[WIP] Tycoon Game

Hey everyone, my first post on this forum but i've been lurking here for quite some time.

I've been working on a tycoon game of sorts for a couple of months now. I'm not quite ready to post the full details about the game as not everything is set in stone, i've been doing alot of prototyping. But I will keep updating this thread as I move ahead

I do however have some screenshots and a small video of the core-mechanic of the game, building stuff! I'd just like some feedback on the 'art-style' (dirt and grass) of the map. The walls will get redone eventually, they're just something I threw together in photoshop.

The map will get extra procedural things like little stones and flowers/bushes eventually but I'm focusing on prototyping the other main game-elements first.

Now, the whole map is procedural, every time I start the scene it looks totally different. I'm just not sure if the textures are good enough, some extra shader perhaps?

Map zoomed out:



Map zoomed in, with some walls:



Video of wall-building:

 

OK, just one guy's opinion only.
The dirt is too orange. More of a tan base would look better.
The orange is also speckled throughout the grass which makes it look a little 'pea soupish'.
(Guess) It's difficult to have texture detail when everything needs to tile correctly as it is loaded procedurally.

I think adding some edge detail to the borders of the grass/dirt would improve the look.

Since you have been prototyping, Have you attempted to procedurally generate a detail overlay map to either the dirt or grass or both after it has been built? I don't even know if this is possible, but if it is - it would break up the flat-ness of the two areas after it was built.
Maybe the decal ability in the new standard shader could be overlayed to add some variation.

Really nice progress. I'm working in a very similar process. Prototyping a ton of isolated elements, one at a time.

Looking forward to the next update.

 

Thanks for the feedback

I made the textures in Inkscape and I had trouble keeping the color even in "porting" them to Unity, it was some trial and error. But I postponed on improving the textures further because I wanted to add more functionality to the game first so I could have a better overlook of what would fit together better, if that makes any sense?

I'm thinking of using a shader (actually been doing alot of research on that) to blurry the dirt-grass edges and make them "greener", like a sort of "more grass on the sides"-effect.

Well, the prototyping on the programming-side of the tilemap is done. I can have as many layers of tilemaps on top of each other as I want. It's actually what you see in the video, the walls are on a different tilemap that's on top of the ground-tilemap. I manage 10-15 drawcalls with 2 layers at the moment. I'm planning on adding 3-4 extra layers, at least one of those will have extra detail for the ground-map.

My map can go up to roughly 300x300 tiles (that's 90k tiles, should be enough for any tycoon game ) and contains 5 meshes per layer. Each tile has separate uv's so I can put any texture I want on any tile. Took me a while to program but was totally worth it. It's flexibility is saving me loads of time right now. I'm currently working on the GUI (including money-system and timeline), it looks basic at the moment but I'm getting the groundwork done so I can have fun making it pretty later.

 

What kind of tycoon game this will be? ex: prison, school?

 

It's gonna be about building and organizing/managing a movie studio. The building system will strongly resemble Prison Architect, with a very different mechanic for making movies ofcourse.

 

A little update:

I was home for a few days and decided to get some of the main coding burdens out of the way. I wrote a sort of framework to convert text files (with data in them ofcourse) to "buttons" in my gui. Every "conversion" places a item/building/terrain/etc choice in it's respective panel. I got this out of the way first so I can focus on the game-flow. I can add content very easily this way.

I also started on the way building will actually work in the game. In a nutshell: when you click on a build/buy button, a separate mode will open and you place "buildings/terrain improvements/items/..." on the map. After you're done placing stuff you can press "Order" and depending on what you placed, "contractors" will enter your lot and construct buildings/terrain improvements or deliver your items after which your own workmen can install them.

The contractor-AI is all but done, I had a little fun with stress-testing and added 200 workers, I found it funny and decided to share

ps: everything else is placeholder (UI, map, the contractor-cubes )
ps2: sorry for the low quality of the video, and any feedback/opinions on the "building-system" are welcome

 

I really like the spawning process... guess I'm a bit fuzzy on what it's supposed to simulate, but it looks cool ;-)

 

Thanks Well, when you click on "order", you order the buildings you placed and the contractor (larger cube at the moment) comes in, the workers (the smaller cubes) depart once it's parked, they build your stuff and then they leave again.

 

I've been hard at work implementing proper pathfinding (A*). I implemented it from scratch because I wanted to really understand the algorithm and I'm kinda proud of how it turned out. Very lightweight, super-fast and because I wrote it myself, ideally suited for my project.

Here's a little video where I show off the pathfinding and some other stuff. If anyone get's this far, If I may ask, kindly leave some feedback on the workings of the UI (artwork is placeholder) and the wall-sprites (those are final but only one type of many).

 

Nice, but i hope you change a little bit spwan system. Workers?

 

Yes ofcourse! These are just the contractors that come and go to place your buildings and terrain improvements, a bit like in reality. The employees that are going to work in said buildings you'll have to hire using another system, also a bit like reality.

 

A little update

I finally finished up the groundwork for placing items. Alot of time went into an extensive editor-extension so I can quickly add (and test) content. I also streamlined the map-code so placing stuff (and changing the map) is alot easier on the coding side. Next up are the first actual gameplay things and room-placement.

Everything in the video except the wall-, door- and desk-sprites is placeholder. Feedback is very much appreciated .

 

I really like the progress you made, looks good! Make sure you really focus on UI with these types of games so the player can easily and fluently do what he needs to do. But its looking good!

 

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, as you can see I've changed the UI around 3 times now but I quite like it as is right now. It's quite easy to figure it out without a tutorial so I'm happy

 

I liked the swarming contractors better Looks fun, I wish I had time to work on something like that

Keep up the good work !

 

I think the tables should be brought in by two people and a truck, that would be hilarious and surreal. I'd love to be able to code like this.

 

Well the cubes are going to be trucks And I only started coding in C# about a year ago, never heard about Unity before january so just keep at it.

 

Is this project still going? i would like to see more

 

Yes! I'm still making progress. Just didn't update for a while and then had a very busy year during which I had to make an end project for my degree in programming. I made a sort of similar game to this which is alot better structured/programmed because I have alot more experience now in programming, it also has alot more features.

I just recently started refacturing code from that project and bits and pieces from the game featured here and combining it into a new project. Map generation is done already, expect an update in a few weeks. Very strange that someone digs up this topic just as I recently restarted the project.