Hey guys, I thought I would do a another mini dev log about my thought process when it comes to developing DR4X.

So I wanted to get research implemented in the game for this Friday’s build.

I wanted to add this new system but not change up the gameplay too much, eg, I want it to feel natural. My first thought was to do science like in age of empires, where you just research a tech on a building and then this tech gets applied to everything after researched. After thinking about this for awhile I realized it would not fit the current game very well, imagine I had a walled city and researched fire arrows or something, and then it applied it to all rangers, including those rangers from other cities. It just feels kind of fake, ya know.

So my second thought was to do it like in Seven Kingdoms 2, where upgrades on specific buildings just apply to all buildings of that type, after stewing over this idea, I almost liked it, but then the same problem emerges, would researching upgraded guards on one building mean i can recruit them at all buildings of that type, in seven kingdom’s case, yes in DR4X’s case NO. In fact I already had a system for this, which was the upgrade system, where I just upgrade a building and the building can do new things after that. (eg watch tower to guard tower)

Then, it came to me! What if tech was researched on a per building basis, like in the game Majesty and like how upgrades currently work for DR4X! Its perfect, I can add techs to individual cities that help out certain units from those cities, so in that way, its a important decision what you research and on what building or unit and you almost always have something to research in the mid and late game, say, upgrading gremlins from a specific hive to have better weapons and armor! And so this is how DR4X’s new research system was born. I now use a unity scriptable object for each tech (that way i can add new techs easily and not have to configure them per unit) , and a command can research that tech, on that building and techs from that building can impact units created from that building, what commands are available and so on!

It fits the way the game currently works, so the player doesn’t need to learn new specific rules or anything and it allows for me to add some more interesting progression! Its a win-win! And it fits the fast paced gameplay! This system will hopefully be in place by the friday build, and I already have started on it! At first it will be rathe rlimited, each being able to give a guard tower bonus fire/poison damage) but then i’ll expand from there!