New Blog and Website

This blog has been discontinued, you can find the newest posts here (we'll have a decent URL at some point), this will also be the location of the game's website when we make it.

Dev. Spotlight: The Locations

Hi, this is the first in a series of Development Spotlights. These spotlights will focus on specific parts of the game.

The first spotlight in the series is on the locations in the TGP, how they affect gameplay, and how you can move between them.

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The Locations

Which cities are to be included in the first release of the TGP?
In the first (beta) release of the game, there will be a total of 7 cities. They are: London(UK), Chicago (USA), Paris (France), Beijing (China), Athens (Greece), New Dehli (India), and Cape Town (South Africa).

Adding new cities is as easy as adding another entry to the city database, and painting a new pip onto the world map (see below), this means that we can add new cities on the fly without much hassle. The news reel will notify players of any new cities, and the soon-to-come, "Today's News" screen (which will be displayed at login) will also show the news.

How will they affect gameplay in the TGP?
Cities will be there for more than just aesthetic reasons, they will play a vital role in both production of resources, and various aspects behind the scenes of the game.
Each city will have it's own "native resource(s)", this means that you can buy/make that resource cheaply in its parent city. If you want to import the resource into another city, you must hire a cargo ship, much like when transporting factories (which will obviously be expensive).

Cities will also play a vital role behind the scenes as well. As this is our first ever game, we decided that it was vital to ensure we could cope with running it as well as developing it. We needed a way to limit the amount of players allowed into the game, whilst making it make sense in a roleplaying kind of way. So we decided that each city could only hold a certain amount of players, for example London can hold 25 players.
Using this method, the game can be limited to 150 players during the BETA tests, in a way that makes sense within the game world.

After the BETA test has finished, more cities will be added to increase the maximum population of our world, and will continue to be added until we run out of cities. Once this happens it will then be up to the players to determine how many more players can join, but we'll leave it to you to discover how.

How do we move between cities?
Moving between cities will be controlled from the world map. As shown below (colours may change as always), each of the 7 cities is shown as a small blip in the relevant place.

To move to a city, you must click it's 'pip', choose a vehicle from the list (the list only shows vehicles you own), and press start move. If there is room in the city, you will start to move to your new home. The ETA will be displayed on the 'My Account' screen, and probably on the world map after I add it.

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Progress

As of writing this post, we have no time managment system working. This means that once you start your move, you will never reach your destination as we have no way of telling how long it has been. As you can see from our ToDo List this is high on our list of priorities. However the city capacity feature is almost working perfectly, the only thing left to do is make it change when people move to and from the city.

Here we go again

Ok people some good news this time, I've started working on the game again! Whether or not I'll be able to keep motivated I don't know, so show some support :D.

To help keep the production organised, I've started to put together this To-Do List. Most of it probably won't make much sense to you at the moment, but all will come clear when this thing is finally released.

The list doesn't contain everything we have left to do yet, otherwise the game would be far too easy to make. These are just the things I am struggling along with at the moment. And yes the staff commands are important as well as the rest of the game mechanics, we can't have you lot going and destroying our game now can we.

Note: In the list you may notice that city capacities are mentioned, this means that each of the cities in the game can only support a set amount of citizens. This helps to keep the player base small at the start, allowing it to be more managable. Don't worry though, once the game is up and running, many more places will be built for you to live in, and therefore more players can join in the fun.

Some Slightly Bad News

Due to a problem with the server the game will be using, production has had to be stopped until August 28th at the earliest. Obviously this pushes back the release date drastically.

Progress has been slow over the past few weeks as I have been on holiday, and Ashley seems to have gone AWOL (not that I've made much effort to find him).

I assure you that we will continue to make the TGP, but again it may take some time. At this stage we have no idea as to when the game will be ready for BETA.

We'll keep you posted.
Gaz

Project Status Update 3

Welcome to the third in a long line of project updates. Since the last update, a lot of progress has been made, all of this is explained below. New comments are shown in green

At the bottom there will be some technical info for all those who are feeling adventurous.

