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[aheydeck]

LATEST SCREENSHOT





Good evening good folks of TigSource!

I'm currently working on a sequel of Smooth Operators: Call Center Chaos (http://store.steampowered.com/app/262900/), which was released on Xbox360, Steam, App Store and on PC disc in german speaking countries.

Project name: Smooth Operators 2;
Genre: Business / Supply Chain Simulation;
Target platforms: PC, Linux, Mac, XboxOne, PS4;
Game engine: Unity3D


So basically, Smooth Operators, for those of you who haven't heard of it, is a call center simulator game in 2D with pixel art, á la tower building game.
Sounds pretty dull, but it somehow managed to get good reviews, and sold pretty well actually.

So the idea for Smooth Operators 2 is to build on the gameplay of Smooth and expand on the idea. Very much.

Instead of running only a call center, you'd be running an entire supply chain corporation, which includes Head Offices, a Production Plant, and a Warehouse.

You play a CEO character, and you have to construct your facilities to house the head office, sales, janitorials, project management, human resources, et cetera et cetera.
You also have to construct your production plant and warehouse, and on top of it all, you have to hire all type of worker classes that are needed to run a company, and this would include:

• Salesmen
• Project managers
• Team leaders
• HR Managers
• Custodials
• Warhouse operators
• Production operators
• Marketing staff
• Customer service staff
• Support staff
• Mechanics
• IT Staff
• ... and a lot more.

The idea is that you have to construct your building and your company from the ground and up. You have to hire and balance your workforce and make sure that you meet sales quotas, production quotas and so on.
On top of this, there is the usual components of balancing your staff's different needs.

In the spirit of making a successor to a 2D pixel game, i'm this time doing a 3D voxel game. =)
However, the assets will probably be normal 3D models, and only modeled/drawn as voxel art.

I hope to build a better game than Smooth 1 was (although i'm very happy with how it turned out), a better looking game, and a game that handles better.
I decided to use Unity instead of XNA/Monogame, because you get so many different types of components for free, and there is a whole lot of stuff in the Asset Store that you'd be way better off just purchasing and integrating into your game, than coding everything from scratch.

So here are some screenshots of the art from the game so far;

Managers office:


Debugging scene


Reception area:




So, this is the start of my devlog, i'll write another post tomorrow to tell you about my progress! =)
Thanks for reading! =)

[aheydeck]

So what have i done already, and where do i stand?

Construct a building
Since this is a tower builder type of game, then this is the first thing that haveto work. The buildings will fit into a virtual 2d grid.
Work done
You can place a building block, reception, stairs and elevators, and it basically looks like this:

Art
I've already shown you a bunch of the art in the first post above. I'll be using voxel art, because i think that voxelart can be really beautiful, it's easy for me as a non-artist to make my own adjustments as well as basic small stuff. I've gotten in touch with a talented frenchman to do the concept art that im using now. We keep in touch and he's agreed to continue to do the conceptart for the game during development. I also need to get ahold of a ui designer as well, but i see that more like a "beginning of the end of development" type of action. I dunno, might be good to do it already, but naaaaa...


Pathfinding
I used my own implementation of a* pathfinding algorithm for Smooth 1, but since this is now 3D/2.5D i needed something a bit more complex. I'll be using The A* Pathfinding Project for Unity. I already set it up and made sure that it suits my needs, and it does. I believe that the amount of professionality it will bring to the overall feel and look of the game is tremendous also.
Besides, it's dirt cheap considering what you get.


AI Character simulation
Omigawwwd, i have so many ideaaaas! I'll probably implement 3 of them. =)
Together with the pathfinding i have a working ai that adhere to a working schedule, in terms of going to and from work, as well as a start of a state machine for the AI. I'm still figuring this one out, because if i'm gonna implement all ideas that i have, i haveto be quite vigilant  in terms of thinking shit through before i implement it. If i get it wrong in the beginning, i'll probably have to rewrite a ton of classes and structures.
But the basic idea is that the ai character simulation will contain a schedule system for going to and from work and so on, but also some type of needs system that will handle stuff like happiness, hunger, toiletneeds, working out, coffee, and a bit of other type of procrastinations that will take place when the player has been idle for like 10 minutes or something like that. =)


Saving/Loading
Well, almost done anyway. This is the first time using Unity, and at first i thought i could just serialize all data from a gameobject and deserialize it back again. But no.
So i'm writing a data class layer that will contain all necessary data about a building or npc-object. Almost done.


