Skies above
Roma Invicta
Currently I work exclusively in the Godot 4 game engine https://godotengine.org/.
The programming language I use is the integrated GD-Script, which is very similar to Python.
Hello and welcome to Puntigames. My name is Didi and I am a game developer. This Website is intended to present my current and future projects and project ideas. My passion are strategy games, especially those with historical context.
Follow my Youtube Channel for trailers, gameplay videos and future announcements.
Or feel free to join and participate on our Discord-Server https://discord.gg/gnp8cJga29.
My personal story
As teenager I started building small games with the drag&drop applications from Clickteam.
I found that extremely funny but always quickly reached the limits of the engine and thus never managed to implement my ideas properly.
Two decades passed before I finally stumbled across the Godot
engine and finally dared to rediscover this great hobby and finally started learning how to code.
With courses on Udemy and Youtube tutorials I was able to make progress quite quickly
and slowly started to create the games I always wanted to play myself.
Since I was living in the district "Puntigam" in the city of Graz at the time,
the name under which I wanted to design my web presence was also clear to me.
In early 2022 I released my first complete game Roma Invicta on Steam. I built it besides my regular job in two years
of hard work and just wanted to experience the process behind releasing a game. The unforeseen responses were amazing and
so I decided to dedicate my life completetly to game development.
Skies above the Great War
Skies above the Great War is a hybrid of action and grand strategy sandbox game set on the Western Front during the First World War. You take the lead of the air forces, either on the allied or the german side. And because every single aircraft is fully simulated in real-time you can jump into any cockpit or go to third person controls at any moment and join the fight yourself.
Features
- Take direct control of any plane at any time and prove yourself in easily accessible but challenging dogfights with detailed damage models.
- Provide your airfields with machines and pilots and send them on missions that support your overall war strategy on a persistent 10.000 square kilometers wide gameworld fully simulated in real time.
- From reconnaissance missions to front patrolling, strategic bombing and balloon hunting, it is up to you to use your resources wisely and stand up to the enemy.
- Hire manufacturers such as Fokker or Sopwith to produce airplanes and even to let them develop new models that are able to compete with the constantly advancing technology of your enemy.
- Manage your airfields and squadrons to make them as effective as possible.
- Individualize your squadrons and every single aircraft with custom paintings and insignias.
- Each pilot comes with his individual portrait and a given talent that needs to be transferred into skill. So train them and order them wisely to your squadrons so they can take up their duty in the skies.
- From time to time a name or two will pop up among the ranks of talented newcomer pilots that might be familiar to those interested in history.
- Want to skip one or more of the features above? Just hand it over to the AI and play the game exactly as you like.
Roma Invicta
In Roma Invicta you have the honor of conquering ancient Gaul with your Roman legions. The game combines action oriented real-time battles with turn-based strategy on the campaign map where you raise, supply and move your armies. The game can best be described as a mixture of the old Amiga classic 'North and South' and the 'Total War' series.
Features
- Experience a lovingly handcrafted scenery of ancient Gaul.
- Recruit your troops from legionnaires to scorpion artillery to Germanic cavalry.
- Fight in tactical and action-packed real-time battles with hundreds of individual soldiers.
- Slow down or pause the battle to always stay in control and give orders with no hurry.
- Hand over parts of your army to the AI to always keep control even in larger battles.
- Supply your troops and always pay attention to the changing of the seasons.
- You decide whether to bring peace to the Gallic villages or whether to plunder them and thus further ignite the resistance against you.
- Different starting conditions and difficulty levels ensure replay value.
my design principles for Roma Invicta
Less interface, more immersion
I don't know about you but floating UI elements over the soldiers always killed the immersion for me. That's why Roma Invicta only has them when there's no other option. For example a ranged fighter's ammo is not indicated by a bar above the head. If he has three spears left in his hand he can shoot three more times. If a fighter still has his shield in hand he can use it to block attacks - if not, then not. In the case of morale and stamina unfortunately I couldn't prevent this from being displayed via status bars. However, these can easily be switched on and off.
No hit points
A similar concept applies to me at hitpoints. The standard for troops to have hitpoints and for those to be indicated by a green bar above their heads was seemingly set in stone by titles like Command&Conquer or Warcraft back in the '90s. Few games dare to deviate from this convention and design a 'real' damage model. At Roma Invicta one is simple. A soldier is either alive or not. There are no hit points. If he is shot at or gets hit he has a chance to block or dodge with the shield. If this doesn't work maybe his armor could save him. If he gets hit he dies. If not he keeps fighting. However, the probabilities are affected by his current stamina.
Historically correct as far as possible
Of course as a hobby game developer I'm not a professional historian. But I try to deal with the respective topic at least above the Hollywood standard. So in Roma Invicta there are no fire-arrows that do more "damage" or similar nonsensical and illogical garbage. Conversely, the Legionnaires' thrown pila get stuck in the enemy's shields. This makes the shields unusable for melee combat and the enemies will drop them after a few seconds. Such details make me happy and that's why I wanted to implement as much as possible.
Persistent battlefield
After a battle the battlefield should also look like a battlefield. It was already the case with the Amiga classic 'North and South' that fallen soldiers stayed on the field and didn't just disappear after a while. Cannonball craters have also devastated the area. When a battle was over, the presented scenery drew a picture of its course. In Roma Invicta too every arrow shot and every shield thrown remains in its place and you can clearly see what has happened there.
Fear of death
No soldier wants to die on the battlefield (with a few exceptions). That's why it's all the more surprising that in most games you fight until last man standing. This is historically incorrect and also totally illogical. When the soldiers in Roma Invicta are shot at or even see their comrades dying their morale sinks and panic raises to the point where they drop their weapons and flee from the battlefield. Only a Centurion will never surrender but will fight to the death.
Still interested, or even more? Then buy the game on steam and support me as an indie game-dev!
