Too many parallel systems are not conducive to future patches and updates, especially if you have to consider the combinations of different setting rules, and you are the only developer.
It isn't really parallel. The "standard strategy game" mode mostly just removes the detailed sim stuff. So you'd have a more traditional treaty menu with no negotiations back and forth or waiting on result, in this specific case. The most likely problem is some sort of cheese capability if the values of the terms are unbalanced, but realistically any "standard strategy" style diplomacy menu is highly cheesable so that isn't a big deal.
Plus the original version would be the default and the one that I focused on, so it wouldn't likely hurt people who wanted a full fantasy world sim.
I'm not too worried about this though since it would require sufficient interest from potential buyers before I did it, and many of those people would stick with the higher production value generic "grand strategy"/"4x" options anyway.
Assuming Axioms sells more than 5000 copies in the first year I'll be doing great financially, with no need to deviate from my plan for 2 expansions and then if I'm still going the sequel. Which is like a 10 year time frame. Then I'd be doing bug fixes and patches and free updates with my extra time.
Well I'd also be playing the game so maybe I wouldn't have any extra time :)
If Axioms is successful would you consider expanding the team ( hiring more devs) and adding something less important in your opinion? Like multiplayer or better graphics.
No because business with indie dev is a shitshow. You have no easy way to find trustworthy partners to do stuff. At least with art you can commission work.
Additionally the game is heavily optimized around being single player. Doing multiplayer would take an insane amount of time and work and might not even be possible performance wise.
As far as better graphics, I doubt it. Fancy graphics are a permanent penalty to development efficiency, are oftne quite expensive, and specifically for Axioms the game is just really dynamic/procedural. It'd be difficult to fancy up most parts of the graphics plus some mechanics rely on the pixels of the map to function right.
Maybe you could do something with fancy character portraits but it'd be very expensive. Axioms would have to be a huge hit to justify that.
Too many parallel systems are not conducive to future patches and updates, especially if you have to consider the combinations of different setting rules, and you are the only developer.
It isn't really parallel. The "standard strategy game" mode mostly just removes the detailed sim stuff. So you'd have a more traditional treaty menu with no negotiations back and forth or waiting on result, in this specific case. The most likely problem is some sort of cheese capability if the values of the terms are unbalanced, but realistically any "standard strategy" style diplomacy menu is highly cheesable so that isn't a big deal.
Plus the original version would be the default and the one that I focused on, so it wouldn't likely hurt people who wanted a full fantasy world sim.
I'm not too worried about this though since it would require sufficient interest from potential buyers before I did it, and many of those people would stick with the higher production value generic "grand strategy"/"4x" options anyway.
Assuming Axioms sells more than 5000 copies in the first year I'll be doing great financially, with no need to deviate from my plan for 2 expansions and then if I'm still going the sequel. Which is like a 10 year time frame. Then I'd be doing bug fixes and patches and free updates with my extra time.
Well I'd also be playing the game so maybe I wouldn't have any extra time :)
If Axioms is successful would you consider expanding the team ( hiring more devs) and adding something less important in your opinion? Like multiplayer or better graphics.
No because business with indie dev is a shitshow. You have no easy way to find trustworthy partners to do stuff. At least with art you can commission work.
Additionally the game is heavily optimized around being single player. Doing multiplayer would take an insane amount of time and work and might not even be possible performance wise.
As far as better graphics, I doubt it. Fancy graphics are a permanent penalty to development efficiency, are oftne quite expensive, and specifically for Axioms the game is just really dynamic/procedural. It'd be difficult to fancy up most parts of the graphics plus some mechanics rely on the pixels of the map to function right.
Maybe you could do something with fancy character portraits but it'd be very expensive. Axioms would have to be a huge hit to justify that.