Playtest

So today we had a playtest where we were able to test a playable version of our minigame. Our game was the first played and then the testers came back to the game throughout the day as they found codes that unlocked further features.
The first playthrough was interesting, I was there to explain how to play the game and what the aims were although tomorrow I'll be a guide and Illy will be explaining the game. I led them through step by step how to set up buildings, farms and boats and then explained how all of these effect the system behind and fulfills the island's needs like food and energy. They were able to fulfill their need for food fairly quickly but weren't able to get enough power or production. Getting one measurement in the green was a good place to end though and they moved on to the refugee game where they got a code to unlock a wave of immigration which increased their need for food. They did this and a few other testers also got a chance to play, these testers understood the concepts much faster.

Later on they got yet another code which gave them better crop yield meaning they could reach their food goal with all the new inhabitants. This however was because of an anomaly in the testing, they were given the code a little early and hadn't played the parts of the other games that explained harvest and the quality of earth. But they used the code and saw that their food production went well past the limit.

 Lather they found the treasure and got the solar panel code to replace the coal power plants that were keeping their CO2 meter so high, they immediately replaced all the coal plants they could and a few factories with solar panels. They understood the concept of this very quickly and they had gotten a very good grip of the game mechanics by this point.

Lastly they found a code to unlock the trade feature from the merchant character, they came back to the game and opened up trading with the other islands, they were able to trade their excess food with their neighbors to make the difference in their remaining requirements. They managed to finish the game with a fully sustainable island which was great!

More varied islands

Island terrain generation is still damn fun. I've added variables for customization for the islands for a little variation on the islands.

This is the player island, blue squares mark available slots for boats and light colored chunks of terrain are available to place buildings like farms and factories.

Extra large beaches, extra large island, less exponential terrain

Small beaches, smaller island, 

So, why not use unity terrain? I chose early on to generate this terrain and build the meshes with code while unity terrain sounds like a simpler choice. A few factors led to this, of course one is that I love procedural terrain. Otherwise though: first, once written the code can generate any amount of islands. Although we're not using more than four or five we have made a lot of changes to what we wanted from these islands. The size was originally going to be much smaller but we increased it as we needed more land to work with. I can easily change the size of my islands without rebuilding anything. Secondly I base where you can build on heightmap data, something that I have simple access to in my own code. And lastly the way I've implemented these meshes has let me create a simplified pixel graphic look for the terrain that is minimalist and almost cartoony. This lets us get away without breathtaking visuals while still looking good.

With all this in place it's fun to think about larger applications of it, maybe getting to sail around an infinite sea of islands, trading with them, maybe fighting off pirates and eventually running your own island. I wish I had time to program everything I think of.

Late update

Because both myself and Illy were away for two days on a course our group was a little behind when the playtesting was supposed to be done. This unfortunately meant that we couldn't get any feedback on how our mini game feels to play. However I got to work as soon as the playtesting was over.
To finish a playable version I wrote a script to place buildings on the island. However after implementing it I saw that as you placed buildings you could easily cram far too many buildings on the island and they would clip into each other looking terrible. To solve the visual problem and limit the number of buildings players can build I set up a grid of tiles on the island each of which can hold one building. I think this is a good solution to the problem, the result is that there is a strict and logical max cap for buildings and no matter how many you place it still looks pretty good, crowded but not cluttered. I also decided to manipulate the vertex lit shader a bit to darken tiles you can't build on and highlight the ones on which you can.

Then I realised that the fishing boats needed a different way to be placed because my implementation for the tiles on land was based on the chunks of terrain mesh but the ocean is one large plane and the terrain is under it. I added some code to the terrain gen code to generate small flat planes just above sea level for each chunk with an average height below sea level. These planes are then the tiles boats can be placed on. It isn't so important that I limit the number of boats the player can place because that is limited by the fish available but this ensures that boats aren't placed too close together and that they use a matching style to the placeables on land.

CLD

Causal loop diagram:

The game system and the player's interaction with the system.

Islands!

The island generator can be placed as many times as I see fit, this will be used to make all the other islands you can trade with, however I might still add some variations to things like beach size, terrain noise and mountain height and likeliness. Although the islands are already all unique I think that some extra offsetting of variables will give them more of a memorable appearance.

From above:

That island furthest to the left is the player's, the other ones are just random noise examples. The ones with large lagoons are really pretty though. I just want to make a boat script and sail around this archipelago!

Island!

I've added textures and texture noise and lighting and a prefab skybox, the island is now ready for viewing:

This will be the player's island and it should be a piece of cake to generate the rest of the islands using the same code. The code I've written generates an island expanding out from the center point using sine waves to round the edges and the distance to the middle to the power of two = height to generate a mountain somewhere on the island. Once the meshes start making things like this I get really excited, I'm looking forward to generating the rest of the islands!

Getting to the code

This is where the fun starts! Today I've been programming a procedural island generator for our mini game, I would have used the built in terrain but we need more flexible meshes than the built in ones offer. That's things like switching the texture of some of the triangles at a time for placing things on the map. Also the code I've written is easier to texture in the simplistic style we're going for. I'll be tweaking the implementation of Perlin noise to generate the islands the way I imagine them but otherwise I can start moving on to placing objects on the mesh.