What am i working on now?

• Save/Load. I might rewrite this a bit. If i use static building object/prefabs, i can just use the system i have now. If i want to make the building a bit more... editable, like let the player to move the furniture around a bit, then i have to rewrite a bit of my code there.
• Expand on the character state machine, as well as define all worker classes.
• Complete the elevator functionality in the pathfinding

So back to work! Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, feel free!

[aheydeck]

After a bit of play with the shader and camera, i got it looking pretty good! So this is ingame screenshot of the managers office, zoomed in!

[aheydeck]

Heyyyyy!

No screenshot today. Nothing really has changed visually so far. Although, i've been at it with the a* project in unity to try to implement it entirely. And with that, i mean with elevators, stairs and multiple floor that are created runtime.
Not an easy thing to do, but finally with a lot of tweaking in the settings of the graph component and with a couple of grid connections, it seems to work just fine! I really love that unity addon!

Also, i've been modeling the data objects, as well as designed the database that will hold the data for the business simulation. I think that a database would be a good place to temporarily store all the orders that will be created ingame, to be able to display charts and handle statistics in an easier way. It also allows for datadumping of statistics, which i think could be useful.

But now, it's time to rewrite the building saving code. For the... like... 4th time.

Btw, speaking of rewriting code... isn't it funny how when you rewritten a code for the 4th time, it's like 3 times shorter and 5 times more efficient! =)

[doihaveto]

Hey, I remember Smooth Operators! That was a fun (and funny) game. 

I'd be curious to hear how you're changing the gameplay in the new one?

[aheydeck]

Hey, I remember Smooth Operators! That was a fun (and funny) game. 
I'd be curious to hear how you're changing the gameplay in the new one?

There are a bunch of things i'm going to change. There will be more to micromanage in terms of staff, but there will also be a lot more macromanaging with bulk actions. I'm also hoping on being able to implement a behavioural system that takes different simple personality traits into account as well. If i reach my goal, there will be the same amount of managing the social aspect of your company as well as the business side of things.

The gameplay itself though will probably be quite similar, except that you're now managing a complete company with head office, manufacturing plant and a warehouse. So i'm moving away from the call center thing, and focus on a more generic manufacturing company. Hopefully that will appeal to a wider audience. =)

[aheydeck]

So i just thought i'd share a video from when i was testing the pathfinding system earlier today, i hope you enjoy! =)

[BananasGoMoo]

This is cool, I remember I bought the first game on steam (well Desura and got a Steam Key I think?).


Anyways, I was hoping you could answer a question. As far as I know, in the previous game, it was never fixed so that if Windows had the mouse buttons flipped, the game would also flip them. It was always just Left click = Left click. I posted about it once on the steam discussions for the game here, but never heard any reply. I assume since you're using Unity now, it'll be automatic, but I'd just like to mention it at this point, before development gets too far.

Anyways, I'm excited for this second game!

-BGM

[aheydeck]

This is cool, I remember I bought the first game on steam (well Desura and got a Steam Key I think?).


Anyways, I was hoping you could answer a question. As far as I know, in the previous game, it was never fixed so that if Windows had the mouse buttons flipped, the game would also flip them. It was always just Left click = Left click. I posted about it once on the steam discussions for the game here, but never heard any reply. I assume since you're using Unity now, it'll be automatic, but I'd just like to mention it at this point, before development gets too far.

Anyways, I'm excited for this second game!

-BGM

Hey! Ya, i might have dropped the ball on that matter for Smooth 1. However, as i went through the Smooth forum to get gamer-requirements for Smooth 2, i have noted this and it's on the to do list for Smooth 2. =)

[BananasGoMoo]

Hey! Ya, i might have dropped the ball on that matter for Smooth 1. However, as i went through the Smooth forum to get gamer-requirements for Smooth 2, i have noted this and it's on the to do list for Smooth 2. =)

Nice!

[aheydeck]

Here's another design prototype. It's getting there. =)

[aheydeck]

Well, it's been a while since i visited this thread, but i thought i'd show you a short video of my progress.
A lot has happened since, and if there's interest, i'll tell you all about it! =)

So here's a video, i hope you like it, and please gimme any feedback you might have!

VIDEO




SCREENSHOT