Fitting a new Exhaust.

Happy new year!

I originally wanted to write a post about how world generation works in Honcho, but I’ve been working on all sorts of areas of the game this month. It made more sense to create a general showcase video. This way, I can better demonstrate how the game is coming along.

Another benefit of producing a general showcase video like this is that it doesn’t influence the feedback we receive. After publishing this video, I’ve already gained a better idea of what resonates with players and have also replaced the autumn colours in the environment. If there’s anything that stands out as particularly positive or negative for you in this video, please let me know.

Demo When?

I know I need to release a build to a small base of players so I can start ironing out issues and improving features. The problem at the moment is that there just isn’t enough content.

Here are the areas that still need work:

• More World Generation Variety

• More Vehicle Upgrade Variety

• Better Edge Case Handling

• General Game Options

• General Bug Fixing and Polish

More World Generation Variety

This is the easiest thing to implement; it just requires me to spend time building environments. While I’m very happy with how world generation works and how scalable it is, it simply needs more content to expand the variety of environments it can create.

Essentially, the game designs a town or route layout and then populates that layout with a random selection of "tiles." These tiles also feature random population densities, buildings, traffic, and so on. For delivery routes, all this generation is influenced by rarity modifiers, which are themselves influenced by the difficulty of the route. (More on this at a later date.)

All this requires is for me to create more content for the generation systems to draw from, which is essentially just a time cost of me sitting at the computer and working.

More Vehicle Upgrade Variety

Why have players deliver goods throughout a clever world generation system? So they can find vehicle upgrades, of course!

The current build only features three engine types and a single type of everything else. While these vehicle components can generate with different attributes (such as material type) and generally require players to find various parts to repair them to full performance, the game still needs much more.

I also have many attributes I’d like to explore to help expand vehicle build variety. Features like increased fuel consumption from more powerful engines are still untapped design opportunities but can mostly be implemented after Demo 1.

Better Edge Case handling

This is currently the biggest obstacle to releasing a demo. There are a few aspects of the game design that could lead to player frustration. I’ll explain them below:

Spanners

Spanners are currently loose objects in the garage. This isn’t ideal because players who complete a delivery route may encounter an abandoned vehicle (Kushiro) but won’t have brought their spanners along to dismantle the vehicle and salvage parts for scrap. It’s also annoying that, when targeting nuts, players can accidentally place their spanner instead of interacting. This can be seen in the video at 3:42.

The solution is to have tools carried by the player at all times, accessible through a button press. I imagine this working similarly to the inventory system in The Forest. This change would solve issues with misplaced spanners and rendering annoyances, while also opening the door for future tool upgrades.

Breakdowns, Write-Offs, and Running Out of Fuel

Currently, there’s no option to abandon a route or call breakdown assistance. This is problematic because accidents can render a car undrivable unless the player has tape to patch up essential components.

In Jalopy, this was addressed by allowing players to push the car or abandon the route. However, this isn’t viable in Honcho, as the routes can be significantly longer.

Half of this issue can be mitigated by including tape in the spanner solution above, increasing the likelihood that players can repair their vehicle after an accident. I’ll likely implement this but also need to add an "abandon route" option that recovers the vehicle, possibly adding debt to the player’s financial screen.

I’m not entirely confident in this solution yet, but its viability will only become clear through implementation and testing.

Bodies of Water

The vehicle doesn’t currently interact with bodies of water. However, this can probably be addressed after the demo. I’d like to implement engine flooding, rather than just rushing a water spray effect into the game.

General Game Options

This one is self-explanatory. I still need to add a menu for changing graphics options, remapping keys, audio settings, etc. Simple work, just tedious.

General Bug Fixing, Polish

The overall standard for indie games has risen significantly since Jalopy was released. While my games will probably always have some quirks, it’s a big priority of mine to make Honcho the most polished and bug-free game I’ve worked on. I’m repeating this here as a reminder, and to hold myself accountable.

This means the game will likely take longer to develop, but it will be much better as a result.

Delivery?

How do I plan to deliver this demo? I’m not sure how viable this is, but I’d like to release it first to anyone who has supported me on Patreon for at least one month. Probably via an Itch.io link or similar. This would allow me to manage initial feedback more easily while also giving a small thank-you to my loyal supporters.

I’ll provide more updates on this next month. Until then, thank you all for your continued support. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

Cheers,
Greg

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