next »

[ColePowered]

It's been almost a week since the kickstarter ended, and what a week it's been! I've mostly been continuing work on the game- the building count now stands at 55. But more importantly, I've been collecting lots of great feedback from the preview version.

There's no shortage of good suggestions, that's for sure. There are lots of little confusing elements that I need to clear up in the final game- things which are unclear in the tutorial, or gameplay elements that are confusing at first. Thanks for pointing those out, when you've been making a game for a long time things like this become invisible. It's valuable feedback.

I've been putting requested changes I think are good (which are 90% of them!) Into a list I can work down. I'll share with you some significant ones in this update.

I'll start with UI changes, proposed by Joel Finch. Joel even went out his way to do some mock-ups of his ideas, which I think are great.



The main differences here are much clearer +/- squares. In the preview version, the closer to 0 the tile value is, the closer to white it is. Values become blue or red as they increase or decrease. This all sounds very well, but as Joel pointed out, most of the time values are quite low, so they stay very close to white- the only distinguishing feature being a '-' sign. By assigning a clear red for - scores and blue for + scores, things will become much clearer.

He also suggested having the empty tile scores lay flat against the isometric plane, which I like a lot as you can then distinguish them more easily from building scores.



Lastly, there's a clearer highlight when a spacial effect applies to a point scoring building. I love those arrows! He also made the point that displaying individual building scores is not strictly necessary in the 'normal' game mode, so I think I shall include a toggle for them in the top right button panel.

Moving on to some game mechanics, there has been lots of input regarding the 'buy phase', and deck building. I'm going to give the system a bit of an overhaul, and try some new things with it. One thing I think is a must is having an option to delete any card in the deck list in exchange for a 'buy', instead of adding one of the four cards. The game needs more control in deck building as at the moment it can feel a bit aimless later in the game. I want to make the process more dynamic and fun- it needs to be easier to swap cards and upgrade them instead of just making a huge deck with some good cards and a lot of average ones!

I'm also thinking about having an option to gain a life by using a 'buy', up until a maximum. To stop this becoming a bit too easy, it needs to be quite strictly limited though. I've got some other ideas to test when it comes to deck building- some more developed than others. It's a tricky thing to get right, and in the preview version, it's definitely an area that needs work.

I'd like to mention the preview build was really only meant to feature the 'basic' cards- there's a lot of cool stuff planned for the full game, which will also help the deck building be more dynamic.

I'll probably continue sharing the suggestions at a later date. There's lots more, but posting all of them would take too long to write. So thank you all for your feedback! If you've posted it here, messaged/emailed or posted on the forum- I'm pretty sure I've read it and it's very likely your feedback is in my 'list of suggestions' file.

This week I'm also going to be starting the implementation of the versus mode. I have a hunch this may actually be the game mode most people will like to play above the current one. It's shaping up to be really cool already, and as soon as there's some AI to play against it's going to be something special. That AI is no easy task in a game like this though, I have my work cut out for me.

[ColePowered]

Just a handfull of new buildings...

[eblomquist]

Those are some very pretty models - love the palatte as well.

[ColePowered]

Thank you eblomquist!

I'm planning to post the new buildings every week. Plenty more to do! Here are this week's...

[doihaveto]

This looks amazing! Looking forward to how the game will develop!

[ColePowered]

Here's this weeks additions:

[ColePowered]

Hi all! I hope you had a great Christmas! Apologies for the slightly late update- I have been continuing work on the game throughout the holidays- it's just been one of those few days where I'd rather work than write about working if that makes any sense! Everything is going well though. I'm hesitant to say the project is ahead of schedule as there's still so much to do, but it's definitely on schedule.

I'm very pleased to say there's been some important progress on the versus mode. After spending a lot of time on it this month, I have a basic functioning AI to play against- which is already quite effective! It can't deck build yet, which is quite a significant part of the game, but it can play nicely with the starting deck. Versus mode is exactly how I've envisioned it so far- it's like city building Chess, but where you can screw each other over! It's really exciting to get to this stage because it was the largest element of the game which was unimplemented at the time of the kickstarter campaign/preview build. I've said it before, but I wouldn't be surprised if it became the game's 'primary' mode. I'm certainly aiming to build a significant part of the story campaign around it. It's a bit more thought/strategy intensive than the solo mode, so I think the two complement each other nicely.

