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Game Dev Tycoon ideas
#1

Dear devs of Greenheart Games,

I have to admit that I’m considering never opening the game again. It is clearly very dangerous and messes with the laws of physics - 6 hours of my life have disappeared just like that. Plus I’m not sure I can endure the heartache of having a lovingly crafted game trashed by the reviewers again.

So, the game has me hooked. The graphics are cute, and contrary to many sim games I didn’t feel like I had to grab a calculator to get a good result. I may not be as good as some of the stuff I’ve seen posted on forums, reddit etc, but I survived and actually made money. The learning curve is Goldilocks - not too steep, not too shallow

However, I do have a few things I’d like to see changed:

Information booklet/database: I’m not a min/maxer, nor do I have a great memory. I found it almost impossible to keep track of the information I got regarding good and bad combinations, or what game elements were important for which category. I know some of it is shown under the bars during development, but that doesn’t help if I turn out to have picked completely the wrong engine wayyyyy back at the start. I found it a bit frustrating at times. Sure, I can look this stuff up elsewhere online - but if I want to look something up this often I feel it should be part of the game. This was a major bugbear for me.

Platform progression: As far as I can tell this mirrors actual progression of consoles in real life. I rather like the silly ‘not quite right’ names, but I noticed knowing how succesful (or not) a platform would be IRL influenced my choices in game. It makes choices regarding platform a lot less risky and thus a bit less interesting and a lot less important than it would be if it was more unpredictable.

Engine summary: Please can you add a summary of what elements are in which engine? I did try various naming conventions such as SimEngine1, or 3DV2Stereo (yes, I like camelcase) but after a few years there are too many options to keep track of. I ended up putting practically everything into a new engine every few developments, even though I’d rather have developed genre-specific ones. That would add to the interestingness of this gameplay element.

More down to basics for total newbies: Some things, while obvious to devs or hardcore gamers, are less clear to the less technologically inclined. What does the engine actually do, precisely? Graphics: is this tech or design? The look would be design, but the complexity of implementing it might require a bit of tech knowledge? Does the game idea in my head fall under sim or under strategy?

Tiredness bars: and lastly a minor niggle for the design people moves slider. I found it easy to overlook low and empty tiredness bars in the last office. They’re not very brightly coloured and blended in with the grey desks/screens they were superimposed on.

TL,DR: great game, one major and a few minor points of criticism. Game to be marketed as diet aid as it made me forget to have lunch.

Thanks!

2 Likes
#2

If you get to the part where you can get a specialist in a certain area, you can see exactly what the tech/design split is for each category. Or you could look in the wiki. But it’s already in the game, with the basis that whatever D/T points are needed to make a specialist are related to the D/T ‘needed’ for each area.

This means that there are 3 design-heavy areas, 2 tech heavy-areas, and 4 middle-of-the-road areas.

#3

This is very true xD

You have some nice points here.

#4

Second Playthrough Points! Yes, I have more and I’m wordy. Brace yourselves!! Not to mention that my notes have been getting more chaotic the later and more-alcohol-laden the night gets. Anyway, in no particular order cos I ain’t THAT organised:

Plus point: I really like the ‘bubbles’ with exp/research/etc numbers. Simple yet fun.

Whatcha Doin’? [Visuals, Mid Prio]: it would be nice to see what my team members (hereafter to be called minions) are working on. The colours on the bars are nice, but if I single-click on one I kinda expect to see the exact subject of study/research.

Research [Gameplay, Low Prio]: OMG getting enough points in this is annoying! I’ve been boosting it by doing all the contracts available after I finish developing a game. But…those contracts take time, and I only have 35 years total. Is there no way around this?

Boost: [Design, Gameplay, Mid Prio]: I like boost! But circle is the same colour when it’s ready as when it’s recharging or in use. This makes me click more than I need to (bad for lazy people). I’d like to see at a glance whether it’s recharging or de-charging (is that a word? if not, now it is!). Also, boosts seem to lag a bit for me: quite often I’ll get a period of low bubbles just after clicking.

Ordering Employees [Gameplay, High Prio]: I’d really like to be able to order my minions according to T/D or % used on the development slider pages. I want to know who the next highest available designer is, dammit. STAT! Really annoying.

