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Author Topic: Underworld: $hadow Economics [v0.1.8 July 2020] - a text based crime simulation  (Read 9597 times)

wolf.b

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Begin as a lowly gang in New York City (currently), where you buy and sell drugs with varying markets in different areas, much like the classic Drug Wars. As you grow though, you must economically and violently take on other gangs to corner your markets, make alliances and partnerships, organize mule-trains and smurf drops, stay ahead of the police and FBI or even try to infiltrate them. You'll also need to set up stash-houses, money laundering businesses and even setup more illicit money sources from human trafficking and prostitution through to gun running and arms deals.

Check out our website for more information about the game and our community, as well as a download link to the game.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2020, 03:18:01 pm by wolf.b »
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2020, 06:48:07 pm »

BUILD v0.1.5 HAS BEEN RELEASED!
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By Wolf
Ladies & Gentlemen, It has been a LONG three months since our last release. But today we have released v0.1.5 for your pleasure. Firstly I want to stress not to expect too much as a player experience. There are some enjoyable small additions but the main feature is the save mechanic as promised. In fact this build only took our team here two weeks to compile.

For two and a half months before that Anon doggedly worked as hard as he could on the project through titanic changes. A new lead developer that had us begin converting the game from VisualBasic to C++ only to leave the project a week in, another new Lead Dev who never even started before quitting.

Over twenty interviews until at last we found our partners in crime (that's right, I said it) Nerdrage and Micycle. These powerhouses have been working tirelessly for the last two weeks to rebuild the game and improve it immeasurably on the back-end ahead of v02's development cycle which begins on Monday. You can expect much faster build releases from here on out. And I hope you enjoy our infant game's latest build.

By Nerdrage
While the build should be feature complete for the v0.1 goals, don't expect great performance or a small footprint. There are certainly bugs, as we've cut internal testing short to end the release drought as soon as possible. As we flesh out the gameplay, optimizations and UI improvements will follow.

By Micycle
Really excited to be working on this release! Moving forward we’re making a lot of changes to the back end. Mostly optimizations that will make it easier to add features and make changes in the future. We’ve got lots of great things planned and we want to make it easy to share them with you all!
« Last Edit: February 10, 2020, 11:54:14 am by wolf.b »
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George_Chickens

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2020, 02:34:35 pm »

Looks like a lot of fun. Will try in the morning
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George_Chickens

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2020, 06:32:54 am »

I tried the newest version, and it seems to just crash on startup.
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2020, 12:59:35 pm »

Apologies I didn't have the topic set to notify, by mistake.

Can you tell me the nature of the crash?
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #5 on: February 05, 2020, 01:08:45 pm »

Okay, I just had 3 members of our community re-download the game and it opened for them with no issues. Nor have I heard from anyone else about the game not opening. Please provide any details you can including your Windows version. This is clearly not a common problem so anyone else interested in playing the game, please do proceed, hopefully this is a unique situation.
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Blaze

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2020, 12:00:29 am »

Works on my end.

Then again, there isn't much to it yet, get some recruits, send recruits to location, buy drugs with moderate variances in price every day, pass time as recruits sell drugs, buy more drugs, repeat.
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #7 on: February 06, 2020, 04:47:53 am »

That's an accurate summary of the game so far. In fact all those features were in the first build, the last was about converting the code from VisualBasic to C++ and doing a lot on the backend of the code to better operate those features, as well as a save feature. The next build will be more of the same, no new gameplay features. Instead we'll be doing more backend code, and making the front-end more sophisticated and more streamlined with merged menus and our first test map. We're only a infant game in development right now, that means baby steps.
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2020, 11:25:29 am »

By Wolf

Hello everyone. We're bringing you another (albeit belated) weekly roundup from the team:

As some of you know I've finally completed the borough map designs and even stitched together an entire NYC map which we've now calculated that we can use in the game from v0.1.7. along with all the maps (save The Bronx borough map which we'll be testing in v0.1.6). What's going to very exciting about a NYC map is that it will allow players to see the economic struggles between gangs, and 'gang-wars' on a top-tier level, whilst still allowing players to focus on more specific areas.

Meanwhile 1.6 is moving at a rapid pace. Our top priority this build has been to continue cleaning up the code from the first build. We've stripped out all game-text (which was all hard-coded) and built string lists for reimplementation. This will allow for localization later which the others go into a little. For those unfamiliar with the term localization is the process of allowing the game to be displayed in multiple languages. For now we're only planning to offer Portuguese-Brazilian, but if other translators step forward then we'll be able to offer those too.

