u/zoombapup

Hi all,

I'm reworking some of the base building for me game and I came to the part that I really dislike the most, the UI for it all.

I'm after recommendations for what you guys consider a "good" base building UI setup? So please recommend any games you thought had good UI for this kind of thing?

I see similar patterns in many of the games I've reviewed so far. Things like having a categorization for the individual sets of items. So far I've got these categories:

• Structural
• Machinery
• Furniture
• Logistics
• Cooking
• Farming
• Research
• Lighting
• Storage
• Energy
• Cosmetic

But it appears that a lot of games have sub-categories, which makes sense, so for instance structural items might be walls, floors, doors, windows, supports etc.

So you typically choose the overall category as a tab item or from a list. That filters items, which are then grouped by sub-category.

A few games I've looked at also have "variants" or "sets", which are the same category/subcategory, but with different visuals. Think wooden walls, upgraded to stone walls. Same category/subcategory but different set. With a set having been designed to look good with other similar items in the set.

Then there are also ones where they allow you to then customize the placed items with things like material colours etc.

But the reality is I've not been able to play as many games in the base building genre as I'd like for this kind of thing. So please feel free to identify features from the UI for your favourite game you'd recommend I look at. For instance, I've seen some games offering a quick-bar style placement? Others I've seen are things like having a way of adding "favourites".

I'm not a huge fan of working on UI because I always find it frustrating, so please help me out and show me what "good" looks like in terms of functionality.

Ta!

So I'm building a game, which I guess would be somewhat close to satisfactory in its approach. Especially now I've watched a bunch of Coffee Stains old livestreams and seen their prototypes (I do a lot of those).

Looking at their dev work, got me thinking about why anyone would want to play something *like* satisfactory given it already exists. Even if the mechanics were different and the vibe of the world and the aesthetic wouldn't be the same, I can't help but imagine the comparisons being made.

I put a lot of hours into satisfactory and really loved the game, but in my head, my own work is really very different and the best way I can explain the difference, is that my game has a narrative structure to it that will aim to guide the player. Not that it isn't ultimately a sandbox base building automation game at heart, just that complexity is layered via a narrative structure.

Has anyone else come across a satisfactory like game where there was a narrative structure to it? Did you feel like that added anything to the game?

I've not played the latest revisions of Satisfactory to be fair, so they could have added a lot of that kind of thing, but it didn't really need it for me.

What surprises me, is that I'm typically a "mechanics first" sort of game designer. I prototype systems and scrap them a lot because I learn about what I want more that way. So really I was a bit shocked when considering my unique selling point might be the fiction of the world I'm building and not necessarily the mechanics.

My gut instinct is that the narrative will add that initial sense of progress towards a greater goal, beyond just setting up initial conveyors and constructors and the like. It will also allow me to gate complexity because there's actually two loops in the game, the base building underground and the exploration and looting above ground. Both of which can be progressed and automated in different ways.

But I've not come across any examples where narrative really made a significant impact to gameplay. So please do recommend any if you have them. Also I'd be happy to hear everyone's thoughts as I usually would shy away from the narrative (I'm not trying to make an RPG).

What do you think?

So I was working on some autonomous mobile robots for my underground base builder game and I was using placeholder art. Then I got an email that kitbash3D had just launched a "Warehouse" pack of assets. So now I'm even poorer than before and I've added to the thousands of asset packs I own. But hey, at least I have robots now and not trash cans or lockers or something.

This is using Unreal Engine's "mass" system, which I'm new to. 240 agents in this one with custom everything. I still haven't figured out how this stuff is going to animate (I have a robot arm mesh so something like that on a platform adding things to a plastic bin on top of the moving robots maybe?).

Its all good fun though!

Been working on some logistics/digital twin features for the game. Still a lot to do in terms of the large scale logistics (pipelines, power lines etc). But hey, conveyors and storage volumes are fun!