City Tycoon Devlog

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#1

Intro

Hello Devforum! I recently just finished my other game, with it being a decent success, but more importantly it was a huge learning experience! Although I could go on and on about that game all I need to say is that I'm planning to use that amazing knowledge to create my hopefully first successful experience, City Tycoon!

Main Concept

Players will earn money by creating functioning buildings with a sandbox tycoon editor, which includes color customization and (hopefully) readable and easily navigable UI. Players can then use that money to upgrade their buildings, create their dream home, purchase a car, unlock different buildings, and much more! When players want to upgrade the extra stuff they can head down to the central city where they have many services for them to use, some examples it would have would be a car dealership, bank, etc.

Features

  • Customizing house to flex on other players.
  • NPC’s will visit buildings and interact with them while purchasing items to give the player income.
  • Purchasable cars varying in price, speed, and handling, found at a car dealership in the central city.
  • Central city where you can buy even more goods like cars as listed above.
  • Trucks pickup income from buildings and take it to a main building where it will be collected for the truck to go and pick up another load. This feature is simply an idea, and may be re thought.
  • Unlock new buildings in city depending on your level.
  • Players will be able to interact in other players cities as if they were an NPC.

Progress Showcase


This video showcases the building system, which features rotating, smooth grid transition, and plot boundaries! The tree shown in the video is simply a placeholder :upside_down_face:.


This video showcases the leveling system, which features smooth display bar using tweens, easy configuration, not much to it but it is perfected to it’s finest!

Screen Shot 2022-02-02 at 7.34.16 AM
Screen Shot 2022-02-02 at 7.34.16 AM774Ă—409 357 KB

This picture showcases the cars I’ve modeled for the past 2 weeks :sweat_smile:! The meshes are separated in a way so that I can make the base of the cars (The part that is colored red) change colors based on the players liking!

Screen Shot 2022-04-10 at 2.19.12 PM
The shelf and register are one of the first pieces of furniture that I’ve managed to model. I’ve also tagged them using collection service so that I can find registers and shelves for NPC’s to interact with. Register mainly inspired by Retail Tycoon…

Outro

After hearing about this game it's time for feedback! Any kind of feedback is welcome! I’m hoping to make this game a success so I need the watchful eyes of the devforum!

In the category description it states to post anything you want a discussion or feedback on, in this case my game concept and execution.

22 Likes
What are you working on currently? (2022)
What are you working on currently? (2022)
#2

Do know when progress is made it will be logged on this post!

2 Likes
#3

Seems really nice, but I hate to break this to you. You have placed this into the wrong category.
Normally it would be in like #bulletin-board

4 Likes
#4

I see the confusion but:

Adding on to that I have seen a lot of posts similar to this one but for another game. If you were referring to feedback on the idea, this post is where I will showcase everything in the game as I make progress, instead of making multiple posts and cluttering up the feedback category.

#5

I think the Game’s concept is unique and spectacular for a tycoon-based game!

There is already a pretty popular game called Big City Tycoon that may include similar aspects that you plan on bringing into the Game, making it not 100% original, but I still like the idea.

Small things can make an experience big, so I highly recommend focusing on UI/GUI design, NPC interaction, and generally the layout of how the Game will be played. I think this will make the Game more attractive, allowing more players to come across it (without the exception of advertising it). If you’d like to keep the player base high, add updates and changes to keep players entertained, which means making things top quality with a lot of time/effort put into it. Adding Game Passes that change/improve the gameplay is a great idea for others and the revenue.

This was a pretty long message, but I hope you understand the point that I’m saying!

2 Likes
#6


The building system has been completed! It features rotating, smooth grid transition, and plot boundaries! You can check out the video above to see it in action :grin:! Also keep in mind that the tree object is simply a placeholder object and is not how the real objects will look! If there is anything that you think I should add/fix please tell me!

Like @pinkfluffyemoji_999 said in their reply about highly focusing on the UI, how can I improve this one? You can see the UI in the video. I added a gradient hoping for it to give the frame a little more detail, and I didn’t add a UI corner to the object frame trying not to be repetitive with the UI corners. I’m also thinking about giving the object frame a little spin with tweens when you click it, would this be cool? Overall what would you rate the UI from 1-10? How can I improve? Please keep it constructive!

EDIT:
I’ve added a button to the UI that toggles the frame position, any feedback? Anything is appreciated!
Screen Shot 2022-01-09 at 7.11.22 PM

#7


The leveling system has been completed! It features smooth tweening on the progress bar, easy configuration, and some other behind the scene stuff! If there is anything that you think I should fix/add please tell me! The UI is pretty basic, so if you have any ideas to spice it up let me know!

#8

I’ve been working on modeling some cars, tell me what you think about them! I’m going for a sleek, low poly look, with as much detail as I can :grin:!

Car Screenshots

Screen Shot 2022-01-26 at 4.40.16 PM
Screen Shot 2022-01-26 at 4.41.20 PM
Screen Shot 2022-01-26 at 4.41.34 PM
Screen Shot 2022-01-26 at 7.06.03 AM

Here is the feedback post I made:

But you can post your feedback here if you want!