I've also been working on horse-race betting for implementation at some point (no planned release slot yet). And I know that several people keep hoping for Linux and Mac OS X ports. These are important to us but there's still a lot we are trying to do first, so I ask for your continued patience and faith because they WILL happen.


By Nerdrage

As we've heard a few voices asking about localization, it was decided to move its support up in the implementation priority list. Our asset pipeline was adjusted to accommodate that change.

The focus of the upcoming patch is upgrades to both the output and the input systems to support maps and longer lists that are coming right after. The groundwork that happens at the moment aims not only to make localization possible, but to prepare us to the eventual upgrade to tile graphics.


By Micycle

We've been working hard on improvements to the game and user experience! Among other things, we've been making back-end changes in preparation for eventually supporting other languages. We've cataloged all the text in the game and formatted it for the program to read. Eventually we hope to translate all the text to other languages to bring the game to more people.
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2020, 11:38:50 am »

Below is the NYC Map mentioned in today's weekly roundup:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #10 on: February 16, 2020, 01:38:40 pm »

By Wolf
A fairly conceptual week for me. the GDD for v0.1.7 is complete and is just awaiting me to finalize the asset list which I'll be finishing shortly. Elsewhere I've begun designing an 'incidental narrative map framework'. I've also been doing quite a bit of research into the economics of wages in gang culture which I hope to implement over the next few builds. I've completed a 2nd draft redesign of the robbery system which makes each borough more dynamic in it's results. I'm also working on a 2nd draft of the burglary system, as well as building loot lists for the incidental maps when we finally get around to those.


By Nerdrage
The UI rework is nearing its completion. We have localizable text, adjustable keybinds, dynamically resized tables, etc. Slicker menus, tighter controls and more colors are starting to shape up as well. Internal testing will start in the upcoming week and I can't wait to use all the new toys in 1.7 and beyond. I have confidence that this build is a worthy backend investment that will hasten upcoming releases.
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JimboM12

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #11 on: February 16, 2020, 01:51:20 pm »

hopefully this game will let me become gus fring from breaking bad but jimbo. gim bring, even. ptw.
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #12 on: February 16, 2020, 02:03:37 pm »

hopefully this game will let me become gus fring from breaking bad but jimbo. gim bring, even. ptw.

The initial macro development is focused on gang culture and economics but this will slowly branch outwards and upwards to encompass more and more shadow economic currents. For now you'll control the group as opposed to the individual, but we're slowly building towards the point where you control the individual and not the group. This is called the QUANTUM LEAP system. And you'll be able to have various characters throughout the world that you can jump into the lives of, whether your other characters are dead or alive. You might be a crack addict holding up liquor stores for their next fix or a mob boss trying to keep the peace with your competition. The QL system will be driven by VICES, another special system we're working towards.
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wolf.b

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #13 on: February 23, 2020, 06:33:28 am »

BUILD v0.1.6 HAS BEEN RELEASED!

BY WOLF
It's been a quieter week than usual on the design end of things. I've rebuilt v0.1.7's GDD based on several new design parameters we've implemented. I'm currently working on a gang name generator given there will be hundreds of AI gangs in the game in the near future. One of the ways in which I'm doing this is by collating the name of every street categorized by borough in NYC. I won't be able to collate them by neighborhood, but this is a great start so far. An added benefit later down the road will be rpg driving, with street names built into the mechanic's narrative.

v0.1.6 completed a successful cycle of internal testing (a big thank you to all our testers), and we were able to patch a few issues quickly. One we've not solved yet appears to be the test map going black on dual monitors. But we will eventually be moving to our own renderer rather than console emulation and this will allow us to work on solving issues like this with more ease.

v0.1.7 has already entered development and with our new protocol of focusing on 1 major design feature each build, rapid progress has been made (we split the original 1.7 into 1.7 and 1.8, the first covering maps (city, borough, neighborhood) and the second covering combat). Neighborhood maps will be more abstract than borough and city maps, with random generation based on certain rules as more features are added to it. For now it merely displays corner locations.

BY NERDRAGE
The initial UI implementation is complete! It will be much faster and less error-prone to add new menus with rich functionality from now on. The changes are too numerous to list, it was a complete rewrite from ground up.

We are now using the full extent of the console emulator's pseudo-graphics output: colors, drawing characters, font and window controls. Localization, color themes and custom keybinds are now supported by the program architecture, and the appropriate front-end for them is being devised. One last thing, those with big resolutions may find the NumPad + button useful.
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( Tchey )

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Re: Underworld: $hadow Economics - a text-based crime simulation
« Reply #14 on: February 23, 2020, 06:52:22 am »

Ah !

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Linux (coming soon)


Ho...
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