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Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

634 points david927 | 4 comments | 24 Aug 24 22:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?
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joegibbs ◴[25 Aug 24 01:32 UTC] No.41343553[source]▶
I've been working on a kind of strategy game called Fall of an Empire (https://fallofanempiregame.com), it's a bit like a mix between Crusader Kings, Total War, Mount and Blade type games (just the overworld, not the battles), but rather than expanding you're trying to prevent an empire from collapsing.

It's a ton of work, especially with the number of systems - you've got combat, resource management, settlement development, food managment, espionage, diplomacy etc - these all need to play together well. And then you've got to add in the storyline, graphics, marketing -but I think I'm making pretty good progress.

I'm still using Unreal Engine 4 because I started work on that version and I haven't needed to upgrade to 5 since it's been released. I've got a free prologue that I'm releasing on October 1, so now until then is a lot of polishing to make it work well.

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Syntaf ◴[25 Aug 24 01:35 UTC] No.41343574[source]▶
Looks really cool & quite in-depth, awesome project. Are you a solo-developer or a game studio building this?
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1. joegibbs ◴[25 Aug 24 05:12 UTC] No.41344576[source]▶
Just me, I work on it in my spare time. I’ve contracted out for some of it - some of the UI elements and models, and the soundtrack.

All in all I’ve probably spent $5000 max on it.

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2. dbacar ◴[25 Aug 24 05:28 UTC] No.41344641[source]▶
what kind of a spare time is that, i want one also, congrats bro.
3. versteegen ◴[25 Aug 24 09:00 UTC] No.41345724[source]▶
Whoa. You need to write about how you've accomplished that. How long have you been working on it?
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4. joegibbs ◴[25 Aug 24 10:25 UTC] No.41346181[source]▶
I started in uni during the start of Covid because I was playing Warband and I wanted to see if I could do something like the overworld in Unreal. Then I left it for a few months, got the idea of turning it into a proper strategy game and worked on an off until this year when I really started working on it. I probably put in 2-3 hours on weekdays after work and 6-7 on weekends. I think that I'm definitely more productive now because I have more experience, and I had literally no money at all at the start due to not having a job.