Hi all. There has been no news from me for a long time, but this is not because I forgot about you. I planned to do a global update at the end of spring of this year, but it so happened that I found myself at the construction site of a house for the whole summer, where there was not even the Internet. When I returned, I suddenly discovered that the announced almost finished location had disappeared somewhere.
However, over the past year, I have done a lot. The third iteration of the game is currently underway. The problem I encountered was in the organization of the project. Each time, as soon as the number of lines of code reached more than 10,000, I realized that I myself had a poor understanding of how it all worked and I spent half the time trying to figure out what I was doing myself. And I think in most cases when you see rare and minor updates to some other project, the developers face the same problem. However, I found an approach that would help me overcome this milestone, and I was so glad that Unity allows me to implement it.
In addition to rewriting the code, I was also involved in development. I completed my car repair system and I also understood why this is not in other games. This is a very complex system that includes multi-level intersecting loop logic. In reality, turning the nuts is somehow easier.
Also, I kept looking for the meaning of the game, for what to travel and carry cargo. It was possible to create a system where the player is simply given a load, told where to bring it and rewarded upon completion. This is a primitive system that is developed in less than a month, but I can’t do that. I need a reason for existence and I also found it - the development of the region. Yes, now cities develop with the direct participation of the player. Roads are built from dirt to asphalt and then turn into a highway. Supplying a populated area, supplying manufacturing factories, transporting workers to their place of work, in general, a living economy in which each game object takes part.
Now for the location. Since I somehow safely got rid of the finished training location, I had to make another one. Since the economic model already includes several dozen goods and about 20 factories, plus it is necessary to locate several cities with development prospects, I decided to aim for a square of 30x30 kilometers... And I succeeded. 900 square kilometers is already a lot, but this is not the limit. I've already written about the concern that I don't think players will be interested in traveling for several days, but I decided that I'll let the players decide for themselves whether they're interested or not. In general, the diagonal of the map is 42 kilometers, which is 30 minutes of continuous movement at an average speed of 60 km/h. For starters, it sounds good.
In general, I polish the project, place objects in the new location, make traffic flow, lay roads and download the update. Global events are planned on our planet in the fall, and if this does not affect me, I hope to cope in a couple of months.
Bye everyone.