I'm a bit of a fence sitter on the actual issue, I love F-Droid as is and fear change, but I'll say as someone who thinks they'll release on Google Play in the general future, the thing that pisses me off most about Google Play is they have a "repetitive content policy" which disincentivizes you from releasing a full paid app and a demo app. The main issue is, I don't want my app to categorize as "in-app purchases" if the only purchase is the "unlock full version", because that doesn't distinguish my app from any unethical whale-hunting casino-for-children microtransaction apps, and I don't want my app to claim to be free if it's just a demo.

At least, from a pro-user, communicate everything clearly, perspective, I feel that Google is compelling devs to dark-pattern-by-default on this subject.

LMK if I'm wrong about any of that.

just imagine living in a socialist utopia where Dawn of War Soulstorm is open source, getting regular updates like graphics updates, optimizations, native support MacOS and linux, ARM builds, new campaigns added regularly, new game modes, an optional hybrid LoL/DotA game mode...

my advanced age

I think there was a time when turn-based gameplay was popular because it wasn't as hardware-intensive

That's interesting, my initial choice of turn-based gameplay is mostly 2 things: It's a lot easier to offer an experience that respects your PC/phone's battery, such as less animations between user actions, or maybe even just offering an option in settings to reduce idle animations. I'm dabbling into 3D, which I've not committed either way, but might make this detail harder.

Also, I am getting older, and finding myself less able to sit at a computer and play a "live action" game, or online games that can't be paused, or online games that require a commitment of 30 to 60 uninterrupted minutes, or schedule specific times to game with my friends. And these are often caused by reasons like "job" or "family", but maybe soon there will be reasons like "My old non-gaming mouse and arthritis can't out-micro this diamond league starcraft player."

What's absolutely crazy to me, is that a lot of turn based games I've seen still require a commitment of 30 to 60 uninterrupted minutes to play. Probably the most important core design detail of my game is the ability to play turns, even partial turns, progressively throughout a day/week on the player's own schedule. I plan on supporting both "live" games and asynchronous games.

Anyways, thanks for your thoughts!

Turn-based - This one is hard for me to admit because I’ve played lots of great turn-based games and will inevitably play more of them, but for some reason when turn-based is a key feature, my brain interprets it as being a low-budget and/or low-effort game, or that the gameplay won’t match how the game is presented. It’s not that I dislike the concept of turn-based play, but when I see “turn-based” in a description I just glaze over.

I'm working on a turn based game, you could say it's low budget, perhaps more accurately, no-budget. Does your glaze over system offer leniency for games that are clearly indie+cheap, or maybe you intended this for games with huge marketing budgets and have microtransactions? Either way, I'd love any specific interests/thoughts you have on the turn based games genre in general.

My engine is homemade, I'm focusing primarily on perfecting networking/server stuff in a way that would make the "what if I lost internet/what if I don't want to play online every" people happy. My prototype is 2d placeholders. I plan on doing some experiments with 3D before deciding to go all-in on an art style or 2D vs 3D. I currently do not have any music or sound effect assets. I haven't published anything yet, but to oversimplify, pretend that I'm making an Advanced Wars 2 clone.

I would absolutely to love to have any of those with access to paid gamedev assets, as I've not bought any, or acquired any that were temporarily free, and will be relatively poor until after I win the gamedev lottery.

I'm not using Unity tho, so if any of those are vendor-locked to Unity (license or otherwise), maybe the next person should take those.

I've been working on my Advanced Wars clone for a while now, and so I've researched this a little bit. Game mechanics almost basically can't be copyrighted. It also helps (in my case) that I'm not really cloning 1:1 as much as I'm making a substantially different game in many key ways. Also I'm not using a sprite sheet found online, I'm making all my art assets myself at slightly higher resolutions. Mostly you should worry about:

• using assets (art, sound, other files) you don't have the rights to.
• using trademarks you don't have the rights to.

The DS version was turn based, the other versions were real time lol.

The fundamental cancer at the heart of the project is the glorification of war and conquest itself.

I think this is really good criticism, it's possible I need to double-check my pre-made single-player campaigns (which will all be cartoony goofyness) or even consider pivoting my project's aesthetics away from war gaming. There's going to be a lot to think about there and it's technically not too late for a lot of pivoting.

My intent with the campaigns though is to let historically literate individuals make campaigns that players will learn by playing. Make the USSR look good in some conflict, tell the story of a specific revolution, make up a new story without any historicalbaggage, etc., they'd be able to setup the maps/dialog to tell that story via my user friendly UI. There's an uphill battle in preventing reactionaries from doing the same though. Glorifying is not the intent, but I feel that I cannot refute your allegations, which is troubling.

If you're trying to make a game that Nazis aren't going to piss all over, you're going to end up with Undertale. Which is, of course, fine. Everyone loves Undertale. But its a game in which the conflict isn't always resolved by the guy who can push out bomber jets the fastest.

I'm very unfamiliar with Undertale and don't know how to interpret this.

I'm working on an indie advanced wars clone where one of my lead features is that users can create their own campaigns and share them.

One thing that discourages me is that I know there are people out there going to make pro-wrong-side-of-history campaigns and glorify fascists. It's easy enough to ban all pro-Hitler content, but every country, region, era, etc. has their own lesser-Hitlers to glorify.

My special skill set is programming, not historical literacy and lore mastery. These people will probably flank every fair and principled moderation stance I attempt. I'll probably both-sides something I shouldn't, or be on the wrong side of history on something. Not to mention the burden of moderation itself when my passion is to work on the non-content aspect of the game.

It's tempting to cancel that feature. Either way, just not looking forward to it. Thanks for reading my rant.

Anyone shopping around in the last 1-2 years for which game engine their first/next indie game should be already sees a ton of "just use godot, especially if you're making a 2d game". Unity's future as a legacy engine was already set in stone in the eyes of the wider indie gamedev community before this announcement.

Open Source Javascript stuff is also kind of hot, considering that mobile devices are getting fast enough to side-step how slow JS (for 2d games at least).

Also Open Source Rust stuff is also going to be popping up on less esoteric radars soon.

Unreal Engine (not libre) is getting easier for indie devs to make higher-end projects.

Any way you look at it, Unity is surrounded by all sides. It's just a matter of time for the momentum to manifest as actual games/studios.

I'm actually literally making what can best be described as an AW2 clone with Words With Friends style multiplayer and co-op. Progress is slow because I have a day job :deeper-sadness: .