As of June 28th
Quite a few background features are complete and up and running. Below are is an updates list of features from the previous updates.

• Main client window
• Contains a toolbar where the player can access the market, their factory, their settings, and their inventory. - and now a logout button, and information about their account
• Will contain a chat room, list of online users, and the players account details. - Now contains an online user list (fully working) and will contain a chat room
• For the duration of the BETA tests (and possibly after), a report bug button is available for players to report any problems they find in the game (top-right of the window)
• The client now recognises when a member of staff logs in, and allows them access to staff commands.
  
• "Today's News" headline bar (which updates every 10 minutes)
• Will reveal news about global events (such as wars, or famines etc) and also personal player events (such as when a user contributes a certain amount to the game and gains a rank). - Currently working 100%, the server can send a new headline whenever it wants, and all clients will update their news.
  
• Market section
• Buying and selling is now completely operational, all we need now are the resources to fill the market. At the moment we have over 100 resources for you to play with, however these cannot be added to the market until base costs, and some other details have been worked out for each.
  
• Client-to-server communication
• This is obviously a major part of the game, and is what will require the most work. Currently the server can recognise the following commands from the client:
• Login *
  
• Logout *
  
• Buy *
  
• Sell *
  
• Get product details * - still need to complete databases, but framework is there.
• Get factory details
• Send message *
  
• Register new user *
• Some staff commands *
• Change password *
  
• However the server cannot yet do anything with these commands as none of the server side databases have been created (players, products etc). - Server can now fully use the commands that are *ed
• The client can recognise responses from the server for the above commands, and can act on most.

Tech Talk
After having a lot of problems with the winsock control used to communicate between client and server, we have finally created a control that works for our needs. It allows the server to log the amount of users that has been connected, and send and receive files. - All works well testing the client when it's running on the same machine as the server, however connecting to the server over the Internet is not working right now - we are working on solving the problem. This problem has not yet been resolved, mainly because we have been too busy to get round to it. I know that sounds really bad, but to fix it both me and Ashley need to get together and work on it, recently there have been no opportunities for this.

The Future
Ashley is currently working on the resources, and creating databases to contain them. This is a very big job and he will be working on that for a while. I am currently coding the server and client, adding new features almost daily, and fixing various bugs I've already found in the code.

The third screenshot

(Click to enlarge)

This is the third released screenshot of the game client as it looks now. The picture shows the main client window, with the market open. The news bar can be seen at the bottom of the picture. - The user list and logout button can be seen as well. And yes we know the client hasn't changed much to look at, but a lot of code has been added in the background to prepare for the new features. As you can see from above, the client has changed a lot from last time. Notice all the new shiny buttons on the toolbar, they are all pretty self explanatory. Because most of the sections shown are not finished, I will hold off screenshots of them for now. For obvious reasons, the staff options button will not be available to all. Finally notice to 'report bug' button in the top-right, this can be used to report any problems you find while testing the game.

And Finally...
As usual any features and ideas discussed here can and probably will change before the game is released, nothing is set in stone yet.

Project Status Update 2

Welcome to the second in a long line of project updates. As stated in the first update, production stopped for a long time until the 21st due to RL, but we are now back in business and have a shed load of new features to tell you about.

At the bottom there will be some technical info for all those who are feeling adventurous.

As of June 23rd
Quite a few background features are complete and up and running. Below are is an updates list of features from the 1st update.

• Main client window
• Contains a toolbar where the player can access the market, their factory, their settings, and theire inventory. - and now a logout button :D
  
• Will probably contain a chat room, list of online users, and the players account details. - Now contains an online user list (fully working) and will contain a chat room
  
• "Today's News" headline bar (which updates every 10 minutes)
• Will reveal news about global events (such as wars, or famines etc) and also personal player events (such as when a user contributes a certain amount to the game and gains a rank). - Currently working 100%, the server can send a new headline whenever it wants, and all clients will update their news.
  
