2023 Development Update (006)

Happy New Year! We wanted to start out the new year fresh, so we had our logo redesigned, and this is the end result!

We’ll use this logo and style at least until we start the early access release, which is currently planned to be released somewhere in the first half of the year.

Please let us know what you think, we’d love to hear your thoughts, either through the comment below, the steam discussions, or on Discord!

Holiday Update

Just before christmas, we released the holiday update, v0.3.0, which was announced in the update video we released late November last year.

This update has been in the works for quite some time, and marks the first in a series of updates, focusing on developing the core game mechanics, like the finances system, the (over)crowding mechanic, visitor happiness, site attractiveness, and object operationality.

We’ll explain how all these come together in these development updates over the coming months. Here we’ll briefly discuss these and other changes released last month.

Finance Mechanic

During the planning and production of your event, you’ll now have to take financing into account. All objects you want to rent have rental costs associated with them, and all the food and drinks you sell to visitors will have to be paid for as well. Visitors also have a set amount of money available to them for the duration of your event, so they can only spend a certain amount, before running out of money.

Finance Tooltip Screenshot

Object Info Panel Finance Section Screenshot

While this first version is still somewhat basic (it doesn’t include any ticket sales for instance), it will serve as a foundation for the development of other game mechanics, and gives you something to keep an eye on during the show phase of an event. At thawe end of your event, in the Post Production panel, you can see the final balance for the production, and whether you made any profit.

Post Production Panel Screenshot

Weather Mechanic

An initial version of the Weather mechanic was also introduced, though still in a very basic way for now. The will change throughout your event, and from time to time you may experience a (heavy) rainstorm. This will be used to impact the muddiness of your terrain for example, and have an impact on the happiness of your visitors.

The current graphics use Unity’s VFX graph under the hood, weather being the first of many effects we hope to implement using this technology. That said, we’re still learning, so the current FX are fairly limited, but will be improved in the future.

Minor Improvements / Content Additions

Kitchen Equipment

We’ve added some more props to vending objects, like tables and refrigerators. We’ll be adding more props, like grills, pots and pans soon as well.

Sandbox Event Setup

You can now manually set the number of visitors to aim for during the event. When you start a new sandbox game, use the Visitor Count field to set a custom number of visitors. The values you’re used to are used as default values when you select an event site.

Stage Performance Bug

A nasty bug was also introduced in version v0.3.0, which had a major impact on the fps, and made performers no longer perform on stage properly. This has now been fixed in v0.3.1, thanks playtesters for reporting this to us.

Current Work & Upcoming (Winter) Update

And there’s lots of more good stuff to come these cold winter months!

Crowding Mechanic

One of the things we’ve been eager to start work on are the (over)crowding game mechanics. How crowded certain areas of your event site are influences a lot of things, like the happiness of your visitors, but also the state of the terrain, especially under demanding weather conditions.

Screenshot of Crowding Overlay

Other mechanics will be constructed using the crowding mechanic, so once we’ve got it working properly, we’ll be able to start work on more gameplay mechanics, aiming to give you more stuff to do during an event, and make the entire experience more realistic.

Object Operationality

Maybe, if you’re one of our beloved playtesters, you’ve noticed that simulated characters will attempt to use vending and service objects, which haven’t been constructed yet. This can lead to funny situations, where visitors are queuing for a certain object, while other visitors just walk straight through the yet to be constructed object.

That’s why we’re working on “Object Operationality”, meaning an object is supposed to be marked as “Operational”, before it will be used by visitors and other characters.

Screenshot of updated InfoLayer UI Indicator

What conditions need to be met before something is marked as “Operational” differ for each object, and will continue to evolve as more game mechanics are added, like power consumption for instance. Again, this will be used to integrate into other game mechanics, like crew and inventory management.

That’s it for now, we wish you a great 2023, and hope to see you in Festivals - Headliners soon!