Hello all! It's Cassel, developer of <Ratopia>
As the yer's end gets closer, news coming up for new great games are unstopping!
And for this December, a new indie game show named 'Burning Beaver' holds up for the first time,
and we also have applied to join it.
Many supports are provided for the indi e developers, so please welcome this new game show.
Now, let's begin the actual DevDiary.
Citizen's desires
On the previous DevDiary, I have explained about the game's production chain.
Those produced items are consumed through various ways;
some are consumed directly by the citizens, some are used to provide services, and some are only to be exported for national wealth.
This is one of the unique features that <Ratopia> has;
each of the citizens has its own wealth for consumption activities.
Personal wealth shown on a citizen's condition page
Citizens pay money when they consume goods and services to fulfill their desires.
Those with insufficient money for consumption, or those who could not find consumable items or services lose happiness.
When the happiness gets too low, citizens revolt or abandon the habitat.
It is the player's role to allocate them with suitable jobs to make them earn enough,
and to make them provide sufficient supplies for the city all together.
in the early development, there were only two desires: hunger(food) and fatigue(stamina).
As the development goes on, new aspects were added up; joy, hygiene, and necessities.
Hunger and necessities get fulfilled by direct consumption,
but joy and hygiene can only be fulfilled by using service facilities with the service providers.
For some services in addition, specific items are needed, resulting more complexity.
This complexity was to add more various places for various consuming behaviors,
which also enabled us to put more jobs in the game.
As the result, citizens were busily roaming around the city to fulfill their desires,
and it was really satisfying to watch.
Various structures to fulfill people's desires
As the city gets more crowded, it became a lot harder to find out who needs what,
resulting the player could only get to know there has been a problem after the uprising.
Those rebels were designed to be stopped only by the player's direct action;
without quick enough reaction, this could cause a great lose.
We could easily see the needs of indicators to be implemented.
Firstly, we thought about simply adding a thinking bubble,
so the players will be able to see what they are in needs of.
In addition to that, we tried to add some motions for specific needs,
such as grimace face with touching own stomach motion for hungry citizens.
They cannot live without toilet
However, citizens were not always moving around in the player’s sight.
Those at the outside of the player’s camera view could not be checked through those methods.
This time, we added UIs working as alarms, on the top left corner of the screen,
so that the players can recognize the situation quicker and better.
Desire alarms in the early development
In the early design, we’ve put citizen’s name on the alarm.
This was to let the player know who needs what, or who is in the trouble,
and also to put function to move the camera view to the citizen when clicked.
But as the city gets overpopulated, alarms never stopped.
So we had to change the alarm in more broad but less specific information,
showing the number of citizen in needs of help for each type of problem,
Turning the game’s administration system bit more macro.
Citizen's Classes
Citizens’ needs seem to be easily solved through building structures and supply items they need;
however, it is not that simple.
Citizens use their wealth for those benefits;
those with less income will gets poorer as they spend more money for their desires.
This could result some to get bankrupt for spending all their money for eating and enjoying,
so this actually needs to be cared with more care.
But for those higher-level foods and services had to have some advantages to be provided too,
since people are spending more money at once for using them, and having higher risks for that.
So we have simply made those to give higher amount of sufficiency when used.
Though those superior items are not might be cost-effective,
but citizens with higher income could consume them and save their time for more work,
meaning that citizens in upper class would have less time roaming around,
produce more items, and get more money for themselves.
But this could be only happened when all the citizens have enough money from the beginning.
Those with less skills could only get lesser income even if they have more time to work.
The benefits for saving time, or consuming more cost-effective items had to be measured,
resulting the citizens to make different choices.
So we have divided citizens based on their quarterly income into three groups; lower, middle, and upper classes.
And they only could consume the goods fits with their classes.
Basic clothing for each classes
But measuring quarterly income, which was used as standard for diversion, was not easy enough.
Those earning money for daily basis were not really a problem,
but some farmer-like jobs getting their income like every four days were having troubles.
