Sections
How can I provide a map experience for a semi-open world game where exploration feels like meaningful progression?
Prospector’s core exploration mechanic involves searching for additional resources via strategic placement of supply lines to provide the player with oxygen for survival and power for extended base building. I used a traditional fog of war to obfuscate the world map, but decided to only reveal areas the player has charted with a supply line. This allowed me to hide resource placement while adding to the player's fantasy that they are actually mapping an uncharted world.
Place supply lines for oxygen and power distribution.
Supply lines clear fog of war and reveal resource locations.
Get an overview of active work areas and current production.
The original map design used colored blocks to denote different resource types, every building placed, and every supply line dropped. This worked well enough for the early game, but completely broke down in mid/late game where the majority of the world map was uncovered.
This change resulted in a map that showed fewer unnecessary details while simultaneously bubbling the most important information up in the map’s visual hierarchy.
Similar to the previous issue of too much detail reducing valuable information, buildings placed close together made it hard for players to identify specific locations due to overlapping pins.
Cluster pins based on zoom level, similar to how applications like Yelp represent multiple pins in a single location with a number, then break them into individual pins as you zoom in.
Show generic colored blocks for most buildings like furnaces while showing special pins for unique buildings like the Changing Station or Fabricator.
Show pins for any building outside a Transformer zone while clustering buildings inside a Transformer zone and allow the player to expand a list of buildings by hovering on the Transformer building.
I decided to implement design option #3 because it was an effective way to solve overlapping pins while providing a high level of detail to players and it was significantly cheaper to build than clustering pins dynamically based on zoom level.
Smart storage filters that reduce friction but not the fun
How can I improving quality of life while adding min/max features for power players?
While Prospector is not a hardcore logistics game, resource management is a critical component for its design. The game’s experience necessitates players crafting thousands of items and storing them in logical containers. Prospector has an item storage building called a Silo, which supports 36 item slots.
Open the filters menu for a specific silo
Set filters and limits organized by category
Modify from favorites tab for quick updates
You can also see that item filters themselves are added to larger categories that map to specific use cases players might have for a particular work area. For example, this allows players to quickly decide that a silo is only for storing animal products and makes it easy to toggle all those items at once, which saves them from having to activate 20+ toggles.
For example, let’s say the player has a furnace and a sheet press inside the same work zone. If the furnace is set to make infinite plastic bricks while the sheet press is set to make infinite plastic sheets, every single plastic brick will be turned into a sheet when players actually want a certain amount of both.
With this update, players could control how many of a resource could be used in automated crafting by setting a minimum limit. In addition, setting a max would prevent a single silo from filling up with a single item.