• Market section
• Currently we are in the process of perfecting the buy and sell commands, and are constantly coming up with new ideas for resources and goods. - The basic commands for buying and selling are in place, but not operational at all yet.
  
• Client-to-server communication
• This is obviously a major part of the game, and is what will require the most work. Currently the server can recognise the following commands from the client:
• Login *
  
• Logout *
  
• Buy
• Sell
• Get product details * - still need to complete databases, but framework is there.
• Get factory details
• Send message *
  
• Register new user *
  
• However the server cannot yet do anything with these commands as none of the server side databases have been created (players, products etc). - Server can fully use the commands that are *ed
  
• The client can recognise responses from the server for the above commands, and can act on most.

Tech Talk
After having a lot of problems with the winsock control used to communicate between client and server, we have finally created a control that works for our needs. It allows the server to log the amount of users that has been connected, and send and receive files. - All works well testing the client when it's running on the same machine as the server, however connecting to the server over the internet is not working right now - we are working on solving the problem.

The Future
Production on the actual client will stop until roughly June 21st because of RL stuff. However we will still be discussing features behind the scenes, such as resources, factories, and how the game will work in general. - We're back now and ready to rumble.

The second screenshot

(Click to enlarge)

This is the second released screenshot of the game client as it looks now. The picture shows the main client window, with the market open. The news bar can be seen at the bottom of the picture. - The userlist and logout button can be seen as well. And yes we know the client hasn't changed much to look at, but a lot of code has been added in the background to prepare for the new features.

And Finally...
Please note that any features and ideas discussed here can and probably will change before the game is released, nothing is set in stone yet.

Sneaky Peak: The Server

The screenshot below shows the server as it is at the moment, the text is a real-time log of information that is sent to the server. This was taken during a test run by me, nice and simple hey ;)

New Discussion Forum

I have just created a new discussion forum for the game here.

On the forum you can:

• Discuss current game ideas and features
• Suggest new ideas and features for the game
• Get to know the staff
• Apply to join the staff
• Ask the staff a question about the game

There is no need to join the forum, but doing so will allow us to take a more personal approach when replying to your comments. It will also, in the future, allow you access to secrets about the game, but not until the game is functional.

Curiously Vague Information

Keep an eye on the news reel, who knows what important breakthroughs can be found there.

P.S. That's all you're getting, so don't bother asking.

BETA Signup Form

If you are interested in helping us test the BETA version of the game, leave a comment below with your name and some way of contacting you (if neither of us know you personally).

Game Concepts - Power Stations

This is a tricky topic, as it is one of our 'non-player-industries'. Again, there was a lot of debate at lunch with a lot of pens in the air (literally).

Paying for Power
First a foremost, we need power to make sure there is always some output to a player's assets, so that you cannot survive without doing something - sorry, that's the way the world works. You sit on your ass all day, you're gonna lose out - except me, I'm not gonna to lose out because I'm making the game and I'm gonna get you to pay for my services. Anyway, enough about that, back to the power - having to pay for power ensures that players who are actually interested in playing the game will keep coming back. Eventually it will become a minor fee as you become an industry tycoon. What we still need to decide on is how you pay for your power - the current train of thought has taken us to paying daily. You pay at the end of the game day (which just so happens to be a real day - aren't we good to you?) for the current demand for power from all of you combined factories. The power demand depends on which types of factory you own and how many there are.

And that's about all there is to power at the moment. Like I said, it's a complicated matter and there's bound to be additions to this aspect of the game.

Game Concepts - Accommodation

An early concept for the game was that of accommodation - I think Gaz just likes pictures of card-board boxes because we had no real use for the funtion that early on. After a bit of discussion over lunch (and English 'revision') we came to a decision as to what it can do.

It's not the size that counts
I'm sorry to say it is in the world of industry - the bigger, better and more expensive your 'accommodation' is, the more industries you can own. You may start with a barn house, for example, in which case a logical choice would be a farm or other raw material based industry. The downside to this is that you can only support a single 'factory' or 'industry'. You can work your way up to something like a mansion, or private island or something as or more extravagant - at this stage you can own an infinite number of industries, providing you can afford it (see Game Concepts - Factories/Industries).