In addition to that, some jobs were purely depended on how many orders did player give.
Thus the calculation for quarterly income was not only too complex, but also not precise enough.
In fact, distinguishing the citizens with their current wealth was much easier to program.
This also shared the same basic idea of ‘get more money to get higher class’.
So we have decided to put the class system based on their cumulated wealth.
Various structures for upper classes
When testing, some unexpected problems were occurred as usual.
Since the system was based on the citizen’s current wealth,
some citizens got to higher class, not because they earned and consumed well,
but they had no time to do other actions rather than working.
In addition to that, some fell down to previous class right away since they could not handle their increased price of living.
So this time, we’ve added new condition to check consumed necessities for class change.
Living necessities were designed to have less priority than hunger, fun, and hygiene.
Instead, it was designed to give additional bonus after those three gets fulfilled.
So we thought this could become a great tool to measure whether the citizens are consuming enough to get to the next class.
Various living necessities
For this, necessity satisfaction gauge was added.
The citizen with certain amount of wealth and necessity satisfaction gets to the next classes,
and to make the standard clearer, we’ve distinguished those as below:
Basic Necessities: 10 points for each.
Advanced Necessities: 18 points for each
Luxurious Necessities: 26 points for each
Lower to middle class: Over 20 necessity satisfaction with wealth over 500.
Middle to high class: Over 46 necessity satisfaction with wealth over 3000.
The color filled in varies with the type of necessities consumed
Through this, class changes got bit more complex, but the game got more strategic.
Now the player could control when to make citizen to get to the upper classes by controlling supplies of the necessities.
In addition to that this could prohibit citizens changing classes due to their insufficient time for consumption, and only those fits with the standard properly could get to where they belong.
But even now, citizens assigned for less-earning jobs could not get to the upper classes.
Since the player is the one to choose whom to do what, this had to be fixed.
So we have brainstormed for the new methods to make the citizens to earn more as they master their skills.
For the next DevDiary, I will write about our solution for this; citizen’s status and abilities.
Thank you for reading the long article again,
Hope you have a great November.
Hello all! It's Cassel, developer of <Ratopia>
As the yer's end gets closer, news coming up for new great games are unstopping!
And for this December, a new indie game show named 'Burning Beaver' holds up for the first time,
and we also have applied to join it.
Many supports are provided for the indi e developers, so please welcome this new game show.
Now, let's begin the actual DevDiary.
Citizen's desires
On the previous DevDiary, I have explained about the game's production chain.
Those produced items are consumed through various ways;
some are consumed directly by the citizens, some are used to provide services, and some are only to be exported for national wealth.
This is one of the unique features that <Ratopia> has;
each of the citizens has its own wealth for consumption activities.
Personal wealth shown on a citizen's condition page
Citizens pay money when they consume goods and services to fulfill their desires.
Those with insufficient money for consumption, or those who could not find consumable items or services lose happiness.
When the happiness gets too low, citizens revolt or abandon the habitat.
It is the player's role to allocate them with suitable jobs to make them earn enough,
and to make them provide sufficient supplies for the city all together.
in the early development, there were only two desires: hunger(food) and fatigue(stamina).
As the development goes on, new aspects were added up; joy, hygiene, and necessities.
Hunger and necessities get fulfilled by direct consumption,
but joy and hygiene can only be fulfilled by using service facilities with the service providers.
For some services in addition, specific items are needed, resulting more complexity.
This complexity was to add more various places for various consuming behaviors,
which also enabled us to put more jobs in the game.
As the result, citizens were busily roaming around the city to fulfill their desires,
and it was really satisfying to watch.
Various structures to fulfill people's desires
As the city gets more crowded, it became a lot harder to find out who needs what,
resulting the player could only get to know there has been a problem after the uprising.
Those rebels were designed to be stopped only by the player's direct action;
without quick enough reaction, this could cause a great lose.
We could easily see the needs of indicators to be implemented.
Firstly, we thought about simply adding a thinking bubble,
so the players will be able to see what they are in needs of.
