What role would you enjoy most?

Trying to figure out the perfect direction for this game. I have always wanted a mining game so I could feel what it was like to be on gold rush. But, I also love trucking simulators and farming games.

I dont want to try to be too many things and not do any one of them right. A mining game? A forestry/Trucking game (I feel this market is over saturated). A general sandpit with real earth physics? What do you think? Id love to do it all in one game but I think the quality would suffer.

Interested in your opinions!

-W

Honestly the Sandpit is the first step. You would be surprised how many people enjoy moving dirt. But then once that was a proven and stress tested environment It would need to go somewhere. The mining is for me the clear winner as you are actually using the essence that this was created for, moving dirt. you could go into road building, and water management as well as mining, so people could plan and build their mining empires, divert rivers, build ponds etc. but i think if you go into farming or logging you are then working above the ground rather that with it.

I’d suggest building a game engine and a sandbox on top of it, and developing the two together, so the sandbox drives what the engine needs and the engine opens up new things to try in the sandbox.

In the sandbox you could have small situations to resolve, on grounds about the same size as the ones you have now, like a flooding river over the main road in a diorama, or clearing fallen trees and felling new ones. Trees would be a great one for physics too, because they are usually not modelled very well in games.

There are many open-world games already, but with Ground Works I am just happy to dig in the first place. If I didn’t have to deal with grand strategy and could simply enjoy the mud, rocks, sand, dust and trees, that would be something I’d find really interesting.

Each diorama could be a puzzle to resolve. Also you can vary the topic, like farming, mining, felling, demolishing building, paving road, etc.

So these situations first, the engine matures, and then you can think about something bigger.

Update: oh and also water, flowing.

Having a sandbox game with the option to create your own scenarios sounds like a cool idea, that way we can decide how to solve problems. A gold mining game is fine, but could limit the potential, as it would need to be a bit more varied.

In my opinion, a good forestry sim with good physics is certainly lacking, being able to fell trees with machinery and creating your own routes and what not as one example, much like what warmuffin has said. :)

I personally hate games with missions or games that force you to play in a certain way. To me it’s best if it’s an open sandbox kinda the way beamng was done but with some type of economy.

I think a roadcraft open world type game could be good, but with out the restrictions, that game has. A big open-world game with some sort of mission or structure to it, but at the same time no restrictions on how or what you use to achieve your objectives. Realism is key!

Procedural generation: Consider procedurally generated maps so that no two worlds are the same. Each playthrough could offer a different layout and different opportunities.

Audience fit: Depending on the intended direction and target audience, this style of sim may not appeal to players looking for a quick pick-me-up or instant-gratification game. It seems better suited to players who enjoy slower, planning-heavy gameplay.

Scouting and placement: There’s strong potential in letting players scout the map to find the “perfect” spot for mining or forestry, then lay out their equipment and buildings. A placement system for items/buildings would support that nicely.

No in-game boss: One thing I’d strongly recommend leaving out is an in-game character acting as the player’s boss. That trope is oversaturated in sim games and feels boring. Instead, let the player be their own boss, without micromanagement or being hand-held/carried through the game like a baby.

I can add more to this but it'll take a long time. Also, will there be controller support? Later on maybe?

I enjoy sandbox with a goal. In Out of Ore I have quit mining and am building a road across the map. Much more interesting to me. Logging would add much more interest. Also, resource scarcity is not necessarily a bad thing.

For replayability procedural jobs would be a great fit for your tech. Depending on what machines you have invested in you can take different jobs. For example there might be an old house where the basement needs insulation so you need a small excavator to dig around the house. That could be a low tier beginner job. Just digging for no purpose would only be fun for a while. Gold mining is great but as you said its a bit saturated. Logging is interesting but you might spread out the game to thin. There is so much potential though.

I’d like to see it built basically exactly how beam ng is so that we have the option of missions while also having the ability to just do whatever however I’d definitely like to see both mining and a construction aspect of the game

@Scraperskateroninsta this is what I’m talking about!

I'd like mining of different types of materials you take to a sorting facility and just sell it. Done. No crazy production chains, just mine the materials and sell it. If you can find it, you can dig it. Trucking of equipment and logging/clearing mining sites I feel are kind of necessary but perhaps can be optional play.

One that is overlooked way too much imho is road building. I love mining for gold, but having to build the roads, even if they are just gravel roads, would make a huge difference. And it wouldn't need too many new vehicles. Have a gravel pit somewhere, dig the base, drop gravel and sand, compact and you have a road.

Also I was deeply disappointed on the dirt mechanics of pretty much every construction simulator. This game doesn't need to become a construction simulator, but having jobs like digging foundations and spreading gravel or, like previously suggestee, digging around a house for insulation / subsurface drains would add great value. Excavators have so many different roles in a modern society. I think having the multitude of roles precent would add great value to the game.

I honestly like to have a goal. Something that keeps me going. You mine gold and you sell it, but then what? Would be nice to have "contracts" you could get. Like NPCs that ask you to build something for them, so you have to dig the area for the foundations and then haul the materials there to build (like a prefab building that can spawn there once you haul the materials, maybe higher tier contracts that would have multiple stages and would you require to to buy extra equipment like cement and concrete pump trucks and cranes to place the materials in a specific place).

Gold would still be your starting way of making money. You start digging for gold with the basic tier stuff you have and only then you can buy specific equipment for other tasks like construction and logging (logs could even be processed into constuction materials just like slag frrom the gold mine could be used to make roads, etc).

I think you have planted the seed to become the successful dirt/gold/construction version of Star Citizen. You can Mine/Process/Transport/Sell what you mine for other goods/equipment/ships/tools in the economy. Not sure if they have a resource/money sink for excess resources to balance things out. Out of Ore's biggest weakness is finding balance with economy vs resource scarcity. It's supposed to be grindy.

I love what this simulator is and what it isn't. No microtransactions, no arcade BS. If you build it, they will come.

So much potential. It could turn into an MMO where you have miners/workers/builders all coming into the world to build the cities/towns/roads/infrastructures, instead of the devs just making all that fixed in place.

The key to success is optimization, marketing, and a bit of luck. Once the devs have a version they are happy to release into the wild as a beta/early access, that version should be able to run on a low/mid spec PC. I'm thinking of trying this on my Legion 5 laptop with a Ryzen 5000 series and Nvidia GPU as well later.