Completely different audiences lol. Dark Souls will be more fun and engaging, but require constant stat tweaking and balancing. Audience for this are for mostly boys. Animal Crossing isn't fun and engaging, but is more of a social/collecting/nourishing game that has no balance/tweaking required. Audience for this is mostly for girls.
That is a LOT of progress since last time! Nicely done, man. I love that you are considering your game dev pillars as you go--not just adding stuff, but thinking about what type of game (cozy vs. hard) that you want it to be. Well done!
Thanks a lot ! My todo list is getting heavier by the day haha but my game design pillars helps me prioritize and understand what my game really needs. Now that I have something that looks more like a citybuilder, I can try to focus on making it challenging and have the player ask themselves questions on how to tackle it.
6 Ways to improve the game: 1. Artificial tile building. I think you should add a workplace where a civillian might be able to artificialy add grass tiles to desert tiles. It could cost some water and food, and I think it would be a cool survival aspect of the game. 2. House upgrades. You know how in Frostpunk you start with tents, then unlock bunkhouses and then houses? Well, perhaps you could do the same here but differently to match the desert theme. You coould start with slums, then you can upgrade them in the tech tree to low quality homes and then high quality homes. Maybe the stone mining aspect could provide resources to upgrade the houses. 3. Industry upgrades. Slightly different from house upgrades in which in the tech tree you may add industry upgrades similar to fast exploration. Perhaps faster food gathering, water gathering, stone mining etcetera. I think that this would help the player survive harsh conditions, especially if you decide to make it a hard game. Personally, I prefer hard games because they are usually more interactive and generally fun. 4. Soldiers. I think this might already have been mentioned but add some soldiers. Perhaps every 10 or 15 days the village may be attacked by taliban or desert tribes or something like that, and the soldiers will fight it. Also, this uncovers a lot of new tech tree opportunities such as more soldier health, better weapons, vehicles etcetera. 5. Occasional mini tasks/popups. Similar to Frostpunk, you could add mini tasks such as feeding or quenching the people, giving the people homes, or upgrading something specific in the tech tree. And if you fail to comple these tasks, discontent among the people will rise. 6. ADD ROADS. I cannot stress this enough but if I see a city building game without roads I log off. Please, add some road building. Thank you for reading! I hope you take my points into consideration.
Thanks for all the tips ! 1. I may or may not already added that since the last devlog, stick around for the next devlog *wink wink* 😆 2. I was thinking about something close to your 3rd point of techs that would simply increase stats, but could be interesting to also have to upgrade each independent buildings, specially houses, having the player ask themselves if it's better to upgrade or build a new house 🤔 3. Definitly. 4. This is interesting, but it might turn the game into something else, the game changed a bit sice I release this devlog and I'm focusing a lot on fighting the sand storm that we see at the end, which will happen frequently. But I'm also thinking of adding "random events" that can be either good or bad (but mostly bad) so maybe I could make some kind of enemies that attacks the city and the civilians have to fight them, making them stop working and potentially get killed 🤔 5. I was thinking to have "quests" as hidden tutorials, mostly to guide a first time player on how to play the game and have small rewards to complete them, like a bit of gems so they have enough gems for an upgrade or two before the sandstorm kick there asses. But maybe I could also mix that with random events, being a more "neutral" event that the player needs to act on instead of just something that happens. 6. Yeah you're not the first one to mention roads, I'll just need to figure out how I would implement them 🤔, maybe forcing the buildings to be near a road and the road having to connect to the town center. It would probably help to not have the player spread too much everywhere in the fog of war and give a bit more stuff for the player to micro manage, Thanks for all the suggestions !
CUTE DEATH !!! Hahahaha. Yeah hopefully I can make the feel of the game match the cute little civilians. I was thinking of having changing music depending on the state of the game, if there's a sand storm etc. Thanks for passing by 👋
Broooooo! I can't believe I just found out I was not subbed to you and missed these videos. Keeping my eye on and keeping up with this project for sure, very cool concept so far and a lot of great work.
