I feel like the rivers need to be more than just a decoration. How about giving them a current, and then making it possible the float logs along the river, like a lot of sawmills do IRL?
Shipping ships come to take wood or certain items for an improved sell cost, first, you need to build a Dockyard letting the boats come they can also bring things like maybe people or seeds the wanter cam also be used for fish that improve the lumberjacks speed when they eat it. like so BWDev can see
This game can later on have more exotic trees. I think it should start out with realistic trees and move onto crazy scifi trees but that's up to the developer. But definitely shoudl get the seeds from a boat merchant or something.
Weird thought but what if the island had fish and other foods and giving the lumberjacks food would make them happy improving their performance? Also I’m loving the new updates!
Marco Morales that doesn’t take away from my point? Trees could drop apples that the *lumberjack(s)* could eat to make them work faster. Maybe fishing wouldn’t be too complicated just a quick mechanism so that it wouldn’t distract from the main game.
I think a daylight system would be an awesome feature in this game because solar panels would only work in the day giving you reasoning to use other sources of power. It could also add lanterns to light up the night giving another great use for power and another great cosmetic
Are you going to add a day/night cycle? Perhaps one would have to have some form of light sources for employees, either old school fire pits fuelled by wood or lanterns etc. compatible with electricity. I think that a cozy night filled with fireflies and the sound of crickets would suit the forest very well. Keep up the great work!!
RIP Infobar UA-cam recommended me these videos from time to time and everytime I was pleasantly surprised like, ah, yeah, these videos are neat. So I think a subscription is long overdue. The artstyle is really cool and seeing the processes really inspires me.
For the islands: - Import/export - Objects/people wash ashore - Partial multiplayer, you can import/export from/to your friends - Unlocking/buying new islands to connect together - Full multiplayer, each player controls an island
Hey Ben, the idea of the island looks amazing. When you first mentioned getting rid of the "boring void" I was like "What is the problem with the void?" because I am so used to RTS games like Age of Empires where the void is the standard out of bounds design. But then you showed the island and it looked SO much better! Also my feedback for the UI cost counter: I think placing the counter underneath the money UI element is not the best way to go as usually UX elements should be placed closely to the elements they relate to ("Law of Proximity") - the focus of the player is usually very close to the current position of the mouse (= the place they are placing a new element, e.g. a conveyor belt). The "cost" counter is at the very most top left corner however, very far away, especially on large screens. Using a small animation as you did might be helpful but still it is in the peripheral vision of the user and I don't think that this is enough for some kind of information which is really important ("How much did I spend for this?"). My suggestion here would be the following: You can leave the "Total Cost Counter" the way it is right now but maybe add some kind of "money spent for this piece"-text that shortly floats above a freshly placed element. Rollercoaster Tycoon does this similarly: Everytime you place a piece of coaster, a small number appears above said piece, staying for about 2-3 seconds, indicating the coast of this particular piece. I hope this might be somehow helpful! Keep up the amazing work! :-)
Hi, thanks a lot for the suggestions! Am planning on adding exactly what you said - something next to the mouse which shows the cost of each item as it’s purchased (always loved RCT myself so know exactly what you mean). The main monitor is just for a summarised cost of recent purchases 😊
Islands are a really interesting idea! I think it would be cool if certain resources were more common on islands to incline the player more to build on them. The new menus and UI are looking wonderful too! I like the new color choices, and the animations are very clean. Great work! "F" Info Bar
Yep, got some ideas around whether there would be other islands / what the motivation for that would be - different resources could definitely be interesting!
The island idea looks very cool and helps this feel like it's in a more natural world. I also especially love the animated conveyor belts and think it really makes the processes feel more grounded. The touch of wrapping the belt under at the edges of lines is a classy touch.
Water could be treated as a resource, rather than just a part of the background. Feeding workers, cooling machines, that sort of thing. Loving the progress :)
Logging often uses (or maybe used?) rivers to move logs long distances. It could be a way to move logs without spending resources on belts. Just log upstream of your factory and float them down then a machine pulls them out and onto a belt.
By having the lumber mill on an island or by the sea, it would open up the possibility for schooners and other sail ships. Maybe you could add a shipyard where the player could build ships of different sizes. As the size of the mill grew, the player would have to build bigger and more ships to accommodate for all the lumber. Instead of having to create each component of the ships, the player could simply make an order for the desired ships (this way the game won’t get to complicated, but it would add another aspect to the game and increase the difficulty a bit more. I think the game is a bit to easy at the moment, and this new aspect would hopefully make the game more fun and interesting.
