Disco Simulator News

[h3]Surely you noticed that recently there have not been many publications about our game Disco Simulator - It was caused by the change of the team creating the game 🆕 [/h3]

[h3]We are full of positive energy and ready to start a new adventure with the production of our game! Therefore, we will mark devlog as #1[/h3]
[h3]New team - it's a completely new beginning ❗[/h3]



[h2]In this devlog we want to introduce you to a very large part of the game, which is the system of building and personalizing our club 🍸[/h2]

While working on it, we wanted to give you as many opportunities as possible to express yourself and create interiors that will only be limited by your imagination 💭
In addition to building walls, half-walls and floors, which you can freely repaint, you will also have a wide selection of various types of furniture - which will give your club a unique atmosphere.

We also decided to allow you to assign specific roles to individual sectors, thanks to which your guests will have no problem finding what they need most, including - a dance floor 🕺

You can take a look at the mechanics described above in the video below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


As you can see, our new team is moving forward by storm and will soon be sharing the next steps in developing our Disco Simulator game with you! 🤜🤛



[h3]Share with us your opinion and suggestions regarding the mechanics presented by us in the comments or on our Discord, to which we cordially invite you 👇 [/h3]





[h3]and remember to add our game to the Steam Wishlist so you don't miss any new information about our game![/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1226970/Disco_Simulator/

See You soon,
Disco Simulator Team

It’s us again! As per our promise, we are happy to deliver the next update regarding Disco Simulator’s progress. Improved UI, day-night cycle, enhanced (yet simplified) building system, slightly more intelligent AI, and new in-game mechanics.


(Before)


(After)

Not only have we experienced an epiphany regarding the leading user interface theme (It's purplerer!), but we also finally designed some of the key windows in the game - settings, save, furniture and construction shops, time and budget indicators, and a juicy looking loading screen.


(Settings screen - will later be populated with more settings to customize your game experience)


(Save screen - and coming with it, a save system, so you can track your progress on levels without the fear of a sudden crash)


(Loading screen - it's cool and animated, but we're doing our best to show it for as little as possible)

Also, we've introduced more freedom in the creation of your dream club. The last building system allowed the player to create rooms by dragging his mouse over a certain area, which was then automatically converted into rooms with pre-designed walls and floors. The player was able to modify said room either by painting or removing walls, changing the floor, or manually placing other walls within the room. This made the whole system confusing to use, and it often lagged the game due to the number of calculations required to process the recalculation of the club (sounds complicated? Yeah, it was).

Soooo, we simplified it a lot!

A club is still created from 1x1 m tiles. But, instead of the whole “room/area” thingy that was automatically filling in the space for the player - they are now in charge of manually setting up the rooms. Whether you want to place a boring bathroom or a fancy bar with checkered walls and neon floors, you can now do so! (And the game won’t be questioning your taste either!)


(creating floor tiles - still 1x1m)


(new tool - ability to create walls)

Additionally, building upon the idea of freedom, you can now place your own roof tiles - which creates a new emergent mechanic - skylight - your clients will now be able to dance under an open roof (be wary of the rain though).

Although the rain and other weather effects are still a work in progress, they will certainly become an essential part of our new day-night cycle. For now, it features sun and moonlight, with changing colour near the dusk and dawn to make it feel more real. The player is also able to change the game speed if he wishes to!

(Day)


(Sunset)


(Night - Clients now come in at the start of the night, and leave automatically near the end)

Optimizations - the things you can't see:
Okay, we have to do a little tech-talk, so brace yourself. Unity is a complex engine that often needs a developer's know-how, and creating a game of this scope requires many refactorings to both allow for all the features you plan, and still not lower the FPS too much. As stated in the building system section, the game started to feel a bit laggy when players were creating their clubs - and we couldn't leave it that way. The game core was redesigned to allow for hybrid-rendering and multi-threaded computing (which essentially means that many operations are processed in parallel, maximizing your processor's capabilities). This change required even more changes (and so on) - a new physics system, AI navigation system, and object management systems were required to create what you can see in the screenshots above. You may ask "Was all this change necessary?" - Yes, yes it was. It allowed us to create even more amazing features, prototype them more quickly, and increase the game FPS from about 60-70 to 280-300.


Our next devlog will focus mainly on the AI side of workers and clients as well as the whole human resources tab in the game so be ready for even more under the hood changes and tech-talks. We will also introduce more furniture, lights, special effects, speakers to fill your club and give it the proper life it deserves.

It will also add additional views – to gauge whether your space is cozy and comfortable for the visitors, or rather reminisces them of an unkept basement.

(Something like this)

And the last great change that will be coming next devlog - we will be bringing this bad boy back into the game!

(For those of you who don't know him, this is an in-game DJ console that will let you play your own songs at the party)


We're working hard to bring you the demo of Disco Simulator as soon as possible so stay very tuned! If you have any questions regarding the development process (other than the release date) we will be very happy to answer them all! Once again, we would like to invite you to the Disco Simulator discord channel, where hopefully we will post different changes throughout the month. Once again, have a great 2022!!!

[h2]Hello, long time no hear:[/h2]
Welcome back after such a long break. Sorry, you haven’t heard from us for so long. Many things have happened since. The game got redesigned several times, underwent many core changes, and finally, after all this havoc, we can show you what we decided on.

Also, we promise to stay in touch with you now, so stay tuned for future devlog arriving soon!


[h2]The brand new past:[/h2]
As said in the aforementioned introduction, we’ve redesigned the whole game idea. Up until now, it was a mess of many, highly unstable, weirdly entangled mechanics and features. The walls you were able to place were totally off any sort of grid, giving you massive amounts of freedom, and massive amounts of headache for us.


