Ymir: A new dawn
As those who follow news on the Ymir discord probably already know, since the beginning of this year I've been focused on upgrading the game to a newer version of the engine (gms2).
Yes, it is still Gamemaker but this newer version opens up much more possibilities (such as finally 64bit builds removing the memory limitations).
As i started focusing on QOL features last year, it became clear to me that above all else the biggest problem of the game is... loading times, which compound with all the other QOL flaws making it feel tedious and too time consuming.
Everything else would feel much more streamlined if the loading times were reduced between swapping from territory to world map, or going from city to its countryside territories.
Unfortunately because of how graphics were organized and the engine limitations this could not be improved upon without rethinking the whole graphics from scratch.
This upgrade meant redoing graphics rendering from scratch anyways, and I thought that instead of wasting time redoing the same overall system as in the current version of the game, it made more sense to take this opportunity to design something much more ambitious focused around the idea of optimizing loading times as much as possible.
This is going to be much more than a simple upgrade to a more recent version of the engine.
In fact it will probably feel much like a new game rather than an update, although the game mechanics themselves are not going to be modified.
But its going to take many months to complete, so much that i can't give any timeline but it could very will be this whole year.
This also means the current version of the game is going to remain unchanged in the meantime, also why there hasn't been any new update recently.
You may ask "why not take this opportunity to finally move on another engine?".
Well: graphics are only a small part of the game. By upgrading, i "only" have to redo graphics but i can mostly keep everything else unchanged.
Moving to a different engine would have implied redoing and translating everything else. Instead of a year, it would be 3. And that's just too much time to leave the current game standing still in the meantime.
As i make progress on the gms2 transition, I am feeling more confident about my most ambitious plan and it is time for a first teaser so you guys can get a better idea of the scope of the changes and why it's going to take so long.
I will reveal more as i keep making progress, but you can probably already speculate on the scale of changes based on this first screenshot!
The first feature announcement of this update -which was already announced on the discord a while ago- is the transition to not only hexagonal tiles but also to true spherical worlds.
And yes, there will still be procedural worlds as well!
There's a reason spherical worlds are rare in games: it adds considerable headache to everything else.
But I always dreamed of it , and so that trumps everything else.
Plus, as seen in this screenshot, it will allow to make an actually accurate custom Earth map with real proportions, and that's pretty cool as well.
These are going to be exciting changes that will renew the experience of the game, but it's going to be a long wait. I hope it will be worth it and that you will forgive the time it will take to complete this change.
Yes, it is still Gamemaker but this newer version opens up much more possibilities (such as finally 64bit builds removing the memory limitations).
As i started focusing on QOL features last year, it became clear to me that above all else the biggest problem of the game is... loading times, which compound with all the other QOL flaws making it feel tedious and too time consuming.
Everything else would feel much more streamlined if the loading times were reduced between swapping from territory to world map, or going from city to its countryside territories.
Unfortunately because of how graphics were organized and the engine limitations this could not be improved upon without rethinking the whole graphics from scratch.
This upgrade meant redoing graphics rendering from scratch anyways, and I thought that instead of wasting time redoing the same overall system as in the current version of the game, it made more sense to take this opportunity to design something much more ambitious focused around the idea of optimizing loading times as much as possible.
This is going to be much more than a simple upgrade to a more recent version of the engine.
In fact it will probably feel much like a new game rather than an update, although the game mechanics themselves are not going to be modified.
But its going to take many months to complete, so much that i can't give any timeline but it could very will be this whole year.
This also means the current version of the game is going to remain unchanged in the meantime, also why there hasn't been any new update recently.
You may ask "why not take this opportunity to finally move on another engine?".
Well: graphics are only a small part of the game. By upgrading, i "only" have to redo graphics but i can mostly keep everything else unchanged.
Moving to a different engine would have implied redoing and translating everything else. Instead of a year, it would be 3. And that's just too much time to leave the current game standing still in the meantime.
As i make progress on the gms2 transition, I am feeling more confident about my most ambitious plan and it is time for a first teaser so you guys can get a better idea of the scope of the changes and why it's going to take so long.
I will reveal more as i keep making progress, but you can probably already speculate on the scale of changes based on this first screenshot!
Hexagonal tiles and spherical worlds
The first feature announcement of this update -which was already announced on the discord a while ago- is the transition to not only hexagonal tiles but also to true spherical worlds.
And yes, there will still be procedural worlds as well!
There's a reason spherical worlds are rare in games: it adds considerable headache to everything else.
But I always dreamed of it , and so that trumps everything else.
Plus, as seen in this screenshot, it will allow to make an actually accurate custom Earth map with real proportions, and that's pretty cool as well.
These are going to be exciting changes that will renew the experience of the game, but it's going to be a long wait. I hope it will be worth it and that you will forgive the time it will take to complete this change.