[Dev Log] The First Great Brand War

[infamous space turtle]

Hey yall, I have two ideas.

 

They came through the floor (or maybe Momazon Prime): You manage a supermarket in a post apocalyptic hellscape. Tonally it's a smash up of bland corporate chain stores with ghoulish anarchic wasteland oddities. Gameplay is sort of a tycoon ish thing mixed with a tower defense mixed with rimworld. 

 

The first great brand war: You must infect a city with your propaganda/advertising. A kind of black humor vibe as you assist your corporation in its latest territorial gain. Choosing different infection styles, building loyal cells to spread your message, "customer" enforcement etc.. A bit like that infection game or something. Top down and probably abstracted visually. 

 

Anyway I'll sleep on it and then see tomorrow. 

 

 

It has been decided, let the brand war commence. 

 

 

Diversifier: Crowd Source. 

 

If you want to suggest or make an advert heres what i'm looking for (at least at the moment). 

 

Name: "Mr Sticky Buns Burgers". 

Slogan: "A Tasty Treat Just For You! It's Mr Sticky Buns Delectable Hams."

 

Image: If you want to provide an image feel free but I can probably make one if need be. Don't worry too much about style, just shoot for flat and simple. Maybe i'll post a colour palette once I get the visual nailed down.

 

In the future I might have more things to input.

 

[Ben X]

The brand one sounds more interesting to me, especially if the propaganda is all readable (maybe you could crowd source them, or parts of them for a random generator, on the forums).

[atte]

Yeah the Brand War is an intriguing concept, from the aesthetic standpoint I'd like to see how you'd realise it. Thinking about this I remembered fierydrake's cool cyberpunk game Bogost in the Shell from WJ1.

https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam/rate/24532

 

"Supermarket in a post apocalyptic hellscape" brings Dawn of the Dead to mind (which is not a bad thing).

 

 

[infamous space turtle]

Yup I agree with yall. I know how id do the supermarket one so its probably more of a sure thing but the Brand War is a bit more exciting. Im going to do some planning and see. 
Haha yeah thats potentially the kind of vibe id go for ^.  Customers shuffle in from the darkness to peruse the well lit supermarket aisles . 

[infamous space turtle]

I've chosen the brand war. Now for more planning.

Oh and also some base goals:
1. Slicker UI - This game will lean on UI so i'm looking at Zero51 and really trying to get my menus up to scratch. 

2. Is a Gamey Game - Every game idea I have seems to be more a tone and visual moment than an actual set of mechanics. I want to focus on it feeling more like a game with actual determinable consequences. My first one, though unfinished, was kinda mushy and relied a lot on style.

3. Realistic Scope - I have already failed so HA. 

4. Is actually fun -  Fingers crossed. 

[infamous space turtle]

[infamous space turtle]

Brand research googling for inspiration.

 

I think i'll go for that cutesy flat look. I want to go dark places as you progress so a kind of false optimism in the art style might be really effective. 

[Nappi]

I'm really interested to see what this ends up being!

[infamous space turtle]

Me too haha. 

So after a day in photoshop trying to pull together a UI/visual style test I still haven't made anything good looking in that kind of style.

 

However I was looking at shaders to use and I came across a pixel shader which combined with my bad models made a really unpleasant character. 

 

 

 

Instead i'm thinking I could lean into the ugliness and embrace it, as the game progresses it gets more and more broken and gross.

 

I don't know though, it could be really interesting to purposefully explore ugliness but its also not very nice for the player... But im not sure I have the skills to pull of the sweet visuals I was after... 

Ill think about it for now. 

[infamous space turtle]

It begins

 

 

Also I invoke the Crowd Source Diversifier.

 

 

If you want to suggest or make an advert heres what i'm looking for (at least at the moment). 

IE

Name: "Mr Sticky Buns Burgers". 

Slogan: "A Tasty Treat Just For You! It's Mr Sticky Buns Delectable Hams."

 

Image: If you want to provide an image feel free but I can probably make one if need be. Don't worry too much about style, just shoot for flat and simple. Maybe i'll post a colour palette once I get the visual nailed down.

 

In the future I might have more things to input. 

 

[infamous space turtle]

Alright first real update. 

 

 

Behold, the worst UI design ever to grace your screen!

I wont be keeping it, its just temp for the mo (as is everything else).

 

Whats going on in the gif is im demonstrating poster placement orientation.

You can also see a character walking randomly around. 

 

Heres an actual placement of a poster. 

 

Here's the very undeveloped ad customize menu. You cycle through product types and can change the wording for each product. Each message will resonate with the customers in different ways. 

 

 

This is the only model that isn't a temp, I based it off a starswars droid thing.  Its role will soon be revealed. 
 

 

Implemented wise so far I have:

 

-Your corporation will be called "The Red Corporation", i'm not sure if this in something already but I like the orwellian sound of it. 

 

-Characters that can walk about and observe advertisement posters.

 

-Customizable Ads.

