Concept-Art

Upgrading the world of Coobico to 3D essentially led us to create 3D-avatars for Coobico as well (the process ist still not finished yet). This applies to the process of creating avatars and viewing their profiles only, though. Even though opting for an extreme low-poly approach (check out the screenshot above of the current alpha-version of a default avatar), the actual game still needs to resort to isometric sprites for displaying avatars—unfortunately, Flash is still just not fast enough to process raw amounts of polygons. 

A woodcutter lumbers wood, thus providing a steady supply of another important resource for settlements without necessitating the player to care for this personally. Woodcutters increase the level of pollution of the according settlement though. They are recruited at a farm.

One of the roadworks in our transition from the old 2D engine to 3D consisted of turning the world-map into 3D. Well, we finished this step already quite a few weeks ago and are quite happy with the result, as we could greatly enhance the usability of the map as well; you can now freely zoom in and out and switch different details (like settlements or resources) on and off.

The basic concept of the map is still the same: not all parts of the island are open from the very beginning (i.e. the darker parts, covered with the so-called fog of war)—players will need to buy map-extracts to explore new regions of the island.

A new feature was added here, too: you can now also harvest resources in the map-view, which essentially enables players to fully control the whole game just from the map and from their settlement and its profile—we thought this might come in handy for everybody who prefers a civilization-like gameplay over manual avatar-based exploration.

Just like a stonecutter can be recruited at a mine, a miner can be hired there to steadily produce ore for a settlement. This comes at a price of a higher level of pollution though.

A settlement needs stone as an ubiquitous resource. It’s necessary for building new structures and for keeping certain settlers happy (like the mason). Players will not always want to spend their time to manually grind for resources or dedicate their gold to buy stone at a merchant, likewise. At a mine you can therefore recruit a stonecutter. Consuming food, a stonecutter will steadily produce stone for your settlement—oh, and waste, of course…

A Farmer works at a pasture or farm and produces the main supply of food of a settlement.

A farm is one of the first picks to grow your settlement as it acts the primary source of food-supply for a town—no changes so far, but we lately revisited the old model and replaced it with the above version, which features some nice and detailed touches.

A scholar leads a secluded life at a scholar’s quarter or at a university and devotes himself to teaching and studying and thus helps to raise the enlightenment of an associated settlement. Scholars help to counter the negative effects of nearby graveyards.

One of the key-characteristics of each settlement is its enlightenment, which in turn raises public order and the general happiness of all inhabitants. Enlightenment is “produced” by a either a scholar (see image, to the left) or by an upgraded university (to the right). A scholar is one of the structures which is going to be build at a later stage of the game, as it needs a guildhall as a prerequisite.

A guildmaster presides over workshops and guildhalls and raises the crafts-level of a settlement. He regularly issues temp-jobs and other quests.