A status symbol
The accommodation would also add a status symbol to the game, allowing players to quickly judge each other and therefore their trading partners. This is a purely aesthetic value and serves no other game function.

Game Concepts - Factories/Industries

Ok first lets get something straight:

• An industry is the field that the factory works in, i.e. steel industry, or mining industry.
• The factory is the actual building the work happens in.

Sorry had to clear that up because some people were getting confused.

What are the factories for?
The factories will be where most of your profit comes from. To start with each player will own one of a selection of factories. Once the factory is established, the objective will be to buy raw materials in order to make a product that will sell (except mining fossil fuels, which is covered in Game Concepts - Resources).

Once a large enough profit has been gained, the player can upgrade to a second factory, and repeat the process. However in order to buy your second factory, you will have to upgrade your accommodation from small house, to something bigger (this is covered in Game Concepts - Accommodation)

How much will they cost?
The price of each factory depends on two factors:

• The cost of the resources needed to "build" the factory (This process is explained below)
• The number of factories you currently own (the more factories you own, the more it costs to buy a new one).

Building a factory
When a player buys a factory, the server will determine how much of each resource is needed to construct the factory (e.g. 1000 units of steel etc). The building process is automated and requires no input from the player. However the resources used in the building process are taken from the market, meaning if everyone buys loads of factories and doesn't sell anything, eventually everything will run out. The cost of the factory is based mainly on the total cost of the resources needed.

Running a factory
Running a factory can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. You will have to make decisions based on how much of a product you sell and when, also when and how much resources you buy to produce your product.

Because the prices on the market are dynamic, an intelligent manager would wait until the price of the resource needed is low before buying, and similiarly wait until the price of the product is high before selling. There are other complex techniques involved, but we'll leave them to you to work out.

On top of the above choices, you will have control over a variety of factors that will affect the speed of production. So far we have developed one factor idea, that is workers. Put simply, not that it could get much harder, the more workers you have in a factory, the faster you will produce products. There is one down-side, the more workers you have, the more you must pay per month in wages. It's entirely up to you which way you balance this out, do you go for maximum production with small profits, or large profits with very slow production?

Game Concepts - Transport - Updated 5th July 07

Text in red is new since 5th July 2007

Mentioned in 'Game Concepts - Resources' was transport. Transport will be important in a dynamic world with real dimensions and will set apart those truly impressive TNCs (Trans-National Companies) from the subsistence farmers (sorry, geography has really gone to my head with exams and all that).

Transport for a Changing World
The idea for a 'world' is to create a basic world map in which players can actively relocate their industries around. The ability to physically move existing industries will be explained later in the post.

The idea is that a player starts with nothing and has to make their way up the corporate ladder to become a truly successful industrial emperor. Suppose that you start with just a bicycle and then you can choose to buy a different mode of transport later on, when you have a but more cash. In order of price/relative speed:

-Bicycle
-Small Car
-Minvan (same speed as small car) [capacity vehicle]
-Family Car
-Motorcycle
-Helicopter
-Learjet [capacity vehicle]

-Cargo ship [capacity vehicle]

The words 'capacity vehicle' in square brackets [ ] indicates that the vehicle has the ability to transfer assets between industries, be they capitol, workers or resources. A [Large Capacity Vehicle], we have none yet, will allow you to move a factory within the country.

The cargo ship is separated because it will probably cost a lot more than the other vehicles and is the only means of physically moving one of your industries abroad - as an example, say you had a beef farm in the UK and you wanted to move to the US because of proximity to steak factories. You would have to buy a cargo ship in order to 'pack up' the industry and move. Otherwise you would simply sell the industry, move to the US and buy a new one there.