I think that Adding a house that hosts a robot in the lab would be nice (he won't need food or water but some gold to survive and he will be immune to sandstorms)
Big W. Would be cool if there was a reason for players to build houses close together maybe civilians could die if they have to walk to far through the desert. Then you could even have carts that can move food through the desert.
Definitely ! I think that's a current problem for my game, that distance isnt really a factor, as long as you have revealed the fog of war you can build there. I had a couple of ideas, like you mentionned, maybe walking through sand would make civilians spend water or become tired or something, making you build roads or something. With the desert sand storm, I want to make the "desert vs water" mechanics more present and having a very spreaded out city is kind of weird 😅 Thanks for the suggestion !
You could make it so that if a civilian dies no building can be placed in a particular radius of the body (because other civilians would want to avoid being near a corpse😅) it would be very punishing for the player to neglect the survival part making the game difficult
Oooooh that's interesting. Having some kind of negative area around a dead body. I might have a concept of "happyness" at some point, maybe being around a body would make civilians sad. I was also thinking of having "corrupted" tiles, that could not be worked on, so maybe bodies would create corruption around them. Cool idea !
Amazing video! It's great to see your progress. I stumbled upon your video and i had to subscribe. Keep it up :D. And i was wondering if the background could change the colour depending on time of the day.
Hey thank you for watching ! I'll definitely have think about the art at some point, while I dont totally hate it, having a feedback of the time of day or how soon a sandstorm will happen etc would be nice. Also most of my buildings are a recolor and not so interesting, I also want to have NPCs that are not part of the city and are just passing by, those need to look differently also etc. I might try to look into look up tables, that are meant to essentially change the color palette of your game, could make for a nice day night cycle, or maybe go for lighting, not sure yet or maybe I'll simply make the food consumption something else than a day XD cause maybe a day night cycle would happen too often and would end up being annoying more than anything. I plan to reach a more gameplay complete state before thinking of redoing the art, so I'll know what are important thing in my game. That's usually how I approach things, make it fun yet ugly first, than put the good looking art where it matters. Also my UI art is also terrible 😢 I'll probably make a video on just that, making the game look good, cause that will be a big task to tackle for sure haha.
It's custom. I have a little white square selection that follows the cursor (you can see it at around 2:57) I convert the mouse position to a coordinate on the map grid and place the selection there. When I switch into "place a building" mode I read a param in the default object of the building class I selected to find the building image and I swap my white square for the building image instead, so the building image snaps on the grid. I was kind of planning to change it tho, to have an actual building be dragged around, so I can update the effect range (0:44) while placing the building, so the player can find the perfect spot to place the building by looking at the resources the building will generate.
Thanks a lot !! 😃 I started to learn about 3 years ago, I'm still no pro but I like to think I improved 😅 It's nice to hear you like it ! Thank you for the kind words 🙏
Thanks a lot ! Depending on what state it is for the next devlog, I might get that into some player's hand to get some feedback and focus the next next devlog about that. A game is only really a game when people play it 😆 Thank you for watching 🙏
You've inspired me to continue working with 2d in Unreal, looking forward to everything you do! Also, do you need any sound or music made? I'd do it for free just to be able to help!
I mute the music while capturing or editing the video, but I currently have some music from "Steven Melin" a big music pack I bought 1-2 years ago. That being said I'll probably change it, one of my irl friend already suggested making some music for this game. But since music is the only thing I'm not doing (and translation in other languages than english and french) I do keep a list of potential people I can work with, if you have some social or something to share. I'll definitely keep you in my notes if something comes up in the futur !
Thanks ! Yeah the UI are not great, specially the center one that I kept adding stuff to it and it's pure chaos haha. I'll redo most it now that I know what I need to put in there. Plus obviously the art of the UI is kind of bad. Do you have any suggestion ? Something in the UI you specially felt that should be changed ?
@@RockyMulletGamedev the colors feel too desaturated but I'm not the artist on my team haha so I am saying things based on how they feel! good work, honestly one of the best citybuilders I can think of.
@@KindOfWitch I do use a desaturated color palette, but it could be a good idea to have a more saturated version for the UI, to have a better feel of what is UI and what is game art, but I do agree that the colors are specially bad for the UI.