Contracts [Design, Mid Prio]: if there are new ones, could something go BOING/light up on the screen? Plenty of room really. Mid prio due to my reliance on contracts for research points!.

Working Holiday? [Gameplay, Low Prio]:: People seem to be equally productive whether they’re on holiday or not. The poor fuckers…ahem…minions…seem to be able to work 112% and yet be on holiday. This is actually not a bad thing for me as a play so it’s low priority :smiley: But maybe at some point availability numbers/ holidays could be calculated.

Legacy systems [Low Prio]: Hey, do we not get sales for when a console is officially discontinued but so IMBA that the older games still sell. Complicated maths so eh waves hands

New Systems [High Prio]: when somebody announces a new console I’d like to have the option to start developing games for it right away (with license fee of course). It would be a good enhancement to time a game for pre-launch. This sort of ties in with my original platform timing point. Clearly it’s more fun to gamble whether to develop a game for a future console if you don’t know whether it will be delayed or not.

Specialists[Med Prio]: Well I haven’t managed to get any game part specialists yet. Maybe I’m developing my tree wrong. But that’s all a bit unclear…bit more info in tutorial? How can I even see who is specialised in what? I can’t see who my design specialist is at the moment.

Sequels [Med Prio]: If I’m thinking about making a sequel, it would really help if I could quickly see what engine the last one was using. Is it worth it yet, basically?

Own convention[Low Prio]: At the start it’s not clear you have to re-research this every year. I don’t object as such, but it was a bit confusing to see it reappear in the menu. It would be nice to be able to say what game (i.e. one just released, one in development) it should focus on.

G3 convention[Low Prio]: While the flip numbers are exciting when you just start out/swap booth size, after a while they’re not quite as fun. Maybe space or left-click to skip them? Because just after you get the ‘You had X visitors, yay yay yay’ popup which gives essentially the same info. Is there some way to speed that up/combine the two?

Context menus[High Prio]: This is a test to see whether you’re still paying attention! No, it’s not really. I find the context menus a bit fiddly. Sometimes I accidentally open the personal/company ones, then there’s a lot of clicking to get rid of it and open the correct one. Horrid. It can also get fiddly with boost/train/global menus. I dunno, that’s what my notes say. But basically it’s not always the logical menu that opens at a particular spot.

Tiredness/Research [High Prio. BUG??]: OK OK I think I found one! I had one poor guy who was a bit stuck: he was both absolutely knackered and doing research. When his tiredness hit zero it looked like his research did too. Then there was a group development (didn’t write down what, sorry) and he got jiggled out of it(i.e. research done, still tired),

So that’s it! Do with it what you will!

x

ETA TL,DR: A few more points plus game to be marketed as narcolepsy cure. I haven’t slept since I tried it.

2 Likes
#5

Well yep Jyth, I can tab out or check the wiki on another device if I really need to, on * any* subject. But I feel that on the whole the game would be improved by having this info contained in it, rather than externally.

#6

OMG this is 2nd largest post even created in GG Forums! LOL

#7

Let’s say this:

  1. That’s great idea. But I prefer to click on a character to see what’s working on. On a blue bar it would be ‘‘hard’’ for some people to click on it.
  2. But why you do contracts when you finish developing a game?
  3. I think too. I would change it to orange, so it means that is no longer available.
  4. Really…
  5. Let’s about say a small pop-up window appears and says you have new contracts available. boing
  6. People are very productive. You better train them in speed so they cannot ‘‘stay’’ on these annoying vacations.
  7. Yup. I don’t know why but I think a discontinued console do not sell because of that terrible quality.
  8. Not good not bad. Not good is because looks like cheat and you earn money for that license! Not bad is because you can buy license with that game prelaunch. I would say that prelaunch games will be 50% sale of a regular medium game.
  9. Yup. If you’re thinking about specialization, then you can see below their names about their specialization. If you’re thinking about specialists, then I would add that on staff list. (names and games!?)
  10. Completely agreed.
  11. It will focus on games that are only sale. I like the idea, but…, I don’t know.
  12. I think I gonna answer this neutrally. Flip numbers are exciting but as they ‘‘slow down’’ is not so much exciting. I would say that adding a button ‘‘Skip’’ would be a answer to this idea.
  13. Do you pay attention? Why you use the context menus?
  14. Cool. Pretty good bug.

