Honcho Dev Update – World Traversal & Economy

As you’ve probably noticed, the demo hasn’t had an update for a while. That’s because I’ve been busy working on World Traversal. World Traversal is the ability for players to freely travel between prefectures, which also lays the groundwork for the world economy.

New World Map

After going over the publisher feedback I shared last post, I've refocused the world map and it's contents. As you can see, we're now zoomed into the Kantō region of Japan, rather than across several as before. I actually like this better, as it means the travel distances can be more realistic. This region also still provides us with various terrain changes needed for tile sets. Shown in the above map are3 Inaka type prefectures, 3 mountain type prefectures and 3 coastal type prefectures.

For now, I'm focused on getting all 3 Inaka prefectures into the game as traversable locations - as they share the same tile sets to Inaka 1 found in the current demo.

Mountain and Coastal prefectures will come at a later date. City type prefectures are ones I still really want to do, but looking at how niche the game is, it's currently unlikely to make it into the game. The originally planned "Tateyama" prefectures are also gone due to scope.

Each prefecture also generates their own local delivery jobs. These can only be accepted and completed after a player has travelled to that prefecture. Delivery jobs aren't player's main source of income, rather a starting income to help players build up the capital required to embark on their vending machine enterprise. More on this later.

Ignore the distance listed in the above image, it's intentionally low to allow me to test route transitions. Distances from Wadashima ("Inaka 1") and Yamanashi ("Inaka 3") is closer to 100km than 5km, but these values are still being worked out.

Upon selecting the prefecture, players can then travel to that location. This requires driving a randomly generated route (much like the delivery job system in the current build). There is no plan to add fast travel to the game.

Once at the new location, the player can complete jobs, purchase the prefectures specific goods, which can then be used in vending machine tycoonism, purchase property to rest and repair their vehicle and, of course, install vending machines to benefit from the local economy.

Prefecture Specific Goods

Each prefecture has a specific good they sell, and a specific good they desire. World events can influence the sale of these goods and the population's desires. Part of Jalopy was inspired by the 1984 video game "Drug Wars" and Honcho is no different. If you haven't played it, the game has a very basic buy low, sell high design that interjects world events to adjust the price of goods. It's inspired games as recently as "Schedule 1", so surely you've heard of that. It's simple but something I really consider timeless, and about as much economic simulation as a game about driving kei trucks needs to be.

What this means is that at a base level, you will know that you want to buy goods from X prefecture and add them to vending machines in Y prefecture, but with constant world events occurring, plans will change. Obesity awareness campaign in one prefecture? Then your food vends are going to sell worse, but a restaurant closes due to health violation? Then your food vends are going to sell better.

I've a whole sheet typed up of these events. It's a little hard to go into it in much detail without the other prefectures and their trade good types, so I'll save more detail on this for the future. Hopefully you get the basic idea.

Population and Road Conditions start at base low, but the player will be able to invest in each prefecture to improve infrastructure and attract more people. A pretty basic end-game gold sink mechanic.

There's a lot of code and art work still ahead to get this all in and functioning, so as always, patience is appreciated. I'm looking to get a build out with 3 prefectures, vending mechanics, world traversal and world economy setup as soon as I can but there isn't currently a date I can give.

I'm away for a couple of weeks visiting Lithuania, so the next update on this is likely to be in about a month. Hopefully this has given a clearer roadmap of where Honcho is, and where it's heading.

Let me know your thoughts, concerns, suggestions, etc.

Cheers,
Greg