Tag: weekly update

Weekly Update #7: Too Big To Fail

Weekly Update #7: Too Big To Fail

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

Sorry for the couple of weeks without update! Been in heavy development mode, and some other things got in the way. But back on track!

Since the last update, I’ve focused on revamping systems, fixing issues, and integrating the new finances display! (Hence too big too fail, a reference which may be 10 years too late but hey you take what you can!)

Finance

Here’s the reworked version of the financial panel:

Financial panel for Boss Golf
Managing has never been this easy!

Now with a sleeker design, and better overview and division of the different aspects of your resort’s finances. All updated on real time, with graphs wherever they are needed, and easier access to the costs of your employees to give you more information when you need to fire them.

Golfer Panels

Golfer panels have also been updated and received the new UI makeover!

Character Panel
He’s not a very good golfer for a CEO.

The needs feature is also getting a revamp for the next update, adding more data regarding the golfers’ likes and dislikes and feedback for your course.

Everything Else

For the rest of the stuff, it’s difficult to show photos since it’s a lot of internal working. So I’ll list the new stuff in here!

  • Building types have been added. Now you can customize the functionality of the buildings based on their types. (Things like the star-rating of your hotels, room fees, quality and type of the menu at your restaurants etc)
  • Roofs are in for your buildings! Three types for now, with a more simplified display. But adds tons of flavor to the buildings!
  • Added more pieces to use on your buildings. They affect the maintenance costs.
  • Fixed issue with Builders trying to build a building while you are still planning them.
  • Fixed decorations not being placeable.
  • Adjusted the physics for the golf gameplay. The ball should act more “realistically” to different terrain types (hurrai physics materials!) and the forces acted upon it for shooting it have been tweaked. Now the loft of each club is used properly.
  • Fixed AI calculations for putting shots. Now they’re taking into account the height difference between the ball and the pin.
  • Buildings will now properly block the navmesh after being built.
  • Character panels now properly reflect the current state of the AI (Idling, moving to lay tiles, waiting etc).
  • Updated text on the game to use TextMeshPro, for much, much, much better readability and resolution. It’s night and day compared to before!
  • Decoration pieces now modify the navmesh properly! AI sometimes got stuck when navigating them, but now they resolve it correctly.
  • Fixed pathfinding to only try and reach the target position if it’s reachable; otherwise just go as far as the path allows. In instances when the target position is necessary (to strike the ball, for example), it will still reach it.
  • Fixed the Landscapers not wanting to do any work when loading a saved game.
  • And more minor things!

Phew! That’s an extensive list! And here’s another image showing off the roofs and more decoration for buildings:

Buildings in Boss Golf
Gabled, Flat, Angled… You can take your pick!

We’re getting closer to a feature complete version of the Early Access build. Working on updating the panels for the decorations and the water, probably unifying them into one unique panel. Same will follow the paths later!

Stay tuned for next week!

-Gus

Weekly Update #3: Divide and Conquer!

Weekly Update #3: Divide and Conquer!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

This past’s week task was focused on expanding the gameplay systems in Boss Golf; mostly revolving around giving the players more things to do and to manage.

First things first: Decay!

Now the landscapers won’t be tasked solely with laying down decoration and tiles: they’re also responsible for maintaining them! The tiles you lay will decay after a set period of time, with special events making them decay faster. The landscapers will try and attend to it to ensure your resort is running in tip top shape. If it decays to 0, it’ll revert to plain grass.

newDecaySystem

Together with that, you can now set the priorities for each type of task for the landscapers! Want a guy solely focused on maintenance? You can do that. Want a guy that prefers doing the landscaping than decoration? You can do that too!

Next up, hole building overhaul!

Until now, the hole building in Boss Golf was very loosely constrained; you just placed things around and saw how they worked. It was nice in the sense that you had a lot of freedom, but not so nice in the sense that it was hard to get information about how you should be building the hole, the outcomes of it etc.

Not anymore, with the new hole building!

divideAndConquer

Now the new panel is pretty much all in one; you place the hole, tee, lay down the tiles, place decoration, all in one go. Then, when you’re happy with what the hole should be, you just accept it and the landscapers will get to work!

