This is the second part of the January update. Read Part 1 here.
I refined the materials of the game and how they are made and relate to each other. But first there is a quick info on the types of buildings.
Building types
All houses have at least a small and a medium variation next to visual variations. These types are not finally defined, at least there is room for one or two more if it makes sense.
Tents: Made of tarp that is made of plastic bags, fabric or are remaining from the old world like tarpaulin of trucks or backyards. Those are the weakest and most poor type of buildings.
Shacks: Made of board which is solid material of metal, wood or synthetic material. Shacks are unappealing but more solid and personal than tents.
Solid Houses These are the most common type of buildings from the mid term of the game. These buildings are made of the same materials as shacks but are clean and well designed (need more time to build). I think about that they look like common real world houses but are simply made from corrugated plates and the like. The buildings will have a backyard, mailbox and all that stuff (depending on size).
Wooden Huts Might be the most luxurious type of buildings but also cost the most time and resources. The huts are made of processed and sealed wood. Also they contain a garden, a porch and other such elements (depending on size).
You see that the idea is to go beyond the post apocalyptic settings by progression. Just as Endciv always was, these kind of houses always have been planned. Usually you will have poor buildings mixed with wealthy buildings.
Now here are the basic materials, those are still not all. Let me know what you think and if you have better ideas for some of their names.
Resources overview
HEre are some of my brainstorming diagramms.
Here is a draft on how the resources are made and some ideas for food.
Basic Material
Basic material cannot be(explicitly) produced and have to be traded, collected or recycled.
Waste Waste can be found all around the wasteland and is produced as a side product by people.
It mostly consists of organic waste like food and also contains paper.
Scrap All kind of metallic pieces.
Plastic All kind of pieces of plastic and synthetic material.
Board Pieces of boards and planks made of metal, plastic or wood.Used for construction.
Debris Pieces of hard material like stone, bricks, concrete and the like or simply cobblestone.
Wood Pieces of wood, e.g.from trees, furniture or fences.
Fabric Pieces of all kinds of tissue.
Paper Paper can sometimes be found and can be recycled from Waste.
Chemicals All kind of chemicals and synthetic material that can be used to refine other materials in the lab.
Manufactured Material
Fastener Naming unclear All kind of material that is helpful to connect things just like nails, screws, bolts, tape, string and the like. Alternative name: “Bits and bites”, “connectors”, “utility stuff”, simply “stuff”? I’d call it “Utilities” but I am not sure if this makes sense in English.
Lumber Manufactured wood.Used for nicer constructions in the later stage of the game.
Tarp Makeshift tarp made from fabric or plastic parts like bags.Can be used to collect water and is a cheap and quick method for construction.
Mechanic partsNaming unclear All kinds of mechanical parts like gears, hinges, belts, bearings and the like.
Electronic parts Electronic parts like cables, sockets, light bulbs, leds or switches
Microchips Used for advanced electronic devices.
Generator Able to generate electricity or be used as an electric motor.
Tools Tools improve construction and labor speed.There are 2-3 Tech levels.
Weapons Obviously used for defense and hunting. There will be at least 3 Tech levels (Melee, low caliber and high caliber)
Ammunition Ammunition for Weapons.There will be one for each Tech level, except Melee weapons.
Consume Goods
Natural Medication Made of herbs
Herbs Can be used for medication or luxury goods like tea and cigarettes.
Clothes Clothing has at least two tech levels.
Toilet Paper May sound weird but this is an important luxury article in the waste lands :)
Bandages / Medkit? In addition to herbs there should be one kind of medical item that has to be stored in a doctors building.
Clean Paper Paper that can be written on.E.g.can boost research and is a luxury article.
January 2018 - The foundation is solid
Hey everyone.
I made some good progress last month. Most was about game design and mechanics but I solved a number of issues and wrote down the basis for implementation into code.
By next month I believe that there will be a good amount of game mechanics working such as collection, storage and production. Sure that already works in the current version but as I said earlier there will quickly be more diversity and depth to all of it. More can be read here.
I know the shop page is out of date and it is still on the list to become updated.
