Game Development So Far
With another great holiday season in the bag it’s time to start the New Year strong. Game development last year went really well with a final push to clean up some of the UI for the staff and equipment selection. The changes have helped define the basics for the rest of the UI updates. Focusing on a more robust setup behind the scenes which handles the overall UI but also making a cleaner visual style.
The next part of the UI updates were the information and management panels. However, to fully implement these its first necessary to finish the systems that manage the information which will be displayed. This took the game development over towards finalising the systems, algorithms and data saving. Just before the Christmas break I started on completing the money, popularity and gains systems for the gameplay as well as the saving and loading functionality. The money, popularity and gains systems have been pretty easy to work on. It’s simply just a case of defining what game actions affects these values. Saving and loading, however, has proven to be quite tricky.
Unity Save Game System
With GLO, the save game system was really easy. It was a simple case of storing a few integers for level progress and various other stats. However Gym Empire is a totally different game, in the way that progress is not marked static scale. Progress in Gym Empire is more fluid and depends on what a player has bought, who they’ve hired, who is a member of the gym, how they’ve changed their environment etc. Therefore the data to save is much more complex and larger. I was hoping there would an easy way to save the entire scene during playtime and recall that scene later for loading. However saving in Unity isn’t that simple. It requires a form of Serialization.
For those that are unfamiliar, Serialization is basically the process of taken code/data and turning it into a binary or text format. For example you can serialize to an XML file. To load that data you can then Deserialize the XML file and turn it back into the code/data. Serializing simple fields is quite simple, but serializing complex classes isn’t. So this is where I hit the brakes over Christmas and enjoyed the holidays.
Other Developments
With it being the holiday season I decided to ease off the game development and finally get round to playing some video games! I’ve always been a huge fan of the stealth genre. Many of you will already know that Metal Gear Solid is my all-time favourite game. On top of that there’s something about the winter season that amplifies my desire to play stealth games. Maybe it’s the fact that snowy scenes always make for great espionage scenes or maybe it’s because I used to always get stealth/action games for Christmas. Either way I had the urge to find a new spy game to play.
CounterSpy
Being a parent these days means it’s quite hard to find and justify time to sit down and play a console. That is where my handheld consoles come in great! On Christmas Eve I decided to take a look through my library of un-played games to see what took my fancy. That is when I came across CounterSpy. I’d noticed CounterSpy in my list a few times from my PS Plus subscription, but I never fired it up until now.
I’m really glad I did because it was the perfect balance of fun stealth action, gorgeous 3D side scrolling graphics and quick pick up and play levels that kept me hooked over Christmas! It’s basically a side scroller where you can take cover and the camera pans around to give an over the shoulder perspective. This works great and gives you the feeling of playing something much more than just a side scroller. The level design is great too! The 3D models are really crisp and have a real feeling of espionage about them. The levels themselves are randomly generated but feel really well made and fluid.
You have the option of two styles of environment. Either USSR or US themed environment. I found myself playing the USSR themed environments most of the time, mainly because they were covered in snow! It was great fun relaxing on the couch, with a full belly, some egg nog and playing a couple of levels. It was the prefect length too as I managed to complete it last night. Just in time for the return to normality.
Tyccon Game Roundup
The holidays weren’t completely dry of game dev. There were a few moments where I was did a bit of research on saving and loading and tied a few pre built systems from other developers. The Unity Saving and Loading Utility looked promising for a while but I just couldn’t get it to fully work. I also took some new videos of Gym Empire. Firstly for a little snowy digital Christmas card for Discord and Twitter.
Secondly for a the December round up of tycoon games by False Phoenix. I was really psyched to find out Gym Empire was going to be featured and I wanted to give a better representation of the current state of development. So I knocked up a couple of videos showing some of the current functionality.
Time Management
So roll on 2019! Unfortunately I missed getting a demo build out by the end of 2018 as there was just too much work to cram in. I took the executive decision to have a relax with my family and take more time to continue the development of the demo in the early part of 2019. The worst thing that could happen is I rush out a build that’s full of bugs and wastes everyone’s time. I’ve put so much blood, sweat and tears into this already, I don’t want to derail it before it’s even hit the tracks! So with the start of 2019 I’m continuing the work towards a demo build that will be releasing soon. The current tasks are focusing around getting the save and load systems in place. These are the last of the big hitters when it comes to the demo build. Once those are in place I can get to cleaning up all the remaining parts and fine tuning the systems for the gameplay.
Thanks for all the great support in 2018 and here’s to another great year. In the words of lightspeed, “2019 will be the year of Gym Empire”.
Gym Empire is now available to add to your Steam Wishlist.
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