A Blog for Those Who Miss Rome: Dome, Dome Always Changes

How often do you think about the Roman Empire? It all started with a chat one day, and we realized we all think about Rome at least once a week. As we talked more, we started wondering: What if they found oil first? How would ancient Rome look today? Which old stuff would still be around? How would they have fun? Would there still be gladiator fights? And if yes, what weapons would they use? So here we are, imagining what Rome's future could've been like and making up our own version of it.

Summary

We haven’t posted anything in a while, sorry about that! The reason is that DIESELDOME has had many big changes in nearly every aspect and we wanted to get them to a better state before showcasing them to you. From now on we’ll be keeping you posted more regularly.

These past few months have been arduous for the whole team here at GHST Studios but we’re incredibly excited to show off what we’ve been working on!

So what are these big changes?

New Visual Style

Previously, DIESELDOME had a retro style closer to PlayStation 1 games. We wanted to remake them because we found that this style didn’t really give us the chance to add all the details we wanted to add to make our weird “RomanPunk” universe come alive.

Every enemy, object, and weapon in the game has been remodeled and animated again. This was a hard process but we feel like the results speak for themselves.

Here are a few comparisons:

Old Combat:

New Combat:

Don't worry about the amount of blood, there will be lots and lots of Oil and Blood once you start competing in the arena!

Old Grunt:

New Grunt:

Old Throttle-Gun:

New Throttle-Gun:

Changed Game Design

Dieseldome has a lot of movement mechanics but with our previous game design, we weren’t able to utilize them in a way that felt integrated into the rest of our game.

Previously, enemies would just spawn randomly and chase you around in a very simple way; you didn’t need to use movement at all. You could just stay on the ground and fight them.

Now, enemies are periodically created by special units that we call the “Veteranus”. Veteranus spawn on mini bases that are spread out throughout our new map. Each base has a different gameplay style and visual feel. The logic is that if the player wants to stop the ever-increasing waves of weaker units, they will have to keep moving from base to base and deal with the fortified Veteranus.

This new mechanic also allows the player to choose how much risk they are willing to take. For example, instead of killing the Veteranus units, you might choose instead to keep them alive and increase the overall number of enemies in the map. Sure, this is risky but it also means the crowd will love you that much more.

Speaking of the crowd, they also play a more important role now. The crowd is now basically how you level up. Accomplishing the new “Bets”, which are mini-challenges that they periodically request from you gives you a multiplier to how quickly you level up. On the other hand, other veteranus units might taunt you and decrease that multiplier.

Whether to stop a horde of enemies or to stop other veteranus from stealing the spotlight away from you, you will need to move around the map in interesting ways now to stay alive.

This also brings us to our next big change:

New Environment

With the new visual style and the game design changes, our simpler environment just wasn’t cutting it. We had to make a new Dome that was designed specifically for these changes.

Check it out:

There are still many big changes we are extremely excited to show off soon, such as the new metagame, our overhauled AI, and our new perk system. We have way too many ideas for how the future would have looked for the Roman Empire, and we will share them with you as we go. Don't forget to add the game to your wishlist to stay updated on upcoming news!

Nos omnes iterum videbimus!