Banished

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
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One man, one vision: a bad ass super comfy city builder game. Don't think there's any combat here folks, so if you're looking for action, might look somewhere else. Otherwise, prepare to be impressed (hopefully)



Its not out yet, but should be by Christmas it looks like, but almost certainly sooner. The title is feature complete and being debugged and tuned. This man funded and built this game entirely by himself, no kickstarter, no begging for donations, nothing. There's a steam page up nowBanished on Steamso this is coming soon. Should be between 15 and 20 bucks I imagine, not early access. Feature complete final build.

Company website/game website

Shining Rock Software

Shining Rock Software has only a single developer doing all the software development, artwork, and audio.

My goal is to make simple and fun games for people to enjoy, similar to the enjoyment I got from playing shareware games back in the 1990s.

I've been gaming and programming for a long time. I used to work as an professional graphics engine programmer making console games for about 10 years before going 'indie'.

The current title in development is a city building strategy game called Banished.
 

Nutron_sl

shitlord
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been on my radar for a long time, will most likely pick it up
smile.png
 

Dandai

<WoW Guild Officer>
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Pretty fucking impressive that he did all of that himself. I didn't look too hard - did he say how long he's been working on this?
 

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Im guessing they original settlers were Banished and had to start anew. :p
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
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Pretty much. The theme of the game is like colonial era, so the premise is probably that you're people have been kicked out of their homeland and forced to survive in a newly discovered territory.
 

Black Sun Wizard

Silver Knight of the Realm
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Picked it up based upon the Steam reviews and have to say it's money very well spent.

Slow paced but complex enough that you don't notice. It's also impressive that this was all done by one person.

Does anyone know what engine or system he used to make this? It's kind of inspiring.
 

Kedwyn

Silver Squire
3,915
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I got about 8 hours in on it and got a pretty good feel for the game. Its fairly basic overall in that you simply need to take care of your people's needs:

Food
Clothing
Heating

While micromanaging what they are doing. Normally this might be a pain in the ass but the games AI and systems are done in a way that its trivial to move people from say harvesting ore to farming.

Assuming you don't expand out quickly the game is fairly easy on the default settings. I'm going to go back once I get more time on my current world and ramp up the difficulty some but I'm strangely happy with just micro managing things and seeing how far I can grow the town.

My complaints so far are:

Once you kind of get the system it seems trivial to slow play it and win.
Towns do not grow very large at all.

Otherwise its a solid town building sim. If a little basic. $20, well spent. I'll get 30 hours on this easy and I've paid $60 for much shorter and shittier games. Kickstarter is full of them.
 

Flight

Molten Core Raider
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Buy it from the guys website (DRM free and a smaller client that the Steam download but also comes with a Steam key) :Shining Rock Software

Has some good vids on that site also :Shining Rock Software



Does anyone know what engine or system he used to make this? It's kind of inspiring.
Not sure what tools he has used but modkit is coming for it and you'll be able to import anything in FBX format, so planning ahead you could start now using anything that can export to that format.

Official site has a modding sub forum, though obviously everyone is waiting for the mod kit :All Categories - Shining Rock Software Forums


The guy who made this game was formerly a 3D engine programmer so I'm guessing he made his own tools


edit: More here from him on modding and the forthcoming tool kit :

Mods and Languages

The tool I wrote and use internally to create the data for the game is pretty much the perfect mod tool for it. My hope is to provide this tool and a bit of the core data so that the community can reskin the game, change game balance, and add new buildings, professions, and workplaces.

The tool knows how to deal with all the data in the game, and would allow users to change and add to the game data. That includes textures, models, animations, string tables, audio, music, fonts, character sets, user interface configuration, user interface graphics, sprites, vertex and pixel shaders, and render state. It also compiles game data that configures all the objects in game - workplaces, trees, plants, resources, animals, buildings, citizens, weather, environment, lighting, professions, toolbars, general game balance, and more.

In addition to being able to change almost anything in the game, the tool can also package a set of compiled resources into a single file which would be great for distributing mods.

I've had many people ask about translations for the game. The code for supporting multiple languages in Banished is only partially complete and could use some work. I also don't have any plans for official translations yet. However the mod-kit would allow for community made translations distributed as mods.

I would love to see mods that extend the game. You could add an apiary that has beekeepers and produces honey, a miller that grinds wheat into flour, milk production could be added to cattle, and then a baker could take honey, eggs, milk, and flour and produce honey cakes. Or you could reskin the entire game for different time periods or locations. Or add a lumber mill and add a new class of houses and construction. Or make better character models and animations. I can think of so many directions to take Banished that I can't do them all myself - but I think the community could do some amazing things with it.

As I wasn't thinking about modding when I started coding Banished, there are some things the modkit won't be able to do. You won't be able to change behaviors or add new ones, and you can't make new UI behaviors. You can't make soldiers that fight off packs of wolves or change the AI of the people, or change the deer simulation. All that is in C++ code, and at the moment I don't have a good way to allow plug-ins with new code to extend the functionality. This is something I'm considering, but I haven't really examined the effort or implications this sort of code change would require.

There are a few things I still need to resolve for the mod kit, like making an interface to load multiple mods at once, and dealing with mods that override the same base resource. I also need to think about mods in relation to patches - if I make a patch for the game or extend the game with new functionality, the binary data formats may change, which will require mods to be recompiled with a new tool that goes with that particular data version.



When?

I don't know when all this will actually happen. As its obvious from the rest of Banished's development I'm not good at estimating how long it will take to get things done.

I'd like the mod support to be available soon, but the game needs to ship and I'm sure I'm going to have bugs and crashes and compatibility issues to deal with first. I may also take a bit of a break after these three years of development on a single project - A short break and some part time work on some new tools, tech, and game prototypes might be nice.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Would you recommend someone who will almost certainly buy the game start now or wait until later? It seems really common for these indi games to release an early demo that is fun but has more promise than real content.
 

Gask

Silver Baron of the Realm
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I enjoy the building and management but my issue is the fact that you can play for several hundred game years and nothing really ever changes beyond scale; you start with a small village and end with that and several other satellite villages scattered around it. In all that time you achieve no new tech, no government, no new buildings and no new threats present themselves; you start with starvation, fire, disease, cold and that's it for the duration. It would have been far more interesting if you could see progress through the years beyond adding yet another 0 horse town adjacent to the last; more buildings, economics, government, law and order, and all the other systems that come into play once a reliable food source is present. At any rate I'm sure that the mods will go a long way toward enhancing some things.
 

Falstaff

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I enjoy the building and management but my issue is the fact that you can play for several hundred game years and nothing really ever changes beyond scale; you start with a small village and end with that and several other satellite villages scattered around it. In all that time you achieve no new tech, no government, no new buildings and no new threats present themselves; you start with starvation, fire, disease, cold and that's it for the duration. It would have been far more interesting if you could see progress through the years beyond adding yet another 0 horse town adjacent to the last; more buildings, economics, government, law and order, and all the other systems that come into play once a reliable food source is present. At any rate I'm sure that the mods will go a long way toward enhancing some things.
This is what I was afraid of and why I'm holding off on this for now.