I'm designing the AI to be interchangable with couch-multiplayer players. You can play local multiplayer with up to 4 people on 2 teams, and have any of the slots taken by AI or players. I want concrete jungle to be a game you can play sat back on your sofa in your living room with friends as well as a game you can 'sit forward' with on your PC.

I'm still in the process of refining the characters, although I have the final 8 finalized now. Those of you familiar with the Preview build have briefly been introduced to characters Laney and mayor Rick Selfridge. The characters will be able to acquire unique cards for their decks throughout a game, which will go towards solving the problem of something to play towards I mentioned last week. Each will be geared towards specific tactics as well, they should make things really interesting!

Lastly, and somewhat 'least', I've been revamping some old code from early in the project. It's almost not worth mentioning, but it is time consuming, and that's what I've been doing today. As the game gets more and more complex, I need the foundations to be watertight.

I haven't been working on any new buildings this week, as I hit my month's quota of 80 last week, so I'm having a bit of a break. Not to fear, I shall start afresh next year on some more buildings! I did cunningly hold some of my previous work back for times like these though, so here, have an Asylum:


Needs a bit more detail perhaps, but you get the idea!
See you all in the new year!

 

[ColePowered]

I've been celebrating the new year by making some more tiny buildings. My original plan was to get a large chunk of them done this month, but I've also been caught up with re-coding/re-designing some of the game's internals. I may continue that and save some more building work for the coming months. Either way I'd like to get the building count up to 100 at least by February.

Versus mode is still going well. This week I've revamped the scoring system- it's a bit slicker and clearer. It now displays your total + score in the middle of the screen for a brief amount of time and also explains how that number is reached. Currently it's the number of points in the column squared. I chose this way because it rewards creating a high scoring building as opposed to just making the target, and in order to do that you've got to take some risks with your building placement. It's also a technique I used in the original MegaCity. I've got some plans to revamp the residential buildings too, but I'll talk about that at a later date.

The way the versus mode works is the two teams compete for each column. They take it in turns to place buildings- currently 3 per turn although this could change. The buildings are then owned by that team- so a house placed by team 1 will collect points in the column for team 1. But the surrounding effects are global, so you can positively and negatively effect each other's buildings.

Each team has their individual target- the first to pass their target 'wins' the column, which means they get all the points in it (whether from their own buildings or the opponent's). If both teams are above their target, the highest score in the column wins. If both teams are below their target and the column fills, it automatically clears and score is divided up according to the point ownership in the column.

To stop any + points being immediately cancelled out by a - from the other team, I've also introduced a 'land ownership' system. If a team owns a tile, only they can place their buildings there. Right now in testing I have it so top 2 rows are 'owned' by team 1, and the bottom 2 owned by team 2. This leaves the middle two rows as a kind of free-for-all territory where either team can place their buildings. I've also made it so the left (column in play) automatically removes ownership on empty tiles.

I've found this to be a good balance so far- it gives each team just enough room for their buildings to interact while also having a 'safe' area where you can build your points. I'm also testing with other ownership setups- having the owned land in the middle rows etc. I expect I'll have it variable in the full game too, as changing the automatic ownership rules changes how you play the versus mode quite dramatically! On top of this it also opens the door for versus-specific cards where you can grab land off each other!

I'll sign off for this week with the latest building- the Zoo!

[jlauener]

This looks very cool. Mixing city building with deck building is a very clever idea!

[davidp]

This looks seriously rad

Keep up the good work

[danieru]

Today I was watching a lets play of Concrete Jungle and I have to say I was going crazy at the youtubers decisions. It made me want to grab the controller out of his hand and play myself. 

[ColePowered]

Thanks guys!

Danieru- ha  I definitely need to do some improvements to the tutorial in the preview version, some people get really confused when they first play it!

Here's this week's update:

Progress on buildings is going really well as you'll see below (we're up to 90 now). Progress on VS mode is also pretty steady.

This week I've started revamping the deck building mode. I'm implementing then testing some pretty big changes which will answer some of the problems with deck building I mentioned a few updates ago. The biggest changes being that the deck building is no longer forced upon you- instead you can open the card shop screen at any time. And also there are going to be other things to get with your card buy points, which are linked to playable character traits. It's going to open up the game a lot and make deck building much more fun and balanced! I can't wait to reveal some more specifics, that will happen soon.

