Link to Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1270520/Warehouse_Tycoon/

Release Date: Feb 26, 2021 @ 4:00am PST

1.) Name of Game: WareHouse Tycoon

2.) Developer name: Nevin

3.) Storyline and/or description:

Manage your own warehouse in Warehouse Tycoon! Start from scratch + build your own shipping/receiving empire! Overcome a variety of obstacles both inside and out of the warehouse. Be sure to get the best bang for your buck because time is money!

Features:

• Company Van: Drive around to purchase inventory and deliver orders

• Warehouse: Design your layout (place shelving, and pallets)

• Inventory: Travel to cities and towns to buy inventory for your warehouse

• Laptop: Manage your warehouse right from your desk! Pay bills, check emails, and regulate inventory

• Be the Boss: Wear a suit and tie

Nice one, looks good from what I saw on steam, is this GG or another engine?

Thank you! Yes it's made in Gameguru.

There is more to show and I changed a bit of what you see in the trailer. I have to update trailer and description before release.

But the idea is you buy packages and store them in your warehouse and get into contracts with towns and citys on the map to sell the packages.

On the map is competitors that spawn. The goal of each level is to buyout the competitors. They also send out vans to citys and towns that buy the packages or contracts that you need.

and a couple of other bits

Looks good! All in GG, impressive!

Impressive, great that it's a gg game, will definitely follow and purchase when it comes out next year, congrats

Here is some gameplay. Showing some sounds and other stuff.

NOTE: I need a new mouse, so when I zoom out/in at one point my mouse wheel does not work that good haha.

NOTE: The main menu screens have not been changed yet, seen at the end of the video.

How cool is that !!
Awesome work.

Yeah, awesome work indeed!!

If you haven't already, you might want to chime in on Lee's RPG thread. Although it looks like you got inventory going great there...

OldFlak...

Finished a bit in the last week.

Emails: Player gets emails for bills or whenever they complete or fail contracts with towns. ( im going to add more to this after the game comes out, im excited and can't wait to add more to the game )

Bill Pay: I wanted to add some bills the player has to pay, electric and warehouse rent and finally got around to finalizing it.

Save/load: When making a game with gg like this there is a lot of extra stuff you have to do to get saving and loading working. In my first test I had around 20 bugs that was kinda weird. One example: The player can drop boxes from their inventory. When they do this I have the box move forward just a little bit to give the idea of them throwing it. But when I loaded the game and pick a box back up and drop it, it throws it across the warehouse. Everything is fixed now but wanted to share that one. Also whenever the player saves and loads as an object is falling it will freeze in place. So I plan to restrict saving and loading to the laptop the player uses ingame as a work around.

Invisible Walls: Im not sure if anyone got this working for them. But the invisible walls gameguru gives you, when saving and loading some of the walls turn / faces a different direction. I tried everything to get them to work. I changed the fpe and tried using other objects as walls.
I found that any dynamic object this can happen to. I think it has something to do with the physics settings. But I ended up just using zones to bounce the player back when they get close... But, in gameguru. Whenever you move the player from 3rd person view like this it shows the skybox, like a little flicker affect. But I find it more reliable then the invisible walls at least.

Great job Nevin !

Thank you bluemeenie. I am working on menu and title screens now. Here are some pics

Nevin looking very good.

Terrific outside the box title for GG! This game has escaped the common prison.
I like the menu style. There was some the-real-deal work put into it,
and you should be rewarded.

Can't you just make the walls static? Why do they need to be dynamic if it is just a barrier?
Just curious.....

Looks great tho - looks like you have put a ton of work into it - keep it up!
Something without weapons is always nice to see.

OldFlak....

@oldflak

could i make an invisible wall without using hide(e) ??

Im so used to thinking of a work around i didnt even try to just make a wall lol. Im going to try that tomorrow

Im thinking i can make a wall set transparency on it at max in blender should work ? I dont have much experience making objects but have made a couple in the past.

@Nevin
I was thinking more along the lines of just using single plane and using transparent texture to make it invisible.

So with you in mind I made some for you to try.

You can find them in my Freebies Thread

Hope that helps

OldFlak....

@OldFlak

The walls work perfectly. I tested in standalone and it works. Thank you so much, they work a lot better then the zones!

