Hello everyone, long time hobby developer here. A few months ago, while listening to Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic I came up with the idea that this period would make a very good setting for a grand strategy game. An Imperator with much less focus on painting the map and more on politics, economy, intrigue.

After spending some time working on what I really enjoy - which is programming the simulation, I got it in my head that this may be a feasible idea. And so I switched to the part I suck at and don't really enjoy - art. If you didn't guess already, I am a programmer/engineer by trade.

I started with the map, and realizing I am sitting on thousands of dollars worth of assets I bought over the years for all sorts of abandoned projects, I decided to instead start with prototype level assets I build myself. Houses are boxes, trees lollypops etc. Well, building these little assets and placing them on the map became addictive. Added a little shader magic (nothing too fancy) and now I am in trouble, because I somehow got it in my head that this looks really good.

The portraits I can't be too proud of. They are bought assets, imported and combined in Unity. Did take a little technical hocus pocus to get them working properly, but I am happy with the result.

The UI is the newest part, only started playing with it a few weeks ago and limited to the character screen. Not final by any measure, but I am starting to like how it looks...

I feel like the first time in a decade I may be looking at something that has potential to ship and look alright. Am I drinking my own Kool-Aid?

I think I need a reality check