In addition to that, we tried to add some motions for specific needs,
such as grimace face with touching own stomach motion for hungry citizens.
They cannot live without toilet
However, citizens were not always moving around in the player’s sight.
Those at the outside of the player’s camera view could not be checked through those methods.
This time, we added UIs working as alarms, on the top left corner of the screen,
so that the players can recognize the situation quicker and better.
Desire alarms in the early development
In the early design, we’ve put citizen’s name on the alarm.
This was to let the player know who needs what, or who is in the trouble,
and also to put function to move the camera view to the citizen when clicked.
But as the city gets overpopulated, alarms never stopped.
So we had to change the alarm in more broad but less specific information,
showing the number of citizen in needs of help for each type of problem,
Turning the game’s administration system bit more macro.
Citizen's Classes
Citizens’ needs seem to be easily solved through building structures and supply items they need;
however, it is not that simple.
Citizens use their wealth for those benefits;
those with less income will gets poorer as they spend more money for their desires.
This could result some to get bankrupt for spending all their money for eating and enjoying,
so this actually needs to be cared with more care.
But for those higher-level foods and services had to have some advantages to be provided too,
since people are spending more money at once for using them, and having higher risks for that.
So we have simply made those to give higher amount of sufficiency when used.
Though those superior items are not might be cost-effective,
but citizens with higher income could consume them and save their time for more work,
meaning that citizens in upper class would have less time roaming around,
produce more items, and get more money for themselves.
But this could be only happened when all the citizens have enough money from the beginning.
Those with less skills could only get lesser income even if they have more time to work.
The benefits for saving time, or consuming more cost-effective items had to be measured,
resulting the citizens to make different choices.
So we have divided citizens based on their quarterly income into three groups; lower, middle, and upper classes.
And they only could consume the goods fits with their classes.
Basic clothing for each classes
But measuring quarterly income, which was used as standard for diversion, was not easy enough.
Those earning money for daily basis were not really a problem,
but some farmer-like jobs getting their income like every four days were having troubles.
In addition to that, some jobs were purely depended on how many orders did player give.
Thus the calculation for quarterly income was not only too complex, but also not precise enough.
In fact, distinguishing the citizens with their current wealth was much easier to program.
This also shared the same basic idea of ‘get more money to get higher class’.
So we have decided to put the class system based on their cumulated wealth.
Various structures for upper classes
When testing, some unexpected problems were occurred as usual.
Since the system was based on the citizen’s current wealth,
some citizens got to higher class, not because they earned and consumed well,
but they had no time to do other actions rather than working.
In addition to that, some fell down to previous class right away since they could not handle their increased price of living.
So this time, we’ve added new condition to check consumed necessities for class change.
Living necessities were designed to have less priority than hunger, fun, and hygiene.
Instead, it was designed to give additional bonus after those three gets fulfilled.
So we thought this could become a great tool to measure whether the citizens are consuming enough to get to the next class.
For this, necessity satisfaction gauge was added.
The citizen with certain amount of wealth and necessity satisfaction gets to the next classes,
and to make the standard clearer, we’ve distinguished those as below:
Basic Necessities: 10 points for each.
Advanced Necessities: 18 points for each
Luxurious Necessities: 26 points for each
Lower to middle class: Over 20 necessity satisfaction with wealth over 500.
Middle to high class: Over 46 necessity satisfaction with wealth over 3000.
Through this, class changes got bit more complex, but the game got more strategic.
Now the player could control when to make citizen to get to the upper classes by controlling supplies of the necessities.
In addition to that this could prohibit citizens changing classes due to their insufficient time for consumption, and only those fits with the standard properly could get to where they belong.
But even now, citizens assigned for less-earning jobs could not get to the upper classes.
Since the player is the one to choose whom to do what, this had to be fixed.
So we have brainstormed for the new methods to make the citizens to earn more as they master their skills.
For the next DevDiary, I will write about our solution for this; citizen’s status and abilities.
Thank you for reading the long article again,
Hope you have a great November.