Week One: Explaining the game’s premise.

Week Two: Discussing the user interface.

Week Three: First gameplay video!

Week Four: The Future of Development

Week Five: Edited Trailer and Competition!

Trailer and Release Date

Welcome back! Firstly, here’s the trailer for the game!

You may notice that the trailer has no release date. This is due to complicated reasons. If I could release the game when it’s finished, I could release it in September. The problem is, I don’t want to release it until it has been approved by my project supervisor, as technically speaking the university may have certain rights over the project.

The latest will be May of 2018, when the project ends. At least that will give me time to add more maps, modes, rooms and units, and further tweaks if I have to wait until then.

I have decided that the game will be released for free; although, an optional pay what you want box will be added.

Competition

I am running a very simple competition: design me a map! Use the template below, and send me a custom map. You can draw it in Paint (Paint.Net is recommended, because you can zoom in further), and my engine automatically converts it. The top three will be put into the official game!

Template

I am using cubeupload, which allows you to upload uncompressed images for free. If the example images below are compressed when downloaded, make sure to either right click and select copy image, or right click and go to the image address, and copy the image from there.

Rules and Tech Stuff

It must be uncompressed (or lossless)! PNG is lossless, and tends to work best.

The black areas are ignored by the importer, so leave them the same!

Your maps must use the same colours as the key in the bottom right of each map for correct importing. You can also download the key image as backup.

The map must be the same size as the image, so draw over the template for simplicity.

You can submit your map on Reddit (I usually link to this on r/basebuildinggames and r/tycoon), this blog comments, or on the trailer comments.

Please also consider commenting what difficulty you want the level to be, as either Easy, Medium, or Hard. This is so that when I test the level, I know how I need to balance it.

As noted above, I may make tweaks to your levels if they are very unbalanced (or even have issues where some areas are inaccessible). The longer your description for the level, the better I can balance things like starting cash, buildable spaces, and resources. For example, if you tell me the level is supposed to be easy, but you have little gold on the map, I will add extra gold. An other example is if you tell me an area is supposed to be a secret area, I won’t add lots of trails pointing towards it.

Also let me know what name (or nickname) you want to be credited as in the game! This game is to be played by kids too, so don’t be filthy.

I may make a blog-of-fame for every unused entry, where there is no limit to the types of maps you can submit. I’m bracing for lots of penis shaped maps.

Key

Black – ignored area, do not change.

Brown – dirt.

Grey – impenetrable rocks.

Yellow – gold.

Purple – gems (unlimited gold).

Example – Tutorial Map

Example – Easy Map

Example – Medium Map

Example – Hard Map

I find it more intuitive when designing the levels to fill the whole map with rocks and then to carve out the diggable areas.

Notice how I have trails of gold for the player to follow, in order to find important or hidden areas.

The easy map has lots of gold nearby, the medium map has less gold nearby but more further away, and the hardest map has little gold near or far, with only the very distant areas having lots of gold or gems.

On the hardest map, the player has to dig a long way around many obstacles to find the resources.

The easiest map has lots of space for the player to build without rock obstacles.