 

-Character "professions" that determine how susceptible they are to certain adverts. This is one area i'm really uncertain about, currently its stuff like "profession = CEO" which means they prefer Adverts for expensive watches, dont like things associated with low income people etc. I don't like such clumsy stereotyping but I need some sort of metric to base a customers receptiveness on. I'm thinking of switching to a sort of rimworld style like "This character is paranoid" and therefore likes products about safety.

Or maybe I could ditch the whole thing and just have each customer be equally receptive? It'd save a big headache. 

 

-Iv decided to go 3D Orthographic. 3D is faster for me generally so I won't do top down. I'm using unity's AI system and I intend on just locking everything down to the Navmesh. The Orthographic gives it this kind of big brother feeling which I quite like. 

 

-Brand loyalty rating . Customers will gain a slight loyalty boost if they pass a poster they like. The rating spans from -100 to 100 and returns to zero over time. 

 

-Money system. Currently there's a periodic check where based on a customer's Loyalty rating a certain amount of money is generated. This is kinda weird, I intend on having two resources Money and Zealot Power. Money is the common one, Zealot power becomes more useful as the game progresses. Zealots are extreme in their brand commitment and there will be push back to their activities. 

 

Anyway i'm feeling pretty overwhelmed and don't know what's next. So here's some things I think I could do. 

 

Zealots, shills and fans- different Loyalty levels that offer various perks. 

 

More advertisement types.

 

Less temp art.

 

Authority figures/enemy brands to counteract player action. 

 

more but I got to go to work

 

 

 

[Nappi]

Wow, nice progress! The poster placement system seems really good already.

[infamous space turtle]

Got a lot done today, feeling less anxious. 

 

first up

 

This customer has 90 brand loyalty (out of 100), this means the game categorises them as a Zealot(name may change).

Today I got a basic command system in place. So far I only have  a goto location command but the frameworks in for more. 

 

 

Next we have character interaction. This system is for environmental interaction, largely context dependent and mostly for stuff like sitting on public benches and chatting with other npc. So far i've got a simple bench sitting interaction, its a tiny bit janky trying to get them all lined up but im happy. 

 

 

Finally I cleaned up the placement stuff and some of the behind the scenes code. Now there's more visual feedback for placing posters. I also got  a better handle on what my awful code was doing so hopefully this won't all collapse on me as it gets more complexe. 

 

Still haven't touched the art stuff. Kinda afraid of spending hours in blender and then throwing out the model because it sucks. Time is very limited for me so that's kinda why im putting the raw game first, I usually try get more visual stuff done first. 

 

Anyway I must go now, good. bye. 

 

 

 

[gerbilsinspace]

ughhh this looks so good!

[Zirrrus]

Wow, this is looking amazing already!

[root]

On 12/14/2017 at 12:50 AM, infamous space turtle said:

 

 

 

 

I hate this. It's perfect.

[infamous space turtle]

haha thanks. 

 

spent a few hours working on a conversation system only to throw it out

:  (

 

 

 

I havnt done a huge amount on account of work but I got a few little things. 

 

a flyer bomb ad type which is one of the cheaper and least effective ads, only lasting a short duration. 

 

 

an induction booth. a late game very invasive booth that converts anyone who enters it into a 100% loyal zealot. currently fully functional but I don't have enter exit animations so i haven't included and brainwashing in the gif.

I expect this kind of ad type won't be viable in the early game, there will be some kind of push back from an authority. Maybe the local government. I was thinking to use these you have to buy out the politicians or something. It'll also be very expensive. 

 

[infamous space turtle]

Nothing worth picturing today, itd just be more tmp UI stuff. 

- Brand partner unlock tree: A five tiered three category unlock tree, where you can bribe officials for getting rid of pesky laws.

- Authority Characters: Basically a beat cop who will destroy anything deemed unlawful. Still haven't implemented character vs character fighting though.

-Behind the scenes stuff.

 

Anyway sorry this devlogs been a bit boring, i'm trying to get the raw stuff in first so there's not a lot visually to show. Also i'm not getting as much done due to time constraints. 

 

 

[infamous space turtle]

Spent yesterday and today trying to make art assets but everything sucks. ARhhhhhhhh. Two days wasted... fuck!. 

I'm not feeling good at all about the project right now, if I can't get going visually it's going to really hard to keep interested.

 

[hedgefield]

It looks really good already though!

[theschap]

Please don't give up! I'm loving this on every level thus far!

[Nappi]

Yup. I can totally relate to losing interest all of a sudden, but hopefully you will find motivation again, because what you have shown so far is really good!

[infamous space turtle]

Thanks yall, yup im not going to stop. Back to jamming !

[infamous space turtle]

Alright iv got some visual stuff sort of working, at least its evoking something. Still no UI though but im glad to feel a bit better about the aesthetic. 

 

 

Im going with a really dark default for now.

 

Here's a cloud passing over(its just a bunch of enlarged garbage bags for now). I was thinking I could change it into a zeppelin that eventually you can advertise on. 

 

 

Dark and ominous, I'm hoping its not too confusing. 

 

The darkness of the colors really emphasizes adverts. 

 

 

 

[fabian]

I like that aesthetic very much!