Project 4X



Brief Description:


Project 4X is a project, yet unnamed, being developed by Pedro Henriques consisting of a browser based 4X game inspired by the classic Master of Orion II and Galactic Civilizations II games.


The game will support 2 to 8 human and/or AI players in each session.


As a 4X game set in space, the players will explore a universe of star systems in search of colonizable planets in order to expand their empire.

During their efforts to expand the various empires will clash and have to either share or fight for the limited resources available.

The game aims to have a "complex enough" empire management, where the player has control but without it becoming a boring chore.

Finally, the game will feature an indepth ship combat system where placement of weapons on the ship's hull will be vital for success, as well as aiming for a balanced fleet approach where simply building bigger ships won't lead to better performance.


In the style of Master of Orion, the game will favor fast paced sessions, thus mitigating one of the common problems with the 4x genre: the game becoming a non challeging "mop up" in the mid to late phases.



Features:

Current Development Status:

Technical Information:


The game is built in NodeJS on the backend and React+Redux on the frontend, both cases using TypeScript.



Motivation:


After countless sessions and hours spent playing the classic 4X games of the 90s and 00s, with special focus on Master of Orion I and II, the interest in modifying those games to improve on some of their limitations, caused by the technology limits of the time, started to grow.

These limitations include limited AI, simplistic diplomacy systems and the lack of proper online multiplayer support.


While I was thinking about how to modify these games and being always on the search for a challenge I thought "why not build my own game?", combining my interest in being challenged with my desire to modify and improve those classic 4x games.


I knew it was going to be a big project, requiring several months to complete on my own and that I would hit several walls, but that is exactly what I love doing. Going outside of my comfort zone and being challenged by new problems to solve.