Hey, Paweł here, with Dev Minutes #3! Today we’re going to focus on states and companies a lot more than before, so get your evening or morning drink and let’s jump right into the topic.
Also: feedback is most welcome! We all should improve, so we’d like you to spend a minute and share your thoughts with us. You can do it on our e-mail: iguanamercenary@gmail.com. Thank you!
A lot is happening recently. I was supposed to work on UI, but due to some changes I am working on XML for the whole time. Michael really needs my help, this is a long-term job right here.
What you can see on the left is a screenshot from so called ‘States Modifiers Statistics File’. The file defines everything about previously mentioned SPMs (State Popularity Modifiers). State Popularity Modifiers directly affect how fast company spreads in states completely changing the dynamics, and shaping the basics of it. A basic value of “spreading” for each state is 100. It’s modified by things like: airport presence, harbour presence, type of economy, state’s political condition (war, dispute) or its neutrality. All these things are defined right in this file.
Let’s take Macedonia as an example. It has an airport, not a harbour though. It is communist, there isn’t a war or dispute going on, and it isn’t neutral. Now, it receives extra modifiers to the base value. It’s respectively: +15 from an airport and +25 for planned economy (communist government). It also does NOT receive modifiers that decrease that value: modifiers like ‘WAR!’ (which brings the value to zero), disputed territory (-100) or neutrality (-10).
In summary, all true or false values either increase or decrease a total value of company’s ability to spread. Harbour and airport presence increase it, disputes and neutrality decrease it.
Another huge thing happening is companies file. Each company has its name, starting state, starting modifier and starting location. Companies are inspired (with a little changed names) and their locations match their real counterparts. It’s done so, so we have at least a bit of accuracy in what has happened on the real market. Although, we do not exclude a possibility for custom companies in the future (maybe as a DLC? Who knows!).
Let’s talk a bit more about the home state and modifier. Home state is something very important for the company – it’s where it all has started, also where the headquarters are. It’s pretty unique – its political condition defines company’s character (it can be either communist or capitalist), it also can’t be “kicked out” of the state by another company, so company’s popularity within home state can’t go below 1%. Company’s character is also important due to another feature – if capitalist company spreads into communist state, it will have trouble due to decreased SPM on “ideologically hostile territory”.
Companies exist within industry branches. When you start a game, you pick one industry branch and then one of twelve companies within a branch and you’ll play with it for the rest of the game. There are 10 branches, each has 12 companies. There are plans for more branches in the future as DLC!
I’m talking so much about DLCs today. Do we have plans? Yes we do coughs oh wait, what did I say? Yes, we do have plans to add at least one huge DLC in the future, but the content and main DLC’s context stay unknown (from obvious reasons). We do plan though, to make all the DLCs free. Why, you might ask? And you’re still asking? We were raised on old industry, when DLC – Downloadable Content – was free. We do believe that if someone buys a game with base price $X, they deserve all the content available. We would like to deliver to people a bit of old traditions and we hope it goes well. That’s a short disclaimer on DLCs for Iguana Mercenary’s games.
Thank you for reading today Dev Minutes! We’ll come back soon!
Iguana Mercenary 