Performance
I am even more confident that the game will work well. I not just learned frm Endciv but also from other projects that early work towards performance optimization helps a lot in the later stage of the process. Because then it can be very hard to start optimization. Better to design your content around optimization systems rather than the other way around. So one solution was that I made a custom LOD system. The one of Unity is not really great for my type of game.
Previous Endciv already used parts of that system to control light settings dynamically.
Here you can see LOD stages (Blue, Orange, Red). Red units for instance aren’t casting shadows. The GPU is definitely the bottleneck for the amount of people on the screen, especially once they have animations. I think that maybe 200 people is already much for this game, but at least technically there is no issue that 2000 walk at the same time.
The game systems also work fine and efficient. Each aspect is scheduled successively. So basically in one frame all the production is done, the next frame deals with crop growth, the next does make construction happen. That is actually how Endciv already worked previously, but now much more consequently. Under the hood this is actually a round based game and one round currently is 3 seconds. You might run the game in time-lapse most of the time anyway, that is also the reason why I choose that system. I am a fan of bulletproof game mechanics where timing or other chaotic events do not affect the output. For instance the result should be exactly the same whether the game runs at 1x or 10x speed.
How Graphics will evolve
Art assets are the biggest pitfall of this game. A city builder should be nice to look at besides having great game play. Some people just want to look close and see all the details the citizens do, me included.
I had such plans but those where the reason why the previous Endciv failed. There is a simple solution: Let’s ignore graphics for a start.
I will use simple artwork, maybe citizens won’t even have animations for a long time. I hope that you can live with that but this is the only way to get this game forward. Once the game play and performance do what they should I will make updates on graphics. The current workflow will allow doing that without any issues.
This sounds like a great workflow anyway. I can focus one a few topics at a time and when the game is shaped it is easier to work on artwork. Aside the fact that I already reserved a budget from previous sales hopefully there will be a few more owners by that time.
Here is how it looks now. Those buildings didn’t even take an hour each so there is room for a bit more detail and I can quickly do some dummy models without wasting resources.
Resources and Buildings
I made some updates on the game design and redefined materials there are.
Read Part 2 here.
Reboot: The fundamentals
Hey there, I certainly have to make things clear. Time is passing by quickly and I actually can’t believe it is already 4 months after my last post, I had some posts planned but postponed them all the time. I did a lot of fundamental work so far and it wasn't worth an update. Next year you can expect regular updates.
It’s a rework, not an update
The game on Steam is going to be updated. But the game I am working on is getting done from scratch, it is not an update on the existing code base.
As I have explained it is too messed up both conceptually and on the technical side.
This required a lot of fundamental things to be done first. That is dozens of classes and thousand lines of code. And maybe you will think holly cow he is insane, working on it for so long and then starting all over again, it will take another 10 years to get a demo or so. I understand that and that is also the reason why I didn’t show anything yet, I may also thought that it was self explanatory.
It is the right thing to do and it is coming along fine. I may underestimated the AI part a bit but overall the pace of development is much better than on the last version. I do reuse all the things that I can. For a system I was working on for weeks with headaches on the old game I was able to implement it completely in just a few hours as I already did all the troubleshooting.
What is done
The good news is that you see there 540 People walking consecutively at 44FPS and there is room to optimize the system, 300 run at 80+FPS. With the old system 40 people already challenged the CPU that was not intended at all. Also a number of 100-200 is already a very big amount of people for this game, but I don’t limit that number, it’s up to the player and mechanics how much is possible.
Currently people walk in the scene, they choose a home to live and do simple AI decisions on whether they walk around or go home. I have a big part of the resource and item system in place (basically the same as before) so the next step is to harvest, produce and consume goods. Some AI and mechanics for that already is in place. The point is that once it is working there already is much more game than there ever was.
That is certainly far away from what you call a finished game but the essential gameplay is actually there pretty early. Endciv now has really little in that sense. It has weather, it has doggies walking around and such but that is all not the essence of what a game should be about. That was my mistake, focusing on the wrong parts first and my attempt to correct that is to go for the basics first. I hope you believe in that once we actually got the game running those decorative things like graphics, audio and feeling can be added then, you have seen what the idea is. And of course that content still exists.
But now the first game version might even use dummy people without animations but it will be something you can enjoy for way more than just a few minutes.
It takes time but before I make a useless Christmas themed main menu next time I better give you some gameplay first.