Genesis
Creating a digital world is no easy feat, and making it dynamic even more so. To begin with we have 7 cities dotted around the world for players to travel between - the cities are representative of their country/region for simplicity. A table has been drawn up with land and sea distances between points. Land distances will determine how long it will take for you to reach your destination using your current mode of transport (except cargo ship). Sea distances are crucial for the cargo ship, which can't just crawl onto land and belly flop its way home, and determine both the price of the ship hire, and the time it will take to reach the destination. With sea routes, the boat takes you to the closest coastal city. You can then move your factory to another city in that country using a large capacity land vehicle.

Times & Costs
As a general rule, we are looking along the lines of 2,000 miles taking 1 real-time hour, that means getting from London to Paris for example (215 miles), will take about 6 minutes 30 seconds in a small car (which would be free, but you must purchase the car first).

However if you wanted to transport a factory with that, then it will take about 4 minutes 40 seconds on the boat (for which you will be charged an amount dependant on the distance), then load your factory onto a large capacity vehicle and take it to Paris.

Obviously the mode of transport will vary depending on what you have bought, this will also affect the time taken to travel over land. However boats will all be the same speed. A small car was used for this example as it has a relative speed of 1 (all other vehicles take their speed from the small car).

I know this sounds complicated, but all the calculations will be handled by the client, and you will only be shown the total time, and the cost (if appropriate).

System Preview
And now for the moment some of you may have been half-interested enough to not be able to wait for. Below is a screenshot of our transport system as it is now, it is not finished and won't be until we work out a way to manage how the time system will work.

Game Concepts - Resources - Updated 28th June 07

Updates 28th June 07

Since actually making the game (not any more! Yep, we're finally getting into it!) is still off-limits for everyone, thoughts are rife in conversation between us developers. Of course, there are basic ideas that need to be considered and we are only considering these at the moment. Here is some information on first-thoughts for resources.

Catagorising the Resources
We are trying to make this game mirror real-world economy as much as possible, while eliminating the complexity of it. We also, of course, want the game to become unique and separated from the real-world in many aspects, otherwise what would be the point of making the game? In the real-world, resources or 'products' can be broken down into primary, secondary, tertiary and quanternary sections that each deal with distinctive resources. We used this as a starting point and discussed from there.

We have decided on calling the very basic resources raw materials which include wood, fossil fuels, animals and metal ores. As of designing the resource tree, we have decided not to allow anybody (except us developers; omniscient remember) to see how to acquire certain resources, or to allow you to see some of the resources. We can reveal, however, that there are 100 resources that each have their own importance in the resource tree. We're leaving you to find out everything about this game on your own, which hopefully will make this game stand out from the rest, which are often heavily documented; who wants to read a huge rule-book anyway? One of the main aims of this game is to make it intuitive and easy to play.

These would normally constitute as primary products in the real-world (actually, in the real-world, raw materials and primary products are the same thing, but we are ignoring this, because we are developers and are allowed) but to make the game simpler to play and design, we have put them into their own class. These can then be refined or can undergo some sort of process to create more valuable (usually) products (we are currently in the process of assigning resources prices and properties).

The resource tree is non-linear which means that resources do not necessarily go directly from one 'state' to another ie. some raw materials may turn into refined materials while others may be used directly for manufactured goods.

Refined materials are, as the name suggests, purer versions of the raw material they are often derived from. They can also represent an intermediate stage between raw material and manufactured good. We've also created a special category for electronics because, well, let's face it, where would we be without electronics? You certainly wouldn't be reading this!

In conclusion, these are the categories for resources:
-Raw Materials
-Refined Materials
-Manufactured Goods
-Electronics
These categories are in the usual order of manufacture although there may be an option to reverse-manufacture products to receive all or a percentage of the original resources used.

