Shape Of Things That Were

Open source strategy game

Design objectives

The goal is to produce a strategy video game. It should emphasize macro over micro management and chaos over stability.

Macro management and Influence

The player should not be bothered with such trivial details as the construction on an aqueduct or granary. He should not have ot move its regiments around the map. He should not chose where his workers will exploit terrain.

To achieve this goal the central concept is Influence: the area that is (more or less) controlled by each empire. The different empires do fight certainly, but this fight consist in improving the influence on the surrounding terrain, or directing it on certain tiles.

Chaotic system

Too many games produce stable and predictible situations. Stable situations are no fun. Predictible ones are so boring. The player should be forced to act, be it to ride the history or to support it, and be surprised by whatever the outcome is.

That is not to mean anything should happen. When anything can happen you do not know what may happen and cannot take decision.

Thus the game should always be moving, in short and long term directions that are clear to the player. It should be complex enough so that the player cannot predict it and micro-manage his way to victory, but it should provide clear clues as to which direction it is heading.

In few words: it must be a chaotic system, logical but impredictible.

Current status

Prototype

• Map display is nice.
• Menu API is working.
• Influence system basics are working
• Diplomacy is working once discovered but quite erratic with AI empires
• Discovery is working but need graphical enhancements (and more discoveries past Antiquity)
• Player control is still too small.

How to launch the game on Windows?

Download the latest version.

Extract the content in any directory.

Execute file ShapeOfThingsThatWere.exe.

(tested on Windows 7 64bits)

How to launch the game?

The game needs Java 8 SE Runtime Environment, all other dependencies can be downloaded by gradle or are embedded into the executable jar.

To start from executable jar file:

• Download jar file from latest release, as of now v0.2.0
• double click the file (windows)
• execute java jar [jar file path] (linux/cygwin)

To start the game from sources:

• checkout github repository
• execute gradlew.bat :desktop:run (windows)
• execute gradlew :desktop:run (linux/cygwin)

To create an executable jar:

• checkout github repository
• execute gradlew.bat :desktop:dist (windows)
• execute gradlew :desktop:dist (linux/cygwin)
• jar is built in directory desktop/build/libs/

To create an zip with embedded game:

• checkout github repository
• execute gradlew.bat desktop:runtimeZip (windows)
• execute gradlew desktop:runtimeZip (linux/cygwin)
• zip is built in directory desktop/build/ShapeOfThingsThatWere.zip
• a start.sh script is embedded to start it

To start the game in Eclipse:

• checkout github repository
• execute gradlew.bat eclipse and import projects (windows, for linux remove .bat)
• or use Eclipse Gradle plugin to import projects
• launch desktop/ImagePacker.launch
• launch desktop/Things That Were.launch