[Unity3D Hex Map Game Dev] 44: Priorities, Research, Experience, Balance
Hello Unity fans and welcome back to my game development series. At this point we have a decent number of specialist unit types making a living on our World Turtle and contributing to the foundations that our vast and great empire will one day stand upon. A lot of hard work will be required to get us there, but life isn’t just about work. Let’s see how we prioritise tasks, gain experience and manage a healthy work-life balance.
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Music:
Acoustic Breeze from bensound.com
Front Porch Blues from YouTube Library
Throughout the series, when it comes to woodcutters and stonemasons, we’ve focused mainly on gathering wood and stone. I know, it’s revolutionary. These are very important tasks, but we need something more to make the units interesting. We need some variation in the form of different tasks, and some sort of progression through experience and upgrades. Each of the possible actions comes with an opportunity cost, since the other possible actions need to be snubbed in favour of the chosen action. The player needs to manage these tasks and the timing of the progression to suit the requirements of a specific game scenario, taking into account available and required resources, long-term strategy, interaction with the rest of the units in the empire and a whole lot more.
Each building type will have two tasks of the hard-labour kind, each with its own icon. The first one would be the resource gathering we’re already very familiar with. For now, I’m allowing only these tasks to be performed. As these tasks are performed, the units gain practical experience in the specific task. This is indicated in the frame of the UI hex for that task. Each building, and by extension the two inhabitants of the building, will start off on the basic level, call it novice or bronze, with the frames of the UI hexes indicating the level. Then, as experience is gained, the frame will be replaced by a partly silver highlighted frame, indicating progress. As soon as enough progress have been made, the building can upgrade to the silver level. I still need to expand on the upgrading mechanic, and it will require better quality tools, some resources, and un upgrade to the size of the building itself, but for now, let’s just change the frame to silver. Of course, the upgrade will afford the building and units some advantages – working faster for example – and will also unlock the second task. Since more than one task is now available, we set the task priorities using these increase-decrease arrows. Each time the unit is ready for a task, one is picked according to the probabilities set. For woodcutters, the second task will be replanting trees to ensure a sustainable future, while for stonemasons it will be clearing out the shards left over after harvesting the bigger rocks. These are the hard, flat, sharper pieces of rock splintering off from the main boulders and I will use these as another resource, which will mainly be used to manufacture tools for the most basic building level. This allows us to commission more novice woodcutters, stonemasons and other units.
But you need more than just practical experience to level up. You also need some theoretical experience, or research. In the early stages of the game, this consists of different units coming together at a central location, which I’ll call a research station, discussing their professions and learning from each other. The idea is that both the practical experience and research need to progress to the next level before the building can level up. So, with enough hard work and learning, the building can eventually level up to the gold level, as indicated in the frame colour, leading to more productive units.
But life is about more than working hard and learning, however rewarding that may be. Our units also need some time to spend on enjoying the fruits of their labour and some of the other fruits life has on offer. Part of this is ensuring the next generation firstly, exists, and secondly, is educated well enough to lead productive and happy lives. In World Turtles, this will be covered by Leisure activities and, yes, our units will eventually bring forth and raise children. I’ve created a very crude Leisure station to show the functionality. Instead of keeping track of progress as for the work and research tasks, the mechanic here would be that units should be allowed enough opportunity for leisure throughout their lifetimes to keep them happy and motivated. If the player can successfully manage this, the reward will be happy and productive offspring to increase the empire’s population and future potential.