This comment section is so positive and has so many good ideas, and you have such skill in art and programming! What did I do right to stumble across this content goldmine?
a thing that might br cool is, a different types of biomes and settings like "forest" has a lot of trees and is big but hilly and hard to build on. Thinking of islands maybe "swamp" so stuff like that
Yeah! That’d be so cool, like you can purchase more islands from different biomes, and maybe different biomes have different, distinct types of wood, resources etc.
The island idea opens up so many new ideas. My idea would be either a) Some sort of Ship Delivery that randomly drops off goodies (money / discounts / loans?) to the player. b) A way to add boats / ships as a delivery method for the finished products the player makes. Loving the content so far! Can't wait to play the final game
@@BWDev can't you just make it so that when the conveyor animation speed is 1 the arrow moves one pixel/second and then you can do: conveyorAnimationSpeed = itemSpeed * pixelsPerUnit;
@@albingrahn5576 or itemSpeed = pixelsPerUnit/animationPixelsPerSecond. Same thing but reversed, depends how he has the code, if the speed of the items is based on the conveyor versus the conveyor being based on the item speed.
1:55 honestly I sort of like the offset arrows because it makes it seem like a new conveyor belt. It's like the effect of lining up a bunch of coloured pencils so that when you roll them it looks like the logo is moving across it. You see the logo dip down into the crevasse between the pencils and come back up . I think the offset sort of implies that subtle curvature and divide between each belt tile. Just my opinion. Great work so far!
ok his opening of "hope you're all doing well" was really sweet and unexpected. This is why indie devs have gotta be the most wholesome community on youtube. Can we just take a moment to appreciate that?
If you decide to go with the island, you gotta make a port where traders can sail in with special deals or maybe you can go sail to other islands and set up colony-mills to collect special wood types on those islands
If you had the forest on an island, then you could explore more islands, purchase them, make more machines on them, and expand beyond your own island, you could also make boats so you could transfer lumberjacks between islands. Which then could lead to fishing, underwater mining, and much more. You could also have there be a central island, where you can set up a shop to sell your wood, fish, and underwater loot. This could also lead to instead of just getting people by setting up a mill. you could set up a "help wanted' sign at your shop, which then could lead to getting 2-10 different options, some being fishermen, lumberjacks, or any other profession. Also you could have the different islands be different climates with different wildlife. So an overgrown island with trees that need someone with a certain strength to chop down, a really snowy one that could have useful materials, or a beach with palm trees. Also the wildlife could lead to hunting, and selling the meat, or skin raw, or prefrozen, or cooked for meat, and different clothes with the skin. which could lead to you opening up different types of shops, clothing store, a depot, restaurants, you get the idea. With different Islands come different altitudes, which means you'd need certain items for your workers to harvest their materials. You could also add farms, with different crops, that need a certain temperature or sun level, soil type to survive, I know al of this seems ambitious, but its all just ideas
I'm always amazed at how I can love the look of something, then you revamp it and it's absolutely blows away your previous attempt. This new UI looks amazing. (Also I loved the island especially with the shade of blue used for the ocean)
The island design could also let you expand into water ideas. Rivers that cut through the land that let you ship lumber down river. Boats that carry lumber off map or bring things into the map from outside the visible world. It also just has the great bonus of looking nice and that it makes the world of the game feel bigger than what we see. We are able to imagine that the water continues and there is a whole world.
Right click on a non-menu part of the screen to close the menu seems to be the standard. You could reuse the closing-menu-function and have it alongside the current settings
Why don’t you just put both conveyor belt designs (basic and chain) into the game? One of them could be better and more expensive for late game. It would be interesting and would differ Lumbermill from other similar games.
I think adding rivers and water powered tools would be awesome, since you were working on electricity and steam power. Players would try to get cheap power from the river and build around it.
I agree with @jonas Grenild statement "I feel like the rivers need to be more than just a decoration. How about giving them a current, and then making it possible the float logs along the river, like a lot of sawmills do IRL?" But to also maybe for power generation?
Ok, for the Island concept, you can have an expensive mid to end game item: the dock. It allows ships to come to the island, and the ships grant access to new technologies that allow you to harvest edible parts of the trees, such as sap from the maple tree to make into syrup, to feed to workers to make them momentarily work faster.
Love the new UI design. Great job! In terms of user experience, I don't think it is very intuitive to have to re-click the icon on the interface to make the interface disappear. ( 07:25 - 07: 34 ) Maybe try something like "if you press escape once it deselects the thing you are busy building/deselects the current selection, and if you press escape again, it closes the menu." Or add a little "X" icon somewhere? I'm not sure what the correct way of doing this is, but I just think that reclicking something to close it doesn't make sense. Other than that, awesome work! Love the progress. Keep going man, really excited about this.
