So, I've decided on the title, and I've wrote down some of my ideas so far. Some of these may not sound that clear on paper but I know what I'm talking about in my head! So here's the title screen:
And I'll copy my ideas so you can see whats tumbling through my nut at the moment:
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Aspects of play – Sim Farm
Ideas!
Game Mechanics:
· Comedy type simulation game.
· Have a backstory? Living the dream? Get married and want to settle down together? A bet? A comedy back story such as you got drunk and bought a plot of land?
· Start with a small farm, 1 piece of land with a house where you live. Start with a small amount of money which you have to build up to buy more land, equipment, animals, crops, pay bills etc
· When is the game set? Time frame, equipment, locations, architecture (Going for modern day, seems to best with the most ideas applicable)
· Time limit for each map? Probably a bad idea.
· Sandbox mode as well, for people who just want to build a massive farm? Procedural level creation, possible in flash?
· Online Play? Would be a really good thing to implement, especially if you could sabotage the other player’s farms and put a monopoly on their products. Maybe possible in demo although not a priority.
· Updates? A good idea, but no good in demo.
· World Map – Choose where you want your farm to be. Start with 3 places that you can afford to buy (eg $500), total of 14 places, each location has a set price with the most being something lucrative which will take all 13 other farms producing money to obtain
· Start out as a singular farm – extend to farm corporation with farms all over the world
· Have awards that come in every year, for example biggest farm, highest amount of income, worst farm etc – Make comedic
· Relationships in the game? Probably a bad idea.
· Fight against other farms. Even have fierce competition such as vandalism and monopoly over markets.
· A steady equilibrium of crops and poultry, produce too much and the price comes down = less income. If your opposition has specialized in a certain crop, make the same for a lesser price or over flood the market with that crop and drive down demand.
· Price of land could either be cumulative eg $100 for the first, $200 for the second, $400 for the third, or it could be set by the land.
o Land could be set in attributes of fertility, size, amount of sun (eg next to a hill), elevation (hillside or flat).
o You could even pay to get land quality increased or to make fertile land from crap land.
o Harder levels could have a majority of bad land to start with.
· A few disasters such as a drought, floods, fences breaking down and livestock escaping etc
· Hire staff or not?
o + = Crops could be set on auto with the right people hired, leaving less micro managing to the player every rotation. Adds an extra micro system for people who want to deal with hiring people. Could have some comedic employees and also some bad ones (eg portfolio’s of some are funny, and some fall asleep and forget to do work some days)
o - = Micro managing regarding hiring people. Game might get too easy, or hard if there are too many employees to handle. Have to create a whole A.I system for the employees and a whole recruitment and handling system for the player.
· Equipment?
o Tractors, ploughs etc. Do these take damage and need repairing? Do they need fuel or are they magically always full (less realistic but easier for the player). Timeframe? Do newer tractors come out? Can you upgrade?
o Stationary equipment such as fences, hose’s etc. Do these get better? Start of with home made fences – evolve to amazing electric fences (add a bit of comedy in there) Solar panels for free electric?
o Maybe late on in the game (not in the demo) you can buy planes to water the fields etc?
· Difficulty settings?
o + = Might make the game more enjoyable to older people, especially people who like to micro manage, for example Tractors could require petrol, MOT’s, the farm house might have to pay rent and tax’s, crop prices fluctuate a lot more, fierce competition!
o Easy mode could have the odd bit of extra info such as what crop would be best here, is it worth buying this land?
o - = A lot more work, 3 different settings at the least.
· Banks? Borrow loans from the bank if you want some more money, time limit to pay it off? Interest? Bad credit = no loans. Work the bad credit off by winning awards? Good idea!
· Each Level has goals to finish it. Size, money made, yearly income, competitors situation (bust), awards?
· Work in years, seasons or months depending on technical limitations with each.
o Years: Miss out on seasons so you only have crops growing every turn. Money comes in too fast? Less micro managing unless its done every turn which may get annoying.
o Seasons: 4 seasons, 1 Season is sowing crops, one is farming the other 2 are caring and micro managing. 4 Turns sounds about right in terms of getting money and spending it.
o Months: 12 months, lots of micro management, money may not come in as fast as the player would like, leaving lots of time not doing anything unless time gaps filled with other jobs.
· Different Crops – Different locations allow different crops eg: rice, sugar, bananas etc
· Sell land and buy land
· Shares and stocks? Adds an extra level into the game. Could buy out competitors or they could buy you out?
· Examine stock screen – Shows you the stock you have in your fields, warehouse thingys, how much its selling for.
· Destroy Crops – Maybe have an insect swarm, or diseased crops that could kill other crops if not destroyed.
· Warehouse’s for crops that arn’t selling well or for not enough money?
· Maybe get a deal with a supermarket for Christmas for example? And if you produce enough turkeys for a good price your reputation with them goes up and you get a reward.
· Able to choose the price you sell your crops for? Could be a key part of the game, or it could be something for a harder difficulty level.
· Need an advisor – Pops up from time to time. Maybe a ? button to ask him questions.
· Purchase and place? Or Plan and Build?
· Upgrade Land/Crops/Buildings
Technical Ideas:
· Idea: Land set out into a grid of 9, each of those 9 grids has another 9 inside of it with your house in the middle. This gives the opportunity to have 81 squares with one taken up with the house in the middle. The player can zoom into 1 of the grids and view 9 of the squares, or zoom out and look at all 9 grids. When zoomed in, the player has arrows at all 4 sides of the screens so they can just click one of them (or just scroll) to look at the contents of other grids.
· When a player clicks on a plot of land, a menu opens up at the mouse with details of the plot of land and a few buttons
o Info with crop could include: Monthly Earnings, Monthly Loss, Monthly Profit, Total Profit, Condition of land, What Crop is on it, How well this crop is in the markets, How long till the crop has to be harvested.
o Info without crops on it could include: Condition of land, How much land sells for or how much it is to buy, Easy mode could have a help screen showing you best crop here.
o Buttons with crops could include: Sell, Harvest Early (If you NEED money fast), change crop, Examine stock of that product, Destroy(burn, or choose own idea)
o Buttons without crops could include: Buy... not much else I can think off right now.
o Hot keys? Maybe set pieces of land to hot keys so the player can quickly jump between important pieces of land? Best sellers, worst growing, new crops etc.
· Warehouses? Crops go straight from the farm out to buyers like supermarkets? If the price is low, or the buyer isn’t buying much you can store it in warehouse type buildings for a maximum of 8 turns? After that you can flog it or destroy it.
· Crops can be sold abroad if it’s something that only grows in your country and is pretty rare. These sell for a lot of money but tax’s and shipping fee’s bring the profit down with small batches, ergo you have to sell a lot of this at once to make profit. Sort of like a late level crop which brings in lots of money.
Ideas:
Create own Land? Possible to start of with a massive area and “draw” out land that you want to use? Maybe in a grid type way?
Keywords:
Loans – Abroad-Buyers
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