First Look: Colony Sim Engine for RPG Maker MZ (Devlog #1)

Hi everyone!

Thank you for your interest in the Colony Sim Engine for RPG Maker MZ. This is the first update so I thought I would share what I already have in place:

Core Features:

• Time control: Everything works at 1x, 2x, and 4x. Pause will appropriately pause the game and everything stays in sync.
• Edge scroll camera: Slide your cursor to the screen edge to move around the mouse.
• Point and click: Move your mouse over a person or building to highlight it. Left click selects it and opens its info in the Inspector.

Building:

• Build mode: Place a building and watch it be built.
• A small, circular progress bar lets you keep track of how much time is left for construction.
• Finished buildings unlock jobs and production (as defined in the parameters).

People and jobs

• Citizens spawn at the very start and also based on your settings
• A shared to-do list assigns tasks based on priority and who is free and nearby.
• A Jobs window where you can assign and remove jobs for your citizens.
• Citizens can use different sprite sheets, so they do not all look the same.
• Random names are assigned from gendered name lists.

Needs and mood

• Hunger, rest, comfort, and safety affect behavior.
• Mood gives a quick read on how people are doing.

Farming

• Prepare soil, plant seeds, water each day, follow seasons, harvest to storage.

Making goods

• Recipes with inputs, outputs, and work time.
• Quotas so the colony crafts until you hit target stock levels.

Events

• Scheduled and random problems that consume resources or damage things.
• On screen alerts explain what happened.

Saves

• Full save and load for all features.

Player and Developer tools

• Inspector panel for live stats, needs, inventory, and current task.
• Top bar with time, day, season, and quick buttons.
• In game data editor for fast balancing.
• Parameter driven setup for sprites, buildings, crops, recipes, and UI.

What's next?

• Custom images for UI 
  • Add a single struct parameter called Asset Overrides. It will let you replace every emoji or built-in icon with your own images. Fields will cover time buttons, toolbar buttons, alerts, build previews, cursors, overlays, and state variants (normal, hover, pressed, disabled). If a field is empty, the default stays in use.
• Setting quotas in game 
  • Add a Quotas panel reachable from the top bar and from stockpiles and workstations. You set desired amounts with a slider or number box per item. The game saves these targets and citizens read them to decide what to craft or haul.
• Getting more citizens 
  • Add a migration system with three sources: scheduled arrivals, event based recruits, and buildings that attract newcomers when you meet conditions like housing space. Dev tools keep a manual spawn for testing.
• Citizen death 
  • Make death optional with a parameter. If on: starvation, combat, or severe incidents can kill. Bodies trigger a cleanup job, mood and productivity are affected. If off: citizens collapse and recover at home.
• Cancel construction 
  • Add a Cancel action on construction sites in the Inspector and context menu. It removes the site and queued tasks and refunds a configurable percentage of materials.
• Resource gathering areas 
  • Let developers paint harvestable zones using regions or terrain tags. Each zone links to a resource type with yield, respawn time, and tool requirement set in parameters. Citizens take harvest jobs from these zones.
• Combat Plan 
  • A simple, opt in combat layer: basic hostile spawns, flee behavior for citizens, simple melee and ranged actions, alert hooks, and on/off switches in parameters.
• Research 
  • Add a small research tree that unlocks buildings, recipes, and bonuses. Include a Research panel with a queue and costs in time and items. Fully optional.
• Resource costs everywhere 
  • Enforce material costs for construction and for any recipe that should not be free. Tasks will check stock before starting and will pause with a clear alert if items are missing.
• Alerts 
  • Create an Alerts struct parameter where you define which alerts exist, their text, priority, sound, screen position, and throttling. Add per alert on/off toggles.
• Cancel a job 
  • Let players cancel any job from the global Jobs panel or from a citizen’s Inspector. If a job is in progress, the worker stops safely and the job is removed from the queue.
• Skills and leveling 
  • Add skill XP for doing work. Levels improve speed or output quality. Show skills in Citizen Details and allow jobs to prefer skilled workers.
• Combine Jobs into Citizen Details 
  • Fold the Jobs window into the Citizen Details window. Show current job, queued tasks, recent history, and quick priority controls in one place.

That’s where the plugin stands today. It’s not public and there’s no test build or release date yet. I’ll keep posting progress as I work through the items above. As always, I’d love any feedback you have to offer. 

Thanks for following along!