Blog 9: Gameplay Concepts

4/25/2023

Welcome back to the Integration Hell development blog.

This week focuses more on concepts for gameplay.

Player - One of the most important things I have been thinking about is the amount of inventory to give the player. Not having enough inventory would be annoying and saturating the player with inventory will make the start of the game boring. My approach is to have the player unlock more inventory as they progress. Larger inventories may be important later in the game but it's ok to have a small one at the start. This can be unlocked through backpacks or something else.

Item Removal - As of now, I do not plan on adding a feature to remove/delete items after they are created. My reasoning for this is that if the player accidentally makes too much of something or as other waste problems, they have to find some conversion or storage solution. I may change this depending on if this ends up making the game less fun.

Item Stacks - Like inventory, I plan on making the maximum stack size of an item start small and increase as the player progresses.

Pollution/Waste - When factory machines run, they will create pollution. This will be invisible but will have a measurable effect on the area around them. Each tile will be absorb pollution and remove some at a fixed rate. However, if a tile becomes fully polluted (by reaching some maximum value of pollution) then it no longer possesses the ability to remove pollution and will spread the pollution to nearby tiles. Waste will function differently than pollution. When machines like chemical processors make products, they will also make waste as a byproduct. As with other items, they cannot be removed from the world and will have to be managed until the player can process waste.

That is all I have for this week. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you next week!

The Checklist:

Tasks:

𐄂 Give the game an icon

✔️ Create gameplay concepts

𐄂 Program player inventory

𐄂 Program items

𐄂 Program pollution/waste

𐄂 Add item system

𐄂 define tile behaviors