placed it.
Also yes, we need at some point to move the scale to be pretty much planet wide with cities the player manages. So at some point the switch needs to happen from individual units and buildings to cities as the things the player plays with.
I… don’t think I ever really meant to insinuate that.
My idea is that the early society stage is pretty much what yours is, minus the control of a single individual. The buildings you built would still be present at this point.
Ok ok ok reading the original post now I realize I misread this
I misread this as saying that you would be switching from an individual (as in the player controlling a single creature) building things.
So uh yeah, I pretty much agree with you wholeheartedly sorry.
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Ah, I see. So this was just a misunderstanding, got it.
I’ll continue with my original idea then for the prototypes.
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