All posts tagged with "the Wheel of Pain needs repairs before it breaks and David gets free"

Let Slip the Trunks of Repair

On the resource end of things, Clockwork Empires is largely a game about production – What resources can you get? How many? How quickly? Progression through the game is largely governed by a flat rate of what modules you can afford to build. Our module design, however, centers around an increasing economy of scale – this calls for the player to be using commodities constantly, not merely when they want to build something new.

A long while back, as a sort of nod to this philosophy we implemented a repair system where modules break after a certain amount of uses and must be repaired. This wasn’t ever made a focus, however – it had no real dedicated UI and what items were necessary to repair modules was not explained. However, as economy balance begins to come more into focus we decided it was time to revisit the repair/breakage system. So, coming in the next experimental: Upkeep!

UK1

Buildings will require weekly upkeep in order to keep functioning. Each module has an upkeep type and cost associated with it, and these add together to create a Building Upkeep that must be paid weekly. (Note that all figures here are subject to change as we get feedback on this feature). How do you pay this upkeep? Must you keep tons of spare building materials laying around? No! Instead you will use… Repair Trunks:

Chests

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Mining & Maintenance

Prologue: Last month we divvied up tasks based on some Agile concept; I believe we’re “writhing” through the next “suffering revolution” on the “Wheel of Pain”, if I have the terminology correct. I proposed that we shove Mineshafts off the current month’s TODO because I didn’t think they were as important as other features. Naturally the task of implementing Mineshafts ended up being assigned to me, as is only correct according to the Iron Laws of Bureaucracy.

Mineshafts

Subsurface mining is pretty straightforward because we abstract the details: the player builds a “Mine” building with a “Mineshaft” module (and at least one door! we’ve had problems with people not putting doors on things!). Once these are built, the player assigns a work crew to the Mine. Using the recent code done for Chapels and Laboratories, the labourers in the mining work crew are transformed into properly-outfitted miners wearing the correct uniform and everything – it’s great to finally get these occupation-specific models into the game properly!

Hey, you! Stop being sad in my screenshot, you're bringing everyone down!

“Hey, you! Stop being sad in my screenshot, you’re bringing everyone down!”

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