I'm a C++ programmer, so it's easier for me and it gives me more freedom. Specially when it comes to doing some math or creating systems or AI. I still do a couple of things in blueprint, like most of my UI works in blueprint, when I remade my building selection UI with categories and scalable strip based on an array of building, that's all blueprint. My rule of thumb is generally: UI, level design and Audio: blueprint. The rest: C++.
Oooooh, that's a great idea ! Wild animals could be a risky way of getting more food when you are in need, specially early in a game when want to expand fast and having a risk of getting a civilian killed could give a cool risk and reward twist to it. Excellent idea ! *taking notes*
Cozy games aren't fun, and the target audience for these games are majority going to be girls unless you are making a NSFW game, then it will be mostly guys. However, with cozy games there is a bit less work in that you don't have to balance/tweak gameplay. Cozy however often needs decent graphics. A hard game is always going to be much much more fun and engaging, but requires a *lot* more time balancing/tweaking stats like damage and such. Graphics for these games are just a plus and not required.
Yoooo , Rocky is back with a bang
The age old internal debate. Do I make darksouls or animal crossing. 🤔⚖
It keeps happening ! smh
DOOM : New horizons
Completely different audiences lol.
Dark Souls will be more fun and engaging, but require constant stat tweaking and balancing. Audience for this are for mostly boys.
Animal Crossing isn't fun and engaging, but is more of a social/collecting/nourishing game that has no balance/tweaking required. Audience for this is mostly for girls.
That is a LOT of progress since last time! Nicely done, man. I love that you are considering your game dev pillars as you go--not just adding stuff, but thinking about what type of game (cozy vs. hard) that you want it to be. Well done!
Thanks a lot !
My todo list is getting heavier by the day haha
but my game design pillars helps me prioritize and understand what my game really needs.
Now that I have something that looks more like a citybuilder, I can try to focus on making it challenging and have the player ask themselves questions on how to tackle it.
6 Ways to improve the game:
1. Artificial tile building. I think you should add a workplace where a civillian might be able to artificialy add grass tiles to desert tiles. It could cost some water and food, and I think it would be a cool survival aspect of the game.
2. House upgrades. You know how in Frostpunk you start with tents, then unlock bunkhouses and then houses? Well, perhaps you could do the same here but differently to match the desert theme. You coould start with slums, then you can upgrade them in the tech tree to low quality homes and then high quality homes. Maybe the stone mining aspect could provide resources to upgrade the houses.
3. Industry upgrades. Slightly different from house upgrades in which in the tech tree you may add industry upgrades similar to fast exploration. Perhaps faster food gathering, water gathering, stone mining etcetera. I think that this would help the player survive harsh conditions, especially if you decide to make it a hard game. Personally, I prefer hard games because they are usually more interactive and generally fun.
4. Soldiers. I think this might already have been mentioned but add some soldiers. Perhaps every 10 or 15 days the village may be attacked by taliban or desert tribes or something like that, and the soldiers will fight it. Also, this uncovers a lot of new tech tree opportunities such as more soldier health, better weapons, vehicles etcetera.
5. Occasional mini tasks/popups. Similar to Frostpunk, you could add mini tasks such as feeding or quenching the people, giving the people homes, or upgrading something specific in the tech tree. And if you fail to comple these tasks, discontent among the people will rise.
6. ADD ROADS. I cannot stress this enough but if I see a city building game without roads I log off. Please, add some road building.
Thank you for reading! I hope you take my points into consideration.
Thanks for all the tips !
1. I may or may not already added that since the last devlog, stick around for the next devlog *wink wink* 😆
2. I was thinking about something close to your 3rd point of techs that would simply increase stats, but could be interesting to also have to upgrade each independent buildings, specially houses, having the player ask themselves if it's better to upgrade or build a new house 🤔
3. Definitly.
4. This is interesting, but it might turn the game into something else, the game changed a bit sice I release this devlog and I'm focusing a lot on fighting the sand storm that we see at the end, which will happen frequently. But I'm also thinking of adding "random events" that can be either good or bad (but mostly bad) so maybe I could make some kind of enemies that attacks the city and the civilians have to fight them, making them stop working and potentially get killed 🤔
5. I was thinking to have "quests" as hidden tutorials, mostly to guide a first time player on how to play the game and have small rewards to complete them, like a bit of gems so they have enough gems for an upgrade or two before the sandstorm kick there asses. But maybe I could also mix that with random events, being a more "neutral" event that the player needs to act on instead of just something that happens.
