Zooconomy (Strategy-puzzle)

[russelkgd]

It’s friday and another devlog. Today I would like to share with you animation of main menu!

Main menu
Behold - new look and animation for main menu:

Zooconomy. Main Menu animation

So old art is now completely replaced with new and original one! It is used across all posters and banners and in shops.

PlayPort Fest
Very unexpectedly it was announced that offline gamedev event will be held in my hometown. With great guests, lectures and etc. Most importantly there will be showcase. So, next week I will be trying to finialize probably final demo before launch, somewhen in summer. I will be back with the results of this event)

And that’s it. See you next time, probably with new demo and updated trailer)

[russelkgd]

Hello everyone and welcome to another devlog. It’s again gonna be short (

PlayPort Fest
Last time I said that unexpected opportunity araised to showcase the game during offline event. Overall everything went fine, but next time I’m just gonna record myself explaining the game, because I was so tired of talking)

I received a nice feedback as well as some thoughts about multiplayer mode. My main drawback is that I can’t imagine system which will allow players to play in their pace. Everything in the game is tied to in game time, so it should be synchronized for all players. But some players need more time to, for example, breed animals or make some zoo management, while other players will just wait for other players to finish. If you have ideas for that matter I really would like to hear them)

And of course I saw a lot things that should be improved and which made me sad) I still want to “release” the game this summer, but it must look polished.

That’s it for today. Until the next time!

[russelkgd]

Another quick devlog)

My animals
Redesign of the My animals menu was inevitable. It was created long time ago, new features were added, some information become outdated and during playtesting it become clear that when you have many animals it is hard to navigate and find them.

Old design

New design

As you can see most notable thing is now animals will drop out from specie selector. It also features common info for this specie, like housing and specie name. Click on specie will show all player’s animal of this specie. And on actual animals will feature information only suitable for them, like age, gender, age and status icons. Filtering were moved on separate submenu.

Some changes were done to the right side, life expectancy removed, cause it was almost same info as approximal years left. Conservation status was also removed as it doesn’t bring any gameplay meaning in My Animals menu.

Overall information become more structured, more readable and easy to understand. I will probably rollout it to other menus, where animals are used.

And that’s it for today. I’ll be back in two weeks)

[russelkgd]

That’s been awhile) But the game slowly, but steady is moving to the release. Mostly all efforts were put into bug fixing, some balancing and trying to overcome several internal problems with new design for My Animals menu. But some new stuff were also added!

New Tasks
Several new task’s types were added bringing total number to 14 types. Which includes task, when specific animals must be alive to complete mission, or when player needs to exchange several animals with specific zoo (in this task only player’s animals will count, like we got 2 animals and give 5 and this 5 animals will count). Also there is a task in which player need to finish specific expedition.

New Missions
Basically they are old, as outline for them were made before to create art, but recently they started to become missions in terms of tasks, gameplay, animals etc. So some new task’s types were created just for missions and some of them can be used in sandbox mode as well.

In this mission player will breed Red Pandas and spread them across the world

And in this mission we will get back in time in 1828 to bring first Giraffe in Schonbrunn zoo.

New Animals
Yes, that’s right. Currently 10 new animals are drawn to be later added to the game, as free updates after launch. These animals feature some very unique and funny animals, like tibetan fox and water deer ( (saber-toothed deer)

Several new animals.

And that’s it for today. In coming weeks I want to create new trailer for the game and roadmap for the Early access.

[russelkgd]

Welcome back to another devlog.

"New" trailer
Basically it is the same trailer from a year ago, but with updated graphics and some minor content changes. It was created mostly to replace trailers in social media and in Steam page.

Zooconomy Gameplay Trailer (PC, strategy-puzzle)

Tutorials
A lot of test players were complaining about tutorial in the game. It’s very ‘scary’ and has a lot of text. So some resources were put to improve it. Firstly texts were adjusted, to make them clearer and remove some ‘unnecessary’ information. Also RichtText were added, mostly to color important words.