Really nice! You can maybe even implement that when you click outside of the buliding box the menu closes or slides down when nothing is selected to be built
Love the island idea!!! Maybe with it you could allow players to expand to more islands and perchase the land to expand their harvesting areas. Maybe you could also adding ships to transport logs and other resources between islands? Maybe different types of trees grow on other islands that could be “old growth” and or other species that could be more valuable.
Something interesting I thought you could suggest adding: something that goes on the conveyor, like a blade, or an age being held up by drink on a wood frame, and when a conveyor has pressure from that wood, the blade will drop and convert it into planks or something
The islands are great!! They add some much-needed visual variety, and could be great for gameplay. If you made building conveyor belts and pathways over water significantly more expensive (or increasingly expensive as water depth increases?) then that could add some interesting barriers for growth and increase the strategy of the game. They also just look great as you’ve prototypes them here :)
I love your progress! Can''t wait to play it one day! I also love the idea of color coding. Maybe you can give your diffent menus a small border color as well for a better overview. Can't wait for your next video!
If you're inspired by the Canadian Shield, you could have different islands house their own little ecosystems. In areas in the Canadian Shield that can easily support both Coniferous and Deciduous trees, you'll often find that each island will have its own particular mix of trees. For instance, the island my family's cottage is on had mostly Birch trees for a number of years, but now it's shifting to have a lot of White Pine. So each island could have some sort of random generation that determines the ratio of Coniferous to Deciduous trees and also have a preferred type of tree for both that would be the dominant species on the island. This would provide some incentive for players to branch out (no pun intended) to acquire different types of wood.
You could use part of the ocean to have deep water oil rigs that produce power. I know you were thinking about canadian islands, but I was reminded of the islands in northern Scotland where a lot of oil is produced. In my mind, these new oil rigs would be late game but would be huge (maybe requiring their own dedicated workforce?) and produce a lot of power. Just an idea! Loving the devlogs :)
I'm really surprised these videos are sub 50k views. I've been watching this series but I never noticed the views, I just assumed they were all around 200k.. you'll hit that popularity soon!!
The place to sell your lumber could be a dock and there might have to be boat management. It would make more scene then the wood just teleportating away. Plus it would look dope to see a ships sailing to your island and back.
Build menu is looking good. Would be nice to also get a description for each building maybe with some stats (size, power usage, input/output rates, etc.)
For the island edges of the game, you could have ports and docks where you export your timber products. So you would have to load up boats that come along. You could also have boats deliver supplies that you might need in production but wouldn't realistically be obtained in a lumber mill, i.e metal for screws and bolts, etc.
I kinda like this 1:50 It looks like the conveyors are rounded and stuck together instead of being a continuous rubber belt. even if that's not how they work irl
Wow this is so amazing, I wanted to make a game extremely similar to this but gave up due to my lack of knowledge on how to make isometric tiles, and instead changed it to a 2D mobile game haha... This is literally so cool to me, you have my support with this game!
Well if you connected rivers to the ocean, you could have some sort of indication of direction of the rivers, and that could be used for hydroelectric power or you could use it so employees could send logs downstream, to be picked up somewhere else. This could be a cool way of transporting things
I think that it would be cool to add animals, they will just randomly spawn in the forest and will be able to mess with the machines (break them, perhaps even moves the little ones, etc) and you will need to build a fence around your factory to protect your machines (or even a new npc, the hunter) Great vid btw and F for the info bar)
You should add different terrain generation, like plains, Islands, mountains, and every terrain would have a specific advantage(islands would be easier to produce Hydro-Eletric energy, mountains would have more ores,etc. But anyway, I'm loving this game!
BWDev, great work. Just one small thing. The animation on the conveyors is faster than the object moving speed. Also as ThinMatrix said, you should go for the island style!
RIP info bar! It's looking really great man, and the conveyors looks really smooth now! You could create lakes and use the island on it. The lake could give the scenario to look even more like a forest and also a view diversity with the blue color. That might as well give you opening to create some features with the water, such as hydroelectricity for instance. I don't know if you're interested but putting hills can give the game a little challenging and give even more feeling of nature.
The islands could add lots of things, like an offshore pump, or like a driftwood collector, possibly even another way to trade, like a dock. (Dock could be how, workers get to the island)
I don’t know if you’ve already thought of this but I think it would be cool if logs could be transported by water by floating, because they are logs, and maybe this could be used to get them closer to the trading posts at a cheaper cost even if it is slower. With this addition of the ocean you could add in a barge and dock that allows you to export your products for a late game experience.
