Dev Diary 12: Happy New Year

 Well, 2020 is now officially over! (Thank goodness for that), we hope you are all relaxed and refreshed after the Christmas holidays (Hope you didn't get too drunk). 

Going forward into 2021 we are now going try aim for 1 blog a month and give you deeper insights into how the games are coming along and how we develop our games within Unreal Engine 4. We have no news to share in regards to castle wars, however in regards to Pub Simulator we would like to announce a tentative release date, which is the 17th of September 2021, this will be early access and may not represent the final product, over the coming months we are going to start showcasing some of the gameplay and features of the game, alongside castle wars (Disclaimer Release date may change)

As per the last blog we will do another QA session with one of the developers, this time we will be interviewing our CEO, Paddy Gledhill.

Hello, I'm Paddy, I'm the CEO and Lead Developer of Pub Simulator, alongside running the company I take an active role in the development of both titles we are currently working on.

Q: What gave you the idea to develop a Pub Simulator?

A: Well after working on other projects with a similar kind of gameplay, and after play GTA: V with the nightclubs, I came up with the idea to expand on that and make a standalone title that focuses mainly on Pubs, and the day to day management, GTA does a good job, but it doesn't go into detail, and GTA is an open-world shooter game, not a bespoke simulator, like what we want to achieve with Pub Simulator, We want to simulate most aspects of the day to day running of pub and what it entails.

Q: I noticed you have started to preserve certain real-world pubs, what made you decided to do that, and why have you chosen to preserve certain pubs?

A: When we look to preserve a pub digitally we look at a lot of factors, like is the pub still standing, is there any documents or photos readily available. With the Old Pack Horse, My great grandad, grandad, brother, and I have all drank in there,  it, unfortunately, closed down in 2016 and was demolished in 2019. With the Old Pack Horse, we have plenty of reference material and schematics, we found a schedule of conditions document on the Pub prior to it being sold, which helped us quite a lot

Q: What made you choose to use Unreal Engine 4 over the other game engines.

A: Unreal Engine 4, for us over all the other engines, gives us the tools and graphical quality we require for a project like this, Unreal has the best graphical quality over other engines such as unity, and the blueprint system means we have to very little coding in C++.

Q: You said you take an active role in development, what is it that you specialise in?

A: I specialize in creating the game world alongside Lucy, Lucy makes all the building blueprints, I then place those buildings in the level and then populate the interiors with all the fixtures and fittings.

Q: What areas of the map have you specifically worked on? 

A: I have been responsible for creating the plaza area in the town part of the map, and the Old Pack Horse, Lucy works on all the residential areas of the map. There is some screenshots coming up on the blog of the plaza area in its early phases.

Q: When making interiors of the buildings what processes do you go through?

A: First ill lay all the floors, which are untextured, then ill look at the design schematics if its a real-world pub, ill then place all the walls in, texture the floors and walls, and then populate it with assets. For other buildings ill consult our own design documents and follow the same steps.

Green Man Inn pool room in production

New Plaza Area (Work In Progress)

New Plaza Area (Work in Progress)

New Plaza Area (Work In Progress)

Hotel Room Prefab (Untextured)

Hotel 1st floor (Untextured)

Hotel Lobby (Untextured)