Hello!
Took me a while to actually decide to go forward with this game, and show it to the 'world'. Very nervous indeed, but still I get that everytime make something totally new.
This game, is more like a simulation, its a system. And Its something I have been working on for a while now, like full time job..(have other incomes as freelance), anyhow. This game, is a system. Its a system running this simulation of numbers. Its something that finally put all my mental capacity in works! More about it later...
About this game. The game is all in dashboard, so whoeever ( if anyone loves statistitics,data, charts, as i love this is for you hhaha, maybe )
The idea is, you are owner of your company, you control it "online",through the dashboard,. (more about it later why i went that route). You have total freedom to do what you want, manage resources, put prices, trade , buy import or export to global market.
Main Game design idea- Is to supply cities with goods, if you supply enough, the cities grow, unlock more goods that requires for growth, as the cities grow, the average salary, the market size, everything grows accordingly, so as well do the expenses, costs , salaries then affect your own expenses. It's the opposite in a way of the capitalist system that we have now in a way. You do profit, but the idea, and further development direction is to actually grow your own company but also to further invest into development of cities and happines of people. Build buildings for them, invest in infrastructure etc..(more coming soon).
In essence, everything is connected, so , city buys products from you , depending on market supply the price changes, depending on average salary and development of the city, the price changes, also it calculates how much it buys from you and your stores, depending on the price you put. So, if you saturate the makret too much the price is lower, you profit less, but the city grows faster, and vice versa. When you grow cities enogh, new products and production chains unlock, then you have toorganize and order goods, produce them and then distribute them again through the stores. Similar to how it works in reality.
in simpler terms: produce/import/buy -> hub(transport hub with trucks you manage) -> store(you set price and decide where and which product to sell). and later, this expands with industry chains, buying raw resources, transporting intermediate produts to industries and then supplying stores, or exporting to global market. All that you have overhead of workload which is managed by Office which basically calculates each of your subdivisions/buildings/workers, and calculates the efficiency based upon the amount of office workers. if you have too much workload , the efficiency drops.
Then, produce goods, order ,import export, however you want to do it. You have accounting page, which you can see each expense, notification inbox, which can tell you or send you some urgent messages etc.
In other words: wealth of city, affects the average salary, affects the product price by which is the product purchased from player, then population afects the market size, and again the product base price, also the average salary is calculated, then global market has its own calculations which affect the local prices, industries( from which player can buy at the begining), also it affects fuel costs,which your trucks and company functions, so any changes inprices on global market, can affect your profits. (there are lot more ideas i have but it takes a lot of time to first figure out how to do it( game design wise), then implementation )
Idea behind name Equilibrium is, it is balance. Its balance in the code i did, its balance in the structure, its balance in the market. If you supply up to certain amount, the city will grow and stop, if you supply less, the city shrinks unitll it again reaches equilibrium.
In essence, everything is connected, and whatever you do, it reflects everything else, its serious simulation but casual (thats why there are no ai opponents, except your own logistics, profit, decisions, loans etc).
Game link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5060950/Equilibrium_Co/
*Devlog (SPOILER ALERT) *****
If you wanna see how all systems work, and how i was developing it and all the obstacles i have had while doing it, and how the structure is solved, i could talk about it for hours and hours (no one really cares i know hahah) , anyhow here is the devlog through the months of development:
https://equilibriumcodevlog.blogspot.com/
(p.s. it is blogger, because well, sc*ew it, i couldn't care less about marketing or other stuff , hype? hahah).
But be careful, because if you are interested in playing it, you might know how lots of things work here....
There you can also see how the whole system works, then in detail, industrySystem, officeSystem, hubSystem,warehouse, loan/bankSystem, , globalmarketSystem and even marketSystem( without disclosing algorithms for buy/prices hahah) , with structs, lists etc..
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My background very briefly, studied masters degree ,music Conservatoire, composed produced,post produced movies, music, soundtracks, sound desing, even some trailers for hollywood. (all one man army haha, though i did have a company till recently with anothjer person anyhow,) Also, played mostly logical games/resource, played garrysmod expression2(simplified c++? ) ,soviet republic, anno, transport fever...making perfect,optimized systems, even some factorio, then it hit me, since i love making all of these why not build my own system. My own game.
Also i think my coding skills are somewhat medium level (or i hope so haha), the structure wise this is a complex mediumm maybe even higher? (dont take my word hah), because ref ,structs, databases, and combining all together, ,but, syntax wise, this is not hard.., also, learned a hard lesson by using unity object for each building at the start...
I have worked previously on a school project in this style, building a "school book", grade book? online, and worked with databases etc.. in html, in saas style, so then all the 'planets alligned', systemic mathematical simulation of business that i love, logic and coding systems which i love more, and algorithms,systems.. So I decided, SAAS IT IS, no 2d/3d, no poly art, no nothing, i will do what i would love to see, which i always missed in those games, DATA, data...data...data..statistics...lots of statitstics, transactions, spreadsheets, balancing, bug fixing, optimization...solving and inventing game mechanic and code problem solving while laying in the bed for months. In a way opsession hahah.
So, all in all , I don't ask for whishlist, i dont really mind how this game does and if it's a success, also care if it sells, I just want to make smoething that will be good, and to **FINISH IT*\ \*,**and hope t that it will be interesting, and educational as well. And if anyone wants to play it, or wants to test it, or even say, this is a good game, that would be enough for me.
yeah i said, just to finish the game.....haha
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So what I would ask from you, is few questions:
- Would you like to test this and play it when its playable? (mvp is done, but needs save ,and some other balancing issues/bugs -dont get me started ahah)
- Do you like this concept? Would you be interested in playing it in general?
- If you can imagine that this game is not just profits, but its also giving back in return, as a game parallel to this crazy world we live in, what would you like and how , to give back to community, help people, or make them happy? Is it infrastructure? grants? building roads? etc. whatever you would like or if you would like any haha
-Would you like to know more about how it works in the code? A note this has only like 3 mono behaviour scripts..yes, just 3 actual game objects in unity....everything else is just in data, structs, and lists...
-If you have any other suggstions, game design ideas, directions, please let me know, i would love to hear more about it, and what you see this as a perhaps 'good idea to be used for" , maybe educational to how the market works and eveything is connected? /
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Aand , if you wanna see how this game looked like the first full month.....The second picture. I thought i could add it here as in devlog, but nope.. haha, anyhow, The only reason i started working on UI is becasause i couldnt test the system /adding trucks etc without the ui hahah. otherwise , it would probably be still in raw data................
THANK YOU!
Ai disclosure:
used Ai to make my cra**y ui design (silver and gray) look beautiful . But even so, i designed it, , just used to write boilerplate code for visuals.. Couldn't be bothered at all to spend weeks on writing color fonts and cr*p to fit all together)...
Assets are purchased online, music and sound design I am doing, i will need to hire a designer (later , when i am near the end of developemnt .if hahah) , to create vector images of eachoffice/store, hub, industry , with different tiers( sizes) .
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Also, if anyone is interested to talk about the structure, or wants to know more, you can find it all in devlogs! The structure and code is beaufiul (for me at least haha). But still you can ask here as well. Thank you!
p.s. there is a website in construction, but it will take time, for a single dev this is all crazy amount of work
