VICI: Ashfall — Devlog #1: From Zero to RTS in 5 Days
Hey, I'm Martijn, from Belgium. No coding background. I work in tech. One day I decided to build the RTS I always wanted to play.
Not a simple one either. I'm talking base building, resource economy, multiple unit types, two asymmetric factions, a full campaign. Classic Command & Conquer vibes, but set in a post-apocalyptic world of my own design.
The game is called VICI: Ashfall.
The World
The setting is called The Ashfall — a grey, dust-choked wasteland. Decades ago, a corporation called ARCH tried to reverse climate change with an atmospheric seeding program. It worked too well. A chain reaction turned 60% of the atmosphere toxic. Billions died.
Two factions rose from the ashes.
The Remnants — scrappy survivors who kept humanity alive through resourcefulness and grit. Fast units, fire weapons, overwhelming numbers. Rust and scrap metal aesthetic.
The Architects — descendants of ARCH corporation survivors who believe the Collapse was a necessary step toward a better world. Slow, expensive, devastatingly powerful. Sleek grey alloy, blue energy lines, heavy mechs.
Neither faction is purely good or evil.
5 Days of Building
I started with absolutely nothing — just Godot 4 installed and a dream. Here's what exists:
Camera movement and zoom
Click and drag unit selection
Unit movement with proper pathfinding (NavigationAgent2D)
Three-resource economy — Water, Food and Scrap, each requiring different player behaviour
Harvesters that autonomously collect scrap and return to base
Pump Stations that generate water passively from water nodes
Food Processors that convert water to food
A radial build menu (Tab to open) with grid-snapped building placement
Barracks that train infantry, Vehicle Bay that trains tanks
Rally points — right-click to set where units walk after training
A production panel at the bottom of the screen showing costs and training progress
And as of today — working combat
Units auto-attack enemies in range. Tank turrets rotate toward their target. Health bars shrink. Units die. It looks like an actual RTS.
What It Looks Like Right Now
It's still placeholder art — coloured shapes and circles. But the systems underneath are real. Infantry are small green circles. Tanks are brown squares with a rotating turret line. Buildings are coloured squares with icons. The tile map has two terrain types — base ash ground and darker scorched patches.
It's not pretty yet. But it works, and that's what matters at this stage.
What's Next
Combat needs a damage matrix — tanks should be strong against buildings but weak against fast infantry. Then a win/lose condition. Then a visual pass to replace the placeholder art with real sprites. Then a basic AI opponent.
After that — the first playable mission. That's when a demo becomes possible.
I'll be posting updates here regularly. If you're into RTS games, indie development, or just curious whether a non-programmer can actually ship a game — follow along.
One session at a time.
— Martijn