Can't help but think that there's a cunning masterplan - and i've got no doubt you have a design and know where this is headed. It gets more intriguing as you slowly reveal and i look forward to every new reveal. . If you're doing all of this on your own I think you're now onto something much bigger for one incredibly talented developer and maybe time to look for some funding??
Maybe you could use the rock edges to create surface lakes that could connect to the rivers to add more detail, you could also extract water from them to give them some more purpose
You have a power system in the game however the system is cool it can always be better. I think Windmills would be a cool way to power the game and get a third power source is always awesome.
Adding multiple islands to 1 map open up new possibilities of transportint resources from island A to island B.. like ships for freight, pipelines for e.g. liquids and so on ^^
When you mentioned that the island wasn't going to be tropical, I immediately thought of a tropical island DLC for the game or something. There would be palm trees instead of pine trees and maybe coconuts and bananas.
I think you should have a mark feature where you can mark a tile on a layer and the mark appears on other layers. This can help for precise underground construction.
I think a cool idea for the island is you start with just pine and maple trees but you can get a boat and go to other islands to get new types of trees and then plant them on your island. I think that would be really cool and makes sense and I really like the game and hope it goes well
One Suggestion I would have for you is. When your menu is open, you could right click on non ui elements (aka the map) to close the menu. That would be satisfying to do and would make menu navigation more easy.
I like the island idea,what if you could make a end game item called the "The Sea Port" which allows you to buy diffrent types of trees that require special care and set up environments like a greenhouse. Examples for tree types are Honduras Oak,Pacific Redwood and Palm trees.
You could offset the logs a bit randomly on the conveyor belt. Right now you cant see the red arrows ever as soon as things are on them. If the logs werent 100% perfectly spaced apart from each other, It'll look a bit more organic and we can see the red arrows sometimes again
the island looks soo good! maybe its a good idea to add ships and ship-tradingcenters to the game? they'd only unlock after youve unlocked the edge of the island so it'd be something to work to. I also feel like the island idea is a good idea for a texture DLC: Tropical island (or treepical islands maybe)!
I think it would be interesting to have an island-hopping mechanic, where you expand to islands that have better amber exchange rates but less water/sunlight, making solar panels less efficient, steam engines harder to build, and trees grow more slowly, and less trees, requiring you to plant more trees.
The world could have multiple islands that can be reached by building bridges to them. They could either have their own inviorment (snowy, tropical, deserted) or just be exactly the same and have artifacts you need to colect to complete the game
Oooh the island looks so cute!! I think the edges of the world would definitely look better like that. The build menu looks great too!
Thanks man! Awesome to see you here 😄
Huh... You're still alive thank God..
Will you start back those dev logs.please..🤔
Good to see you're well! Keep up the incredible work, looking forward to your next devlog!
Totally looking forward to your next video
@@BWDev i think the tropical island of some sort would be a nice addition as a dlc possibly?
I feel like the rivers need to be more than just a decoration. How about giving them a current, and then making it possible the float logs along the river, like a lot of sawmills do IRL?
Maybe he can also have these water wheels in the rivers which produce electricity?
@@thisisloop Thats a great idea, hope he read this
And a random chance of beavers eating your logs
@@thisisloop I think it was already planned in an earlier video
Maybe using rivers for floating logs and using mills as a technology step before electricity and conveyor belts?
Shipping
ships come to take wood or certain items for an improved sell cost, first, you need to build a Dockyard letting the boats come they can also bring things like maybe people or seeds the wanter cam also be used for fish that improve the lumberjacks speed when they eat it.
like so BWDev can see
I've thought about making a game like this before, Importing and exporting, building the factory in between
This game can later on have more exotic trees. I think it should start out with realistic trees and move onto crazy scifi trees but that's up to the developer. But definitely shoudl get the seeds from a boat merchant or something.
I agree
Weird thought but what if the island had fish and other foods and giving the lumberjacks food would make them happy improving their performance? Also I’m loving the new updates!
Thought about that too, they could need less breaks if they are able to fish
it wuold be cool butt i also think the game shuld focus on lumber (thats why we did not make machines under ground).
Marco Morales that doesn’t take away from my point? Trees could drop apples that the *lumberjack(s)* could eat to make them work faster. Maybe fishing wouldn’t be too complicated just a quick mechanism so that it wouldn’t distract from the main game.
i thought of that idea aswell and i agree that he should add it to the game
@@Dryrubbersock *b u t t*
Damn, the UI looks so professional! Gets better every week!
It's looking great, I love the look of the rocks that surround the island! Rip info bar XD
Thanks dude!
