Hello all. I'm in a bit different situation than many. I'm a retired software engineer, with extensive experience in C++ and C# development. I have had in my mind to try a turn-based space strategy game. It would draw inspiration from an old tabletop game, SPI's Outreach, but would not be a clone.

I like this project for a starter, as it isn't too complicated from a game mechanics part. There are only a few counter types, representing starfleets, stargates, beacon stars, and "wisdom chits". I would probably expand and alter that set a bit. At least initially, I plan to make it a single-player game. Eventually I'd add random obstacles and tasks/goals.

As with most games of that era, much of the game play involved rolling dice and looking up results in tables for exploration, contact, fleet jumps, etc. This is the sort of thing lends itself well to programming.

I have been looking at some of the tutorials for TBS games. The original had the typical hex-grid map, but I think a square grid would work fine. One thing I'll like to be able to do is click on a grid square and have it expand, showing everything in the square in larger detail. I haven't seen that sort of thing in my cursory review of some the tutorials. Is that possible with GD, and if so has anyone done that or seen it?

I'd appreciate any information that you care to share. Thanks.

I don't see why that wouldn't be possible. Godot is very flexible for 2D and 3D, or even mixing the two. So while the graphics may not be state-of-the-art, they still look pretty good and it's unlikely there is any game concept that is flat out not possible. There is basic functionality for square grids, people have done hex grids, but it's more of a custom thing. And the way Godot works with Scenes, you can have nested Scenes to as many levels as you like, so you could have what looks like a small button have a whole world in it. It's pretty flexible. Though, a lot of stuff you will have to learn on your own. There are tutorials, but many of them are basic. If you have a more complex or original idea you'll kind of have to put some work in, but there is no limit.

    cybereality I worked my way through the Strategy Game tutorial. That went well, just a couple things I had done or didn't done, but I figured out the problems readily enough. Some good introduction to Scenes/Tiles/UI stuff, and helps to focus my documentation search.

    Obviously that's not how you'd want to make an actual game, creating all those tiles by duplication and positioning them, so I will be concentrating on creating them dynamically at game start.

      It's pretty simple stuff, but if you want to see an example of making the tileset and tilemaps in gdscript, you could look at my dungeon game.

      One thing I'll like to be able to do is click on a grid square and have it expand, showing everything in the square in larger detail

      Sounds like you're looking for a LOD system, some hierarchy to represent the levels of detail when zooming in and out. How about coding a quadtree as a data structure ? Would work for rectangular tiles at least.

      When creating tiles dynamically/procedurally a problem is to make them fit each other at the borders, if they contain some overall structure.

      I would make an extended class to a sprite and then give it a class name. You can scale it up when it gets clicked on. Use a higher resolution and scale it down for the board, then scale it back up to 1 when it gets clicked on or whatever, that way it will have higher resolution. You can keep other details on the class like added sprites or information and only show them when they are enlarged.

        fire7side
        As mentioned, the original game had only a few types of counters, and the main map would need to reflect that at least a representation of what's in that area are present. The small size versions wouldn't necessarily need to be interactive, more informational.

          I've done a bit of notional work using MSVC Forms, as I'm very familiar with that and can do fairly rapid prototyping with it. This isn't near what I would envision for a final form of course. Here are a couple of screen shots:

          Just looking at it, I would use interactive sprite instances and place them in a grid pattern. They are interactive since you want them to enlarge when hovered or clicked on, whatever. You could just use an animation for that and change the scale property, or program it with a tween. Add an area to the scene so you know when the mouse is over it.