An overview and open questions
Some of the overall features will remain such as finding goods in the wasteland, recycle trash, make a sad place a nice place, trade goods with others. The mechanics do change and instead of micromanagement and looking at each individual thing the focus is on the bigger picture.
Also I want to make clear that is is all about to develop further, if you and me find that certain features that have been scraped are worth it then it can happen.
One of those things is the Day/Night cycle.
I will not implement it in the first version as I am not sure if it makes any sense. Games like this usually don’t implement it for good reason. I will implement it later as an optional feature and then we can find out if it makes sense or not.
I can go back to Endciv in the mid of January and I will focus on the features described. I can not tell you how long it will take that is the only honest estimate I can give. Have a good new year and I will get back to you in a month.
Endciv Reboot
Hello Everyone.
It has been a few months now since the development of the game has been halted and I was surprised on how kind some of you reacted to that. As I went back to the Steam page a while ago I expected some bad readings but this was not the case. The community is still small and this can be an advantage as I believe that the damage can be smoothed out.
Info: The game will remain on Steam and will be updated.
It was my fault What I want to tell you today is that Endciv will receive a reboot. Endciv is at it's current state and vision like a misconfigured and misassembled machine. It started like it should have but during those numerous changes in my and my team's situation it morphed into something else and I was blindfolded from time to time.
In hindsight you could say “That escalated quickly”. It basically became two games in once and was just stuffed with ideas and features as there was nobody that could prevent me from doing so. I tried to keep it alive but it just didn’t work and issues were piling up. The following image describes it well:
This is how I saw the game for the past year or so. I knew it was wrong and I wanted to fix it. I haven’t realized that I was on the wrong track. Endciv like what it is today is not what it should be and not what it ever can be. Don’t get me wrong. the major vision still remains but I have to cut all those features which do not provide a favour to either the gameplay and the development process. Pooping dogs that leave their stuff as a physical material on the ground? I don't think that we need that. Weather, Combat and Trade is all still very well for that game. The issues are not in the bigger picture, but in the details.
Think small Having an AI that works more like the Sims or RPG Characters combined with a city builder may works, but not for me. You can’t imagine what kind of stuff I drafted and how complex the AI is. But this is not good for scaling. You can’t manage a big city with all that micromanagement and that complex mechanics running on the CPU. Therefore all the micromanagement content must be erased. No more experiments, no fiddled in features. This also means that the interiors of buildings will be sacrificed. It is much more complex to handle. I will make a solid foundation with simplified gameplay and a regular city builder as we know it. Once this is running well, we can together see where it shall go.
I will take some time to rethink this concept and how it can be organised on the development side. The Project will start totally from scratch. Of course I can make use of all what has been made so far but a total restart is the only way that will work out. Also I learned so much in that time that a new code base will enhance the game in many ways.
Plan C Another reason is that I will consider the topic Open Source. I am not sure about that and one reason simply is third party content in the game. The current version is impossible to publish without a major review even though most of it was made from scratch.
But one thing is for sure if I will find myself again in the situation that I can no longer support the development then I will publish the new source of Endciv.
I will be back in some time, don’t expect me to have news within a few weeks. But I am already on it. Thanks for standing by.
Important announcement
Hello Folks.
It has been a year now since Endciv was released and it was a great experience to develop this game. But this is not the full truth, it was quite depressing from time to time either and the game is far from where it was intended to be now. In the past I attended other jobs in order to get some income which is one of the reasons why development was paused in-between.
The game was planned to be developed by a team of people and it started as such. As I then continued on my own and hired freelancers I was always optimistic that it will turn out as it should. When I start a business I want it to be sustainable all the time and the risk I was willing to take was still not enough to go all-in on this project.
Endciv is a complex project which requires a lot of work for individual features. My expertise is technical art so I wanted to have nice graphical features and content in the game, the downside is that all of this has to be produced by artists which are capable of doing it.
Especially the people in the game are an issue. They should be modular which requires a more complex rigging process. Also each animation must be created and managed in code each time a new feature would be added. These are all things that either require time or additional workforce.
Not that this is not doable but keeping all the other things in mind especially the countless debugging turned this game into a burden. If you want to do a professional project then you require a professional environment and this is the part where I failed.
