Rec Center Tycoon
January progress update
So I spent a few weeks on holiday over the Christmas period so I don't have a huge amount of progress to show but I have a number of things to share.
In addition to a thousand little bug fixes, I've made a few additions to keep things spicy.
Sickness
Customers have a chance to become sick after eating at the Cafe based on the skill of your cook, if this happens they are much more likely to write a bad review which may affect future business.
Random Events
There is now a low chance of random events happening that may significantly affect gameplay. One example of this is heatwaves. In the event of a random heatwave occuring you can expect a whole lot of customers wanting to swim. Just make sure you have large enough pools for them!
Patrolling
Lifeguards & Janitors can now be assigned patrol areas. This is especially useful for lifeguards to allocate them to specific pools, drowning customers is very bad for business!
Employee Welfare
Every employee has their own individual wage based on their abilities. Over time, as your employees get better at their jobs they may request a pay increase. It's up to you whether or not to grant them this. But be warned, if an employee becomes unhappy with their job over time, they may quit.
Translation
The biggest thing I've been working on this month is a better method of translating the game into other languages. Previously I had just coded all the text directly into the game, thousands of lines of text & dialog. I've written a system to get the games text from .txt files in the game folder. Line by line I've been going through the games code, finding text and linking it to lines in .txt documents. So all that is needed to translate the game now is translating the english text in the .txt files to any other language, vastly simplifying the process. There's still a lot of work left to do on this & I have no official translations lined up at the moment but once this framework is fully in place, translating the game into a particular language will be as simple as sending a translator the dialog text files. This also allows the possibility of fan translations.
And finally,
Some time hopefully next month I'm planning a closed beta. Not a very big one, probably only 15-20 people. When it's ready I'll make a post here asking for volunteer beta testers. If you're interested in participating in this and are willing to provide good feedback and bug reports, subscribe to this forum so you get notified when I make the post.
Home stretch my dudes!
Quick November Update
I don't really have any interesting new screenshots to share until a little while after I get back because I've spent most of the last month rewriting employee & customer AI to be less prone to bugs, more manageable and much easier to diagnose the bugs I do find.
This is the third time I've written their AI since I started this project, mostly because I've become so much better at coding since I began that I often find myself going back rewriting old systems to be more stable and flexible.
The good news is that I have a release date in mind for another closed beta and actual early-access release, however I'm not really ready to share what those dates are just yet in case something changes.
I'll have a more thorough & detailed update next month, hopefully before Christmas.
Furthermore, as of tomorrow I won't have any internet access for the next few weeks so I won't be able to respond to any emails, pm's or posts here.
Once more, thank you for your patience :)
August progress update
I've been reworking a few things and overhauling some core aspects of the game to make it more enjoyable and longlasting.
To be completely honest I've found that the pure "business management" aspect of the game to be a little lacking in its current form. And the game needs something to set itself apart from similar style games. I don't want to release a forgettable management sim that people are bored of in a few hours.
Anyway, here's a list of some of the features I've added since the last update:
-Your own storymode character
Originally I planned to release with a standard sandbox management mode where you try to build/run a successful business but I'm happy to say that in addition to that I'm going to include a story or "career" mode.
Upon starting a new storymode game, you'll be prompted to create your own character. The "Owner" of your business.
There are many roles that your character will play. You will need to build them an office to get them started but from there they can be controlled by you personally or left on auto control to handle things on their own.
- New Gym Equipment
A variety of new gym equipment usable by both your customers and your personal character.
- Stock room
Your janitors will need to keep things like vending machines and your cafe fridge full.
- Temperature
The temperature of a day will affect things like what your customers want to do more, for example
you can expect your pools to be full on hotter days.
- Zones
Designate rooms and areas as zones which can restrict entry by specific memberships, genders or employee-only.
- Boxing
The first playable sport has been added, take part in boxing matches using your character, train them up using your gym equipment, climb the ranks and earn money for winning fights.
In the screenshot provided below you'll notice that your character has a wide array of muscle stats, these can be trained and improved by taking control of your character and using your various gym equipment.
These muscle stats will affect your performance in the various sports I've added and will be adding in the near future as well as after release.
For example, if you want to increase your movement speed around the boxing ring or tennis court, use equipment that trains your legs. If you want a more powerful serve, or harder punches, train your arms and so on..
Personally building your character & competing in sports is exclusive to storymode. If you're after a traditional
business management sim, you can always just play the standard sandbox gamemode.
- There have also been innumerable other small changes & bug fixes.
I once again want to apologise for my absence in regards to updates, I had a lot to juggle these last few months but my time has freed up and I'm committing to regular monthly progress updates again. I know this is taking forever but the end is nearing, I hope you all stick around to see the finished product. :)
I've added a couple quick screenshots below showing some new stuff.
