Quartermaster is part of my final major project at Solent University. The project’s goal is to publish a factory management game. I have been working on the project since early January.
This blog goes through different stages, challenges and progress of making the Quartermaster.
Quartermaster is a simulation game heavily focused on logistics and economy. The player plays as the quartermaster. The game's objective is to sort packages coming in through a portal and finish orders.
During the whole production of this game, I have acquired and used these assets from the Unity Asset Store:
Highlights by NoSuchStudio.
Grid System by SoulGames.
Documentation of the project:
As a video game design student, I have had to put a lot of effort into documenting this project. I have used a variety of tools.
I have tracked all of my tasks and progress on the Hackn’plan website. It worked miracles for tracking the time and priorities of each task.
I have created GDD, technical design sheets, flow charts, pseudocode, Gantt chart, and work breakdown structure.
Before I completed the design I have done a literature review in which I researched the effects and the similarities of work and game experiences.
Concept phase:
The main design started forming way before the summer semester started. I have had the idea for such a game in my head for a long time. The main motivation for creating this game was that one of my favourite games were factorio and satisfactory. The idea of the game being located in a logistical theme came from my previous experience as a logistical operative. I know, it is a fancy word for a warehouse worker.
During the concept phase, I created many design documents and prototypes of what the game could feel like. I had no idea how user experience-centred this game is going to end up. I was allocating all of my resources to designing the technical documents for the systems and mechanics rather than user interfaces.
Pre-production:
The start of the pre-production was rough. I had no clear goal and no clear path to get there. A lot of the stress came from overworking myself and not sticking to specific tasks.
With the negatives aside the game has started looking good in my opinion. The mechanics were starting to show in the game and the systems started making sense. During the whole pre-production, I was communicating with my classmates about what to do next. The feedback was very valuable.
At the end of pre-production, I noticed that one very valuable piece of feedback was coming back over and over. “The game will be hard to understand without a proper tutorial and/or quest system. I knew I had to act on it but neither of those systems was designed prior to production.
Production:
That meant that the production started with me designing a new system. I have acquired an asset from the Unity Asset Store but now I needed to understand further code. The asset has helped with highlighting UI and game objects. It wasn't very modular though and I couldn't get it to work with my systems. Working with this type of asset took me a long time but in the end, I managed to get it working.
The first half of the production was just testing out the tutorial, codex and quest systems. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of time, that I could use to improve the visuals and the audio of the game.
I have struggled with the tutorial the most. The game is a simulation factory game and there usually are not a lot of tutorials, to begin with. Most games like Factorio or Satisfactory just give you codex and the player has to learn themselves.
For most of the production, the game Loop was broken due to me not having time to fix it.
Beta Testing:
The beta testing that this thing was a failure. The target was to gather at least 20 testers but I ended up with only six and only five results. I have still gathered valuable feedback and a lot of bugs. I will now try to work and redesign the game loop a bit. It will take some time but the semester is ending and I need to submit whatever improvements I can fix.
Current status:
The bugs and the design flaws are fixed in the newer versions. I hope to work on the game more as it has been a great journey both mentally and emotionally. I believe I grew as a game developer. I have gained a great amount of programming and designing experience from this project alone.
The future of the game is not clear to me. I definitely wish to keep working on the game but I have more important business to take care of at the moment.
Reflection:
Looking back at the project I am very surprised. I am the solo developer of an almost functioning game. The game has a lot of flaws and bugs but I feel the core of the gameplay is really solid. I understand it is repetitive and that is something I wanted to go for. My designs lacked a bit of fun mechanics for the players to enjoy while the game loop is repetitive.
I have gained experience in C # as well as Unity. The logistical systems and mechanics were designed, programmed and implemented by me.
In the end I want to thank all of the silent University staff, most importantly Costas tacos. It is the people that taught me how to think and be confident in what I do.
Link to the project here.
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