Devlog-Zichen

Unknown 

I need to playtest the resource management (concept testing) part of the game. This includes: what building should be in the game; how much do they cost; why would the player need this building; is the cost of this building reasonable. 

Build 

I started off with researching based on existing games and stated a few different resources that are more common in these games. I then listed a bunch of possible buildings that can possible and fits our theme of a flooding and on ocean game.  

I have summarized the type of buildings into: 

1. Infrastructure 

Provides shelter and paths that allow citizens to move around and live at 

2. Production and Resource 

Provides basic needs for a human to survive 

3. Energy 

Provides power to run the other defensive / natural disasters related buildings 

4. Disaster defense 

Provide safety barrier to block flooding and other natural disasters 

5. Research 

Provide different buffs on the other buildings 

6. Late game 

Provides a more stable end game content for player to relax and wait the community grow itself 

I also thought of the possible resources that I can put in the game. This includes:  

1. Wood 

2. Metal 

3. Concrete 

4. Composite Materials 

5. Energy 

6. Research points 

7. Credits 

8. Food  

9. Medicinally 

These are the more and most common resources that I see in different resources management games. And based on these buildings and resources, I kind of imagined when each building should be built and put in different amount and kind of resources for each building.  

Evaluate & Learn 

In the playtest section, what I did was just show them a graph of the different resources and buildings. Show them what each building cost, what each building are for.  

There are 2 main suggestions I got from the playtest:  

1. Cost does not mean anything 

Even though I mentioned about the cost of each building, I have missed something that is important: time and how to get each type resources. The play testers are unable to know, understand and evaluate are the cost for each building is reasonable, nor are they able to identify what kind of building should be built first when they look at the buildings. They want to know how much each type of resources are they starting with; how long would it take for each type of resources; how many different paths (possibilities) to get each type of resources.  

2. Too many buildings  

They think there are too many buildings for our group and worry for the scope problem. And since all we did was just throw a bunch of graph and words at them, they don’t really have the interest to read and understand all the buildings. They think that in order for players to be able to understand each building, we really need some very good tutorial, or some interactable tutorials, so they can learn hands-on instead of just reading. 

Inform  

Now, the main part I need to figure out are how long and how many ways can the player get each type of resources. I will also scope down the graph into 3 different types of buildings for each main building use to lower the scope for the team and for the player to better remember the different buildings. The deleted buildings will still be able for my team to work on, but now we will just focus on making the base of these buildings like how much feedback they give to the player if the player decided to build this certain building.