GDT Revised & Expanded

# GDT Revised & Expanded

This mod is my way of celebrating this game that has stolen countless hours of my high school years, about 10 years ago. Recently during a trip, I've discovered the game had a mobile version and I've decided to download it again for the sake of killing some time while I'm away from my home- little did I know that I would be again obsessed with the urge to make my own game empire- I mean, company.

This game has been one of the factors that lead me to try to create my own games as a hobby. I haven't released my own authorial stuff yet- I'm the kind of person that suffers from being too perfectionist, and other things such as college and jobs kept me a bit away from doing it. Still, I had a lot of fun coding a mod for this game, adapting it to my own visions of game design and production, and I hope you find it interesting and fun.

My goal with this mod is to make old players such as myself go back and revisit this game with a new approach. And, not gonna lie, I would love it if this mod reaches people to make this interesting game's community alive again.

Anyway, thank you Greenheart Games- if anyone from the team is reading it, I hope this mod can be enjoyable and fun to you as well and worth the tribute!

## Core Changes and Features

### New Genres

Sometimes, 6 genres are not enough to express your game- specially “Action” that is such an umbrella term. So, now we have 12 genres! Some of them still required to be unlocked through research.

**Shooter**: Focus on aiming and shooting at targets.

**Combat**: Focus on melee attacking enemies and dodging them.

**Driving & Sports**: Games which the core actions require quick reactions and usually competition against others.

**Survival**: Little to no power situations, running and hiding amid the tension.

**Platformer**: Precise movements and exploration.

**Adventure**: Exploring the plot and characters are more important than the gameplay.

**RPG**: Developing your character(s) is so satisfying.

**Simulation**: In-depth experiences such as real-life systems.

**Strategy**: Managing resources to expand.

**Tactics**: Battlefield decisions while on a closed set of rules.

**Puzzle**: Logical thinking to solve problems.

**Sandbox**: Freedom and creativity overall- the player will find their own way of having fun.

### Sub-Genres

Sometimes, 12 genres are not enough to express your game to the deepest mechanical details that you have in mind. So, now you have 33 Sub-Genres!

Sub-Genres are a new mechanic introduced to this mod. They are unlocked to be researched as time passes to reflect the real-life booming of them, such as Immersive Sims in the early 2000’s and Battle Royales on the mid-to-late 2010’s. They can be selected on the game definition phase, above your game’s current graphic engines.

They are not just cosmetics: They will increase your final game’s score significantly, if your genre x genre combination is correct, like how genre x topic already happens on the game. Get only the first genre correct- the “main genre” of them both- and you will have half of this bonus. Get none of them correctly and your game will receive a slight penalty on it’s score.

To make easier to test this mechanic, Multi-Genre research is now unlocked by the year 2, and requires lower RP. If you don’t use two genres but still use a sub-genre on your game, you won’t receive a penalty neither a bonus, but you will still waste your money into developing it.

A few, but not all the SubGenres available:

Visual Novel, Fighting, Hack and Slash, Metroidvania, Rogue-Like, Souls-like, Rhythm, Immersive Sim., Battle Royale, 4X, Survival Horror, MOBA, etc.

### Graphics Engine & Tech Levels

**Acquiring Graphics**: You don’t acquire new Graphics features from leveling up your previous Graphics feature, they are now acquired based on time, on pair with the current console generation on the market.

**Multiple Parts**: Graphics are not from V1 to V5/V7 anymore. Now, they are composed of multiple parts that need to be researched: Sprites (2D), Models (3D), Textures, Shaders and Lighting. Each of them gives a small amount of TechLevel.

**Sounds and Physics**: Both are now counting for your TechLevel as well, and new technology is unlocked in pair with the current market technology as well.

**Minimum TechLevel Requirements**: Each console now has a minimum tech level requirement. Not reaching the minimum requirement may cause a penalty for your game score.

**TechLevel Calculations**: Instead of being the average of the tech level of your features, tech levels are now the sum- so you need to research as many of them as possible to keep with the dominant consoles on the market or play safe on less advanced consoles until you can reach the point required.

All the features discussed under this topic are not usable in the stage sliders, they are exclusively used to surpass the current generation tech level requirements, and must be selected on the game definition’s screen, right after the SubGenres you’ve researched.

### New Stage Sliders & Features

**Engine is now Core Gameplay**: Defines the second-to-second loop of the game. Focus on responsiveness and feedback on the main mechanics of the game, the most visceral part of the gameplay design.

**Gameplay is now Systemic Gameplay**: Defines the minute-to-minute loop of the game. Focus on the world-ruling systems that interact with the player on a bigger gameplay loop, such as AI and Level Design.

**Story/Quests are now Game Progression**: Definition of the hour-to-hour loop of the game. Focus on the bigger scope of the game and feeling of satisfaction over long-term gameplay, such as narrative and character progression.

**Dialogs are now Assets & Content**: Focus on creating the tangible content that the player sees and interacts with, such as explorable areas and enemies.

**Level Design is now Challenges**: Focus on creating new ways of the player to approach the game’s content and balancing its economy, such as quests and rewards.

**AI is now Game Structures**: Definition of supporting structures to expand the player’s interactions with the game itself, such as alternative game modes and multiplayer support.

**World Design is now Immersion**: Expansion on the narrative and sensorial items to improve immersion, such as dialogues and the game’s soundtrack.

**Graphics are now Visual Polish**: Refinement of graphics and addition of visual elements to enhance the game, such as animations and VFX.