(How the game looked a few months ago (a club in the desert, we know))

The game looked great, but the amount of different mechanics, and checks, and the sheer amount of work required to build something as simple as this club shown above was tremendous and much more than we could ever chew.

So the game had to undergo some simplifications:
We decided to put you back on the grid, just to make the building system easier, and more fun to use. We’ve created a tool that allows you to place whole rooms all at once, and it made a lot of difference. The tool was constrained to a .5m by .5m grid, allowing you to build a room in any shape you wanted, later on, we added the ability to add triangular room segments, as well as arched ones. This idea to stick to the room-only build mode allowed to make different buildings far quicker than before, and it was a lot more fun too, but the addition of sloped and arched rooms generated the same problem as the previous building system. It was just too hard to manage the number of variations a player can create in their building. And on top of that, it still was hard to modify and create something exactly the way players desired.


(How the tool looked - notice the change from the previous UI version)

So for now, we took another step back.

But the game has hit another block, and this time it wasn’t so easy to overcome:
The game had to undergo another hiatus. Our team is small, and life is hard, so we didn't have time to make the game for a while. And when we came back, our visions didn’t exactly align as we wished. The team almost broke down, and the development has been paused for another 2 months.


For everything that has been happening up until now, as well as for you having been kept in the dark, we deeply apologize. That’s why we promise not to let you down anymore and give you a monthly update on our progress.

[h2]The promising future:[/h2]
As we previously mentioned, the game underwent major changes. From now on, you are designing your clubs based on the rooms that you build in them. Rooms can be anything from a wide selection (Toilet, Bar, or even Karaoke), and can be equipped with a variety of different furniture.


(Current view on the club - screenshot taken on 14th October 2021)

The current system again allows you to build rooms. But it’s far more versatile than the last one. On top of simply creating, you can now expand, move, rotate, or even copy rooms in your club, speeding up the process of designing, and giving you more creative freedom.




Every build is created from a set of 1x1m tiles. For now, the building system only allows you to create square tiles, but later on, we plan to add other possibilities, such as triangular tile, or arch tile (you won’t be able to stretch them tho). The furniture in your build can be both confined to a grid, or placed freely if you want to give that nice personal touch to the build.

Following that, we’ve also established a more suitable UI system, allowing you to show many different windows on the screen at the same time. In the screenshot, you can see the two Debug windows, but later on, they will be replaced with various shops, graphs, and many others.

Another system we’re introducing is the day-night cycle. The time will most likely be ever-flowing, with no ability to pause (unless changed in the settings menu), as to give you a deeper, more simulator-like challenge of managing your club.


(Club at night - you can see many light sources in there providing light, as well as NPC characters wandering in and out of it)

We can’t show you everything, so this is the last design change in the game that we will showcase, for now, just to give you a tease on the game experience. The picture below shows the most probable campaign map design. You can see many different regions over which game levels will be spread. The regions are expected to include suburban areas, metropolis, tundra, desert, island resort, and many others, giving you a unique challenge with each level you play.


(Quick mockup on how the campaign map will most likely look)

[h2]And for now, that's all folks:[/h2]
We will uncover more and more things as we proceed with the devlogs - for now though, we would like to invite YOU to the Disco Simulator discord channel where we will showcase what we’re working on every other day, and answer your questions about the game
Stay tuned for more and cya in the next devlog!!.

[h2]Hello Everyone!![/h2]

We've got some great news for ya, the project is not dead and neither are we. As 2020 is finally over, we'd like to share some happy news. The long-awaited info about the current status of Disco Simulator is finally here, starting with the first devlog of a (hopefully) monthly series. You all have been waiting for a long time for any news regarding the production, and here it is. As of now, Disco Simulator has been in production for a rather short time, compared to the scale of the endeavor, but here are the things we're currently working on.

The fact that you're reading this means, most probably, that you know what the game is about. But in case you aren't familiar with the core idea, here's how it works - in short, you manage your very own club. Starting with a simple warehouse club with virtually no reputation, through micro-management and commitment, to a multi-million dollar empire with various clubs around the United States of America.

We’re currently working simultaneously on a range variety of features including:

[h2]Club personalization[/h2]


We've decided to take the idea showcased in the trailer and vastly expand on it, as it is one of the core mechanics in the game. Previously, the idea was that a player would design the club with predefined sets of furniture that could only be placed in designated areas. But with the new system in place, you can add your furniture almost wherever you like - it's your club after all.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In the upcoming months, we'll expand on this idea, allowing you to design your club's interior walls to better suit your style and add a few extra places for you to play with. We will also be adding some characters to walk on the generated navmesh shown below and use the placed furniture in order to make your place more lively.

[h2]Music console[/h2]
As the game is based on running a club, music is an integral part of it. Therefore, we've decided to allow you to try your strength as a DJ by providing you with a music mixing console in the game. At the moment, its role is not fully defined, so we are unable to predict whether it will only be an addition or will become a fundamental part of the game.

The console still requires improvement and more polish, which will be done in the upcoming weeks, and by that time, we will probably know its role in the game.

And for now, that's all. In the upcoming months, the game will receive a more coherent gameplay loop, as we as some economic systems to connect it all together. We will also take some care of the AI and enable it to not only dance and walk randomly across the club. As for now though, be safe, and stay very tuned for the next devlog. Don't forget to follow us on Steam and join our Discord. If you have any questions - we'll be more than happy to answer them.

Best regards,
Disco Dev Team