Announcing CarbonField!
Introducing CarbonField!
CarbonField is our upcoming real-time strategy game set during an alternate interwar period. Manage resources, build your base, train units and mass assault enemy positions to overcome your opponents fortifications.
We've been building CarbonField as a love letter to classic RTS games like Age of Empires, Iron Harvest, Entente and even Warfare:1917, but with a setting and game dynamics that set it apart. Our focus is driven towards static emplacements, winding trench lines, strategic defence, and the overwhelming firepower needed to break through your enemies lines.
Setting
Our vision focuses on the scale and grit of a Great Continuation War, set in a world where the Great War reignites and the fledgling great powers struggle to hold the line against their own weight. Every country's technology has barely had time to advance beyond the trenches of the past decade, and out emerges a reimagined mass assault doctrine with an interwar flare.
Trenches still dominate the battlefield, but uncommon sights, including multi-turreted tanks, semi-modern planes, modernised assault guns, and not-yet-banned strategic weapons, begin to appear. The powers struggle to fight off one another, and internally, systems begin to collapse. Emerging from this world in chaos are new uprisings and new powers to challenge the old empires and monarchies. Nationalist and communist uprisings plague every nation's streets, and it's not long before these powers too enter the war.
The Tech Behind It
We chose an unconventional stack for CarbonField. Godot 4.5 handles rendering, input, and the editor, while a Rust library built on Bevy ECS handles all game simulation, pathfinding, AI, combat, resource logic, communicated over GDExtension. This hybrid approach gives us Godot's flexibility for UI and visuals with Rust's raw performance for the systems that need it most.
CarbonField is in early pre-alpha, but the foundations are already in place. Here's what's working today:
- Heightmap terrain with grid overlay, elevation, and terrain painting
- GPU shader-rendered Fog of War with per-player persistence
- Hierarchical flow field pathfinding, groups of units share a single flow field instead of running individual A* queries
- Base building with placement previews that conform to terrain elevation
- Resource gathering, harvest trees for Lumber, manage Grain, Iron, and Oil
- Unit training with queued production and a morale system
- AI opponents powered by Goal-Oriented Action Planning
What's Next
Development follows a milestone roadmap. We're currently in the 0.0.x pre-milestone era, building out core systems patch by patch. The next major milestones are:
- 0.1.0 - Networking: multiplayer via Steam Networking with lockstep simulation
- 0.2.0 - Basic RTS: complete base building, combat, and win condition
- 0.3.0 - Map Maker: community map creation tools
- ...and much more to come after this.
Follow the Development
We'll be posting patch notes and development updates right here on aternix.com, and they'll also land in our Discord. If you want to follow along as CarbonField takes shape, join the community and stay tuned for the next update. We also have a Newsletter Subscribe form on our CarbonField page. Please also follow us on YouTube to keep up to date with our DevLogs!