ATM

I've added the ability to deposit, withdraw, repay and borrow money from ATMs in Honcho.

The driver for this feature was bank loans. Bank loans exist to ensure players can access money at regular points in the game to allow them to invest in parts, components, fuel & other fluids, trade goods, vending property locations and more. Players who have an accidental collision early-game could find themselves in a financial dead-end, unable to afford the repairs. Bank loans help mitigate this.

The other features of vending machines are currently:

• Deposit

  • Deposit your held cash into the bank

• Withdraw

  • Withdraw your stored cash

• Repay

  • Repay any debts you've accrued (i.e. not paying for fuel)

• Borrow

  • Take out a bank loan

For now, depositing cash doesn't serve much of a purpose. I'll rectify this as more features develop. Perhaps when a player passes out from exhaustion, they'd lose some held cash. Or perhaps depositing the money into an account will grant interest. Economics is a very complicated thing to get right, and it needs to be approached with care.

All money earnt from vending machine enterprises (if a worker is set to collect) will go directly to the account. This means players will have to withdraw from the ATM to access it. I like this idea because I like the feeling of anxiety when checking my own bank account. Immersion.

One more financial feature I'm yet to add is 'Invest', which would add the ability to invest in the infrastructure of the province your in, providing various benefits (24 hour shops, better roads, etc). More on this at a later date.

Shinkin Banks (信用金庫)

Eagle-eyed Japanese readers may notice that the ATM is a Shinkin bank. A Shinkin bank is community-driven deposit institution that serve small to medium enterprises and local residents. The reason for picking this over a traditional bank felt more appropriate due to the game's humble beginnings. Players start with little, in the inaka (countryside) province with ambitions to take on the established and much larger keiretsu.

Lighting Work

I've also spent some time improving how lighting looks at night, and making it performant. The game only has the inaka province right now - with kaigan (coastal), ichi (city), yama (mountain) and yuki (snow) provinces to come. So performance focus and lighting polish may seem premature, but the rest of the game will be built upon these systems. Getting them right now saves a lot of time down the road.

Anyway, that's all for this update.

Cheers,

Greg

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