Been about a year since my last blog post here. Time I should write again.
What i’ve been doing these past months.
It has been a very interesting several months where I have been very busy debugging the many thousands of lines of codes i’ve written.
Balancing the game as i went, adding tooltips with information. Choosing music that goes with the game… My biggest thanks goes to my steam friend nicknamed Argus, a great Canadian. And a patient tester. Countless hours have been spent, many hours of both fun and frustrations. But, having come halfway towards a fully released game it’s been a very enjoyable ride.
Needless to say that, when coding up until the morning hours, skipping my weekly judo sessions as i went, I had this sense of archievement when bug number 6141155 had been fixed.
Now, yesterday evening, I have been setting up the Steam store page for Ventura Inc. And I’m hoping for Steams approval, at some point in the next month.
In the meantime I have also requested several Steam Beta Keys to divide amongst friends, family and possibly interested Steam players. These keys will remain active for the duration of the final testphase. Contact me at admin@ventura-inc.com if interested. First comes, first served.
I worked hard to sufficiently test server stability. However, considering my current tests were usually limited to 2 to 5 players. I think it will be interesting to see how the game fares with way higher numbers. What I can say however is that I have been minimising the data sent between client and server wherever possible as to maximize the number of concurrent players on the server.
Now, a bit about the game.
As it currently stands:
The game is all about running a company. And choosing company ‘branches’ to make a profit. At present there are:
- Engineer
- Bank
- Construction
- Woodworking
- Steel Mill
- Fishing
- Restaurant
- Transport
- Farm
- Factory
- Power Plant
- Oil Refinery
- Warehouse
- Housing
These branches, are all in some way connected to one another by the services or goods they provide to eachother. By design, you have a whole world of interconnected industries. Basically a simulation of reality.
Some examples:
- The engineer makes the blueprints, wich are used when constructing a building. However, constructing a building needs a construction company willing and able to do the job. What this means is that you’ll be needing to buy a blueprint from an engineer, and sign a construction contract with someone too (if you don’t have one yourself). The construction branch will get to work , and it’ll need resources that it’ll hopefully have stocked up on. These goods can come from Factory, Steel Mill and Woordworking branches.
- In general , alot of the branches, Steel Mill, Restaurant, Farms, etc can employ machines as a multiplier of their employees productivity. However, there is a tradeoff, as these machines will be using electricity wich is provided by a power plant.
- All goods are transported by the Transport branches (Shipping & Airlines are still to be added when multiple cities are introduced)
- Bank provides loans wich are often needed to fund your new buildings.
This interconnectivity can be a good thing, but also a bad thing, depending on where someone ends up in financial difficulties, it’s possible he drags someone else with him.
In theory it’s possible to have all the different branches in your company, however. I have designed the game for it to come at a cost. This might mean it’s sub optimal from a business point of view. As you’ll probably want to maximize profit.
The gameworld currently has just 1 city. And in that city there are around 1600 plots where there can be build. However, I will be releasing more cities asap, and i have provided a system to cope with the limit in land. Currently, when designing (Engineer) a branch building, you’ll be able to define the number of offices that building has. This means, that you’ll be able to rent out office space to other players. Plots also get exponentially more expensive for a company to upkeep. So having 1 plot is cheap, having 10 is probably not affordable unless if you’re massive.
With this I sign off, going to work on that wiki page tonight…