With the announcement of new GameDev.net challenge I decided to join yet again!

I saved the first weekend pretty much only for brain storming and coming up with solid idea and sort of road map how to get there. Deciding which technology I'm going to use this time and how should I approach the development (from past experience, failing this step leads inevitably to failure of ANY project, not just game development one). Contrary to the past, I would like to give at least weekly updates on how the progress is going. So what's the plan?

Technology

This decision was a tough one, I was considering using my own game engine but in the end I've decided against it. There are few reasons behind this (incomplete networking code being one of those - and even though there won't be too much of networking, I'd rather prefer creating more content in the game than debugging networking). Sadly this really means that I won't be doing ray tracing nor path tracing this time.

The engine of my choice this time will be Unity (as with many other projects) for the client application (i.e. the one you will hopefully be running in the end). The game will be 3D, although be prepared for at least few fancy effects!

Concept

This is a challenge - so I will layout the concept. It is likely it will change in one or more ways - but anyways let's discuss what I'd like to do for challenge. As per challenge requirements we will be building and managing - to be precise it will be sort of town. The concept counts with few resources that will be used in building and sustaining your own little village (wood, stone, food, water … depending on the time and animation this list may grow or get shorter), you will have to pay your workers with currency, so far nothing really surprising.

The social aspect of the challenge will allow you to:

1. Share your town in a larger scale world (divided to principalities, players will claim principalities), there will be certain restrictions (only principalities with 0 or positive balance can be commit - as they will still participate in the market)
2. Interact with other players through trade to obtain certain resources, this will require using currency (either directly or through 3, not decided about that yet)
3. The only way to obtain currency is trade to “the king” (an entity which will buy/sell any resources at given cost in currency - if I get time to develop this further, the resources cost will fluctuate as on a real market)

There will be a score for each principality, therefore showing which one is more/less successful economy. Although there is an important BUT. Each principality will be slightly different due to terrain and resource availability - so the score is more or less representing an economic power of principality.

Roadmap

Clearly the concept isn't small, therefore it is likely some corners will be cut (while I originally planned over a dozen of different resources, due to experience I'll be glad if I get in just those 4 basic ones + currency). First step in the road map is getting a prototype of building your town running. And that is the task for the following week. If everything goes well, there might be some WIP demos available over time (as making those with Unity is extremely easy).

Alright, so let's get to work!