Thank you.

Last month we formally announced our next game, the Quintessential Construction Simulator; Landlord’s Super. This month, thanks, media coverage, and a clearer insight into the core gameplay loop of the game.

So first of all, thank you! We are blown away by the support for the announcement, Steam Wishlists have far exceeded our expectations and we’re on track for a solid Early Access launch. Like the theme’s of the game itself, game development is a precarious trade, so you have our humblest and deepest thanks for the support you’ve all provided.

Thanks to your enthusiasm, the media picked up the announcement. Here’s some of the coverage that stood out to us.

Jalopy en France!

French youtuber’s Wankil Studio picked up and played Jalopy. Give the video a comment and a like to show your support!

The ‘inhell you even do in Landlord’s Super?

While the Announcement Trailer for Landlord’s Super did a great job of showing the minutia of the gameplayer, it didn’t do a lot for explaining to people what the heck we’d be doing in that world.

Landlord’s Super is a Life-Sim with deep construction gameplay set in 1980’s Northern Britain. You’ll be mixing concrete, then going for a pint. Searching for Jobs at Job Centre, then going for a pint. Laying bricks then going for a pint. It also has peeing mechanics that will give Death Stranding a run for it’s money (No water for the cement mix? Just pee into it. Oh, you spent all last night drink the in-game Porter, Doyle? Looks like your cement is now tinted black, friend!)

That’s all well and good in the moment to moment gameplay, but what will players be pushing towards? Why are they investing their time in this prison of poverty? Below is a high-level Core Game Loop. This details the overall gameplay loop found in Landlord’s Super.

At the core of Landlord’s is the property the player inherits at the start of the game. This property provides players an outlet to experience the Quintessential Construction gameplay, whilst also building towards the promise of fortune gained via the Landlord business. Also, there’s plenty of slinking down the Anchor Tavern (how else you going to regenerate your energy?).

That’s all from us this month. Thanks again for all the support. So far Steam Wishlists have started strong, and we’re getting a nice steady average. Once there’s more to show of Landlord’s we’ll do another big push again.

Next Month we’ll be showing you the new, expanded game world, some of the reading material going into the research of Landlord’s Super, and some of the beautiful concept work Ruta is creating.

Till next month. Tara!

Early Access coming to Steam soon.
Wishlist now.

The developer of Jalopy is proud to introduce you to the world of their next game.

The Quintessential Construction Simulator

Landlord’s Super, is a First-Person Life-Simulation set in the murky midlands of the British Isle during the polarising years of the 1980s. Build stuff, get drunk, build stuff while getting drunk. Your choice.

Explore the Fictional County of West Berklands.

Interact with a diverse cast of characters, during the polarising years of the 1980s. An honest insight into ‘English Culture’.

The Quintessential Construction Simulator.

Order supplies! Mix your own cement! Assemble scaffolding to reach high places! Build walls brick by brick! The most ambitious construction gameplay ever seen!

Plan & Execute

Carefully manage your time and energy around time of day, weather, seasons, world events, union interference and your own well-being. Some days it’s better to soak yourself down the pub than risk working in the rain.

Speak the Queen’s English!

The game is localised in both American English and British colloquialisms.

Early Access coming to Steam soon.

Wishlist on Steam Now

So this week I was working on getting the job system up and running till I couldn’t go any further without needing to finish hooking up the dialogue system. I panicked because I lost a lot of time to the dialogue system in jalopy, and need to get a working build ready by end of next week.

Fear not, because I am a cunning bugger, and have knocked out a workable dialogue system. Details below:

The dialogue system in Jalopy sucked, so like everything on this project I was excited to start from scratch. With the dialogue system in Landlord’s Super, I wanted to keep something that felt more alive than the canned animations in Jalopy, but was also fast and reusable and didn’t hamper development speeds for a solo developer like myself.

With these two compromises in mind, here’s the current solution I’ve come up with:

There’s a lot of dynamic stuff going on here, so as to avoid the pitfall of creating endless canned animations.

• The character has a static, full body idle pose
• The character has an emotional reaction layer (happy, sad, angry, etc)
• The character has lip sync tied to the typewriter effect in the UI
• The character also controls blinking independently

By separating all these and allowing them to work independently of one another, I can crack on with writing dialogue, and building the rest of the game. It doesn’t look perfect, but this system took me about one long day to get in, so it is fast. That’s also thanks to a little time saving elsewhere, though…

Sage advice: You don’t need to model pants if the player isn’t ever going to see them.

Also, talking of time saving, Jimmy pays the player after a days work, so I was looking for the AdjustWealth function and came across these.

I vaguely remember coding in the ability to change the player’s urine. The idea being if they get beaten up too bad they’d piss blood, or if they drank too much Stout they’d piss black, but I can’t for the life of me remember why I thought this was a good use of my time.

Anyway, as the project starts coming together I look forward to sharing more with you all.

Greg