Before:

After:

As new mechanics are added, maybe I will add another tutorial mission to not overload other tutorial missions with tons of text.

That’s all for today. See you next time

[russelkgd]

After short holiday I’m back with new devlog.

My Zoo redesign
I wanted to do redesign since this layout was introduced. It was “scary” and overloaded. That’s way I made more overloaded)

Old design

New design

I honestly do not why I did it. I wanted to add some graphics, to make it more good-looking, but at the same time I didn’t remove anything from it hence it became more overloaded. I’m really curious, how will it evolve further. Yes, “Change me” image will be replaced)

Tasks redesign
This time end result it’s definitely better. Task description used to take so much space and looked wierd, so in the new version it was shortened and missions image was added to fill free space. Progress bar and time limit told the same information → time limit was removed.

Old design

New design

Tutorials
New and probably last tutorial mission was added. The main goal is to tell the player about random events and how to prevent them. When “Research” mechanic will be done, it will be also mentioned in this tutorial.

That’s it for today. Next week I will have a small announcement.

[russelkgd]

It’s time for small announcement.

Zooconomy is taking part in FanFavorite Weekly Vote this week at Game Development World Championship (Cool right?). And I would like to ask you for your votes . No registration needed, just click on the vote button. You can do it until the next Monday. I’m more or less confident, that I won’t win, but who knows) It’s still a great opportunity to promote the game and get some wishlists on Steam.

https://thegdwc.com/pages/game.php?game_guid=85379b9c-20a9-42ab-a7b5-0315568d2e97

P.S. You can add your games as well at their website.

[Alex_8BitSkull]

Voted!

Are you planning on having a demo and participating in a Steam festival? I have heard those can generate lots of wishlists. Slightly lower quality than usual perhaps, but seems worth it.

[russelkgd]

Thanks!

I have wasted this opportunity in Fall 2020. So I can’t take part in it again with the same game.

[russelkgd]

Welcome to another quick devlog. Let’s get started.

Mission Editor
Recently, I discovered that it is getting hard to set up missions manually, so I started implementing Missions Editor, which I also want to release to the public for community created missions. It’s early in development, so no tasks and animals setup yet.

New art
Some new art was drawn to accompany UI changes mentioned in the last devlog.

Tutorial Mission 5

Sandbox in Task menu

My Zoo

Game Development World Championship
Quick reminder, that you can still vote for Zooconomy until next Monday: Zooconomy | GDWC 2021

That’s all for today. See you next time .

[Alex_8BitSkull]

Nice work! What are you using to make Mission Editor?

[russelkgd]

Visual Studio 2019 on WPF on C++. It will be faster to do it with Python, but GUI support and .exe bundling is kinda nightmare there, so I’m stuck with Visual Studio. If it was internal thing, I would use Python, but since I want to release it later…

[anon95708182]

Your artwork is absolutely beautiful.

[russelkgd]

Thanks, I will pass this to my artist)

[russelkgd]

Well. Third place out 9 games. I think that is not really bad)

Thank everyone for your votes.

[AGulev]

Tomorrow will be a very interesting activity for indie devs in Twitter. Take a look it maybe useful for you (as well as for other devs in our community): https://pitchyagame.com

[russelkgd]

Thanks

[russelkgd]

While I’m a little bit distracted by gamejam, some work is still done on Zooconomy.

Info
Finally, redesign was done on Zoo Info menu. Base concept was taken from My Animals menu, where there is one specie node with specie name, avatar and housing info and nodes representing all animals from this specie. Main difference is that all animals are shown, not like in My Animals, where you have to click on specie to expand it. Also country and city were divided into two separate nods, as some country and city names are long.

Before

After

Wanted animals are also looking better.

Before

After

Later, income will also depend on animal condition, so it will be different.

Gifting
Same for the gifting menu. More animals can be displayed at the same time. Also maximum number of animals to gift were added.

Before

After

And that’s it. Next one on redesign - Exchange menu. See you next time.