Game Maker Progress 43: Project Update Prior to First Group Play-test

Hello everyone,

Preparations are more or less complete for the group play-test which is scheduled for next Saturday (29th July 2017). I feel both excited, and nervous; as the project makes it's first step towards being tried by players as a game. 

The last few days have been quite the joy when it comes to Foundation of Civilisation. The project has made huge strides since it's planning, concept, and the hours of work that have been put into it until this point. There are still hours, days, if not months of work left before the game can be anywhere near what I believe it could be ready for public release - however progress is being made. The most exciting feeling from play-testing the game came from it actually feeling like a game - like a game I would play. 

With so many ideas still left to be tried and tested, both exciting ones, and ones focused on making the project just that little bit better of an experience; in terms of optimisation, and in terms of game-play. 

Until next time,

Dylan

Game Maker Progress 42: Preparations for Play-Test and Next Step

Hello everyone,

As I begin preparations to have some play-testers try out the project - I started working more towards usability by fixing the tool-tips and working on the interface. The play-test will help offer a few insights on what's already been done and what can be improved, and changed. Aside from a few parameters being tuned, and fixing a few basic bugs - the game for the initial play-test. At the moment - most of the parameters have been set with testing in-mind; as such they need to be adjusted to what they could be for game-play purposes.

I have a number of ideas on what to change, add and remove that could help the game's experience. Thinking on how to go from the early-game to the late-game and ensuring the game remains compelling was one of the more important considerations as I continued thinking on could be added next, after the play-test.

Two ideas that came to mind is to have an underground-map which the player can dig-out to create underground structures. The second idea is to allow the player to have certain decisions and choices that will influence their nation. These can range from trade deals, to large immigration, to dealing with issues and so on. Following the play-tests - I will begin planning out the next build, plan out what features to implement, fix issues, and adjust elements based on feedback!

Until next time,

Dylan

Game Maker Progress 41: District and Workpost Upgrade Plots and the Production Menu

Hello everyone,

This week I worked on two fairly work-load heavy elements. Both still have work that need to be done beyond simply tuning - however, since one depended on the other; it meant that I could not focus on one to completion before moving onto the other. The most work-load heavy is the new Upgrade System for the various Districts and Work-posts. 

Plots represent a space in which a structure that has a certain functionality can be built within a district or work-post. Previously - the Artisan District was the only structure that would have had these types of structures - the sawmill for instance, refined logs into timber. However, moving forward each structure will have plots where upgrade structures can be built with functionality ranging from increased efficiency and productive, to different resource production and a number of other ideas. The idea of 'Plots' came as I intend to make the menu as shown above, a small map of the area - with plots of land along roads being available for structures. This helps give a more tangible feel to the districts and work-posts as being actual places within your civilisation. 

The production menu - the more incomplete of the two systems listed here - will be able to show the amount of resources being produced 'per game tick' so to speak. Each tick - represented by the temporary clock-like indicator above the season and weather indicator - represents around a week for instance within the game world. So based on the production rate - we can see that 9 logs are being cut per week for instance. The production limit listed here will be adjustable by the player to limit production of resources. This is mostly important based on feedback of previous play-testers about artisan structures using so much raw material to produce refined resources, that it became difficult to have enough raw resources to do other actions. 

I have also replaced a few of the UI backdrops - in particular the ones used for both menus - the plan in this account is to have these menus appear on paper-like material; that you as the leader of these people are looking at whilst making your decisions on a day-to-day basis so to speak.

Until next time,

Dylan 

Game Maker Progress 40: Workers and Real-Time Game-Play

Hello everyone,

This week - two more critical components of the project have been implemented. These being the ability to add and remove workers to and from work-posts, together with the relevant code to ensure that if a population loses a member who contributing as a worker - the working population reduces; and the second component is that of real-time game-play. 

The ability to add and remove workers has been a major element of the project which has now been taken care of. Ensuring that the player does not somehow end up with a large amount of workers, when residential districts only have a few workers, as well as ensuring all the correct figures are shown, was a small head-ache. Thankfully - much of the work to ensure the system works was done with the concept build, which now only meant I needed to refine it and re-implement a new version. 

There does need to be a lot of adjustments to parameters based on the fact that game now operates in real-time. The real-time element in essence functions by having an 'Alarm' on-going during game-play which triggers a set of functions and resets the alarm; to signify time passing by. The way this has been implemented allows for a fairly simple way of allowing the player to choose speed - be it slow, normal and fast - which will be implemented along the line. This is a major change from the concept build - but a necessary one based on the type of game-play I am offering. Some of the feedback on the concept build described the game-play to be too slow; this might be the solution for this, this remains to be seen with play-testing however. 

There remains a few other tasks before I can begin refining the current build to a form to allow play-testers to test the game. More specifically is adding the Artisan District's functionality, possibly add the ability to save and load, and add the Production Menu to allow for better management of resources. Following this - I will be focusing my attention on the User Interface and the place-holder graphic elements. I will be keeping most of my efforts on the UI and the place-holder graphics in a more general form - for instance - attempt to have a single button graphic that can be modified using code and scaling to perform multiple tasks. 

Until next time,

Dylan