Devlog #1 - Numbers everywhereHi everyone! I decided to start writing bi-monthly devlogs to help us stay motivated. Pardon in advance for my wonky grammar
The cities of the rainbowLast months were mainly spent working on worldbuilding, lists of items and prices. We decided to have seven main cities, each one with a local product:
The blind priests of the sun-god live in the
red city in the desert. They sell mirrors, telescopes, and other intricate examples of
glasswork.
The
orange city is a giant tank from the Old War, now home of countless rascals and swindlers. Its inhabitants use the still-working engines' power to cut and carve
wood.
The
yellow city is your tipical medieval fantasy town, but with bees.
Bee products like honey and wax are the main source of income.
It's also the starting point of the adventure - we liked the idea of greeting the player with a familiar setting, so s/he can learn the game mechanics before starting to worry about the lore.
The
city of green is the home of the plant people, and of wizard-botanists capable of changing vegetables in strange and endearing ways. They grow plants for
food and much more.
In the
city with cyan-colored walls, people make
cloth from seaweeds and dye them with crushed crustaceans.
They also catch fishes that also are books.
Indigo city lies between the mountains, and is full of miners extracting
stone and minerals from the bellows of the Earth.
Geothermal energy was abolished when the world became Still. Nobody knows exactly how the mining process is fueled.
Violet is not a city. It's a lost army.
The cold killed their mounts and their engines and their hometown. They now live in the frozen carcasses of their war-beasts. They pray strange gods and mingle with the spider people.
They sell
informations you don't really want to know.
Items and categoriesWe,'re trying to give strong pros and cons to each item category, so the gameplay won't be reduced to a simple "buy low, sell high".
For example, stone is really heavy and will slower your cart, but is highly profitable. Food, on the other hand, is simple to store and easy to sell everywhere, but can spoil during your journey (so carrying stone and food together is actually a very bad idea!)
Setting the priceI finally started programming the core of our game: the
bartering system.
For now, whenever you ask for an item's price, the game looks at:
-
Where you are. each city has its local product, other easily available items, and rare/difficult to obtain products. The game check the item's category and multiply its base price according to the place.
-
The vendor. Some are greedier than others.
EXAMPLELet's say you want to buy candles in the red city.
The item base price is 50 gold. The red city is near to the yellow one, so candles are a common good. The base price is raised only to 120%, so 60 is the medium price of candles in the red city.
A common vendor in the market street might raise this price by another 5%, because he's greedy like that. A wholesaler could instead lower the price, but will only accept orders in bulk.
If you decide to buy something, you'll have to make an offer. Bartering will then begin, but we'll talk abut this in two weeks!
Fancy watercolor of the week: meet the young heiress of the Hivemind Corporation.