Hey there, I’m Anton. A standalone Unity developer.
Masterplan Tycoon looks pretty simple, doesn't it? But the fact is that I’ve been working on it since 2018.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1644500/Masterplan_Tycoon/
I’m developing my ideas in a special way. When I come up with a concept for a new super-innovative technological masterpiece, I’m in no hurry to create another Unity project. Every developer has a cemetery like this. I shelf the idea to see if it survives. At first, the idea hunts birds and animals and makes a fire with sticks and stones. Then, it builds a shelter against the winter storm. Sometimes it meets other ideas, or what is left of them, some of the older ones that grew feral and lost the power of speech. And, if the idea overcomes these hardships, at last, the ship “Deliberation about the upcoming project” will take it away from that desert island.
I’ve been a game developer for almost 10 years. There are plenty of tools in our industry, and not all of them have to do something with the coding. There is a bunch of visual instruments now I'd like to show you what a node editor looks like:
Node editors allow to create algorithms without getting into the syntax of programming languages. Sometimes it works like a bridge between a programmer and an artist or a game designer. If you saw such things but had no idea what they are used for, here is your answer ;)
Also, I’m a huge fan of tycoons or games where you can build a settlement. I have been playing them since childhood, and it is always a pleasure to see how a few small houses appear at first, then grow into a small village, then a town, and finally a bustling metropolis. To progress in such games you have to create a chain of buildings that would improve the existing system and push the player forward.
Truth be told, I cannot remember the exact time this idea occurred to me. It must have been an uneventful day since it completely slipped my mind :)
The idea was to merge the node mechanics and the building chain progression from tycoon games. And after this concept survived the so-called “desert island”, I tried to make it into reality.
I completed the prototype in the autumn of 2018 during the hackathon. It’s an event where you need to create something solid in a short time. I had one day and that single idea…
Since there was practically no time, less was more. There were no resource zones, no quests. The algorithm that drew the curves was so bad that it looked bearable only when the nodes were arranged in a certain position. And yet I achieved everything that I wanted to do in a 24-hour period.
One of the most important development rules is "Never use anything that was put in the prototype". Most of the time it is easier to throw the mess away and restart from scratch than to fix it, so that's what I did! It took me a couple of weeks to recreate the functionality of nodes, curves, and resource delivery. Then I added resource areas because water and wood have to come from somewhere, after all.
The visual style became more distinct. I used blueprints as a base, so the game was filled with blue and its shades :)
At that stage, I was free to experiment. For example, the animation of gathering stones:
As you can see, in this version resource zones look “spotty”. They kept behaving like naughty children!
The real problems began when I tried to implement the “enlargement” or “reduction” of the zones- it wasn’t immediately clear how this mechanic was supposed to work, which in turn made it difficult to program. This is why I decided to abandon that idea in favor of tiles.
We will talk about this more in the upcoming chapter of “Making of”.
Best wishes,
Anton!
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