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Post news Report RSS The Concrete Jungle Weekly Chronicle – March 9th

Another big update this week. Progress on the latest build for EGX Rezzed, including the first iteration of the versus mode AI, UI tweaks and the first finished character in-game!

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I've been working non-stop to put together a build ready for EGX Rezzed this week. It's great seeing this game start to come together! In terms of the whole project, I've still got a lot of content to add, but the core elements are now in-place after going back and refining a load of them thanks to your feedback.

As well as the gameplay changes I've made in previous weeks, I've updated the UI this week also with ideas from you guys:

march15

There are now (animated) arrows that hover over point collecting buildings when they will be affected by what you're about to place. This is a *great* addition, and you have backer Joel Finch to thank for the idea. It not only makes things clearer but I think it actually helps make the game easier to grasp for new players.

march15_2

Next up, I've also made the tile brightness change in accordance to it's score. This mainly effects empty tiles- again, it's a visual hint that helps increase awareness.

One final change this week, which is one of those things which I should of implemented right from the start- I should of even put it in MegaCity. It's essentially a finish line. In addition to the endless mode found in the Preview version and MegaCity, there is now also a non-endless mode which is actually winnable. Now finally solo mode is not just an endless survival type mode!

Just placeholder UI art for now, but you get the idea.

Just placeholder UI art for now, but you get the idea.

It's really simple, if you clear columns up until the designated line then you win the level, if not then you loose. The game has needed more objective game modes for a while now I think. Endless mode will still feature of course, but the addition of this will allow me to have proper levels and make some proper challenges in the story mode also.

I've also started implementing some requested keyboard control with cursor key and wasd scrolling. I want there to be a lot of different control options in the final game, including controllers.

This week I also finished the first iteration of the verses mode AI. There's going to be a huge amount of refining and tweaking it, but it's great to actually get a semi-competent AI in the game to play against for now. I don't think it's ever going to be able to compete with human players once they've started learning the game's more intricate mechanics- there's just too many crafty combos a human player could put together to outfox the AI. It has managed to beat me once as of last night though, and it's come close several times, even though I've not had long to test it! For some reason the AI currently really loves farmhouses.

But wait there's more!

There's finally some finished character details to share with you. I figured I'd introduce each playable character as their skill tree is completed. As of this update, the first playable character -Laney, is ready and in-game.

Karl, my character artist has completed all the pieces for the 8 characters and I couldn't be happier with them!

Laney

Laney Thompson is the city's Architect. As a result her skill tree focuses around this, and features lots of perks to buff buildings.

laneytech

The other focus of her skill tree is culture. Laney gets access to buildings such as an Arthouse Cinema, a Ballet School and ulitmately the Opera House. The cultural buildings & skills are based around deck control. They have effects such as increasing your playslots from 2 to 3 and removing unwanted cards from your deck.

Being one of the starting characters, I wanted her skill tree to be simple, straight forward and easy-to-play. She should be able to hold her own in versus mode too.

That's all for this week- I hope to see you at Rezzed, where Concrete Jungle will be part of the Bafta Inside Games Arcade!

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OmegaZeroDay
OmegaZeroDay

Hey, just got around to playing the backer build from KickStarter and I'm really enjoying the game! I have a couple of questions from my initial play session; are there intentions to have a hover (or otherwise) rules explanation somewhere in-game? For example, I didn't really understand what neighbourhoods did and just wished I could click the word or hover over it to see what it does or how it helps, kind of like I've seen in Mojang's Scrolls (I assume other digital card games do this).

The other question I have was about the art, I absolutely love it but it seemed surprisingly low-res, are we going to get a high quality option on PC or at least a limit to the amount you can zoom? I would love a high-res option.

"For some reason the AI currently really loves farmhouses."

This is amusing, perhaps if it continues to be the case you could have the opposing AI smack-talk you, but as if he was from the west country :P

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ColePowered Author
ColePowered

Hi Omega!

Thanks for your comment, there's already been a lot of progress on some of your suggestions (especially with the explaination of the game mechanics).

Neighborhoods (now called 'blocks' in-game) are when the buildings of the same class group together- you'll notice if you do this the roads encircle them. Some buildings have the ability to effect a whole block/neighborhood- for example there are cards that give +1 point to all houses in a block.

One thing I've done is make it so you can right click on any card at any time and mouse over to get a detailed explaination of each part of the card. I hope this will go a long way to providing a more thorough explaination.

Also there's going to be a west country playable character- more on that soon!

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OmegaZeroDay
OmegaZeroDay

Thanks for the reply! That all sounds great and your constant updates are pretty refreshing from an indie dev, seems like it's really coming along, looking forward to it!

West country playable character?! All games should have this.

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