6. Yeah you're not the first one to mention roads, I'll just need to figure out how I would implement them 🤔, maybe forcing the buildings to be near a road and the road having to connect to the town center. It would probably help to not have the player spread too much everywhere in the fog of war and give a bit more stuff for the player to micro manage,
Thanks for all the suggestions !
@@RockyMulletGamedev Thanks for replying!😁
This looks great! Love the cute graphics so it'll be interesting how that works with the survival mechanics.
CUTE DEATH !!! Hahahaha. Yeah hopefully I can make the feel of the game match the cute little civilians. I was thinking of having changing music depending on the state of the game, if there's a sand storm etc.
Thanks for passing by 👋
Broooooo! I can't believe I just found out I was not subbed to you and missed these videos. Keeping my eye on and keeping up with this project for sure, very cool concept so far and a lot of great work.
Hey ! 😆
Thanks for passing by 👋
I think that Adding a house that hosts a robot in the lab would be nice (he won't need food or water but some gold to survive and he will be immune to sandstorms)
Ooooh that's interesting, yeah maybe some NPCs that are not civilians could be nice.
@@RockyMulletGamedev :)
Very interesting and funny ! It's really nice to see your improvements and all those changes ! Keep it up
Thank you :D
and thank you for watching 🙏
Ooooooh and hi Koopanada/Milo ;)
Big W. Would be cool if there was a reason for players to build houses close together maybe civilians could die if they have to walk to far through the desert. Then you could even have carts that can move food through the desert.
Definitely ! I think that's a current problem for my game, that distance isnt really a factor, as long as you have revealed the fog of war you can build there.
I had a couple of ideas, like you mentionned, maybe walking through sand would make civilians spend water or become tired or something, making you build roads or something. With the desert sand storm, I want to make the "desert vs water" mechanics more present and having a very spreaded out city is kind of weird 😅
Thanks for the suggestion !
looks great! waiting for more :)
Thank you ! Now that the devlog's done, I'm back at it 😤
So you can expect a third devlog on it at some point 😆
You could make it so that if a civilian dies no building can be placed in a particular radius of the body (because other civilians would want to avoid being near a corpse😅) it would be very punishing for the player to neglect the survival part making the game difficult
Oooooh that's interesting. Having some kind of negative area around a dead body. I might have a concept of "happyness" at some point, maybe being around a body would make civilians sad. I was also thinking of having "corrupted" tiles, that could not be worked on, so maybe bodies would create corruption around them.
Cool idea !
Amazing video! It's great to see your progress. I stumbled upon your video and i had to subscribe. Keep it up :D. And i was wondering if the background could change the colour depending on time of the day.
Hey thank you for watching !
I'll definitely have think about the art at some point, while I dont totally hate it, having a feedback of the time of day or how soon a sandstorm will happen etc would be nice. Also most of my buildings are a recolor and not so interesting, I also want to have NPCs that are not part of the city and are just passing by, those need to look differently also etc.
I might try to look into look up tables, that are meant to essentially change the color palette of your game, could make for a nice day night cycle, or maybe go for lighting, not sure yet or maybe I'll simply make the food consumption something else than a day XD cause maybe a day night cycle would happen too often and would end up being annoying more than anything.
I plan to reach a more gameplay complete state before thinking of redoing the art, so I'll know what are important thing in my game. That's usually how I approach things, make it fun yet ugly first, than put the good looking art where it matters. Also my UI art is also terrible 😢
I'll probably make a video on just that, making the game look good, cause that will be a big task to tackle for sure haha.
@@RockyMulletGamedev I am worried what will you do if you call this terrible :D. You did amazing job and i am happily waiting for another devlog.
