Hello everyone and welcome to the
first devlog for Mini Golf Tycoon. That name is not finalized, so if you have any
suggestions let me know in the comments. Anyway, MGT is about building and managing your very own
mini-golf franchise. I know there are a lot of games like this out there, such as Sim Golf and
Golftopia, but those are about normal-ish golf, not the miniature version. And I have some
tricks up my sleeve to make it more unique. To start things off, let’s talk about the
building. I have already started work on this system, but it is most definitely not
finished. The goal is to be able to select a piece of the course you want and place it down.
The holes will be separated as different objects, so you can select them and change some settings
like what par it is and the name of the hole. My goal is to have a massive selection of
things to collect and put on your courses. But how do you collect said pieces?
Let’s talk about research.
In MGT, your franchise will have a level/rank. You level
up by getting XP, which comes from completing challenges that will pop up every now and then
just like the challenge mode in Planet Coaster. When you level up, you can get some
research points or special items. You use those research points
to unlock things in a tech tree. But challenge mode is only one of the three
different game modes I want to include. There will also eventually be a campaign with a
story and scenarios that lead the player into the game and teach them the basics. And finally, as
all creative games have, a sandbox mode. You will have infinite money, everything researched,
and a few extra options to have fun with.
To own a mini-golf place, you need guests,
right? Guests will be able to come into your mini-golf place to play holes, buy stuff, and
have fun. You need to keep them happy with decor, shade, and services they need
like bathrooms/food. I want you to be able to name them and see their
thoughts like any good management game. And one of my favorite features that I
have planned is the first-person mode. You will be able to walk around your holes and
play them, testing them out.
You might be able to interact with the guests, too. As well
as yell at staff which will hopefully be the first update after the early access release,
which is why I haven’t talked much about it. The game will be physics-based in terms
of the ball and the playing of mini-golf, but there will be lots of fun animated
decorations for you to research and place. I have already been working on one, the classic
windmill. The way these will work is that you can choose how many entrances and exits there
are for the ball, but they go in preset places. So you can have 1 entrance, and 3 exits and it
will randomly choose which one to shoot out of, or 2 entrances and 2 exits, where it
won’t be random unless you set it to be.
This is quite a big project so I don’t
expect to finish it anytime soon. If you want to see what updates
will be coming next, look in the description for a link to my discord
server. I will post a roadmap there, as well as other random progress updates.
I look forward to seeing you there! I love good soundtracks for games, (my fav is
Stonehearth) and I want this one to have one. I am terrible at making music, so I
have someone helping me out with that. They are also helping out with
ideas, but I also want to hear what you think! Put suggestions in
the comments or my discord server! Over Halloween weekend my family went to Austin
for a ghost tour and to play Mini Golf.
We went to Dreamland and Peter Pan Mini Golf. I have pictures
from both for inspiration. So let’s look at them. Ok, so this part of the devlog is
actually me talking in real-time. I am going to go over some of the pictures
that I took in Austin at 2 mini golf places. This is at Dreamland in the Dripping Springs
area. This is a hole that I thought looked really cool. It’s really long and it has elevation
changes. This is a sheer dropoff right there, like, this goes straight down. And then it
curves around, so I need to figure out how to put elevation into my game, which is probably going to
be a challenge because of how my building works, but it might not be? I might just use
some different pieces that can go up. It swoops through here and then, I don’t
know if you can see very well down there, but there are 2 different ways it can go so I am
going to need splitting pieces.
This was on a hard course so there were like 3 different kinds
of holes and each one was a different difficulty, but, that was the only one at Dreamland,
let’s move on to the next one. I thought this one had a really cool
layout, the way you’re supposed to do it. I just thought it was really cool, it
doesn’t have anything for gameplay, I just thought it was really cool. You start
here, you can kind of see my shadow, you have to hit it and angle it so that it goes here, up this
hill, and into the hole. I think I got really close, I didn’t get a hole-in-one on this one but
I think I got really close. I hit it at the right speed and angle to go up that hill and back down.
Here, I just thought this one looked really funny, so I am probably going to do a lot of pieces
like this. You hit it up and it goes into the whale’s mouth and it comes out the butthole
on the other side.
I thought it would be cooler if it shot out of a blowhole, but that wouldn’t
be in real life but I could put it in my game. Here is a bridge. This is like a multi-directional
thing so bridges are gonna be something cool. You start over here and you have to angle it off
down here, and then get it to go over the bridge, and there is stuff on the other side, but
I thought the bridge also just looked cool. And this is obviously something I would put in
my game, but since the game is physics-based I don’t know how well I can do it, but it just
goes through the loops, and over there.
I think I got a hole-in-one on that one maybe. This is
what I was talking about earlier in the devlog when I was talking about entrances and exits.
This is the last hole and you could go down this one, this one, or this one. It kind of curved
over in the back, there was a hump and you had to angle it right on the hump to get into a tube
because there was also like a wall right there. But that’s basically the inspiration I got
from photos, I have a few more. Thanks for watching this video, it really helps out
a lot, and I’ll get on with the devlog! I have so many more things planned. I hope
this game eventually ends up on Steam, so I want to try to have Achievements and Workshop
integration.
This game is something like my dream game because I love simulation/management
games, and mini-golf is a fun hobby of mine. So that is what MGT will look like, and
how many things I actually have to add. The game is just a passion project, as I am still
in school and have some other things going on. So that means probably roughly 10-20 hours a
week if I feel like doing it. Sometimes more if I am really motivated to push out a feature.
I hope to have an early beta by February, but that is just a dream and probably won’t
happen.
A more reasonable date is this summer. I thank you all for watching Devlog #0 for Mini Golf Tycoon. I hope you enjoyed
it and I will see you again very soon. Bye! comment “i like turtles” if you are reading this.