Hello folks!

As part of slowing down the pace of gameplay and integrating the management aspect of the game in Boss Golf, I’ve finalized the primary implementation of the AI for the landscaper as well as changed the system for laying down tiles to make him place them!

Until now, you’d plop down a tile, and it would immediately affect the environment. This would let you create a massive resort at a too quick a pace. There was no incentive for careful planning, and it wasn’t an action you could think twice before committing to.

All of that changes now with the Landscaper and its AI. The new implementation, which will be rolled out to the other building features in the game, delegates the act of changing the landscape to the AI, and works on a system of orders.

Players will now draw the areas like they did before; instead of immediately affecting the environment, an overlay is added and an order is created. The players can then view this order’s characteristics: price, time to finish, area etc. They can modify this overlay/order with the bulldozer tool, to trim things they ended up thinking twice over. (Editing of the height of the tiles is still free and can be performed at any time, instantly. Since this is a very vital part of finetuning your golf course, I thought it better to keep it that way)

Once they are happy, they can simply Approve the order, and the landscaper will get around to effecting it once he has the time to do so. Like in the animations below:

Pausing and Resuming has also been reworked to match the new gameplay style. Time now flows at a constant rate, and can be paused whenever you wish. You can’t make time pass by faster; later, however, you’ll be able to go on “holiday”, and the Resort will autosimulate and resolve the events of the day until you come back, or while you are managing another resort. The timescale for the day still needs some tweaking, but that is simple enough! (Also, really cool to pause the game as the AI takes an awesome shot, and just seeing the ball lying in the air, waiting for time to unfreeze!)

Oh! And you are also able to set the working hours for your resort. This will impact your running costs later, but right now it controls when the landscaper will be at work, as well as when the golfers are able to be spawned on your resort!

That’s all for today, folks! Next up is connecting the money (receiving from the AI and spending on building), and adding more management. Perhaps the goals would be a fun thing to have!

Stay tuned for more!