March Update
I've been a little quiet on here with the updates & responses lately but I've been hard at work adding new features and overhauling some of the weaker aspects of the game. I'd like to share some of the things I've been working on this past couple months:
-Parking
One of the larger things I've been working on is the ability to create parking lots for customers to drive and park onsite, it still needs a fair amount of work until it's finished but it's shaping up nicely so far.
-Cafe overhaul
The old method of cafes was simply a barista sitting at a counter serving food to customers, it was a bit simple so I'm remaking cafes to require the use of fridges/cookers & cooks, whose cooking skills will affect customer satisfaction.
-New profession: Lifeguard
It is now possible for customers to occasionally start drowning and potentially dying in your rec center leaving you in some serious trouble! To combat this, it's now possible to hire Lifeguards who can either be stationary on a lifeguard chair, watching over a pool or assigned to a patrol area.
-Membership
I originally planned to add this later in early-access but I feel it's important enough to be a release feature.
As an alternative to customers just paying a casual entrance fee, customers may now sign up to be basic or premium members which will give them benefits or discounts which are up to the players discretion.
If you want you can restrict the use of swimming pools to premium members, offer discounts at the cafe and so on, giving many options to entice customers to fork out for memberships.
-Health/Safety inspectors
On the odd occasion you may be visited by a health or safety inspector who will walk through your rec center assessing things like cleanliness or how well equipment is being maintained. They will award you with large bonuses or fines based on how their assessment goes.
I don't have a release date at this time but I'm working very hard to add loads of content to keep players happy for a long time. :)
Quick update - Feb 1st
Something that's very important to me is to make sure the game has plenty of depth on release to keep players interested, so I'm adding a few more features that I had originally planned for later in the early-access period.
These aren't huge features that will take months to implement so it shouldn't significantly affect the release date.
One of these features is membership options for your customers!
Before, your primary method of income was from a standard entrance fee, but now, provided customers enjoy your Rec Center, they may now sign up and pay a weekly fee to become members.
Member can have benefits that are completely up to the player, you can offer discounts on things like the cafe, have member-only rooms and various other perks.
Another thing lately is that I've been updating some of the gym equipment sprites and animations as I'm slowly learning to draw graphics a little better.
Here's a quick screenie just took to show some of the visual improvements on equipment.
I'll have more info soon so stay tuned :)
Progress update for Rec Center Tycoon
First, I know it can be tough being dropped into a sandbox management game and having no idea what's going on, so lately I've been putting together a quick optional tutorial at the beginning of the game to give a bit of an idea about how a few things work.
Another thing I've being doing this last week is tooltips, so many tooltips... it really helps having a tooltip for each piece of equipment giving an idea of what to do with it, so this is very necessary. That being said, in the first upcoming early-access version some things like tooltips for languages other than english may not be translated yet.
Which brings me to the next thing, language translations.
Major UI elements are mostly all translated but some small things like I said above, tooltips & customer reviews will still appear in English. This applies to all translations. However this will only be for the first Early-Access version. After release I plan to recruit some professional game translators to finish translating for the next version.
Next, performance optimising. You might not expect it, but games like this can be surprisingly taxing on mid-lower end PCs. Rec Center Tycoon has a fairly complex lighting system in addition to the countless AI calculations and processes running in the background. There's a lot going on under the hood in management games.
The game development engine I'm using has only single core support so I've been making a lot of tweaks to ensure a solid 60 fps on lower end machines when there is a lot going on in-game.
Finally, in regards to release date I can't really give any estimates or predictions because I'll get burned if I don't make the deadlines. It being Christmas time has slowed me down a little but I'm still making good progress. There's nothing major left to do except a bunch of small things, bug fixes, AI tweaks, testing, trailer, press kit stuff etc.. it is coming soon though!
Thank you for your patience & I hope you all have a Merry Christmas! :)
Update on Rec Center Tycoon
I thought I'd give you all an update on the current progress of Rec Center Tycoon.
The game is feature complete (for the first early access version) although there are a few things I have decided to leave out of the first release such as hiring & training athletes & hosting your own sporting competitions (Both of these will be coming soon after EA release). I would love to include them in the initial release however this would likely add another 6+ months to development time.
I'm in the final round of polishing, testing & bug fixing. There are a few things left to do such as putting together a press kit and preparing the final EA-release trailer which will take a little bit of time too.
I can't really give a specific date just yet, the nature of being a solo indie developer means there is a lot of uncertainty, just know that I'm working around the clock to get the first EA version ready for release.
Mac & Linux versions will be coming some time during early-access.
As soon as I have a specific date, I'll post an update here with the details.
Thank you all for your patience.