I realized it has been a while since our last update. First, apologies, there has just been a lot happening that have slowed the development of the game. I am still a one-man dev team even until today and life, unfortunately, was a bit overwhelming over the past Christmas. Luckily that's becoming more managable and I am confident that situation will become better.
A good news is that we are still committed to bringing this game to market and the development hasn't stopped. Since Feb, we are addressing a lot of built-up issues from previous play-tests, reviews, and feedback so there's unfortunately not too much to show for.
What's currently being worked on:
System adjustments and balancing.
Introduction of new event/proposition system.
Fixing crashes, hangs and performance issue.
Player assist prompts, guide and tips.
Also, we are working on larger improvements on the assets, visual quality, and the gameplay overall so please bare with us as I plow through these more difficult tasks. Hopefully, we'll have something to show soon.
- Michael
Dev Update 6 - What Are Those Flashing Lights? 🚨
Hello Future City Conductors!
For the past month, as usual, we've been hard at work on City Rhapsody! And we've added some exciting gameplay 🤩 that we can't wait to share with you.
To achieve our goal of bringing a sophisticated city-builder to life, one of the concepts we showcased is special city vehicle control. Remember the fire trucks in the trailer? We've been expanding those mechanics quite a lot.
In City Rhapsody!, instead of just automated city service vehicles; you are "really" in control of all the city's fire trucks, police cars, etc. (If anyone played the Emergency franchise, it's a lot like that.) You'll be able to use them creatively to solve your city's problems.
Before we get started on the unit controls though, we would like to introduce the latest addition to City Rhapsody! - The police station and police cars 🚓, see them in action below!
Units and Navigation
Special buildings like police stations and fire stations now have the ability to spawn special units in the city, like a police car.
You, as the player, will be able to drive them to wherever you want. But it must be near a road that the unit can navigate to. It's, after all, a city-building game 😉.
Traffic Interaction
Most of the time, the special units are vehicles that have emergency lights. When they are off, they behave like regular cars on the road that respect all traffic rules.
But in emergency mode, they command everyone's attention with bright flashing lights and loud sirens. And all other traffic will yield to avoid blocking them, similar to how it would be in the real-life.
Special Vehicle Action
Different special vehicles can perform different special actions. For example, the fire truck has a big hose that can spray water at any designated position.
Auto Pilot v.s. Manual Control
You can place the special unit in "auto-pilot" mode where it'll perform basic automation so you won't get overwhelmed with controlling too many units. When in auto-pilot, for example, the fire truck automatically put out fires.
But when there's a lot of fires, you may want to take over and put them in "manual mode" so you can choose which fires to put out first.
And that's just a brief introduction of the unit control mechanics.
Stay tuned for our next update where we'll be going over the details of problems and disasters in the city so you can put those fire trucks and police cars to good use.
Until next time, cheers!
Michael
How BIG Can This Apartment Go?
Hello Future City Conductors!
Remember in our last update, we showed a rendered image of a luxury apartment building? In the past weeks, we've been hard at work designing and tuning that asset to make it playable.
To answer the question, "how big can this apartment go?". Well, what's cool about them is they are
🎊Modular🎊
So really, as BIG as you want.
In City Rhapsody, when your city gets big enough, you'll have the capacity to build larger buildings. Our plan for them is they'll be modular out-of-the-box. The first ones we designed are the "medium residential buildings" aka apartments.
Let's explore how they work.
Full Integration With The Hybrid Grid System
To build these nice apartments, you'll still use the same intuitive building mechanism as the smaller buildings.
Of course, they'll be more expensive and take longer to build (we disabled the construction site in the video for demo purposes 🤓). But aside from that, since they are fully integrated with our hybrid grid, they'll snap neatly next to existing roads and buildings.
Building Variations
You probably noticed this icon in the menu
This means a building has many variations and City Rhapsody! will choose a random variation of the building for you each time you drop it. So your city will look vary different every time you play.
Since City Rhapsody! is about fine-grained control, we also let you specify which variant you want with the arrow keys so you can choose a specific one to build.
In this case, the middle pieces are collected into the same group as they are pretty much interchangeable while the end-pieces are not since they are more special.
Individually Functional
From the game's perspective, each piece is still one building so they are individually functional. But that also mean they all need their own electricity connections. Remember, they cost a fortune and draw a lot of power so if you build too fast, they'll drain the street's power and your citizens won't be happy living in a brand-new, but pitch-black apartment 😥.
Instead, if you are tight on budget or low on power, you can build them in stages so you don't bankrupt your city while you get carried away building big apartments 😉. Your citizens will happily live in the finished building while you build out the rest of the apartment.
Endless Possibilities
With careful planning and sustainable city growth, you'll be able to build large, beautiful, and vibrant communites.