I think a daylight system would be an awesome feature in this game because solar panels would only work in the day giving you reasoning to use other sources of power. It could also add lanterns to light up the night giving another great use for power and another great cosmetic
Are you going to add a day/night cycle? Perhaps one would have to have some form of light sources for employees, either old school fire pits fuelled by wood or lanterns etc. compatible with electricity. I think that a cozy night filled with fireflies and the sound of crickets would suit the forest very well. Keep up the great work!!
RIP Infobar
UA-cam recommended me these videos from time to time and everytime I was pleasantly surprised like, ah, yeah, these videos are neat. So I think a subscription is long overdue.
The artstyle is really cool and seeing the processes really inspires me.
For the islands:
- Import/export
- Objects/people wash ashore
- Partial multiplayer, you can import/export from/to your friends
- Unlocking/buying new islands to connect together
- Full multiplayer, each player controls an island
Hey Ben, the idea of the island looks amazing. When you first mentioned getting rid of the "boring void" I was like "What is the problem with the void?" because I am so used to RTS games like Age of Empires where the void is the standard out of bounds design. But then you showed the island and it looked SO much better!
Also my feedback for the UI cost counter: I think placing the counter underneath the money UI element is not the best way to go as usually UX elements should be placed closely to the elements they relate to ("Law of Proximity") - the focus of the player is usually very close to the current position of the mouse (= the place they are placing a new element, e.g. a conveyor belt). The "cost" counter is at the very most top left corner however, very far away, especially on large screens. Using a small animation as you did might be helpful but still it is in the peripheral vision of the user and I don't think that this is enough for some kind of information which is really important ("How much did I spend for this?").
My suggestion here would be the following: You can leave the "Total Cost Counter" the way it is right now but maybe add some kind of "money spent for this piece"-text that shortly floats above a freshly placed element. Rollercoaster Tycoon does this similarly: Everytime you place a piece of coaster, a small number appears above said piece, staying for about 2-3 seconds, indicating the coast of this particular piece.
I hope this might be somehow helpful! Keep up the amazing work! :-)
Hi, thanks a lot for the suggestions! Am planning on adding exactly what you said - something next to the mouse which shows the cost of each item as it’s purchased (always loved RCT myself so know exactly what you mean). The main monitor is just for a summarised cost of recent purchases 😊
Islands are a really interesting idea! I think it would be cool if certain resources were more common on islands to incline the player more to build on them. The new menus and UI are looking wonderful too! I like the new color choices, and the animations are very clean. Great work!
"F" Info Bar
Yep, got some ideas around whether there would be other islands / what the motivation for that would be - different resources could definitely be interesting!
The island idea looks very cool and helps this feel like it's in a more natural world. I also especially love the animated conveyor belts and think it really makes the processes feel more grounded. The touch of wrapping the belt under at the edges of lines is a classy touch.
Water could be treated as a resource, rather than just a part of the background. Feeding workers, cooling machines, that sort of thing. Loving the progress :)
Logging often uses (or maybe used?) rivers to move logs long distances. It could be a way to move logs without spending resources on belts. Just log upstream of your factory and float them down then a machine pulls them out and onto a belt.
Yesss! Another Dev video! It makes my day when I see your dev logs pop up in my notifications. Keep it up, loving the game so far!
By having the lumber mill on an island or by the sea, it would open up the possibility for schooners and other sail ships. Maybe you could add a shipyard where the player could build ships of different sizes. As the size of the mill grew, the player would have to build bigger and more ships to accommodate for all the lumber.
Instead of having to create each component of the ships, the player could simply make an order for the desired ships (this way the game won’t get to complicated, but it would add another aspect to the game and increase the difficulty a bit more. I think the game is a bit to easy at the moment, and this new aspect would hopefully make the game more fun and interesting.
Help get this to the top!!
This comment section is so positive and has so many good ideas, and you have such skill in art and programming! What did I do right to stumble across this content goldmine?
Press f to pay respects for the info bar ❤ this looks amazing dude, ui is always hard but u make it look so nice!
F
F
F
a thing that might br cool is, a different types of biomes and settings like "forest" has a lot of trees and is big but hilly and hard to build on. Thinking of islands maybe "swamp" so stuff like that
Yeah! That’d be so cool, like you can purchase more islands from different biomes, and maybe different biomes have different, distinct types of wood, resources etc.
The island idea opens up so many new ideas. My idea would be either
a) Some sort of Ship Delivery that randomly drops off goodies (money / discounts / loans?) to the player.
b) A way to add boats / ships as a delivery method for the finished products the player makes.
