Big Ambitions News

[h3]ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 25 APRIL 2021[/h3]
Hi friends,

First of all sorry for the delayed devlog. I took the Friday off and forgot all about the devlog in the meantime 😳

Because of the video update released 2 weeks ago, it’s actually been a full month since the last devlog. As you can imagine, this means we have quite a lot of things to go through. I hope it’s not too overwhelming 😁




As more and more areas of the new map is being completed, we have now moved into one of the corporate areas which means introducing the first “skyscraper”.




[h3]THE DRIVE-IN STORE 🚙[/h3]

Introduced in the last devlog, but now finished! The drive-in store comes with the new pallets, which holds 6 regular cardboard boxes.

Pallets of goods can be loaded directly into your vehicle using the forklifts.






Traffic and pedestrians have been added to the new map. Because of a limitation in the traffic system I’m using, we have been having a lot of traffic jams. Good thing, a patch was applied this week, so hopefully I can fix all of that next week.






The game is now in state where I believe we should start accepting pre-orders and wishlists. This means we have to setup a Steam Coming Soon page. In order to that, we need a trailer. It won’t be a full announcement trailer, but rather a sneak peek, that quickly explains what the game is about.

I’ve setup dolly tracks using Cinemachine to record these captures. The team is now working on improving these specific parts of the city to really make it pop in the trailer 🤩






Because of the upcoming trailer, we have started working on the night time appearance of the city. It’s a lot of work, but so far we got shadows and a few street lamps up and running.






Throughout the city there’s a lot of parking spots/lanes. They used to be all empty, but now I’ve created a generator that will randomly spawn parked vehicles. It was important to me to make these vehicles look realistically parked, meaning distance between cars, angle and free spots has to be randomized.

I’m pretty happy with the result. Currently density is static, but I plan to make it affected by time of day and street popularity.






Until now you were only allowed to walk on sidewalks and crosswalks, as I wanted to keep some level of realism to the game. However it just became too annoying to the playtesters, so you’re now able to walk freely.

Later on I’ll probably add some automated fines for jaywalking 👿






The further we got into playtesting the game, it became clear that monitoring all of your businesses quickly became overwhelming. To help the player, I have now added a to-do list. Basically, whenever something happens that you should take care of, a task will automatically be created.

We definitely still need to improve it more, but it already helps a ton 👍






As you’ve seen in previous devlogs, we have been working on unique and modular characters of the game. This has now been implemented for the male characters. Each citizen will get now come in different outfits, body sizes and later on skin and clothing colors.

It’s been quite a lot of working getting this to work, but now we got the knowledge and adding the female gender and more clothing styles should be a no-brainer.






As the game’s required disk space continues to increase, I’ve decided to move the playtesting to Steam. It allows me to easily push updates, without the testers having to download a full 700 mb zip every time.

At the same time, we started using Github Issues to track bugs. I’m planning to also use Github for the roadmap/kanban board in the future.

Lastly, I added Unity Analytics, to get some early insight on how players are handling challenges in the game. More about that later.






As always, the team has some additional new and good-looking assets:




That’s all for now. See you in 2 weeks!

Thank you for reading! 👍

All the best,
Jonas

[h3]YOU CAN READ ALL PREVIOUS DEVLOGS AT THE WEBSITE[/h3]

[h3]ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 9 APRIL 2021[/h3]

Welcome to the very first dev summary of Big Ambitions!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I would really appreciate any constructive feedback on how we can improve these video updates. Feel free to share in the comments! ❤

If you wan't to stay up to date, make sure to sign up to the newsletter at: https://www.bigambitionsgame.com

All the best,
Jonas

[h3]YOU CAN READ ALL PREVIOUS DEVLOGS AT THE WEBSITE[/h3]

[h3]ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 26 MAR 2021[/h3]

Hi friends,

The last 2 weeks have been much more complicated than usual. Except for what you see below, I have also been spending an awful amount of time working on the market and neighborhood simulators. It is the very core of the game and without comparison the most complex part of the game.

This however means that this devlog will be a bit shallow. As always, I did consider skipping it, but I still believe you rather hear less, than nothing 😊




In the last devlog you already got a preview of the Interview Lite app. Now it’s fully implemented into the game. The app uses two new types of charts which took some time to implement, but will hopefully be useful in future apps of the game.

As you might notice, the UI has been simplified a bit. The original idea was that you had to search for specific types of citizens. Once I had implemented this, it felt cumbersome and annoying. I decided to skip it and instead you simply interview any citizen you find and it will count to the total accuracy of the research data.






I really think this is a cool feature! Currently when you’re stocking up your shops it’s done using a hand truck, box by box. Right now we’re working on a brand new drive-in wholesale store.

Basically, you drive around in your vehicle inside of the store (you’ll need a large vehicle like a van). Everything you buy is in large bulks, but also comes at a lower price. You’ll have to use a fork lift, which I believe everyone will be hyped about 😂

Here’s some early-stage screenshots:






As we’re slowly moving closer to opening up the Steam Coming Soon page, and also starting to accept pre-orders, I want to announce the prices for Big Ambitions. This time, it comes in three tiers:

[h2]Regular version ($19.99) 🥉[/h2]
This is the base version of the game granting you:

• A Steam key that unlocks access to the game on the official release date.
  

[h2]Silver version ($29.99) 🥈[/h2]
You’re not only showing your support for the game development, you also get access to:

• A Steam key that unlocks access to the game on the official release date.
  
• Access to the beta versions of the game.
  
• Exclusive in-game vehicles.
  

[h2]Gold version ($39.99) 🥇[/h2]
Become the ultimate supporter of Big Ambitions by buying the gold version. You get access to:

• A Steam key that unlocks access to the game on the official release date.
  
• Access to both the alpha and the beta versions of the game.
  
• Exclusive in-game vehicles.
  
• Exclusive in-game buildings.
  
• Access to the development forum and be part of the feature and design decisions, both now but also for future DLCs or updates.
  

As I missed my last deadline for opening for pre-orders, I’ll avoid setting a new one. However the only thing holding us back is putting together the sneak peek trailer (it’s in production). I’ll keep you updated 😊




Until now, I’ve been using a temporary solution for placing items in apartments and shops. There were no limitations and you could potentially install your fridge in the middle of a wall.

This is changing now, as I’m currently working on a new “placement grid”. It is stupidly complicated to build and I’m quite surprised by the amount of corner cases and scenarios you have to consider, when building something like this. I suddenly have a huge respect for the Sims 4 devs 😂

Here’s the current implementation. I’m probably half way done:





As mentioned in the last couple of devlogs, the team is working tirelessly on the new map. Here’s some new screenshots showing the current progress and the size of the full map.





We also started putting together props for the streets and avenues. Below is a set of new items you’ll start seeing in the map:



That’s all for now. See you in 2 weeks!

Thank you for reading! 👍

All the best,
Jonas


[h3]YOU CAN READ ALL PREVIOUS DEVLOGS AT THE WEBSITE[/h3]