DOCTRINEERS - Turn-Based Strategy for the Modern Era

[junkmail]

itch.io demo: DOCTRINEERS Public Demo by junkmail (15 missions! and multiplayer, too!)

technology: ggez

platforms: whatever computers i can get it to compile on

genre: advance wars ripoff

trailer: here

status: alpha but pretty far along

playerness: both singleplayer and networked multiplayer

screens:

design/code/writing: me

art: my brother

music: uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

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DOCTRINEERS is my attempt to secretly convince people who are casual fans of Turn-Based strategy to embrace the grognard hell of competitive multiplayer strategy gaming. The game uses a Doctrine system, where off-map powers and the rights to build special units are auctioned off at the start of a match (in campaign, these are determined by the mission). Special units all have some kind of weird sauce to them that makes it so that they’re not just a rehash of older units - we’ve got stuff like Armored Cars which can move again after making an attack, Airships, which launch an AOE attack, and Commandos, which are a permanently stealthed infantry unit.

A big goal of ours is strategic diversity - where most players are content to build a big army and slowly bulldoze their way across the map, the unit roster and map/mission design encourages players to play more loosely and aggressively, but with a variety of approaches which are useful in different situations. In general, we view the Doctrine system and our campaign mission design as a way to kick the player in the pants and force them to adopt new strategies they might not have considered before, instead of leaning back and relying on simple defensive strategies.

At this point, we’d consider ourselves in late alpha. All of the core systems are there, and while there’s still certainly a lot of polish and content design, we’re pretty confident in what we have. The big thing we’re missing is music and proper sound. It turns out that music is expensive and sound is hard! We’re looking into hiring a local musician, and also into doing effects/sound editing in a way we can afford.

DOCTRINEERS is written in 100% rust, using ggez, a lightweight graphics library. It’s a cool language! The approach we’ve picked is pretty idiosyncratic - I like to think my code is laid out in a sane way, but we’re not using standard approaches like ECSes or event systems.

We’re still making a lot of stuff behind the scenes, and hoping to launch a(nother, after the first failed) Kickstarter sometime in Q4. Let us know what you think!

[twky]

your tile selection SFX is really really satisfying

its kinda been a while since i’ve touched turn based strategy that wasn’t also a jrpg so i’m pretty stale. i feel like this does kind of touch in a unique territory as i guess kind of the advance-wars equivalent for the community that’s into battle for wesnoth? stop me if im off the mark there. and codifying some player politiking with the auctions also feels like a draw for civ fans

in general id be curious to hear your take on the expected crowd here. to me advance wars always felt like it offered itself as a stepping stone to get more into strategy for folks not quite ready to jump into spreadsheet-land. hence why it uses a lot of flashy arcadey VFX and cutesy npc designs, so on

i feel like there could be a couple of juice/qol adjustments - for one thing having an automatic ‘end turn’ button appear when out of possible actions in a turn feels like a good idea. i also think having a bit more dynamic of a camera that can slickly tween to enemy units when they are taking turns might help keep focus on whats currently happening - though that may apply more towards campaigns than multiplayer?

[junkmail]

Two fun facts about the tile selection noise: you are absolutely not the first person to mention unprompted how satisfying it is, and it is me clicking my tongue but pitched up. Isn’t sound engineering fun.

I’m not too familiar with Battle for Wesnoth, but I would call it more a spiritual successor to Advance Wars for the AWBW crowd (https://awbw.amarriner.com/). If you wanted it to be charitable, you could call it a rethinking of AWBW to make it more competitive and put more focus on unit diversity, and if you wanted to be uncharitable you could call it the esportification of Advance Wars.

I think one of the remarkable things about AW is how deep the strategy is despite it being a children’s game targeting an audience who might never have played a strategy game before. The VFX and npc designs are really good (and we want to eventually juice our animations up to be about as nice) and a draw for a lot of people but you don’t get 20 years of an online competitive community wihtout some serious depth.

That being said I’m not exclusively targeting grognards like me. There’s a lot of thought put into new player experience and onboarding (having kids come play it at a festival or con is a great way to learn exactly where your tutorialization fails) and we also want it to be satisfying for new players to pick up.

The auctions are actually kind of funny - they’re actually there as a way to entirely stop politicking. Right now, the game is only two player (I could add more players, but a lot of design stuff gets really thorny with more and the vast majority of both campaign and multiplayer games are two player) and the auctions function as a sort of “draft phase,” where it’s impossible to complain that an opponent got units you didn’t (should have bid more for them).

Re auto/prompted end turn: auto end turn has been requested a few times but I’m loathe to include it because it’s a feature I personally hate, but it’ll probably end up in there soon. Camera moving to focus on actions is on the docket but I’m still thinking about the implementation details.

[twky]

@junkmail

Re auto/prompted end turn: auto end turn has been requested a few times but I’m loathe to include it because it’s a feature I personally hate, but it’ll probably end up in there soon.

to be clear i don’t think it should automatically trigger the turn end, rather put up a UI button to remind me that i should end it. because yeah in a turn based context like that if things move too fast and turns just end you lose track of the state of the board

[junkmail]

Bluh, I should post more often. I got covid and I’m stewing in my own madness so enjoy a UI update.

UI Updates! They’re fun, right? Anyways, here’s a few. They’re in the demo build now, as well as the ultra-secret internal playtesting build that you should totally ask for access to if you want.

Danger Warnings

A big piece of feedback I got was that users frequently had little idea how much danger a unit posed or how to counter it - mostly because damage could be a bit opaque.

To fix this, we implemented a pretty quick fix - a table in the unit info view which shows the units that pose the most danger to a given unit.

We’re hoping this surfaces more information for players in a way that makes it easier to make informed decisions. We’re hoping for a more complete damage table view and calculator or more detailed damage breakdowns, but those are both substantially more UI work.

Quick Snap

Pressing Q or clicking the new icon in the lower-left corner of the screen will immediately snap the camera and cursor to the location of your next available unit or production structure. If you’re out of actions, it’ll open the menu (to make it easier to end the turn).

[vehemently]

Where does the name come from?

[junkmail]

It’s a real (albeit very obscure) word, meaning “one who creates doctrine.” IIRC a couple of different militaries use it internally.

It reflects both the role of a handful of characters in the story, as well as the thing I want players to do when they approach the game - not just asking what their strategies and tactics will be, but fundamentally what their approach and tools are - they need to determine, and indeed build, their own military doctrine.

I had a few different names floating around, and I picked this one not just because I like the thematic meaning and think it sounds good, but also because it has amazing SEO.

[twky]

wow nice, yeah, itch is the first result for me at least