How is it going on?
You might be asking, no the game is not cancelled. Features such as savegames are still in the pipeline and will be provided. The price of the game has been reduced (this might take time to update on the shop). I definitely want to work on the Core-Features as described, so mainly building and economy features and a bit of budget is still reserved which is going to be invested in game models.
But I will attend a new day job in March and my business as a self employed developer has ended. I will be less available for the first few months as I won’t be home often and have to relocate then. Yet in the weekends I do have time to finish the savegame feature first.
To be honest in terms of time spent for development it might not have that much of an impact. It’s not that it takes x months to develop certain feature but it is the constant pressure and other obligations that held me back, and yes sometimes the lack of motivation. My new job is not very stressful and going home without having to worry about my future is a big help. Even though I plan to balance my life I will have time to continue. Endciv now is a hobby project again.
Some of you might be angry now but you did definitely contribute to the project and I am sorry if you feel that I used your trust. It is not completely over but it is fair to say that the future of the project is limited now.
As I said earlier the core features are still planned to be developed and I need to see for myself how the next few weeks will turn out.
TLDR; savegames are still coming.
Thanks and sorry for all of you supporting the game.
Happy Holidays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95h_n46WI04
Just in time there is a winter themed update to Endciv. You can now adjust the starting season in the game to play in winter for example. (But it doesn't affect gameplay yet).
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=823511203
Highest priority was to stabilize the game and therefore not many new features have been added. But one helpful improvement is that you can now move small already built objects.
We are still working on more updates, savegames are coming closer.
As posted on the Discussion section many new features are currently in the making and are to be expected during the next months. The Savegame feature should also come this year.
Changelog
Hotfix 0.0.370c Nov 21st
This contains an Engine Update. Some Terrain Textures have improved and the Credits screen works again.
Also an alternative Steam version was provided where you can load the previous game version whenever something went wrong with an update.
In order to do that open the Settings page of a game (right click in the Library -> Settings) and then in the "Betas" tab select the Version you want.
Make sure to restore to "NONE" if you want to be up to date.
Hotfix 0.0.370b Minor fixes.
Fixes storage area extension and removing tool.
Version 0.0.370
Loading speed has improved.
Several UI Improvements, the Construction-Site Tooltip provides more information.
The orange number above the icon indicates the missing amount of each resource.
The white number above indicates all the resources which are already available at the site.
The striped line shows how far the building can be constructed with the available resources.
The number on the top right is an experimental time indicator.
The exclamation mark informs you about issues of tasks so that you know what is going on.
The job panel has changed so that you can assign up to 3 jobs for one person at decreasing priority. An "Anything" option will potentially follow as well.
Bugfix - Objects disappeared after construction.
- The demolishing tool works again.
- Selection rectangle (drag to select many units) works better now
Upcoming
People do not drink out of containers
Savegames
Better tutorial
Chopping down the Buglist…
Upcoming Assets overview
Here is an overview of the assets which are going to be created this month or later this year as well as some additional information to describe the context. I made the following concepts myself so the artist's work is yet to come to fill in the missing ones or to add detail.
Merchants Travelling merchants will visit your town from time to time and there are various types of them with special goods and prices. You would have to buy animals or crop seeds from them in order to start agriculture or animal husbandry.
Carts Carts function to transport greater amounts of goods from one point to the other and will be relevant at a later stage of the game.
Waste management If a dumpster is relevant is not yet decided but a Composter will help to generate natural fertilizer.
Another interesting procedure is to convert these feces into power and I will further investigate the possibility to add this to Endciv. But I assume it is (in real measurements) only efficient for a larger amount of animals or people which produce the required raw material.
Here is an interesting insight on Poo Power.
Water collectors Water collectors like the image shows will help to maintain the water supply in the early game. The 3D model here is just a quick concept. Currently there is a small (2x2) and a medium (4x4) version planned.
Wells Later on wells of different sizes can be constructed. I'd like to illustrate the full construction process in the game but this is a bit of work for the animation, but as the construction will take a couple of hours and days it shall be worth the effort.
Workbench At a workbench simple object can be assembled, such as tools, cartridges, cigarettes and other utilities.
