An Age... of the Machine!

Goatee Games is excited to announce the release of our new game, After the Empire, on Steam this Friday, March 31st!

Check it out on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/493220

Build a galaxy-spanning machine empire!​

Bend galactic geography to your will to seize hundreds of territories with Fleet, Crypto and Glory.

Master your economy with Guilds, Trade Routes and Pilgrimages.

Prove your faith, honor your culture, and conquer the Milky Way!

Above is a screenshot of the main map view of the game, including the Recent Events Notifications in the top left, a Territory Menu open i...

We poured tremendous activity and energy into the Viceroy this week without much to show for it.  I implemented systems that were just as quickly unimplemented and had too many ideas that fell apart after closer consideration with a spreadsheet or calculator.  On the bright side, I've learned a lot about what shouldn't be implemented, and continued to get some amazing feedback from players of the game.  Thanks for all of your comments!  And as far as my activities this week, maybe a game is like a block of marble, not a question of what it is but what it isn't....

v0.38.9 Cumulative Patch Notes

• Tweening on Military particles.

• Random speed on Procession particles.

• Procession particles "die" (go grey) as Civilizations are destroyed.

• Fixed bug changing which Procession particles display the colors of their conqueror when zoom changes.

• Improved title menu appearance with above.

• Improved 'General Menu' (where you access load/save/options in game) appearance.

• Improved appearance of Guild, Trade, and Pilgrimage fleets. 

v0.38.5 Cumulative Patch Notes

• Put the calculations to advance time into their own thread. This eliminated 'time advancing' lag from even the largest map, except for right after starting a new game.

• Improved FPS in some edge cases where it dropped below 60FPS. (By reducing type conversions and other mathematical simplifications.)

• Clarified and updated tutorial.

• Added achievements. (More to follow.)

• Updated manual.

• Improved several information hovers.

• Added new map view that is a heat map of the number of Processions each Territory has. (See above screenshot.)

...

The first game we submitted to Steam for the Greenlight process was named, "After the Empire." It wasn't a dark and gritty territory conquering game so much as a bleak and despairing territory conquering game. Like The Viceroy, it was written in Python. But because it was our first game, it had a lot less polish and pizazz!

It was actually Greenlit about a year after we put it up, not long after The Viceroy was launched. We have completely rewritten the game in Java, making it a lot more exciting and interesting than the original. Here's a short teaser video for it:

For those who are interested,...