I'll sign off, as always, with some new buildings fresh from the Concrete Jungle building factory:


The Stadium

A Museum

Some more Art Deco Skyscrapers...

[ColePowered]

Hello folks!

That week sure went fast! There's not a lot to report, so I'll keep it brief. Progress has been steady, I've still been working on some design changes that I talked about previously- making the deck building much tighter.

I've settled on making a lot more 'one shot' cards- cards that you use once then they are gone from your deck. I originally thought that just the very top buildings would fall into this category, but by having many more of them work like this, it allows the game to be much more fluid. It makes the deck size more manageable which is key, and enables said buildings to be more powerful without upsetting the balance. Plus it mixes the game up a lot as you'll typically get to play with a much greater variety of buildings. There will still be plenty of 'cycle-through' cards too, they will be the 'bread and butter' type buildings- dependable and useful but not overpowered.

Here's the week's new buildings- the count approaching 100 now!

[ColePowered]

A good week for development this week. I've been finalizing some of the big gameplay tweaks I've mentioned in previous updates and I'm pleased to say they offer some pretty big improvements to the gameplay. The game is now much tighter- the deck building is much more manageable, and it no longer feels like your deck size is spiraling out of control. Because you can choose to spend points on character skills, it also means the economy points feel more valuable- which makes decision making more compelling. I'm really pleased with the direction the game is heading in now!

There's still more work to be done on this, I've got to add in some more things like multiple column clearance bonuses and finalize character skills. Once I have one character skill set fully working I can really start tuning things properly before fleshing out the others.

The versus mode has taken a back seat for now while I implement these changes- it got to a point where it really made sense to do the above before coding the rest of AI, as any changes made after could result in me having to re-design elements of it.

Also this week I implemented a 'card info' system that I had planned since the start. You can now right click on any card at any time and a pop up will appear to tell you exactly what the card does. You can mouse over stats or text on the card to show these details. It should be a huge help when you're first starting out in the game, and eliminate confusion around certain aspects of the cards.



I've also got some awesome buildings to show off this week, and with them the 100 buildings milestone has been reached!


The NYC art deco skyscrapers are proving popular so here's another!


Here we have the game's Concert Hall.


I thought I should balance things out a bit and introduce some more modern architecture too. I'm just calling this one 'the monolith'.


And lastly, a rural building, a humble Farmer's Market.

[ColePowered]

Hello everybody!

Another busy week, with a good amount of progress! I can now finally talk in a bit more detail about the gameplay tweaks and changes I've been making- up until recently they were still very much a work in progress, but now many have been implemented and are working nicely I think I can finally share with you some more specifics...

So part of the deck-building revamp was re-working some of the residential mechanics. Residential buildings collect points, which makes them some of the most important cards in the game. In the preview version there were a range of point-collecting buildings ranging from the basic house, the 2x variants (townhouse, duplex), the 3x (tenement) and x4 (apartment tower). Here's some of the changes I've made to them:

-Houses are pretty much the same, but due to the new system of gaining character skills, the automatic addition of house cards has been changed slightly (more on that soon- it'll be easier to explain when I outline these changes in a future dev blog update).

-Townhouses also remain the same. They collect 2x points but are also automatically added to your deck instead of houses after a certain point. They were quite essential to being able to stay in the game, and I didn't want to leave that to the randomness of the card screen. Plus- houses became next to useless towards the mid-late game, why punish the player by giving them loads of boring houses when you can have townhouses instead?

-Duplexes used to be identical to the townhouse and collect 2x points. The original idea was to have another double point building to increase the chances of being able to acquire them through the card screen. This isn't really needed any more, so the Duplex card has been changed to be similar to the house (x1 score), but it starts with a score of +2. It's also a 'one shot' card -of which there are now many- which means the card is removed from your deck after it's played. To compensate, it's now also more common and has a lower cost.

-The 3x and 4x cards I felt were a bit too powerful, especially as repeating cards. To compensate I've removed the 3x card completely. I do have some (currently 1) 4x card- but it's a legendary one-shot card. Quadruple points is super powerful!

But in addition to this I've implemented an awesome new concept- 'tower' buildings. Tower cards can be built on top of each other in addition to being able to be built on empty land. These can be really useful as any player of megacity or the preview version will know- space quickly becomes the most important resource in the game.