We could go even further but industries start to diverge massively at this point, so for simplicities sake, we are leaving it there. Services will also be available to the player but will include non-playable industries that will be essential to industry development:

Services include:-
-Banks (for loans)
-Power stations (costs based on industry size and type)
-Transport (buy different types of transport [see separate Game Concepts - Transport])
-Private investigator (effectively a spy)

Note on fossil fuels
Fossil fuels are mined using a type of factory, the mine. As mines have no raw material needs, they require more workers in order to balance out the pros and cons of running that type of factory (Players are charged a certain amount per week [this used to be per month but we decided it would be easier to update every week because a week has a definate value but a month varies in length] based on the amount of workers they have in their factories.)

Product Status Update 1

Ok this is the first in a series of updates, revealing the progress we are making with the game. At the bottom there will be some technical info for all those who are feeling adventurous.

As of June 5th
The game production has been running much faster than expected and we currently have the following features started:

• Main client window
• Contains a toolbar where the player can access the market, their factory, their settings, and theire inventory.
• Will probably contain a chat room, list of online users, and the players account details.
  
• "Today's News" headline bar (which updates every 10 minutes)
• Will reveal news about global events (such as wars, or famines etc) and also personal player events (such as when a user contributes a certain amount to the game and gains a rank).
  
• Market section
• Currently we are in the process of perfecting the buy and sell commands, and are constantly coming up with new ideas for resources and goods.
• Client-to-server communication
• This is obviously a major part of the game, and is what will require the most work. Currently the server can recognise the following commands from the client:
• Login
• Logout
• Buy
• Sell
• Get product details
• Get factory details
• However the server cannot yet do anything with these commands as none of the server side databases have been created (players, products etc).
• The client can recognise responses from the server for the above commands, and can act on most.

Tech Talk
After having a lot of problems with the winsock control used to communicate between client and server, we have finally created a control that works for our needs. It allows the server to log the amount of users that has been connected, and send and receive files.

The Future
Production on the actual client will stop until roughly June 21st because of RL stuff. However we will still be discussing features behind the scenes, such as resources, factories, and how the game will work in general.

The first screenshot

(Click to enlarge)

This is the first released screenshot of the game client as it looks now. The picture shows the main client window, with the market open. The news bar can be seen at the bottom of the picture.

And Finally...
Please note that any features and ideas discussed here can and probably will change before the game is released, nothing is set in stone yet.

Game FAQ

• Will the game be singleplayer or multiplayer?
• The game will be entirely multiplayer, where users can join forces or fight against each other to put the opposition out of business.

• What sort of game is the "Trading Game"?
• Our game is based on the idea of an economy simulator, its main feature being that the player takes control of managing a number of factories (probably one to start off, until the game is up and stable). The player will have control over everything from resources to staff.

• Will the game be free or will I have to pay for it?
• We aim to create a game, with absolutely no cost to us. This will mean we can provide the game for absolutely no cost to you! In the future however, if the game becomes very big (with lots of players) our server may need to be upgraded, and therefore will start to cost us. Eventually some extra features may be available for paying customers.

• When will the game be complete?
• We are hoping to get the BETA version of the game ready for release sometime in the July-August period. Once the BETA version is done, the game will be released to invited player-testers only. We will post details as to how to apply for a BETA pass when the time comes.

• What are the main stages of development?
• First is the concept of the game, we need to write up a list of resources and factories that will be available to players, how exactly each feature will work (e.g. whether production will be based on real-time or game 'ticks').
• Second, will be the creation of the client template. This will effectively be an empty shell for the client, into which we can insert code that will make the game work.
• Third, will be the actual coding stage. This is where we will start coding each of the features that will be present in the game, and inserting this code into the 'shell'.
• Fourth, we will fully test the game functions personally to ensure that the BETA release has as few bugs as possible.
• Finally, before the first full release, we will release a BETA version of the game for a limited number (under 100) of players to test and provide feedback on.

About the team

The developers of this game are Gaz, Ashley and Tom. We are all 16yr old students (at the time of this post) from the UK, and as part of our summer project we have decided to work on an idea I had for a game.

Welcome to the Blog

Welcome to the blog detailing the development of a new trading-based game. All details of this game are included on this blog so that you can track development and key updates/concepts!