Crystal Conveyor Tycoon

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Inspiration

Being new to the Horizon Desktop Editor and also typescript, but not new to game development nor programming, I thought a tycoon game might be an easier place to start and learn. It ended up being a bit steeper of a learning process than I expected.

What it does

It is a simulation game in the tycoon subgenere. You select a plot from the 6 available and start building by stepping on the buttons and collecting money. The first button spawns the first conveyor and dropper to begin the journey. Sequential buttons spawn more droppers, upgraders, and the main weapon which is a magic wand. Each plot has a color associated with it and the most things that are spawned in will be in that color palette.

How we built it

The Horizon Worlds Desktop editor was used for building the game plus the web interface for managing some asset uploads. I also used Gimp, and little Blender, Some Meta AI, help from other AIs. Mesh Baker (Unity Asset Store) was used to keep the draw calls down. Most of the 3d models are from BitGem ( https://shop.bitgem3d.com/ ) and some where generated by the in editor Meta AI.

Challenges we ran into

Circular references in TypeScript. Keeping everything within good resource limits was always a concern. Various things were a struggle like not being able to do things like parent a spawned object to another or change it's name. The slower nature of the editor saving things online with each modification took some getting used to. I also was a bit harder determining how to do some things because there isn't yet a wealth of knowledge available in the search engines for the relatively stuff. AI's often would struggle finding the right information to help learn.