So the residential tower card is essentially like a house, but it also gives +1 to itself, and you can build it on top of other residential tower buildings (stacking up to a maximum of 6). Of course there are some unique graphics to visualize the stacking:




And why stop at residential towers? I've also implemented the same concept with the 'office block' building- you can build it on top of itself to save space and build an office tower. I'm currently trying to figure out an industrial version -perhaps the storage silos from a few updates ago.

These have proven to be some great additions/changes so far. Success in-game is more under your control now, and the player has some interesting new options available to them. The super powerful 4x point buildings will still be available for ridiculous scores, but they will be rare and limited- best use them wisely when you come across them!

I'll share some of the other key changes in the coming weeks.

[ColePowered]

Hello all!

A brief update this week. I’ve gone back to working on the versus mode AI now the core mechanics are finalized, and it’s coming along really well. I’ve mentioned before that making an AI play this game effectively has been a massive challenge, but I definitely think the most complicated work is done now.

There are so many variables for it to consider when playing: Not just the +/- area effects, but how important every stat associated with the card is, how badly the ai wants to cycle through it’s deck, how much to value the elimination of it’s opponents points vs advancing it’s own, how much space is left in the column, etc etc. That’s only scratching the surface and not including the deck building aspect of the game, which is my task this week. All of the variables the AI considers are easily changed, which means I can create different AI personalities easily- something I’ll be utilizing for the game’s different characters.

I also have an awesome artist working on visually developing the rest of the characters for the game- I can’t wait to show you lot some of the personalities you’ll be playing with and against!

Building development is slower but steady, it shall pick up again once the AI is in place as that’s been such a huge part of the workload this week. But I’ve still found the time to make a cool military base!

[ColePowered]

Hello everybody!

A bumper-sized update this week! I figured I'd share with you the changes I've made to the deck building/card buy system- there were a few problems with the mechanics in the preview build which needed to be improved. I've been testing these changes since the new year and I've arrived at a system I'm really happy with.


The card buy screen can now be accessed at any time via a button in the top right.

-For starters, you now have complete control over when you spend your 'buys'. In the preview version, the card buy screen would pop up once you had 8 buys- whether you wanted it to or not! The original idea behind this was to keep the players on their toes by forcing decisions on them. However, it soon became clear this made the deck building less fun, and it could often interrupt your train of thought when you were planning out plays. Just letting the player spend their buy points at their own pace is a much better system!


Buildings that can be played over and over in your deck now have the circling arrow icon in the top left. 'One-shot' buildings don't feature this on the card.

-As stated in a previous update, a lot of the cards (especially the more powerful ones) have been changed to 'one shot' cards that are removed from your deck after playing them once. This is a much better system as it stops your deck size from spiraling out of control- which was causing the addition of new cards to feel insignificant and even detrimental.

Another noteworthy change is that your new cards are placed in your pickup pile, not your discard pile- so you should get to play them relatively soon after you've purchased them- a few of you requested that in feedback.

-The default buy screen remains largely the same- a choice between 4 cards. However, I've introduced a system where you work towards more powerful cards rather than them just being 'rare'.


I still need to 'pretty up' the UI on the card shop screen.

You'll notice a new segmented bar at the top. This represents your transition from village to megacity. I haven't decided on what to call this in-game yet, but it's essentially technology progression. Every time you buy a new card from the 4 options in the card shop, this bar increases by 1.


This is what a full tech bar looks like.

The bar is split up into different colours which represents the different classes of building. In the preview build I used these colours to signify rarity- that's now been changed to a tech level. It's pretty simple- once you reach the green portion of the bar, green class cards start to appear as options in the card shop. Once you reach the blue portion of the bar, blue class buildings are unlocked. Then purple, and finally yellow (landmark) class buildings- which are the most powerful in the game.

There are also little house icons above the progress bar- once you reach these a house will be added to your deck (replacing the automatic house-add system in the preview build, which worked by checking the ratio of residential buildings in your deck).

Now for the playable characters! My original intention was for each character to have a few unique cards available to them. The problem with integrating them into the card buy system was the randomness- what if your character specific cards simply didn't appear? I didn't want the character-unique cards to be ruled by luck of the draw.