New also is the ability to set the “play space” for your hole. This is the area where you can landscape and place decoration and the hole components. This also tells you the estimated play path in the hole (as seen in the yellow line in the picture), which is completely dynamically changing as you shape your hole. It’s only a guideline, though, as golfers will still try and decide for themselves the best way to play it!

But it does act as a marker for out of bounds. Any ball that lands in the fenced-in area is fair game. If it lands outside, oops! Penalty!

After building the hole, you can summon a special NPC to give it an expected rating of play. (you’ll also get this rating adjusted as golfers play through it)

Later on there’ll be a better shot analyzer to give you information about potential shots on different spots in the hole.

This style of building will be expanded to the water hazards and other hazard types too, giving you more control about shaping them, and reading the statistics on them.

On the other side of things, I’ve also begun prototyping the system for building buildings in the game. It’ll be a pretty cool click and drag system with options for customizations, allowing you to build the building the way you want it built.

That’s all for now, folks! Stay tuned for the next weekly update!

Weekly Update #2: Breaking New Ground

Weekly Update #2: Breaking New Ground

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

Following the development path, this week has been focused on extending the new UI to the other elements, implementing the localization pipeline, and beginning the implementation of new workers!

To start off, the new UI!

I’ve decided to take the UI into a more modern and streamlined direction. Gone is the green/white panels, and in are these awesome new darker panels:

resortRating

In there you can see one of the new features, which is the resort rating. It’s based on the categories as seen in the window. Improving these will increase the rating of your resort, which will unlock new things as well as attract better golfers.

Another thing added were more ingame panels:

buyWindow_newUI

These are for when you wanna expand your resort! You can now break new ground and expand your resort to accommodate more holes. Now, the number of holes you can build is limited to the size of your resort. Need the full 18 holes? Gotta need a larger resort!

Next is the localization pipeline. It has been integrated into the panels, and anything that uses text in the game will be connected to a main localization controller that pulls the necessary data. It’s also very easy to update/add new languages! Big win!

And I’ve also begun adding new staff to the resort. Soon there’ll be janitors and foremans roaming around. I’m also implementing the systems ingame to make those characters needed!

That’s all for this week! These updates will tend to come on the weekend, as that’s when I have extra time to boost development!

See you next Sunday!

Weekly Update #1

Weekly Update #1

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks! Long time no see!

It’s been a while since the last update, but rest assured the game is being developed. You may have noticed that the release date has been moved to February; there is a good reason for that, which will be revealed soon!

I have to stop the closed alpha, though, so that I can focus on the development of the game’s systems. Now I have a proper list of things to get done, and will be turning to a closed beta later this year, so you’ll still have a chance to play the game well before release, and provide good feedback!

So what is today’s update about? It’s hard to show, since it’s a lot of under the hood work. Basically:

  • Moved the AI to a node-based state machine system. The previous hardcoded state machine was alright, but would be hell to expand later on. The new system works better.
  • Implemented a proper pathfinding solution. Node-based navigation, with object avoidance and on-the-fly graph updates are also in. This means that the AI will now properly react to changes in the environment, including bridges and whatnot!
  • Changed the terrain system to allow for expansion of the resort and proper culling of chunks you don’t see. Lighten up the processing load by a lot!
  • Began updating the AI to make it more modern.
  • Began implementation of the proper core gameplay loop of the game.

This last point is the most important one and the cause of the lack of updates recently. The game so far has been alright in a sandbox state, without any real goals to search for and whatnot. This is ok, but not optimal, as in the proper game you wanna have a loop of things to do, things to look forward, plans to adjust and whatnot.

So I took quite a bit of time experimenting and thinking ways to create a good core gameplay loop, and I believe I’m getting close to it now. It’ll involve a lot of facets of resort management, which I’ll expand upon at a later time! Gotta keep something!

And here’s a screenshot of the first pass of the new AI:

newUnewI

I’m going for a more minimalist/clean/flat look. The icons will be replaced by flatter versions of what they do. Placeholder for now, but this is the direction I’m thinking of taking things.

Oh and as of now, I’ll be posting weekly updates regarding the progress of the game, to give better visibility on how it is progressing, specially since the alpha is over. Not having to make sure things are compatible with savegames will certainly speed up development!

That’s all for now!

-Gus