Loving the content so far! Can't wait to play the final game
Sweet improvements! Really love the new UI.
BUUUUT the belt animation is moving faster than the item on the belt.
Yeah, actively trying to figure out the timing. It's trickier than it seems!
@@BWDev I also think that the arrows are a bit too visible relative to the items, maybe try making them smaller, or darker.
@@BWDev can't you just make it so that when the conveyor animation speed is 1 the arrow moves one pixel/second and then you can do:
conveyorAnimationSpeed = itemSpeed * pixelsPerUnit;
@@albingrahn5576 or itemSpeed = pixelsPerUnit/animationPixelsPerSecond. Same thing but reversed, depends how he has the code, if the speed of the items is based on the conveyor versus the conveyor being based on the item speed.
I love your devlogs. I never would have thought of doing my own until I starting watching yours. Thanks for the inspiration!
Wow, ISLANDS?!?
1:55 honestly I sort of like the offset arrows because it makes it seem like a new conveyor belt. It's like the effect of lining up a bunch of coloured pencils so that when you roll them it looks like the logo is moving across it. You see the logo dip down into the crevasse between the pencils and come back up . I think the offset sort of implies that subtle curvature and divide between each belt tile. Just my opinion. Great work so far!
ok his opening of "hope you're all doing well" was really sweet and unexpected. This is why indie devs have gotta be the most wholesome community on youtube. Can we just take a moment to appreciate that?
Totally get Rollercoaster Tycoon vibes now, very nice update on the visuals!
If you decide to go with the island, you gotta make a port where traders can sail in with special deals or maybe you can go sail to other islands and set up colony-mills to collect special wood types on those islands
If you had the forest on an island, then you could explore more islands, purchase them, make more machines on them, and expand beyond your own island, you could also make boats so you could transfer lumberjacks between islands. Which then could lead to fishing, underwater mining, and much more. You could also have there be a central island, where you can set up a shop to sell your wood, fish, and underwater loot. This could also lead to instead of just getting people by setting up a mill. you could set up a "help wanted' sign at your shop, which then could lead to getting 2-10 different options, some being fishermen, lumberjacks, or any other profession. Also you could have the different islands be different climates with different wildlife. So an overgrown island with trees that need someone with a certain strength to chop down, a really snowy one that could have useful materials, or a beach with palm trees. Also the wildlife could lead to hunting, and selling the meat, or skin raw, or prefrozen, or cooked for meat, and different clothes with the skin. which could lead to you opening up different types of shops, clothing store, a depot, restaurants, you get the idea. With different Islands come different altitudes, which means you'd need certain items for your workers to harvest their materials. You could also add farms, with different crops, that need a certain temperature or sun level, soil type to survive, I know al of this seems ambitious, but its all just ideas
I'm always amazed at how I can love the look of something, then you revamp it and it's absolutely blows away your previous attempt. This new UI looks amazing. (Also I loved the island especially with the shade of blue used for the ocean)
The island design could also let you expand into water ideas. Rivers that cut through the land that let you ship lumber down river. Boats that carry lumber off map or bring things into the map from outside the visible world.
It also just has the great bonus of looking nice and that it makes the world of the game feel bigger than what we see. We are able to imagine that the water continues and there is a whole world.
Right click on a non-menu part of the screen to close the menu seems to be the standard. You could reuse the closing-menu-function and have it alongside the current settings
Why don’t you just put both conveyor belt designs (basic and chain) into the game? One of them could be better and more expensive for late game. It would be interesting and would differ Lumbermill from other similar games.
that would be very intresting
We need to get his attention! This is a great idea!
Perhaps the rubber belt would be more efficient for small bits and the vhain for large logs and such
I think adding rivers and water powered tools would be awesome, since you were working on electricity and steam power. Players would try to get cheap power from the river and build around it.
I agree with @jonas Grenild statement "I feel like the rivers need to be more than just a decoration. How about giving them a current, and then making it possible the float logs along the river, like a lot of sawmills do IRL?"
But to also maybe for power generation?
Nice video ben! what about a trading harbor? (btw I really like the new UI)
Ok, for the Island concept, you can have an expensive mid to end game item: the dock. It allows ships to come to the island, and the ships grant access to new technologies that allow you to harvest edible parts of the trees, such as sap from the maple tree to make into syrup, to feed to workers to make them momentarily work faster.
I've never heard of DoTween! That's amazing and would probably save me SO much time. Will be checking this out for sure
Spicy
I absolutely love your videos, keep up the good work.
