When the development started, I have decided to go with pixel art, as I can draw that much faster. I choose the isometric perspective, because it looks really good. There some games I love like Forager that have regular top-down graphics, but isometric seems to be more common for tycoon type of games as it gives a good sense of third dimension.
I had to add isometric support to my custom C++ game engine. It took a day to add it and a week to fix all the bugs
After a month, the game looked like this:
There were still some bugs to iron out, esp. with drawing order of stacked items:
In the initial versions I planned for PC building to be menu based, but then I contemplated that the game would be cool if you could actually build by moving components into their slots. It requires much more graphics, but I feel like it was worth it.
You can right-click to automatically slot items in appropriate slots. You can also click an empty slot to switch to the appropriate shop section. All the actions you can take are displayed at the bottom of the screen all the time:
Drawing pixel art for computer components is actually very interesting. I even made animation for the RGB fans using Aseprite.
For AI, I have designed a system where people would decide what to do based on priorities you set. For example, you might set someone to just install operating system, another person to do research and not care about anything else, etc.
And then I tested with dozens of them in the same room. It worked surprisingly well.
You might wonder, what would all those people do. Well, once they finish setting up the hardware, it's mostly a waiting game. So, I added research. People can perfect their skills, which broadens the types of tasks you can give them.
They can also research company technologies. These go into your company IP, and you can even have teams of multiple employees researching the same thing together to get it done faster. This way you can beat the market, for example by researching advanced mining hardware, or getting better solar panels before eveyone else.
Most game scenarios are tied to some type of research.
For rooms, there are 10 different floor tiles with different prices and dust factor. Dust plays a huge role in the game, as having high dust makes your equipment wear out faster, mostly due to fans breaking resulting in silicon overheating. Keeping dust low will be expensive. You will have to buy and install more expensive floors and/or use enclosed racks and PC cases with filters.
Each facility you rent or buy will have different starting floors which affect the price. So, you will be able to buy a room with concrete and replace all the tiles.
