DEVELOPMENT PLAN / YEAR ONE
From the first greybox street to the first daily ride. A 12-month production pipeline for a stylised 3D Bombay, expressive AI passengers and a game people return to every day.
01 / SET THE DESTINATION
Year one targets a polished, replayable first release. The city grows from a reusable art and road system, with depth concentrated along the routes players actually drive.
Proposed art direction: warm, low-poly forms, hand-painted textures, soft lighting and cinematic monsoon colour. Recognisable Bombay silhouettes, lively street details and expressive passengers; an art bible locks the visual language before production scales.
Map and reference research informs a compressed, playable South Bombay network: Colaba, Fort and Marine Drive as the initial route clusters. Plan for 3–5 curated trips, modular streets and selected landmark exteriors, sized through prototype testing.
A single-player taxi experience with assisted driving, 6–8 original passenger personas, text-first AI dialogue, a curated daily brief, fair tip scoring, a public leaderboard and quote-card export. A desktop-first release keeps the first build focused.
Planning boundary: this budget covers a recognisable, selectively mapped Bombay—not a street-for-street recreation of the entire metropolis. Full-city expansion, mobile/console ports and licensed celebrity voice episodes follow after the core release. Voice interaction is a stretch milestone, dependent on cost and performance.
02 / THE 12-MONTH BUILD
Months are relative to project kickoff. Parallel work keeps the plan within one year; stage durations should not be added together. Each gate determines whether the next scope commitment is ready.
| WORKSTREAM / DURATION | M1 | M2 | M3 | M4 | M5 | M6 | M7 | M8 | M9 | M10 | M11 | M12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 · Pre-production2 months · M1–M2 | — | |||||||||||
| 02 · Playable vertical slice2 months · M3–M4 | — | — | ||||||||||
| 03 · World & game production4 months · M5–M8 | — | — | ||||||||||
| 04 · AI & daily systems scale-up3 months · M7–M9 | — | — | ||||||||||
| 05 · Alpha, beta & polish2 months · M10–M11 | — | — | ||||||||||
| 06 · Controlled launch1 month · M12 | — | |||||||||||
AI feasibility and cost tests begin in the vertical slice. Stage 04 expands proven systems. Playtesting happens throughout; the dedicated validation stage hardens the full experience.
EXIT GATE / APPROVED BLUEPRINTSigned-off art direction, costed scope, technical plan and testable success criteria.
EXIT GATE / THE RIDE WORKSA complete 8–12 minute ride demonstrates the look, the feeling and an affordable AI loop before scaling.
EXIT GATE / CONTENT-COMPLETE ALPHA WORLDAll planned routes are driveable; the city kit is reusable and the target hardware can sustain the agreed frame budget.
EXIT GATE / THE DAILY LOOP IS CONNECTEDA curated brief can reach players end to end, with measured AI cost, tested scoring and a clear operator workflow.
EXIT GATE / RELEASE CANDIDATENo launch-blocking defects; the agreed performance, safety, reliability and per-ride cost targets are met.
EXIT GATE / A STABLE DAILY GAMEA functioning first release, documented operations and a prioritised expansion plan grounded in player behaviour.
03 / HOW THE WORK FLOWS
The world-production pipeline creates the place. The daily-content pipeline gives players a fresh reason to return. Both meet inside one tested ride.
WORLD PRODUCTION → REUSABLE 3D ASSETS
Research routes, capture the city’s visual identity, check source permissions and block out a playable street network.
Approve shapes, palette, textures and asset budgets. Build reusable road, façade, signage and prop families.
Dress route clusters, place landmarks, tune lighting, animate passengers and integrate traffic and sound.
Check navigation, collision, frame time and conversation comfort. Refine each route before content lock.
DAILY CONTENT → A REVIEWED PLAYABLE RIDE
Select a relevant story from reputable reporting. Record attribution and separate established facts from open questions.
Write a balanced brief, choose a passenger lens and define plausible shared ground without prescribing an ideology.
Editorial review plus automated dialogue checks for factual drift, harmful outputs, difficulty and scoring consistency.
Release the daily challenge, monitor cost and reports, retain source context and use feedback to improve the next ride.
04 / RESOURCE PLAN
A proposed allocation for one year, from development to a controlled launch. These are planning ceilings to validate through staffing and supplier quotes.
| PRODUCTION AREA | ALLOCATION |
|---|---|
| Production, game design & researchScope, scheduling, design documentation, city research and playtest coordination. | ₹6,00,000 |
| Gameplay & platform engineeringDriving, camera, traffic, interface integration, saves, account and leaderboard systems. | ₹12,00,000 |
| 3D world, characters & technical artMap layout, environment kit, taxi, original passenger models, animation, materials and optimisation. | ₹11,00,000 |
| AI & daily-content engineeringConversation orchestration, grounding, evaluation, moderation and editorial publishing tools. | ₹6,00,000 |
| Narrative, UI design & audioPersona writing, interaction design, ambient sound, music and editorial preparation. | ₹3,00,000 |
| QA, accessibility & player testingExternal testing, compatibility, performance validation and compensated test sessions. | ₹3,00,000 |
| Tools, hosting & AI usageDevelopment licences, services and capped inference during development, beta and the launch month. | ₹2,00,000 |
| Launch & operational setupStore assets, release preparation, support setup and launch-month daily editorial operations. | ₹2,00,000 |
| Contingency reserveApproved overruns, rework and unresolved vendor or tax costs. | ₹5,00,000 |
| TOTAL PLANNED BUDGET | ₹50,00,000 |
Indicative spending windows sum to ₹45L across all work packages; the ₹5L reserve is unassigned. This is a timing view of the same budget, not an additional allocation.
05 / THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE RIDE
Four core roles own the game, with specialist support across art, narrative, interface design, audio and testing.
Owns scope, milestones, driving/conversation design, research, team coordination and playtest decisions.
Owns driving, camera, traffic, UI integration, saves, accounts and leaderboards. Shares service integration with the AI engineer.
Owns the art bible, city layout, modular kit, lighting, asset integration and rendering optimisation. Sets the pipeline for supporting artists.
Owns dialogue orchestration, source grounding, persona behaviour, tip evaluation, usage controls and the daily-content tools.
Produces the taxi, simplified passenger models, reusable rigs, boarding/seated animations and supporting props under the art lead.
Writes personas and ride examples; designs the sourcing, review and daily-brief playbook with the producer.
Designs onboarding, conversation UI, tip results, leaderboard and share cards; supports usability iteration.
Builds the ambient city soundscape, taxi audio and a small original or appropriately licensed music set.
Tests compatibility, accessibility, AI edge cases and daily-loop reliability. Coordinates structured player-testing sessions.
06 / KEEP THE BUILD ON TRACK
Validate one art-complete street and one full route before mass asset production. Lock route boundaries; use modular kits and selective landmark detail to keep the 3D workload predictable.
Test persona consistency, news grounding, tip fairness and AI cost in the vertical slice. Scale the cast only after the same ride works reliably across varied player responses.
Use each exit gate to review quality, spend and remaining scope. Protect driving, dialogue and the daily loop; keep full-city coverage and celebrity voice licensing outside the committed first release.