We carefully crafted each building models so you can connect them however you want to while still making them look pretty. The combinations are endless! And as our game develops, we'll add more building and the possibilities just gets more and more 😍
We hope you like them! and as usual, if you haven't, wishlist City Rhapsody! today.
Until next time, cheers!
Michael
Dev Update 5 - How BIG Can This Apartment Go?
Hello Future City Conductors!
Remember in our last update, we showed a rendered image of a luxury apartment building? In the past weeks, we've been hard at work designing and tuning that asset to make it playable.
To answer the question, "how big can this apartment go?". Well, what's cool about them is they are
🎊Modular🎊
So really, as BIG as you want.
In City Rhapsody, when your city gets big enough, you'll have the capacity to build larger buildings. Our plan for them is they'll be modular out-of-the-box. The first ones we designed are the "medium residential buildings" aka apartments.
Let's explore how they work.
Full Integration With The Hybrid Grid System
To build these nice apartments, you'll still use the same intuitive building mechanism as the smaller buildings.
Of course, they'll be more expensive and take longer to build (we disabled the construction site in the video for demo purposes 🤓). But aside from that, since they are fully integrated with our hybrid grid, they'll snap neatly next to existing roads and buildings.
Building Variations
You probably noticed this icon in the menu
This means a building has many variations and City Rhapsody! will choose a random variation of the building for you each time you drop it. So your city will look vary different every time you play.
Since City Rhapsody! is about fine-grained control, we also let you specify which variant you want with the arrow keys so you can choose a specific one to build.
In this case, the middle pieces are collected into the same group as they are pretty much interchangeable while the end-pieces are not since they are more special.
Individually Functional
From the game's perspective, each piece is still one building so they are individually functional. But that also mean they all need their own electricity connections. Remember, they cost a fortune and draw a lot of power so if you build too fast, they'll drain the street's power and your citizens won't be happy living in a brand-new, but pitch-black apartment 😥.
Instead, if you are tight on budget or low on power, you can build them in stages so you don't bankrupt your city while you get carried away building big apartments 😉. Your citizens will happily live in the finished building while you build out the rest of the apartment.
Endless Possibilities
With careful planning and sustainable city growth, you'll be able to build large, beautiful, and vibrant communites.
We carefully crafted each building models so you can connect them however you want to while still making them look pretty. The combinations are endless! And as our game develops, we'll add more building and the possibilities just gets more and more 😍
We hope you like them! and as usual, if you haven't, wishlist City Rhapsody! today.
Until next time, cheers!
Michael
Development Update 8/14/2022
Hello, future city conductors!
We are very excited to have seen quite some interests picking up for City Rhapsody! First, a big thanks for all the wishlist entries 🙏! Your interests City Rhapsody! is the best motivation for us and we are even more committed to bringing it alive.
For the past week, we've been hard at work getting CR! going for early access. The majority of the work is currently focused on 1. backend systems, 2. larger gameplay and 3. major asset development.
Elevated Road Placement
A major addition to the gameplay is elevated road placement. All roads will now be able to go up/down a hill. We hope you didn't think CR! is just going to be "flat" 😉.
Now your city can go as high up the mountain as you want! The system also will handle tunnels as well. Want to find out more about how this works? Check out our dev blog article for a more in-depth walk-through.
Bigger Buildings
You probably noticed the buildings in CR! is pretty small. Not to worry, we started out with the smaller buildings to test out the game systems and we are definitely going to have BIG buildings. For example, some luxury apartments 🤩.
Of course, skyscrapers and giant factories are coming so if you haven't, wishlist City Rhapsody! today.
Steam Library Integration
Since we are releasing on Steam, we saw fit to start integrating into the Steam SDK and testing now to save us trouble down the road.
Some other things we worked on includes:
Gameplay - Proper Loading Screen and Main Menu.
Gameplay - Toggling individual signals.
Infrastructure - In-game feedback submission UI and backend. (You will be able to submit your saves and screenshot to us directly in-game!)
Infrastructure - Notification and Prompt UI
Until next time, cheers!
Michael
About us https://www.rhodiumcode.com Discord: https://discord.gg/rvHqYwVe Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhodiumcode Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/Rhodiumcode
Greetings To the Steam Community
Hello Steam Community!
After months of work, we are very excited to be able to bring our first title, City Rhapsody! to the Steam platform. We are building this city builder completely from the ground up and we are barely just getting started.
With all the essential core systems implemented, we are currently hard at work on adding challenges, random events, the first in-game tutorial, and lots of exciting features to get City Rhapsody! ready for early access.
As our development progresses, we'll be posting regular updates here and in our dev blog . So be sure to follow us on social media and wishlist City Rhapsody! today. Also, feel free to post any comments or suggestions in the discussion forum.
Until then, cheers.
Michael
About us https://www.rhodiumcode.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhodiumcode Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/Rhodiumcode
