Empires – a rudimentary, cross-platform 4x game

In-Game Menu of Empires — The In-Game Screen of Empires. It allows the player to access information about their Empire (controlled planets, credits, amount of vessels), the names and faction colours of rival Empires and the names and allegiance of the planets in the galaxy. It also gives the player the ability to use their credits to buy new vessels and use them to attack enemy planets or explore uncharted worlds.

Empires(Windows)_GenerationScreen — The Generation Screen allows the player to customize the number of planets generated and set a random seed in a specific range. If the player presses the "Generate Button", the Generator object will generate the specified amount of planets distributed in a spiral galaxy shape, their names, tech- and resource levels and enemy empires and assigns them their starting worlds.

Empires(Windows)_okxS4CC5pR — All of the generated planets are distributed in a spiral-shaped galaxy. Their textures are procedurally generated by employing noise directly in the shader. This results in a universe that looks different depending on each seed used to create it, but that can be precisely reproduced by using the same seed and number of planets during the generation process.

Empires(Windows)_jeAYod9Uv8 — Every Empire starts with one Discovery Vessel each. The player and the AI can send these vessels to unexplored planets. The Discovery Vessel will begin colonizing the planet, absorbing it into the Empire and allowing the player to collect taxes from it upon arrival. It also enables supply vessels to land on the planet and requisition even more credits for their Empire.

Empires(Windows)_CmO0dGjl15 — A Discovery Vessel moves to an uncolonized planet.

Empires(Windows)_twy64ELRlb — Different Empires are starting to take over the surrounding planets through both Discovery Vessels and the Sphere of Influence. After a while, they will also begin to take other Empires planets through conquest. The Sphere of Influence (visualized through the coloured area around colonized planets) slowly influences other uncolonized planets. If the influence is strong enough, the planet will join the Empire willingly. The more planets influence an uncolonized world, the faster it will join the Empire.

fh1FY5zSJ6 — This Gif shows how the AI interacts and expands their own Empires. Discovery Vessels are sent out; supply vessels collect credits from the ten wealthiest planets in the Empire, and Carrier Ships move to take over other Empires planets forcibly.

Project Progress

Finished 100%

Genre

4x style RTS

Team Size

2 People

Roles

Graphics Programmer

Platform

PC & Linux (Raspberry Pi4)

Duration

8 weeks

In this 4x-style game, you aim to establish your space Empire, gather resources and conquer the entire galaxy.

At the beginning of the game, the player can choose a starting planet. From there, they can collect resources and start populating foreign planets. They can send out discovery vessels to peacefully settle on a new world, carrier vessels that can be used to conquer planets from rival Empires and use resource vessels to collect resources and bring them back to their home base. But beware, the AI empires will expand rapidly and will not stop at anything until their conquest of the galaxy is complete!

What did I work on?

Empires was a lot of firsts for me. It was the first time I did any graphics programming. It was the first time I actively used design patterns like the singleton and coded my own state machine. It was also the first cross-platform project I ever did. It runs on Windows and Linux and was specifically developed for running on the Raspberry Pi 4. To enable cross-platform rendering between these two platforms, I wrote a simple OpenGL renderer that runs on both Linux and Windows.

The entire galaxy in Empires is procedurally generated, from the placement of the planets to their names, properties and even texture. I mostly worked on the graphics side of the project, and thus I wrote a simple shader that uses value noise to create procedural surfaces for planets.

Empires helped me learn the fundamentals of good cross-platform design, how to use several libraries and APIs together to make a cohesive whole and started my journey into graphics programming.

Empires was developed in 8 weeks together with a fellow student at BUAS and talented programmer Stan Vogels.