Love the new UI design. Great job! In terms of user experience, I don't think it is very intuitive to have to re-click the icon on the interface to make the interface disappear. ( 07:25 - 07: 34 ) Maybe try something like "if you press escape once it deselects the thing you are busy building/deselects the current selection, and if you press escape again, it closes the menu." Or add a little "X" icon somewhere? I'm not sure what the correct way of doing this is, but I just think that reclicking something to close it doesn't make sense. Other than that, awesome work! Love the progress. Keep going man, really excited about this.
Maybe being able to travel to more islands maybe they have different perks such as spruce being harder to chop but can be sold for more
Really nice!
You can maybe even implement that when you click outside of the buliding box the menu closes or slides down when nothing is selected to be built
I’d like to see “Seasons” in the game.Summer-Autumn-Winter-Spring.
The island looks fantastic! Definitely think that would look very good for the environment. Nice UI update as well :)
Love the island idea!!! Maybe with it you could allow players to expand to more islands and perchase the land to expand their harvesting areas. Maybe you could also adding ships to transport logs and other resources between islands? Maybe different types of trees grow on other islands that could be “old growth” and or other species that could be more valuable.
Something interesting I thought you could suggest adding: something that goes on the conveyor, like a blade, or an age being held up by drink on a wood frame, and when a conveyor has pressure from that wood, the blade will drop and convert it into planks or something
haven't seen the full video yet, but just want to say this: I love the island concept!! It looks awesome and is a great solution for map boundries.
The islands are great!! They add some much-needed visual variety, and could be great for gameplay. If you made building conveyor belts and pathways over water significantly more expensive (or increasingly expensive as water depth increases?) then that could add some interesting barriers for growth and increase the strategy of the game. They also just look great as you’ve prototypes them here :)
I love your progress! Can''t wait to play it one day!
I also love the idea of color coding. Maybe you can give your diffent menus a small border color as well for a better overview.
Can't wait for your next video!
If you're inspired by the Canadian Shield, you could have different islands house their own little ecosystems. In areas in the Canadian Shield that can easily support both Coniferous and Deciduous trees, you'll often find that each island will have its own particular mix of trees. For instance, the island my family's cottage is on had mostly Birch trees for a number of years, but now it's shifting to have a lot of White Pine. So each island could have some sort of random generation that determines the ratio of Coniferous to Deciduous trees and also have a preferred type of tree for both that would be the dominant species on the island. This would provide some incentive for players to branch out (no pun intended) to acquire different types of wood.
You could use part of the ocean to have deep water oil rigs that produce power. I know you were thinking about canadian islands, but I was reminded of the islands in northern Scotland where a lot of oil is produced. In my mind, these new oil rigs would be late game but would be huge (maybe requiring their own dedicated workforce?) and produce a lot of power. Just an idea! Loving the devlogs :)
I'm really surprised these videos are sub 50k views. I've been watching this series but I never noticed the views, I just assumed they were all around 200k.. you'll hit that popularity soon!!
The place to sell your lumber could be a dock and there might have to be boat management. It would make more scene then the wood just teleportating away. Plus it would look dope to see a ships sailing to your island and back.
Build menu is looking good. Would be nice to also get a description for each building maybe with some stats (size, power usage, input/output rates, etc.)
For the island edges of the game, you could have ports and docks where you export your timber products. So you would have to load up boats that come along.
You could also have boats deliver supplies that you might need in production but wouldn't realistically be obtained in a lumber mill, i.e metal for screws and bolts, etc.
I kinda like this 1:50
It looks like the conveyors are rounded and stuck together instead of being a continuous rubber belt. even if that's not how they work irl
Wow this is so amazing, I wanted to make a game extremely similar to this but gave up due to my lack of knowledge on how to make isometric tiles, and instead changed it to a 2D mobile game haha... This is literally so cool to me, you have my support with this game!
Well if you connected rivers to the ocean, you could have some sort of indication of direction of the rivers, and that could be used for hydroelectric power or you could use it so employees could send logs downstream, to be picked up somewhere else. This could be a cool way of transporting things
I think that it would be cool to add animals, they will just randomly spawn in the forest and will be able to mess with the machines (break them, perhaps even moves the little ones, etc) and you will need to build a fence around your factory to protect your machines (or even a new npc, the hunter)
Great vid btw and F for the info bar)
You should add different terrain generation, like plains, Islands, mountains, and every terrain would have a specific advantage(islands would be easier to produce Hydro-Eletric energy, mountains would have more ores,etc. But anyway, I'm loving this game!
BWDev, great work. Just one small thing. The animation on the conveyors is faster than the object moving speed. Also as ThinMatrix said, you should go for the island style!
I love your process for everything. Thanks for another great devlog.
