Hi friends,

It’s been two weeks since my last devlog. Even though I feel I’ve spent an awful long time on refactoring and rewriting code, I do got a lot of cool things to show you. Let’s get to it!

Minimap

Big Ambitions will undoubtedly need a minimap to ease navigation. I believe the final version will also contain a full “overview” map, similar to what we know from games like GTA. This week I’ve been doing a very basic implementation using a secondary camera that follows the player. It might seem like a weird time to work on this, but I need to make sure how to technically produce the minimap, before we start designing the actual city using real assets. Something I hope to start doing in about 4 weeks time.

The current minimap has a small designed delay when changing orientation to keep it more “calm”. It also adds street names and reduce the amount of graphical objects shown, compared to the main camera.

School and education requirements

Throughout the city you’ll find various types of schools. A school offers educations and courses that is required for certain jobs. In the below example I’m attending the Auto Mechanic Education that allows the player to work as a mechanic in the Auto Repair Shop. Schools are not only used for the player, but also for citizens of the city and your future or existing employees.

Last week I updated the employee UI to only allow you to assign employees who already got the required education or course.

Clothing Store 👔

Another business type to be included in the first playable build. You’ll be able to sell clothes in 3 different price ranges.

Hand Truck 📦

When setting up a new business, you’ll need a lot of various appliances and resources. As new players won’t be able to afford delivery or owning a vehicle, you’ll now be able to borrow a hand truck at all wholesale shops. The hand truck allows you to transport up to 4 items. The hand truck will automatically disappear when out of screen (and not holding any items).

It took me 2 whole days to implement this (due to rewriting the cargo inventory UI), so I hope this will be useful 😂

First UI Concept

Together with my UI designer I’m now exploring how the UI of Big Ambitions should work. One very interesting concept is the smartphone idea. When accessing more complex “apps”, the phone will animate into landscape mode and zoom in, allowing much more space.

The screenshots below is just my own attempt to visualize the idea. Once I feel confident about the idea, the actual design will be done by my UI designer.

Updates from the 3D artists

Until now, I’ve had just one 3D artist working on Big Ambitions. However, in order to be able to ship a playable build of the game a bit faster, I decided to add another artist for the next couple of months.

The team is currently working on a batch of interior items. All assets are made specifically for Big Ambitions. No asset flipping here 😎 Here’s a few renders of completed assets. We hope you like it 🤞

That’s all for now. See you in 2 weeks!

Thank you for reading! 👍

All the best,
Jonas