@GubbyBlips

Thank you. I wanted to make a better menu. But might save it for after the game releases.

I was going to have a live level as the game menu and show the player sitting at a desk, in the background the ai could be moving around with boxes on conveyor belts.

But, the conveyor belts work with a feature I don't have in the game and might not get a chance to do before the game comes out so I decided this was a better menu for now.

People love conveyor belts lol

Finished end of level screen seen here:



I also finished the tutorial. Here are some pics from that:







It is possible to trigger the tutorial again from the laptop. So if the player does not understand a mechanic they can reopen the tutorial. Each level will add new mechanics. So this tutorial template will be reused each level letting the player know of new challenges.

I also did a lot of play testing. I noticed the game was to hard and to slow. So did a lot of balancing to make the game a lot faster. Before, level 1 would take about an hour to finish. Now it takes about 5-15min depending on what the player does.

I started the code for mechanics the player will see in levels as they progress in the game. Here is a list:

1. Can find boxes on the ground, on the map when driving or outside at the warehouse. In the game, selling boxes is how you make money

2. Search for deals on the laptop. This gives something extra to do in the warehouse. At the laptop the player will freeze when searching for deals, they can only move from the laptop when they pause the search. But they can access other parts of the laptop, check bank account, check clients etc. When they find a deal. They can pay for it, after that the box(s) will be shipped to the warehouse.

3. employees. they will be doing some task for the player. but will cost hourly rates

4. repack boxes. at some point the player cant just sell boxes anymore. they will have to repack each box, or have employees do it. This will take 1 tape and the box will show a big white label on it indicating they have re packed it. tape will start selling at the same time on the level this mechanic is active

5. rats! rats will start spawning in the game. They can ruin boxes on the ground, not shelfs. Ruined boxes cant be sold.

I have much more being worked on right now. Wanted to share what I have been up to.

Love the walk animation, reminds me of old GTA. Looks fun

This seems like a really cool project! It's nice to see something so original attempted in GG, and it's clear there has been a lot of effort and passion put into it. Not to mention the amount of LUA you must have written for it. Keep up the great work!

Looks fun as an arcadey version of the concept for sure. You mentioned speeding it up, what a great choice. 5-15 min per level seems fun for a game like this. I mentioned I like how the walking looks, it makes the game look like a fun arcadey sim. Keep moving things in that direction - put in a more fun font, menus, and maybe a bit more cartoonish flair.
Great work.

@Cobbs

The walk animation used is 3869-3900 in Gameguru.

Right now, I have it set that, when a player finishes or fails a contract they get an email. But I think im going to add something extra from what you said. When they finish a contract they will still get an email. But also, some text will happen as some sort of celebration that they have completed it and a fun sound will play.

For menus what are some of your ideas? Right now I have most of the data the player can see tied to their laptop. The watch, warehouse_inv, player_inv, van_inv, town_invs, and end level screens are the menus outside of the laptop.

The graphics are set in stone. I go back and forth with adding a blue tint to the game using fog. So the screen does not look as green. But everything else as far as the models is finished. I do know how to make more models and could go that route. But modeling for this project is not planned. I have made some to possibly use later. One model I made was a red wrench that I would use to show the player something is broken. But right now its not used.

@darimc

Thank you. I plan to keep making these kinds of games. I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing

I added a moon img to the watch. When the player clicks on it the day will end. If the player clicks on it before 12pm, they will also save 50% from their electric bill. I am also doing a test on the rats at this time.

Rats wont be in the game till later levels. But their goal will be to ruin boxes that are not stored on pallets or shelfs. This happens when a rat is in range of the box and the chance in the background says it can ruin boxes. The chance is 2/5. The chance is called once every hour in game.

Rats spawn over time but the chance of them spawning is increased by the ruin box count.

Rats can be removed by buying rat traps.

The player can pickup and drop ruined boxes, and store them in their van. But the only way to remove them is by having a dumpster. Everyday the dumpster is cleared and the player is charged $5 for each ruined box. The player can also repack ruined boxes at later levels.

Here is an img of some rats, and showing the new moon img on the watch for when the player wants to end the day early:

Added a blue outline around inventory items. Not 100% sure I like it

I think the items look better without, just my preference. You could remove the yellow inline of the inventory and change the outline of the items to yellow just like the van underneath the watch in the upper right. If you really don't like it their are many available options to change it.

