Pretty much everything this week I did was some kind or another of bug fix. The one exception was a UI improvement, shown below, where I improved the buying menu considerably, and in the process learned a lot about Unity's UI management, especially Layout Groups.
The biggest improvement was adding a cancel button to the Buying/ Selling goods dialog. What do you think of the new layout?
Bug fixes include bugs related to the newly added game over conditions, updating the estimate of goods when buying new goods, improving ship placement location, getting the correct number of items on the ship, and more.
The plan for the next week is to keep working on bug fixes, and start working on an improved tutorial system. I'm thinking of essentially setting objectives for the tutorial, that can be seen on the screen somehow. I haven't figured it all out yet, but it's coming along.
I managed to do most of what I intended to do this week, although I did fall a bit short of the ending conditions. Still, I'm quite happy overall. But first, let me include a video!
In putting together the video, I noticed a few bugs. The non-UI ones I fixed, and I looked at a few of the UI ones as well. For instance, I found the goods don't scroll on the right, but I was able to fix that.
The main thing I was working on this week was conditions, both starting and ending. For starting, I have cities configured to starting levels. Each city will receive a starting food and water, gold, silver, and a set of random seeds. I have seeds now for the entire set of possible plants. Overall, it seems to be working, although I haven't played much with it in use.
I also set up starting goods on the ship. There is a fixed amount of food and water that each ship will start out with.
I started to work on ending conditions, although I didn't get that far. These conditions could potentially be used for other things as well, and have a good chance of overtaking my tutorial system. Here's an example of a game over bug.
As for this week, I'm going to finish the game over conditions. I'm going to make the UI look at least a little bit better. I am going to set it up so seeds and food can be put in barrels easier, which will make things look better overall. Generally speaking, it's going to be clean up, bug fixing, and polishing. I think I'm going to start working on a video and web site to go with my KickStarter campaign, which I think I'm getting close to doing.
Dev Blog- Sea Trading Game- Ship supplies lifetime indicated, speed improvements, cursor shown, bug fixes!
This has been a productive week, showing a number of new features. I'm hopefully two small steps away from adding the game over conditions, at which time I'll be at an "alpha" state, and will start doing more formal testing!
I added a cursor this week, as well as an indicator as to how long your supplies will last. The color of the line changes depending on how long your supplies will last relative to the expected length of the voyage. I'm also probably going to change the cursor, but it'll serve for the time being.
I fixed a few speed issues, so the game now takes less memory and runs faster. It is now running at a similar speed to how it was several months ago, despite adding quite a few new complex features!
This week I'm hoping to get the game over conditions, which will basically occur if your crew gets to the point that they are wanting to revolt because you haven't fed or paid them. More similar details will occur, but that's the general idea for how the game will end. I'm also hoping to get the starting conditions better set, and possibly work on some improvements to the brokerage system.
My major accomplishment this week was to add good specific needs to a ship. For instance, Sheep will require food in order to thrive on a ship at this point in time, at least they would if you could load them on to a ship. I also started the framework for giving indicators of how long you can survive with your given resources without dying.
Another small bug that I fixed was that the distance to the ship no longer indicates the distance to the land, if you are navigating to the land. It still shows a tail as you can see below, but I'm inclined to keep it as is. What do you think?
This week I will get the indicators as to if you have enough resources to make the trip safely. I'm also going to so some improvements to selecting the tiles. I'm hoping to get to a game over condition if I can get to it!