RIP info bar! It's looking really great man, and the conveyors looks really smooth now!
You could create lakes and use the island on it. The lake could give the scenario to look even more like a forest and also a view diversity with the blue color. That might as well give you opening to create some features with the water, such as hydroelectricity for instance.
I don't know if you're interested but putting hills can give the game a little challenging and give even more feeling of nature.
Love the art, and I agree the island you POC'd fit well and would be better than the void that is currently there!
The islands could add lots of things, like an offshore pump, or like a driftwood collector, possibly even another way to trade, like a dock. (Dock could be how, workers get to the island)
Ouuhhh smooth! I think Tweening will be my great friend also XD Nice progress mate!
I don’t know if you’ve already thought of this but I think it would be cool if logs could be transported by water by floating, because they are logs, and maybe this could be used to get them closer to the trading posts at a cheaper cost even if it is slower. With this addition of the ocean you could add in a barge and dock that allows you to export your products for a late game experience.
I’m so excited to watch this video!!
EDIT: Amazing progress!
With islands you could deliver your products (logs, chairs, tables, planks) via containers on large container ships!! :)
Fantastic progress. The concept for the island looks amazing.
I'm really impressed on how far this game has come. Good job!
Idea: the colder weather could make different trees that take more time to cut and clean but sells for a lot, making your time worth it.
Can't help but think that there's a cunning masterplan - and i've got no doubt you have a design and know where this is headed. It gets more intriguing as you slowly reveal and i look forward to every new reveal. . If you're doing all of this on your own I think you're now onto something much bigger for one incredibly talented developer and maybe time to look for some funding??
Maybe you could use the rock edges to create surface lakes that could connect to the rivers to add more detail, you could also extract water from them to give them some more purpose
You have a power system in the game however the system is cool it can always be better. I think Windmills would be a cool way to power the game and get a third power source is always awesome.
love the new stuff, well done!
The island looks really good, definitely better than the empty void. Can't wait to see how the game turns out
Adding multiple islands to 1 map open up new possibilities of transportint resources from island A to island B.. like ships for freight, pipelines for e.g. liquids and so on ^^
When you mentioned that the island wasn't going to be tropical, I immediately thought of a tropical island DLC for the game or something. There would be palm trees instead of pine trees and maybe coconuts and bananas.
Wow, the island rock-borders look fantastic!
I really love the look of the little Island!
I think you should have a mark feature where you can mark a tile on a layer and the mark appears on other layers. This can help for precise underground construction.
I think a cool idea for the island is you start with just pine and maple trees but you can get a boat and go to other islands to get new types of trees and then plant them on your island. I think that would be really cool and makes sense and I really like the game and hope it goes well
One Suggestion I would have for you is. When your menu is open, you could right click on non ui elements (aka the map) to close the menu. That would be satisfying to do and would make menu navigation more easy.
I believe your game will be a success.
I'am defiently getting this, well done.
I love these hover and click animations so much! Keep up the good work! ❤
The pixelart in this game is gorgeous.
I like the island idea,what if you could make a end game item called the "The Sea Port" which allows you to buy diffrent types of trees that require special care and set up environments like a greenhouse.
Examples for tree types are Honduras Oak,Pacific Redwood and Palm trees.
I'm really liking the game more and more with every devlog. I'll be excited to give this a go :D
Also, F for the info bar.
I honestly want that island picture as a desktop background.
You could offset the logs a bit randomly on the conveyor belt.
Right now you cant see the red arrows ever as soon as things are on them. If the logs werent 100% perfectly spaced apart from each other, It'll look a bit more organic and we can see the red arrows sometimes again
the island looks soo good! maybe its a good idea to add ships and ship-tradingcenters to the game? they'd only unlock after youve unlocked the edge of the island so it'd be something to work to.
I also feel like the island idea is a good idea for a texture DLC: Tropical island (or treepical islands maybe)!
I think it would be interesting to have an island-hopping mechanic, where you expand to islands that have better amber exchange rates but less water/sunlight, making solar panels less efficient, steam engines harder to build, and trees grow more slowly, and less trees, requiring you to plant more trees.
the island concept is really pretty
The world could have multiple islands that can be reached by building bridges to them. They could either have their own inviorment (snowy, tropical, deserted) or just be exactly the same and have artifacts you need to colect to complete the game
Love these devlogs! Can't wait till the games comes out!
Aww, I liked the pixelated icons. It matched the text and rest of the game better.
Hills in the islands, a new challenge to build your factory
you should keep the thick edge around the selected item in the build menu, when you've selected it, so you can tell what you're about to build
This guy gets my creativity going again.