**Sound is now User-Experience**: Improvement of interfaces, clarity of information and game feedback to the player, such as the HUD and tutorials.

Each of these new categories for game development also have received a total redesign on the researchable features to make the leveling-up of them feel a bit more satisfying.

### New Audiences

Young, Everyone and Mature have been substituted by Casual, Immersive and Challenging, to be a bit more on pair with how gamers’ audiences are mapped nowadays.
Casual players are the players that will occasionally play the game and not invest much time in a single gameplay but rather return every few days to play new levels or collect rewards.

Immersive is the audience that looks for a game to dive into an experience for a couple of hours, they are usually exploring a game’s lore or adventuring through the map.

Challenging is for players that won’t bother into playing the game multiple times to get better, may it be multiple online matches, playing against hard AI bosses or having to refine their precision to make a surgical task.

### New Topics

Topics have been expanded to 126 in total and adapted to be compatible with the 12 genres of now! Following the same idea of trying to make your game ideas more “expressible”, some topics that are too wide like Fantasy have been sliced into famous versions of it like Epic Fantasy, Low Fantasy and Dark Fantasy.

A few, but not all, of the new topics are: Anime, Historical Conflict, Japanese Mythology, Lovecraftian Horror, Mafia, Philosophy, Kart Racing, Samurai, Steampunk, Slasher, etc.

## Disclaimers, Bugs & F.A.Q.

**AI Illustrations**: The new icons for genres, subgenres and topics use AI. While I am not a fan of this practice, especially because they are not nearly as good as illustrations from real artists that worked on the original game, please understand that this is a mod made by a single person that is doing it as a hobby and with no intention of receiving profits of any kind from it.

As a matter of fact, when designing and coding this mod, I wasn't planning on adding icons at all, but I've decided to add them before releasing this mod so it is slightly clearer for the gameplay.

However, if you want to help me replace the AI icons with new and authorial illustrations, feel free to upload them somewhere and send me, and I will give you credits!

**Late-Game and Pirate Mode**: To be honest, I haven’t played much of the late game with the mod, and not at all the pirate mode, since I had a short period of time for testing the mod. So, if you find anything weird, such as bugs or balancing issues, please report to me and I will address it in the future. But overall, there shouldn’t be any game breaking bugs since I haven’t messed yet with the RD labs or the DRM features.

**Save Files**: Please do not load old save files with this mod enabled- use only save files that had this mod enabled from the very beginning to avoid corruption and lost of data.

**Mod Compatibility**: This mod probably won’t work, and can even interfere negatively with other mods, since it has so many changes to the core mechanics of the game.

**Localization**: Since this mod changes some terminology from the original game, such as genres, there will be words and phrases that won’t be translated to your game’s language if it isn’t English.

### Known bugs

- There is a small chance that the game will open a pop-up alert after you research your Custom Game Engine. I’m still working on understanding which under circumstances this bug happens. But worry not, it’s not game breaking! Just close and open your game again and your save will work as usual.

- When the UI opens the game feature’s page right after the definition of topic, platform, etc, you’ll find your latest tech available at the bottom of the page, right after the researched subgenres. They were supposed to be shown at the beginning with your initial tech (Text-Based and 8-Bit Sprites), but for some reason it’s not working as of right now.

### F.A.Q.

**Do you have new planned features?**

Yes! I want to rework the current MMO mechanic to make it a bit more viable and make similar variations of it to include the wide evolution of game models that the game market had on the past decade. Most of them are controversial, like Gachas or Game-as-a-Service, so I’m designing how to make it reflect the real-life effects of it.

But overall, these features should be only stuff to increase the core idea of modernization of the mod, not changing more core systems of the game.

**Can you add this new topic?**

Sure, give me your suggestion and if I think it is worth the shot, I’ll put in the next version of it ; )

**Can you add this new subgenre?**

This is a bit of a trickier one, I have designed 3 subgenres per main genre to make it balanced and not give too much advantage over other genres, since I know most players tend to focus on two genres over each gameplay. But if your idea is good, I might try to tinker with it. Overall, more of a design issue rather than a technical one.

**Can you add this new genre?**

This is even trickier, as this will make me rebalance all the topics and platforms. To be honest, on the beginning of designing this mod, I had over 20(!) genres, but it has become just too much for me to code, design and even test it. That’s one of the reasons why the subgenre mechanic has been born, so I would rather expand on it and not the main genres.

**Are you going to introduce new platforms?**

Yes! With the release of important platforms in the recent years such as the Volve’s Storm Deck and the Ninvento’s Swap 2, I feel like it should be mandatory for this mod, so this is a must be. However, I haven’t put them to the mod at this moment because I haven’t thought much about what to add- just these two would be a bit disappointing, I would rather make it a significantly expansion, and at the same time, reduce some redundant/useless platforms from the original game (looking at you GrPad and Mpad). Others ideas I had were cloud gaming services and arcades, but like I said I still need more ideas.

**Can you balance X or Y aspect of the mod?**

Of course! Please feel free to give me feedback not only on bugs you may find, but also on anything related to balancing, may it be RP costs, money while developing a game, etc.

**Can you provide a doc or a sheet with the modifying values of sliders, subgenre combinations, tips, etc?**

I’m working on it. 😊

**Can I contribute to this project?**

Financially, no. But any kind of help with original illustrations, ideas or even coding advice would be welcome- and you will be credited.

Also, consider following me on my Itch.io page- my past game projects I’ve worked on are there, and I shall release a new one sooner than later, so this would make me happy!

https://yukapu.itch.io/