3:02 are you using Unreal's drag and drop solution or did you custom made it? :D
It's custom. I have a little white square selection that follows the cursor (you can see it at around 2:57) I convert the mouse position to a coordinate on the map grid and place the selection there. When I switch into "place a building" mode I read a param in the default object of the building class I selected to find the building image and I swap my white square for the building image instead, so the building image snaps on the grid.
I was kind of planning to change it tho, to have an actual building be dragged around, so I can update the effect range (0:44) while placing the building, so the player can find the perfect spot to place the building by looking at the resources the building will generate.
Oh I see. It's cool to see you're using Unreal for 2D stuff :D wish you best of luck :)@@RockyMulletGamedev
Thanks a lot !
I really like your pixel art graphics!
Thanks a lot !! 😃
I started to learn about 3 years ago, I'm still no pro but I like to think I improved 😅
It's nice to hear you like it ! Thank you for the kind words 🙏
This game is looking really good. Will be interesting to see where it goes. Love the graphics too
Thanks a lot ! Depending on what state it is for the next devlog, I might get that into some player's hand to get some feedback and focus the next next devlog about that. A game is only really a game when people play it 😆
Thank you for watching 🙏
I can't wait to control an army of tiny little civilians (and watch as most of them die to a sandstorm)
Hahaha they will, they will 😈
You've inspired me to continue working with 2d in Unreal, looking forward to everything you do! Also, do you need any sound or music made? I'd do it for free just to be able to help!
I mute the music while capturing or editing the video, but I currently have some music from "Steven Melin" a big music pack I bought 1-2 years ago.
That being said I'll probably change it, one of my irl friend already suggested making some music for this game.
But since music is the only thing I'm not doing (and translation in other languages than english and french) I do keep a list of potential people I can work with, if you have some social or something to share. I'll definitely keep you in my notes if something comes up in the futur !
I think my reply got deleted cause I put a link in it, do you have a discord at all?@@RockyMulletGamedev
this is great! makes me want to make one. I reccomend some ui changes
Thanks ! Yeah the UI are not great, specially the center one that I kept adding stuff to it and it's pure chaos haha. I'll redo most it now that I know what I need to put in there. Plus obviously the art of the UI is kind of bad.
Do you have any suggestion ? Something in the UI you specially felt that should be changed ?
@@RockyMulletGamedev the colors feel too desaturated but I'm not the artist on my team haha so I am saying things based on how they feel! good work, honestly one of the best citybuilders I can think of.
@@KindOfWitch I do use a desaturated color palette, but it could be a good idea to have a more saturated version for the UI, to have a better feel of what is UI and what is game art, but I do agree that the colors are specially bad for the UI.
what engine do you use?
I use Unreal Engine 4.27
Why C++ insted of Blueprints ?🤔
I'm a C++ programmer, so it's easier for me and it gives me more freedom. Specially when it comes to doing some math or creating systems or AI.
I still do a couple of things in blueprint, like most of my UI works in blueprint, when I remade my building selection UI with categories and scalable strip based on an array of building, that's all blueprint.
My rule of thumb is generally: UI, level design and Audio: blueprint. The rest: C++.
YEAH 2d unreal gang
💪💪💪
I think it'd be cool if animals could attack civilians and if killed would drop food
Oooooh, that's a great idea ! Wild animals could be a risky way of getting more food when you are in need, specially early in a game when want to expand fast and having a risk of getting a civilian killed could give a cool risk and reward twist to it.
Excellent idea !
*taking notes*
Cozy games aren't fun, and the target audience for these games are majority going to be girls unless you are making a NSFW game, then it will be mostly guys. However, with cozy games there is a bit less work in that you don't have to balance/tweak gameplay. Cozy however often needs decent graphics.
A hard game is always going to be much much more fun and engaging, but requires a *lot* more time balancing/tweaking stats like damage and such. Graphics for these games are just a plus and not required.
Well good, cause my initial goal with that citybuilder is to practice game design. I rather have a fun game than a good looking one.
Honestly, cozy games are kinda boring. Like I'm here to have fun not to relax.