To solve this I created a new way to spend 'buys'. Each playable character has a skill tree completely unique to them. They are filled with unique buildings, cards or sometimes passive or instant effects that can also be added to your deck or triggered. These skills are also spit up into the colour coded tech levels and become available for purchasing accordingly. They can be purchased for a point instead of one of the random 4 cards, but crucially, the purchase of these do not add to the tech/progress bar itself. This means you'll have to strike a balance between the random cards in the card shop and investing in your perhaps more powerful character skills/unique buildings.


A work-in-progress skill tree. I have all the skills planned out, but not all are functional yet.

The skill tree brings some much needed consistency to deck building tactics.

This revamp goes a long way to fixing the problem of there not being much to work towards in the game. I'm really pleased with how it's playing now. There is still a long way to go -creating the different skill trees in particular is going to be a lot of work even though I have skills planned out.

But this gives me a good segue into the characters themselves. I've recently commissioned the excellent Karl James Mountford to work on visually developing the characters for the game. Graphically, character art has never been one of my strengths- I can render and colour to a decent standard, but I've never been good at conveying a lot of personality through my line work. Karl really excels at this so it's really really exciting to have him on board! I can't wait to show you the game's 8 characters- I shall introduce you to them week-by-week starting soon...

Lastly, here are this weeks new buildings!


The Opera House.

A movie studio!

I realize the game doesn't even have an airport yet, but I couldn't resist putting a launch pad in! I want to make the shuttle launch when the column clears!

[DwarvenArtisan]

Well.. thats probably the most beautiful buildings in this kind of style I've ever seen. Extremely gorgeous!
Also, the idea and concept is great.
And thanks for all the insight on your workflows!
*likelikelike* 

[ColePowered]

Thank you DwarvenArtisan!

It's been a little while since the last update.

GDC & EGX Rezzed

I'll start with some awesome news- GDC is coming up very soon in a few days. Although I myself will unfortunately not be there, a build of Concrete Jungle will make an appearance courtesy of Clickteam who will be demoing it at their booth along with some other games. You can find them at booth #736, so be sure to check that out if you're going! I wanted to go myself, but the prices for me to visit were pretty astronomical as I'm based in the UK- I really hope I can go next year.

An event I will be attending however, is EGX Rezzed in London on 12th March. A build of Concrete Jungle will be there also- specific details on that to follow soon.

The GDC build is still without the versus mode as it's still not quite ready (it's very close to being completely functional though). The same goes for the character tech tree. You will be able to explore the tweaked and tightened mechanics that I mentioned last update though along with a load of buildings that have been added since the preview version.

The build at Rezzed will hopefully feature one or both- as I'll be able to work on getting a build ready practically right up until it's time to set up! Which is what I'll be working frantically on this week.

Progress

There's been some decent progress since the last update. All the buildings I've developed graphics for since the new year are now fully-functional in the game, and the AI also knows how to play all of them. How effective it is at playing some specific ones remains to be seen and will certainly require additional work, but the foundations are in-place. That means there are currently 106 buildings functioning in the game! That's excluding the cards which are not buildings.

The first character skill tree is almost done too, and Karl is nearing completion with the character designs which are looking *awesome*. More on the characters very soon.

Once that and work on the AI's ability to progress through the skill tree is complete, the versus mode will be functional. This, along with a proper main menu system, is what I'm waiting on before beginning a new testing phase- which will first be an internal alpha to get a feel for how things are working. I hope to have this going around mid/late-march.

Pending adjustments following that, I'll be looking at doing an opt-in beta for any backers who have access to the preview version. I want it to be opt-in to keep the numbers manageable, but you will be very welcome to access it when the time comes (I shall let you know when through these updates). I would expect that in April. Once the mechanics have been refined I'll move on to focusing on the mac port.

Unfortunately there are no new buildings to sign off with this week as I think there's enough in-game now to shift the focus onto putting everything together as described above. The next 50 will be added gradually as the game comes together some more- a lot of these will be be added for balancing and special character skills. We should have the characters to show you soon as a replacement for the weekly building visuals, but this week there's a bit of a gap in new visuals to show you.

Maybe you can have a look at some of the cool new card mechanics I've added for the new buildings over the last few weeks!

[s0]

love city building, love deck building, love these graphics. great!