Hello all! It's Cassel, the developer of <Ratopia>.

It is getting colder after the BIC (Busan Indie Connect festival),

but thanks to all of you, your encouragements are warming our hearts.

This time's BIC booth was larger than before!

Through the BIC, we could get around 100s feedback surveys.

Overall satisfaction level improved from 3.84 to 4.2, compared to the PlayX4.

We've found that control difficulty issues really need to be solved.

All the feedback are organized, and we are in the middle of applying some of those.

Hope to meet you with the new version of the game.

Thanks for all the precious feedback and ideas.

Now, let’s begin the DevDiary.

Last one was about the biomes of <Ratopia>,

So this time, let’s talk about production chain in the biomes system.

Biome Resources

In <Ratopia>, raw materials from the nature can be processed from the buildings to make new things.

Those new items again can be used to build, consumed, or even to make other new things.

Basic items gathered at the beginning of the game could change playing style a lot, 

as the resources within the certain biomes were designed to have some certain purposes.

- Field → Resources to maintain populations

- Cave → Resources to fight against predators

- Jungle → Resources to maintain happiness

Checking environments will be really important

We’ve done many researches, as the game’s main setting was medieval,

especially about the items used and resources needed to make them.

Then, resources were put to where it would feel more natural.

Some problems occurred, naturally.

One of the problems was that some resources were too limited in use.

In addition to that, the number of items placed in each of the biomes differ greatly.

We’ve added uses for the resources and new resources for the biomes to solve the problem,

but this resulted complex on relationship between resources.

Many were to be added and changed as the development goes on,

we felt the needs of schematization so that the whole chain would not be twisted.

Production Chain

To organize the resources, at first we used Excel.

While doing it, we could find relationship between resources and their values.

But there was a limit only using Excel.

Connecting new resources and making space for those were not easy enough.

So, we’ve changed the tool to Whimsical, which we have introduced before.

This was much simpler to fix the connections of resources.

Growth of the production chain

With such effort, finally the production chain looked better than expected.

But when testing the game, the design and playing were quite not matched as well.

For example, wood-related resources are the most basic items in the game.

So the idea was to make it gatherable through many ways;

Chopping tree object and digging wooden tile would give ‘Log’, 

sapling object for ‘Branch’, and inner-wood to give ‘Wooden plate’.

It was designed to give many choices for playthrough,

but this only resulted complexity on understanding the mechanism.

For the beginners, instead of curiosity, abstrusity came first.

In addition, the items had different uses so they were hard to be memorize.

As solution, we cut off the branches and made it much simpler.

The raw materials that could be gained in wild were narrowed to one item; log.

The rest cam only be made through processing the log in the lumber mill.

After this, other related items also had to be fixed.

Production chain getting simpler

Structure based re-organization

The main goal of the production chain was to connect all the resources with the lines,

so that it can show their relationships.

However, because of this, many changes among those relationships had to be followed whenever there is a fixation.

Every time when we do the update, we had to work solely to change the data showing.

For example, let’s say I want to put a new resource named ‘golden thread’.

To make this, I need a gold ingot and silkworm cocoon.

Then, I’ll have to find the gold ingot and silkworm cocoon located on the chain,

and connect them while the connection is not affecting the other lines.

If to remove those, same work had to be done, but other way around.

Since there many to be changed,

we had to make a method that can easily be fixed and also easy to understand.

So we fragmentized the chain and re-connected centering around production buildings.

Structure based production chain

This time, with such case as golden thread as mentioned previously,

Simply adding gold ingot and silkworm cocoon to textile mill and add golden thread as result was enough.

If they were no longer needed, I can simply remove those without considering other items.

This method might not be useful for checking the original resource of the resource in needs, or to check which exact resources are needed to make the new ones,

but it was quick enough to keep step with the updates.

Through this change it became a lot easier to put new resources experimentally,

and got much easier to relate the data with project plans and balance sheets.

When there a mismatched process between designers, artists, and programmers so the item has unexpected date to be included,

then without complex fixation, the chain could be modified temporarily and mended later.

Later, when there is a no need of fixation,

I think we will again design that huge chain of resources.

Getting inspiration from already-done resource chain from other games was really helpful,

but I think because of that I could not measure the cost for fixing it.

And also was blinded what could they have been through for completing the production chain.

So DevDiary 07 is done here.

For the next time, I’ll write about how the citizens consume the resources.

Hope you take care, not to catch a cold.

See you next time.