Buying Land

We've been working on buying land today!

Before we began, we had a debate on which method of land buying would be best for our game. The first option is to allow the player to buy tile-by-tile (like RCT). The second option is to create predefined rooms per level that the player can buy (like Theme Hospital).

We chose to have pre-defined rooms for two reasons. Firstly, it allows us as designers to cram in more challenges (difficult rooms arrangements etc). Secondly, when you look at our game, buying tile by tile isn't really needed: players would just buy small chunks of land when they needed to which is neither compelling gameplay-wise or attractive to look at.

While the way players buy land is now more linear, we've retained some sand-boxy elements with the actual land value itself. The cost of each room is calculated by the number of tiles in the room multiplied by the tile price. This is important because it gives us the freedom to increase or decrease tile price during a scenario. For example, if your museum has a bad reputation and is covered in litter the land value may decrease around you. This acts as a natural elastic band for players who are struggling. However, it can also be used in more threatening and interesting ways. Perhaps you've been lining your pockets with mobster money: this might make the local mayor unhappy and as a punishment he may increase the land-value around your museum. Having land-value as a variable gives us another tool to leverage with the player.

Onto the actual land-buying itself!

We've started work on a fancy animation for when you buy a new room. We've also created a toggle to see where rooms are available to buy (The blueprints on the ground):

We've also created the buttons to view land for sale:

In other news:

• We've replaced all of the floor tiles with textures instead of vertex colours. It looks exactly the same but has saved us a ton of draw calls and optimised the game significantly. 

• We're starting work on improving how security guards patrol. Will have an update on that tomorrow.

• We've also made a few more Egyptian relics, which we will reveal at a later date when we have more to show.