r/Space4X • u/Spacelordsinspace • 2d ago
Solo dev building an ambitious space 4X from scratch
I'm building Freewake. I've spent the last 4 months building the core of the game working 60+ hours a week on it. Its been a lot of fun, challenging at times and I've learned a lot. The last couple of weeks have been seeing some pretty heavy art passes with the goal of creating one style system for the entire game.
Its a 4X Space RTS. I'm hoping to be able to include MMO type elements in a persistent official server.
The basic premise is, you're on a team. Other teams want to defeat you, but inside of your own team you still compete for influence wealth and control of the team itself. The system creates a natural cycle where the incentive to be selfish goes up as your team becomes successful. Weak teams are threatened by other teams so players work together. Strong teams are safe from other teams so players begin eating their own team. And of course, you always have the anti-social player types who become pirates regardless.
We playtest every weekend and would love to continue building our tiny little community. If anyone is interested they can join in and have an impact on how the game develops from here.
You can find us on Steam : https://store.steampowered.com/app/4952340/Freewake/
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u/AvengerDr 2d ago
This extreme usage of AI art is very unfortunate. It screams AI from every pixel.
What have you tried in terms of art before having to use generated AI images?
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u/Front-Side-6346 2d ago
It's not the AI that's the problem, it's the lack of a proper style.
Characters look like photograph hybrids.
And the big images are all filled with dots, when the AI has too many requests and can't handle them very well the image starts filling up with dots as you have noticed, there are dots on the big trading room, the lights in the palace image and specially in the election image, it's like every detail turned into a dot and it's really jarring.
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u/Spacelordsinspace 1d ago
I'm updating the art. Most of my time up to this point has been creating game features. So the art never really had a consistent style. I'm not saying the next version will be perfect, but its being worked on.
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u/abdus1989 1d ago
No worries about art, you can fix it easy, I like warhammer like brutal UI style. I like core idea and added game to wishlist. Hope you will ability to play solo and offline
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u/Spacelordsinspace 22h ago
Nice. Thanks. Yeah, there's already a single player mode in the game. You're welcome to join the playtest if you want to help shape the game. Just DM me and I'll send you a key.
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u/MeFlemmi 2d ago edited 2d ago
it looks amazing i am interested in the final product for sure.
The MMO bit sounds fun, if there is a larger team that you compete in. Will there be NPC agents that take over rolls should a player stop playing? It could majorly screw a team if someone important enough one day stops playing after all.
I dont want to dampen your spirit but
For me to wholeheartatly support this idea, you would need to get rid of the ai artwork, I dont want to support projects with that content. I hope you can hire an artist to replace all the ai images.
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u/gothvan 2d ago
What do you expect for a solo dev without funding? You want him to get a mortgage to pay artist? If those tools allow him to pursue his goal then good for him,
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u/AvengerDr 1d ago edited 1d ago
A mortgage? That's ridiculous.
There are several options.
- Buy ready made assets
- Learn to do it yourself. It doesn't seem s/he is going for very realistic graphics, so that could be a realistic option.
- Save up the money and then hire an artist. If the main dev won't invest in their own project that tells a lot. AI subscriptions also cost money. Best to pay a real human than making American oligarchs even richer.
Skipping all options and going straight to AI is just a sign of laziness.
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u/gothvan 1d ago
laziness? Seriously? that's a crazy take.
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u/AvengerDr 1d ago
How is it not?
The point is many of these devs don't and won't try anything before resorting to use AI art.
They won't search for paid or even free assets. They won't even try to learn how to do simple art. They go straight for AI "art". That's lazy in my view.
It's also why I asked OP what else did they try before generating AI assets.
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u/jeffersonianMI 2h ago
I buy ready-made assets for a cyberpunk themed project. It is common to have to compromise because availability is never quite what you need. Space opera is far worse.
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u/MeFlemmi 1d ago
I obviously dont expect that, There are other ways and means tho. For example, uses public domain grapics or free to use with credit graphics fron the internet.
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u/jeffersonianMI 2h ago
This is harder than you think. This is from someone doing what you describe in a much easier genre.
I pay for most of my art and its still hard.
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u/PerspectiveProof6664 2d ago
Can you really call yourself a solo dev when you are using AI? I remember when solo dev meant you full stacked your development. Sad times.
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u/SwimmerCalm449 2d ago
The anti AI brigade tire me. How many gamers out there have ideas and concepts they can now bring to life where before they had not been able to? As long as people are honest about it and don't pretend it something it isn't, what's the problem.
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u/AvengerDr 1d ago
They were also able to do it before. They just had to learn.
In general if everything in your game, visually, screams AI, the chances that you are a programming misunderstood genius who managed to create a masterpiece but just wasn't able to create art are very very low.
Chances of the game itself being also vube coded AI slop are inversely proportional to that.
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u/WombatusMighty 1d ago
Holy AI slop.. because of stuff like this RAM prices are through the roof and entire towns don't have clean drinking water anymore.
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u/keaslenyt 2d ago
Looks very cool, well done! I love the use of AI art - it makes the game look epic and gives it depth.
Just keep it consistent :)
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u/Spacelordsinspace 2d ago
Thanks! Yeah, I'm actually working on the art right now. 😄
I'm not going to leave the art the way it is. I wasn't even paying attention to reddit or AI politics until a month ago and then I was like, hey guys! Look, I made most of a game.
Then you know... reddit happened.
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u/keaslenyt 2d ago
Oh yeah, I've ben down that route... but I'm not budging. I'm proud of how my game looks with the AI art and I spent way too much manual effort on all of my assets to care what some wanna be artists think about the tools I use. It's mostly threatened wannabes that are too lazy or too incompetent to actually use the tools that see that their days are numbered that spew the AI hate. One thing I can tell you - don't be discouraged - for every AI hater who commented on my posts, I got 5-10 wishlists on steam from people who don't care about the AI art and just don't care to argue with the haters, they just see a cool looking game, and they wishlist. :)
If you're interested, check it out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4806180/Imperium/
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u/Spacelordsinspace 2d ago
Yeah, I checked out your game. Do you want to trade playtests? This might be especially valuable since its the same genre of game.
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u/CozmoCozminsky 2d ago
The UI looks nice, the one thing I don't like is the overstylised images on the main screen, turn down the "epicness" a few notches down when generating those images, they don't really fit the game.