Lathe A lathe is used to produce more complex mechanical and mostly metallic components. It has milling, drilling and bending machines and both electrical and manual elements. (When it has no electricity production is slower).
Can produce: Guns & Rifles, mechanical parts, cartridge-hulses, fastener
Workbench II (Fine mechanics) A workbench used for fine work, it is more clean and organized than the others. It contains a number of fine tools (such as small screwdrivers, pliers, cutters, pens, fastener, cable), a soldering bolt and measuring tools (electronic measure, rulers, stencils).
Can produce: Microelectronic, electronically parts, lights, solar panels, generators and electronic tools.
Laboratory Laboratory is used to produce synthetic products as well as to research. Appears more to be a meth laboratory than a school laboratory. Contains Distillery, blowtorch, small smelter and a number of substances (glasses or plastic bottles). Other content: glasses, buckets, tubes, pipes, pipettes, sprays, cans… Can produce: Chemicals, explosives, synthetic fertilizer, medication etc.
Drafting Table Angled table with a stool used to draft and research technology.
Kitchen Some sort of Kitchen or butchery table is planned but yet just conceptually.
Livestock Animal husbandry is an essential aspect for a thriving and big city.
Major: Chicken (eggs), Pigs, Cows (dairy products).
Secondary: Goats, Deer, Rabbits and Rats.
These secondary animals are conceptual and may turn out to be redundant.
To hold livestock there is the fences as well as Coops for small animals.
Eventually the size and freedom of the animal enclosures will affect certain aspects of gameplay. Maybe bad treatment let animals die earlier or affect productivity. It may also affects the image and satisfaction level of the town.
Dogs are not rated as livestock but can also be hold and breed. They are in fact halfway between animals and citizens regarding to behavior and parameters.
Electricity Solar panels and Wind power plants are going to be implemented at a later stage and research is required to produce them. There are more concepts then these for wind power plants. It is interesting how broken solar panel pieces can be put together as shown in this video.
The campfire is going to be updated as well and will come in two sizes.
Bury mechanic and makeshift graves will come soon as well.
Hotfix
Changelog
Hotfix 0.0.365c Here is a quick update after some annoying bugs occurred.
Bed does no longer disappear after it was constructed.
Fireplace does not cause people to sit around it and do nothing else.
Production and Cooking Context menu (lower left corner) did not disappear.
Notice: when there are no resources available then the cooking task and the production task will cause the executing citizen to be stuck in a loop. When this happens simply assign another task to the unit. We will add information when resources are missing for specific tasks or in general why tasks are aborted and the AI should take care of this more effectively.
Recent update and Hotfix
Changelog
Version 0.0.364 + Hotfix 0.0.365
AI updates. Units can now claim resources which are then usually not taken by another friendly unit. This helps to improve the flow of logistics.
Updated workbench and production task. A bug has been solved where a unit was unable to craft items. It should now find resources autonomously and start a crafting task afterwards.
Job masking has been added to the Citizen Overview window. You can choose for each citizen between three jobs:
Labor: Gather resources and transport them
Construction: Construct and deconstruct buildings
Production: Crafting items
The labor job is always part of each citizen, but if it has another job it prioritizes those. So for instance if there are missing resources for a construction a constructor will also start to gather resources until there are enough resources available. Units also seek more jobs autonomously.
Zones can now be extended. In order to do that click on the “Add Area” button. Then click on the area which you want to extend. As the animation shows move the cursor to an edge of the area and click and hold your mouse to draw an extended area. Release the mouse to apply the extension. Zones have a limited size and appear red when they cannot be placed. In a future update overlapping objects will also be recognized which is currently not the case.
Bugfix: Viewing and dragging out resources of a storage caused a number of errors which should now be fixed. You can drag and drop an item out of the inventory list to the ground in order to pick it up by a unit.
The unit inventory has been updated and now contains a list for equipment. Equipment will not be removed when the unit clears its inventory to store resources. Equipment can be Tools, weapons and ammunition as well as nutrition and other usable items (which are yet to come). You can simply drag and drop items from one list to another.
Fastener can now be produced which are required for many constructions. Fastener are crafted quickly but cost one scrap each and you should always hold a number of those in stock. These values have to be evaluated but here are the current cost for a quadratic fence with one gate.
