Project Description
Ecopolis is a 3D top down city builder game made in the Unity game engine. Its USP is that encourages players to think 'green' to try and make low polluting sustainable cities.
Project Info
Role: Gameplay Programmer
Team Size: 3 during the time I worked on the project
Time Frame: 6 Weeks
Engine & Language: Unity with C#
Project Introduction
Ecopolis is a city builder that encourages the player to 'think green' and try to make a city that has a low pollution output. Targeting the 12-16 age group, the game requires players to build and maintain a virtual town over 200 years of technological change. With the ability to place and upgrade city blocks including housing, industry and leisure, players can monitor the impact of their choices in terms of population, happiness, wealth and, importantly, pollution.
When I started working on the project, the main mechanics were complete so it was up to me and my 2 colleagues to playtest and polish the game. I had to fix various bugs as well as implement a couple of mechanics myself that me and the designer on the team thought would improve the gameplay experience.
Highlighted Mechanics
#1 Tutorial System
When we started working on the project, we noticed the tutorial was very simple and didn't teach the player much about the game and how in-depth the mechanics actually are. So the designer created a comprehensive tutorial that I managed to implement.
Unfortunately the current steps in the tutorial were not coded in modular fashion that made it easy to add more steps. As a result I overhauled the whole system to make it easy to insert or delete steps in the tutorial. This was done using case statements to step through the tutorial stages depending on what the current stage was.
#2 The Budget Screen
As an avid city builder player myself, I thougt it very odd that the current game build did not have any sort of budget screen. There was not even a UI section in the current funds display that told you your current income for the next year. As a result after consulting with the designer on the team, we created a concept for a budget screen and a UI overhaul to make it clearer where the player was earning and losing money.
Project Reflection
Overall this project ended up being a good polished project, this was largely due to the 6 weeks me and my colleague had to do polish work on the game. I had also never coded a tutorial system as indepth before, so it was good experience for future projects. Hopefully it will soon be commercially released by my former employer, for now I do have permission from them to post these showcases. You can also look into the game more via this article:
