Wolkenwelt

[Stoney]

Hey guys,
I'm currently working on a commercial title which is called Wolkenwelt. It's basically a strategy simulation game where you build on sky islands. You have a few buildings like a power generator as your energy sources, lumberjack to chop down wood and houses for your citizens.
Each sky island has something different to offer: Grass island have forests on them and provide wood as a building material, cloud islands offer energy bonus for power generators and so on.

There are no enemies what-so-ever, it's going to be a peaceful and compared to other games relatively slow-paced. You just play the game by yourself in single player, I might offer different modes/scenarios for the player, but I'm not so sure about that.

I had the idea for the game for one of the Ludum Dare competitions and iterated on the prototype last week-end in Berlin at BIGJAM.
Here's a screenshot showing what it currently looks like:
584
(Click to enlarge)

I plan on finishing the game in September and it will be released some time after that.

The price will be something around 5 to 10 dollars, it'll definitely be available on my homepage and I'll try to get on some portals as well. Platforms so far are Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

I'll start the official development diary on September 2nd, I just wanted to give you guys an exclusive look at it and I'm looking forward to know what you guys think of it. Pre-order will start around the same time and everyone who pre-ordered will get a new build of the game every two to three days. I'm using an open development model like Overgrowth and I'm going to show even the smallest changes, write about the library and stuff like that.

[azrael11]

it looks pretty cool...

[Stoney]

it looks pretty cool...

Thank you. Most of the guys I showed the prototype to at BIGJAM (http://bigjam2011.eventbrite.com/) really like the graphic style.



Because I want to keep you up-to-date with the development process as soon as it happens, here is what I have planned for the different type of buildings:
- Power generator (provides energy)
- House (for your citizens)
- Lumberjack (chops wood)
- Crystal mines (mines crystal from crystal sky islands)
- Alchemy tower

The upgrading doesn't work like it does in similar games, you don't just click on the button to upgrade a building, you have to combine the different resources (wood, gold, crystal) and drag it to the building. Once the alchemy tower is built, you are also able to burn and smelt items and make potions out of it.

[wagenheimer]

It seems very nice!!!

It would be nice to see a video of it running!

For sure I will follow your dev diary when it starts! =)

[paul_nicholls]

Cool! I really love that graphical style...good luck with this :)

cheers,
Paul

[WILL]

I remember you showing me this last week. Very cool to see what you did. You must learn a lot from doing all these mini compos and game jams. :)

[Stoney]

The official development blog started: http://www.freeze-dev.com/blog/announcing-wolkenwelt/

There is a new screenshot of the current debug build, there are just a few minor changes though:
http://www.freeze-dev.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/wolkenwelt_day1.png

Here is my daily to-do list:
What did I do today?
Graphics
Updated the grass island texture
Updated the button textures
Updated the background image

Engine stuff
CSS3-like drop shadow for rectangles
Rectangles can be nodes now and be easily added to the scene
Implemented rounded rectangles and gradient rectangles as classes


Things to do tomorrow
Create house graphics
Create Wolkenwelt homepage
Make a nice screenshot for #ScreenshotSaturday


Edit: I'll do a video of the game on Sunday.

[paul_nicholls]

Looking good mate :)

cheers,
Paul

[Stoney]

I posted a video about the current development build on Youtube. You can build houses now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhmchNHmWX0

[Stoney]

I've decided to enter Wolkenwelt in the October Challenge (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/09/28/announcing-october-challenge-2011/) (a challenge by the Ludum Dare organisators where you have to create a game, take it to the market and earn at least 1$). The official pre-order date for Wolkenwelt is October 21th and here is a new screenshot:
http://www.freeze-dev.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-Shot-2011-10-01-at-10.56.11-PM.png

[Daikrys]

nice good luck :)

drop a line after the comp how well it sell, i would hardly interested in

[paul_nicholls]

Looking good mate, I hope it goes well for you :)

cheers,
Paul

[Ingemar]

I've decided to enter Wolkenwelt in the October Challenge (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/09/28/announcing-october-challenge-2011/) (a challenge by the Ludum Dare organisators where you have to create a game, take it to the market and earn at least 1$). The official pre-order date for Wolkenwelt is October 21th and here is a new screenshot:
http://www.freeze-dev.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-Shot-2011-10-01-at-10.56.11-PM.png

Oh, I just thought about what competition I should enter next, since I have worked too much august-september to make the uDevGames competition. Never heard about this one before.

So you expect to be finished three weeks from now? Your game looks quite odd, which is a positive thing. Seems to have a bit in common with SimCity, Be a king or Deadlock? (But maybe I am just reacting on the lack of power problem, which is common in both SimCity and Deadlock.)

[Stoney]

So you expect to be finished three weeks from now?

I want to be, but I don't think it's realistic at all. I'll be starting pre-orders by then and I'm using a similar model that Wolfire (http://www.wolfire.com) is using with Overgrowth. If you pre-order Wolkenwelt you get a current build of the game each week until the game is finished. (You get the finished game as well, of course.)


To be honest, I never knew Deadlock. I googled it, found some screenshots and a description of it. A shame this game isn't available on GOG.com or a similar platform.
As for energy, currently energy is just a "standard" resource in the game like food, wood, etc. Unlike in Sim City you don't need to connect buildings to your energy source.

[dazappa]

I was thinking of trying this challenge out. BTW Ingemar this one isn't a competition, more of a personal challenge to everyone. I was thinking of combining it with a silly supersmall competition on tigs http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22017.0 .

In any event, I think the best way to make $1 in such a short timespan will be with flash, so I'm gonna try that out. Maybe I'll think of rewriting my pascal LD entry Isolated Empire for flash... but as it stands I don't have the money to hire semi-professionals to make me resources for what I would consider a decent enough desktop game people would buy.

[Ingemar]

I was thinking of trying this challenge out. BTW Ingemar this one isn't a competition, more of a personal challenge to everyone. I was thinking of combining it with a silly supersmall competition on tigs http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22017.0 .

Doesn't matter, really. The important thing IMHO is to set healthy goals and deadlines. There doesn't need to be a price, only progress.

[Stoney]

The website is online at http://www.wolkenwelt.com
A few things on the website are subject to change (some of the graphics and the description). Since last week I've working almost day and night on the game, but the progress is quite slow unfortunately. There are some business things to iron out, but I want to make pre-orders available in the next few days.