@Issac Bones

I agree. I removed the outlines.

The rat traps I added are a black rat trap that you see in warehouses in real life. This looked to black so wanted to do an outline. But after removing the outline I just upped the brightness of the img and now I feel good about the inventory items.

Thank you for your help!

Nevin great project you have here. Its really inspiring

This looks fantastic gonna follow your progress

@Medmatheus & @science boy

Thank you!

I want to make a post about whats in the game and whats not in the game at this time and what im working on. Bec I had to cut some things that I earlier said would be in the game. I feel like this post needs to be updated. The game releases on the 27th of this month. So I feel its a good time to update this post.

In The Game:

- Contracts: The only way at this time to make money is to have a contract with a town or city. The contract says how much boxes of a certain product they want. Once the contract is finished the player gets money.

- Towns/Cities: Towns and cities sell boxes and offer contracts to the player. Cities offer more then towns.

- Watch: Keeps track of time, can end the day at anytime.

- Day/Night Kinda: There is a day/night cycle. But at 8pm the day ends.

- There are 8 levels in the game at this time.

- Competitors: The goal of the game is to buy-out your competitors in each level.

- Building: The player can buy shelfs,pallets,rat traps, and dumpsters from towns and cities. Then they can place them in their warehouse for use.

- Laptop: On every level the player will have a laptop in their warehouse.

- Laptop Emails: The player will get emails about their bills and when they complete or fail contracts ( this is still being updated and might change some things ).

- Laptop Clients: Can view all info for each active contract.

- Laptop Storage: View how much product is in the warehouse

- Laptop Bank: Pay bills, see transactions, and view bank account

- Van: Load up your van with boxes, drive around the map and deliver boxes / buy more boxes and enter into contracts with towns/cities

NOT In The Game:
This is a list of features im focused on adding to the game after the game is released. Things I had to put off, or just remove temporarily.

- Employees: This is a big one. Before I had the full game idea I was working on the ai for it. But I am going to be changing how I want ai to work in this game and will add into the game at a later time along with all the extra stuff that will be coming with them. Like more objects to place and managing them.

- Big Shelfs: Right now there is only 1 type of shelf. But later I would like to add bigger ones

- Competitors Red Van: The competitors need a way to be... Competitive. So I have plans to had a red van to them that will drive around and take the contracts and boxes that the player needs from the towns they both fight over.

- Factories: A new location on the map.

- Stats / Investing / Product Worth: I have code already for this showing bar graphs. But this still needs work before its added to the game.

- Order Boxes / Search For Deals On Laptop: A way for the player to fill out their inventory without relying on towns

Being Worked On:

- Save/Load: I want the save/load to be done at the laptop and loading at the main menu. Not in menus once already in the game.

- Tutorials: Making all the tutorials needed.

- Text On Screen: Gameguru does not auto fix the text on screen for all sizes. So have to go in and set it for each line of code that uses text and for each size that I think will be used. Will prob ask around and see if this is necessary first but from my experience with other games with GG it is something that has to be done..

Update:

Save/Load:
Finished how save/load will work in WareHouse Tycoon. It will be much different then how gameguru works by default.
In the long term Im thinking of adding an auto save feature after every level. This is pretty easy to do with the changes.
I also thought about adding a way to simply restart the level. Just a thought right now,

Tutorials:
Tutorials took a bit of time to make bec the game adds more features as the player progresses. So different levels needed more tutorials on what the new changes/features are.

Now its time to work on how the game looks on different screen resolutions. This will be a long and boring process. But the game right now wont work for different screen resolutions.

Here is an example:

My screen:


Player screen with different screen resolution:

Nevin, adjust sprite size to different screen resolutions is my worst nightmare! lol

Your game seems to be using alot of em, mixed with GG numbers and letters. I hadn't spend much time working on resolutions, but what I notice is that on Tilesbank, there a file resolutions.lua, wich define the players resolution. I think g_strBestResolution defines the player resolution, so it might work to use this as condition for the sprite size command.

@Medmatheus

Yes this works I tested it.

But with testing I noticed this takes a very long time. I could do it. But id lose my mind doing it.

So I will mark this down as a failure and move on with releases.

lessons learned.