Trick of the Light - An experiment in unshared fog of war

Trick of the Light is an experiment in strategic game design based on imperfect information in a unique 'unshared' fog of war setting: instead of all units on a team sharing their vision telepathically over any distance, they can only see what's around them at any given moment. A hybrid of real-time-strategy, RPG and roguelike genres, the game challenges players to maintain an expansive base system without being able to see anything beyond their own limited vision radius. All units, allied or enemy, maintain private memories about what they have seen, and must directly exchange information to keep up to date. The player acts as commander, making decisions and giving orders while dealing with adversaries, sabotage and misinformation. This project was accepted as a master's thesis work after having been a pet project for years, with most of the academic work being upgrading it from its ascii state to a playable version and testing to see how players would react to its novel mechanics and themes.

• Unshared Fog of War: Each character can only see whats directly around them, and have their own separate collection of memories about who or what they've seen.
• Propagation of Information: Units can talk with eachother to share their mental maps, keeping eachother up-to-date with the most recent sightings of where people are.
• Propagation of Misinformation: Information becomes innacurate / outdated without constant updates, and intentional lies propagaded by an enemy could spread quickly with disasterous results.
• Multilayered Visibility: The fog of war is quite literal, and carrying a torch is a double edged sword: you can see much farther in the light, but whatever lurks at the edge of the darkness will see you first.
• Resource Management: Theres no global cache for resources, everything must be delivered by hand to its destination. Caravans transporting collected goods should be well defended as they travel between bases...
• Autonomous AI: Your troops and workers are used to being alone in the dark, and know how to do their basic duties while reacting intelligently to common occurances they might stumble into by themselves.
• Modular "Task" Behaviours: Units can be taught advance behaviours and techniques with training, allowing them to perform their jobs more efficiently / intelligently or get rid of bad practices like running from intimidating foes.
• Adaptable Learning: Give your followers tools or weapons they know about and they'll try to use them when appropriate. Certain spells or effects can cause them to act differently or reprioritize their objectives as well.
• Entirely from Scratch: Started with nothing but a blank Eclipse project and inspiration. Originally written in Java, but fully ported to C++ when I was told it's the hip cool game developer language and would be more impressive on a resume. Did it work?
• Extendable Engine: Making new behaviours, items, status effects, units or maps is simple, with built in templates and modularity in mind accouting for numerous potential interactions.
• Labor of Love: Yeah, the SDL Minecraft graphics ain't nothing to brag about, most of the game is under the hood and its still a work in progress, but I'm proud of the fact I know I did everything I could; every line of code inside and out, every algorithm and helper function, every design choice and mechanic system, and all the trials and tribulations that came with refining them. Playtesting and explaining the in-depth intricacies to interested players was by far the best experience I had in college, and I hope to do this for the rest of my life.

Status: Suspended for now. It currently only has placeholder art assets scrounged from free providers online, and the visual / rendering / UI aspects are still very much up in the air for a rework or overhaul. Adding in new units / items / status effects / behaviours is easy, streamlined and potentially open for modding, but the main objectives now would be adding tutorials for some of the more in-depth mechanics and ensuring players understand what's going on around them when the theme of the game is to predict what's happening beyond what they can see. Working nearly the entirety of the thesis on graphical-related design at the very least has taught me that my SDL 'art' isn't going to work for the level of detail I'd need to fully show what the characters are doing / thinking.