After taking a bit of a break from working on Industrial Revolution, it was nice to come back and make it feel fresh. Best way to do this, new art. The realism approach really wasn’t working, whilst up close it was bearable, at a distance it looked ridiculously tiled! After discussion with a friend, we decided the best approach was to go for a more ‘cartoonish’ feel, and the new art looks really nice. It suits the game much better, and reflects the theme I want it to follow. Furthermore, it was time to stop putting off blending textures together and get around to doing it. Now it’s actually nice to open up the game when I’m developing, my eyes are not put off by hideous graphics. In terms of art, I still need to re-do the GUI to fit the new theme, but other that that it will suffice for now.Apart from the art, I worked a little on the minimap so that you can click and drag on it to move the camera, easily navigating the large map. Workers can now chop down trees, and the logs are added to their inventory which can be viewed by right clicking on them, which simultaneously makes the camera auto-follow them. I’m not sure if this feature is a keeper. Ultimately, your workers only have limited carrying space, so you need to designate storage space for them to offload their gains. At the moment you can place down some simple outside storage platforms, but to come will be containers and warehouses. I spend a far bit of time brainstorming how the game will work from a scale point of view, and eventually reached a solution that allowed for both macro and micro management. This will work as such: during the early levels of the game you will be one-to-one with your workers, directing them to forests to chop, lakes to fish in, land to farm, animals to kill etc. As you progress, you gain more materials, and money, to spend on researching, and then building, new technologies, such as factories and machinery. This higher technology will allow you to complete previously slow and unproductive tasks at a higher rate, with a higher cost. In order to use these more complex work cycles, you will need to purchase managers to control workers within your factories and other systems. Hence, as you progress through the game and your infrastructure grows, you in turn will rise up the hierarchy of control and can delegate work to managers and other workers.More on the subject of workers, they will have an experience attribute as well as a happiness attribute. Happiness is quite simply determined by there hunger, thirst, whether they are doing a suitable job (I.E. don’t get your scientist chopping trees), and a suitable wage. Higher experience will mean production/research/etc is completed at a faster rate, and may also contribute to happiness. Your workers will gain experience over time, but will gain it faster being around more experienced workers. This will be consistent throughout, so whilst an experienced lumberjack will chop trees faster, an experienced manager will keep control and the production rate of a factory up.When it comes to high end production, the aim for there to be multiple routes to take. Perhaps you will choose to eco friendly? Perhaps you will cut the safety budget and increase the working hours, sacrificing happiness for produce. Or perhaps you’ll be laidback and give your workers jobs they love, but be prepared to spend a lot longer building up an infrastructure.Ultimately, these are all ideas and concepts for the game. What actually ever makes it is unforeseeable, but it’s always positive to have high aspirations for the game, and the potential is exciting, at least for me.