#9

This sounds awesome! But just a warning: only focus on the absolute essential features first and foremost!

Feature creep can be real tempting when you have so many cool ideas you want to implement all at once.

And often times, once you start adding every idea, you lose focus of the original game, maybe even feel overwhelmed and get burned out, possibly abandoning the project.

At least, I know this happens to me quite often in my projects.

But in conclusion, when making a large game by yourself (or even with a large team!), try to hone your focus on the most essential stuff! It will make your game even better and also maintain your sanity.

#10

Sorry for the late response @Shadowskull1247, but I’m really going to try and apply this advice to this game :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:! What do you think would count as a main feature in the features I listed, so I can do those first.

#11

It’s hard to say, that’s mainly up to you as to what you think is the most important. Some people prioritize the gameplay/mechanic first, some prioritize the themes/aesthetics first, while others prioritize other things first.

I personally am more gameplay focused, but this differs between every developer.

I would recommend focusing on the elements you find fun to work on first and foremost.

1 Like
#12

Hey! One of my developers had an idea to have jobs that you can do. What do you think about this?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Other(Comment)

0 voters

I would love it if you would help explain why or why not it’s a good idea!

Edit:

I’ve closed the poll and decided to add jobs!

#13

I think that it would be a good idea because if people want to buy something but don’t want to have to wait to get enough money they could earn some money manually.

#14

Yeah, that was the general idea behind it. Players would be able to interact with stuff in the game to stay entertained when bored, and gain a some bonus money while doing it!

#15

As you guys should know I’ve been modeling cars for the past couple weeks. I’ve currently modeled a Mustang and a Pickup Truck, and I want some sort of beginner car. Any ideas on what kind of car I should make next as a starter car or something??

#16

I think a good starter car could be a Ford KA (1996)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ka

#17

That is exactly what I’m looking for! I’ll make sure to notify you when I finish it and release it for feedback!

#18

This is a great idea, I have yet to see a tycoon with this sort of progression where you work at different jobs to progress (at least I think that’s what you’re aiming on doing!).

Don’t do this yet, get the main aspects done, but it would be cool to add some animations on the character for the trimming trees.

As it’s a city tycoon, you could add buildings that make rent as money, a certain amount every few seconds that increases as you unlock more buildings.
If you do add rent, I would either make rented buildings give no or very little xp for levels, to encourage people to manually do jobs rather than AFK.
Add more jobs! Motels, Pizzarias, Car Dealers, you name it! Just make sure the game doesn’t get too laggy, keep with the low-poly theme to keep down parts. The tasks don’t have to be complex, for pizza it could just be like cashiers at “Work at a Pizza Place”, where they select either cheese, pepperoni, sausage etc.

In the future you could also reward people for adding decor. Buildings could have a radius and if they have certain amenities such as a park or trees then the rent increases.

I honestly love this idea, feel free to use any of what I have suggested, and let me know if you need more ideas!

2 Likes
#19

As always your reply is very helpful to the development of this game :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: ! About the tree trimming, I’m embarrassed to say that I’m pretty clueless about animations. Do you have a post you could link or a script I could Have for the animations that the player will do when interacting with a placed object? Also just to make it clear, the tree and all its interactions and such is just testing. I’m planning to make the real models way more detailed, like way more.

Now for the rent idea. I really like this idea as a decently old developer, but would this make the game too complicated? If so how could I tone it down to make it understandable and enjoyable for younger audiences, as they are a big chunk of Roblox. I’m not quite sure what rent is though, will the player collect the rent or pay the rent? How would that work? Are you talking about just simply giving players more money per seconds based on the amount of buildings and calling it rent?

Now for the jobs, I really like the job ideas you have presented, and I’ll probably implement them when jobs come out. Although I’m going to try and keep the main source of income from the objects the player has placed. Ex. Making main source of income from a store with a register and NPC’s purchasing items at it, not a job that the player is doing. I was thinking that jobs would be more or less just to entertain the player while their saving their money, with some bonus cash on the side. What’s your opinions on this?

Edit:
I’m planning on adding a rating for their buildings in a future update. It will likely be based on similar stuff as restaurant tycoon 2 based theirs on, but of course not the food ratings.

1 Like
#20

I gotta admit, I don’t do animations at all either, but it can literally be a really simple animation of the character getting some big scissors (secateurs) and snipping them together, it doesn’t need to change the appearance of the tree!

I don’t think it would make it too tricky, you can just say that houses make income every minute or something, and a little $? appears above each house every time it earns money, shouldn’t be too hard for young kids to grasp.

I feel like you will need to get the job balance about right. I would make sure that players can do jobs for bonus cash (50% more cash than if they aren’t doing the job) but there could also be NPCs filling the places in while the player isn’t working there.

Ratings are a good idea, are you going to link ratings with the amount of decoration and a few other factors?

On top of this, I would also add quite a few structures purely for decoration, that have no effect on rating. This could include roads, sidewalks etc.