I think someone as moderator, or something will see this.

#8

I did say it was in the game, it’s just a bit indirect. But when you see it where it is, it makes sense suddenly.

IE, the D/T points needed for specialists is the same D/T split for the categories for employees.

Though, I guess having it above the categories while making a game wouldn’t be amiss, with all the other hints this game gives now.

#9

Yes, it’s long. I think it’s because I’m so enthuasiastic about the game! :smile: I know it looks like I have tonnes of criticism, but I wouldn’t bother giving the feedback if I didn’t really enjoy the game.

  1. Clicking the person is indeed what I meant. Unclearly worded, sorry!
  2. I do them to get some more research points relatively quickly. There’s probably a better way to get this done, hopefully I’ll discover it in a new playthrough. I don’t do contracts during game dev because I often max out everybody’s available time.
  4. Not sure if that’s agreement or that my point was unclear. By ordering I meant ‘sorting’. For example: click on the word “Tech” to order the people high to low by tech score. Not crucial to gameplay but a really nice thing to have.
  5. Yep, that would work. I’m not a design person so I figured I’d leave the details to others!
  6. Aha, ty for the tip. But I’ll clarify what I meant. I can plan Person X in to say 100% capacity using the sliders. However, if I then see that Person X needs a break I can also send them on holiday. But the work I assigned to him/her still seems to get done. I feel I should have to reassign it to somebody who is NOT on holiday.
  7. I was thinking of a situation where support for a console was cancelled while I was developing a game for it. It was bad timing on my part, but I figure that people who still owned that system would still buy the game if it was any good.
  8. You could make it so that the announced future console comes up as an option at the start of development, but that the game won’t make money when it’s finished if the console isn’t ready yet. It would be cool to be one of the ‘original’ games that comes out with the console.
  9. I haven’t really managed to get enough training for this stuff yet so I might have missed this :smile:
  11. I was thinking along the lines of Blizzcon. They use it to hype the forthcoming expansions, even if they’re not finished yet. It would add a bit of a dimension to the Hype factor, add a bit of depth.
  12. Skip Button sounds good.
  13. Probably unclear about what I meant and using the term incorrectly. I meant the game menus that appear when you left click. You get certain options if you click on the office, and others if you click on an employee. I often find one type opening when I’m expecting a different one. This point may have been made later in the evening after a few glasses of wine. blush
#10

I was like: WHY DO YOU NOT LIKE THE GAME, ARGH!

#11

Thanks for the feedback :smile:

#12

Contracts are in comparison a very poor method of gaining research points.
Eventually making games with a topic/genre combination is the best method, but also making a engine does provide with a bunch of research points.

There is one thing thats important though, training your staffs research skills.
And of course try not spend precious research points on things you do not actually need.

You decide what someone specialization will be.
I always hire staff with mediocre skills, that way i can easily train them to whatever i want.

That was most likely the Coding Contest ( random event ) and yes it will cause all employees to drop everything they were doing and start with the contest.

#13

I just don’t ever seem to have enough research points to both train my folks AND research the topics I want. At first I thought it was because I tried to do too many different types of games and thus needed everything, but even on the playthrough where I specialised in Adventure only I still didn’t have enough. I’m going to try supertraining them in research early on maybe.

It might have been the contest that jiggled him out of his coma - I’m not sure what would have happened otherwise as I didn’t have the option of sending him on a holiday. Poor chap would have been sitting there asleep over his research forever.

#14

I was so sad. But why?

#15

Ok, I figured it out. Meaning about the highest designers/technicians (design/tech) and their stats to be in order? Great idea. :sweat_smile:

#16

Wtf? I was thinking: Oh no, GDT became dangerous!

#17

I don’t think you read the whole post thoroughly :smile:

1 Like
#18

Hmm maybe they could add real-life feedback. Like an electric shock if you pick a bad combination. That would certainly add an element of danger to the game.