Let's look at the backstage #2
Hello, fans of strategic city-builders!
Today's announcement will allow all players waiting for the premiere of The Whims of the Gods to learn a little more about our studio and the production itself. It will be the second part; you can check the first one here! Our stars are once again:
Łukasz Janczuk - responsible for the design of the production
Paweł Truong - dealing with technical issues/programming
Magdalena Stadnicka - working on the artistic side of The Whims of the Gods
Let's give them a voice!
Łukasz:
The biggest challenge for me was creating cooperation in a city-builder game. What exactly would the players be doing? How should their responsibilities for the city be divided?
In the earliest version of the game, the division between players assumed that one would handle city construction, resource production, and the economy, while the other would take care of city defense and military training. This division seemed interesting because it offered asymmetrical gameplay and defined roles. However, we quickly realized this wouldn't work; we couldn't offer equal engagement for both players. Building an ancient metropolis is a long process that requires careful preparation and planning while defending the city is much more intense and fast-paced.
We tried to find a way to balance the players' involvement. One approach was to give each player as many tasks as possible. But we soon noticed that this made the game larger and more complex, almost as if we were creating two games at once. It was a dead end...
This forced us to rethink our assumptions and search for a different way to divide responsibilities. This is how the idea emerged to split each responsibility between players instead of assigning distinct roles. Rather than giving one player food production and the other steelworking, both would be involved in food production. One would focus on crop cultivation and processing, while the other would manage livestock farming. This approach allowed us to balance player engagement and, at the same time, created interesting opportunities for cooperation between them.
Paweł:
Creating a game is one of the more interesting activities, but it can sometimes be tedious...
Let's take, for example, a bridge. Sure, everyone knows what it looks like and what it's for, but how do you make it "come to life" in the game? This is where the collaboration between designers, programmers, and artists begins.
BEFORE
AFTER
Designers have a vision for why they need a bridge and how it should be integrated into the gameplay. As a programmer, I gather their information and extract repeatable scenarios with various parameters. I check whether we can use existing systems or if a new one needs to be designed. I have to be diligent, thoroughly describe the issue, and plan its technical implementation, but at the same time, I must avoid becoming too perfectionistic in trying to design the perfect system.
If I started coding right away, I might realize later that I overlooked a scenario, and all the time saved by skipping proper planning would turn into time spent on fixes—or worse, the code might end up being scrapped entirely. That's why designing and fully understanding the problem is key. Making changes to diagrams, electronic documents, or even on paper is easy and relatively quick compared to altering programmed structures, classes, methods, and assets. It's also important to ask designers how they intend to configure the functionality. If the system design covers all the identified scenarios, the next phase is creating a prototype. Placeholder assets can be used at this stage, allowing us to discover any unforeseen technical issues.
Once the artists refine the project, the testers find bugs in the old version, and the programmer creates fixes and tackles technical challenges like navigation, AI, collisions, calculations, network replication, textures, and models, the testers return, and once again, programmers watch the world burn.
Artist: K.C.GreenMagdalena:
At my first meeting, I was tasked with evaluating the content created so far from an artistic perspective. One thing was clear. It didn’t create a cohesive world, and the individual elements didn’t fit together. At this stage, I also had to make a final but important decision: do we go with a typical low-poly style and adjust everything to match that direction (including trees and water), or do we take a risk and try to create something more unique and individual?
The environment was the first focus. Rocks were easy - they fit perfectly with our style. Water had to wait, as it required more advanced technical solutions. Trees… well... they were the real challenge!
I knew the trees needed a simplified, geometric form that would align with the chosen style. I sketched some quick concepts, and the artist created a 3D draft. Unfortunately, the idea didn’t work. While the trees gained a stylized, geometric shape, they looked heavy, and increasing the density didn’t help much. In the meantime, I was giving feedback on the developing concepts and models for buildings, characters, and UI... Everything was going well—except for the trees! They were a real nightmare! I kept thinking about how they should look and what technical solution would work best for us.
So, I wrote on paper all the elements of ideal trees should have, like "fluffy but still geometric" and "let’s try creating the leaves as polygons," etc. In the end, we found the perfect result, and I love our trees! 🙂
Don't forget to JOIN OUR DISCORD to talk about The Whims of the Gods with the development team! All the people featured in this announcement are there (almost) every day!
