This week's update has three major parts. A visual update, adding more life to the map and editor's desk, that's definitely the most noticeable part of Alpha 8.7.
Secondly, this is a balance update aimed specifically at chapters 3, 4 and 5, once your newspaper is past the initial survival struggle (hopefully).
Finally, it patches a couple of big issues with the strategic goals, including a crash. As always, you can find a more detailed list of changes below.
Changes in Alpha 8.7
Dust puff particles appear when stories and ads disappear from the map
Star and symbol particles appear, when stories or ads are picked up from the map
Star particle showers happen, when stories are arranged on the front page
Custom mouse cursor added (begone, default Windows cursor!)
Additional celebrity tie-ins with the random events, particularly in chapters 3+
The ambient audio is lower in the overall mix, especially on the map
Various balance tweaks to Personality Traits
Greatly increased Angry Letter forgiveness rewards in later stages of the game
Greatly increased the bonus points and subscribers gained from winning awards
Shortened the wait between finishing one goal and selecting the next
Fixed Advertisement goal not completing when it was supposed to
Fixed crash, when presented with a Happiness goal
Several random events were edited for broken special characters
Alpha 8.6 : Three Times the Fun!
This update has a TON of stuff. As usual it is all detailed below, but the short version is this: Above the Fold now supports up to 3 active games at a time, and comes with a bunch new content based on Reporter personality traits.
This patch took a bit longer than the previous ones and comes with many changes - I'd love to hear what you think of them, and what else you'd like to see in the game.
Thank you to all of you who have already given me feedback, whether it was on Steam, Twitter, Discord or elsewhere. You rock!
Change list for Alpha 8.6
Added: support for up to 3 active games at a time (slots are cleared on game over)
Added: You can use delete button on main menu to clear unwanted games and clear a slot
Added: main menu button that takes you to the Gamepedia wiki How-to-Play guide.
Added: Passive effects for all 36 Personality Traits in Reporters
Added: 72 new, rare but repeatable Events, 2 for each Personality Trait
Added: A few more headline elements for additional variation
Balance: Quest goals are slightly higher (except Award quests)
Balance: Tweaked the base importance of some story genres for greater variation and trait tie-ins
Balance: Reporters have a much greater chance of having at least 1 personality trait
Balance: Personality trait triggered events are limited, so only a few can be queued at any time, reporters have effect cooldowns
Balance: If a priority event is queued, it how has a 10% higher base chance of playing out each day
UI: Story cards now show smaller stars, moved to the top for easier readability
UI: Renamed "Manage Reporters" to "Manage Staff", because it's shorter and fits with the Retire-button
Bug: Fixed an issue where full screen settings were not saved/loaded properly
Bug: Lowered the max length of allowed headlines to reduce overlaps
Bug: Fixed an event-gong sound that would sometimes play, even if no event was triggered
Bug: Fixed an issue where the wordcount of an article was deducted twice if the reporter was fired mid-story
Bug: Fixed an issue where word counts would update incorrectly when a story was replaced
Bug: Fixed the awards panel to correctly reflect the number of awards needed to win the game.
Alpha 8.5 : What's That Noise?
This patch is a bit of a mixed bag with both new content and bug fixes. Personality traits are still being worked into the game, as you'll see below, and I am curious to hear how you like it. The main addition by far, is that some reporters will have an easier time leveling up (increasing their skill), something that was impossible to do before.
There is still a lot to be done on the personality trait side, but it's not the only priority in this build. The first ambient audio has been added to the game as well.
Changes in this patch
Added: Whomever wrote the top story of an award-winning issue gets a happiness boost (diminishing return) and a special quote of the day, when an award is won.
Added: Different circumstances cause minor personality trait effects on Happiness and in some cases daily quotes.
Added: Personality trait based special events added for 12 of the 36 traits, primarily allowing reporters to level up or boosts newspaper cred
Added: Negative personality trait based events added for 2 of the traits so far. Special circumstances may cause affected reporters to quit
Sound: 5 ambient traffic audio tracks added on the map (shuffled each day)
Sound: Ambient background noise loop on the Office screen
Balance: For publishing a Themed issue, instead of half your reporters writing articles of the same genre, you now need 2 + your current game chapter (so, from 3-7 depending on your game progress)
Fixed bug where Conservative quests goals were labeled as Liberal
Fixed a bug where Ad Inch quest goal counter failed to reset after completion
Fixed crash when hitting Esc on the Editor's Desk screen
Fixed crash when firing a Reporter who was in the middle of writing a story
Alpha 8.4 : Signs of Personality
Since the beginning, some Reporters have come with up to 3 personality traits. Up until now however, they didn't actually have any effect in the game. With today's patch, each trait is now associated with 2 story genres. One in a positive way, and one in a negative way.
To see the personality traits of existing reporters, go to Reporter Management, select a reporter and look in the sidebar on the right. The traits also appear on the Reporter Card when you mouse over candidates on the Map.
If you assign a story of that genre to a reporter with the matching trait, a bonus or penalty will be applied to its final Importance score. This offers further options for getting the most out of your staff, but it's not the final scope for personalities. Each trait will also be associated with events, but that is for a later patch.
A reporter with many traits has a bigger chance to impact the overall issue score if the story is either well-matched or badly matched to their personality traits. Matching and mismatching also affects the reporter's happiness, and may result in a special quote of the day.
There are also quite a few bug fixes in this one, in fact, most of the work happened behind the scenes. See below for a more detailed list.
Personality Traits and Stories: Reporters have 0-3 traits (of 36 total). Each trait matches 2 story genres, a bonus/penalty applied to Importance.
Balance: It is now slightly easier to win a Recognition Award in the early game(you get these by publishing lots of Themed issues, regardless of the theme).
Bug Fix: Upgrade buttons no longer incorrectly display as unlocked after "New Game" button is hit.
Bug Fix: Two of the same type of Strategic Goal can no longer be shown at the same time, so you'll always have 3 different goal types to pick from.
Bug Fix: The "Goals" panel no longer causes the game to crash, if you are on the quest to sell X ad inches.
Bug Fix: When replacing stories that took longer than 1 day, the word count was not updating correctly. Now fixed.
Various minor bug fixes.
Alpha 8.3 : Ad Inches Hot-Fix
Astute players found a game breaking bug in one of the strategic goals. If you had a quest to sell X inches of advertising, and you opened up the panel to view your progress, chances are your game would crash. And keep crashing, every time it would attempt to load said panel.
A misplaced parenthesis, it turns out, was to blame.
Alpha 8.3 is a hotfix just for this issue. Going forward, selling advertisements as a goal should once again be safe.
If you already had this issue, and for some reason it persists even after updating to Alpha 8.3, the manual fix is to delete the settings.ini file (which stores what panels you have open). This won't affect your save game progress at all, but if you muted the music, you will have to do that again.
You will find the settings.ini file at:
"C:\Users\[your Windows username]\AppData\Local\AboveTheFold\settings.ini"
Alpha 8.1 : Strategic Goals Have Arrived
With the shift to Alpha 8 one of the last missing major features is added to the game, namely Strategic Goals. Really, that is just another word for quests. Every so often, the mysterious Owner will present you with three options to choose from. Each has a deadline and a goal to reach.
If you reach your Strategic Goal in time, the Owner will reward you with cash and forgive a few more angry letters. But if you should fail to meet your goals, you're in trouble. Do it 4 time total, and you're fired, so choose your quests carefully.
Besides the new goals, there are a number of other changes and fixes in this patch.
Note: There is a strong possibility that existing games from Alpha 7.x will break with this update. By all means try to continue with the old one, but no promises!
As this is the first patch with the quest system included, I fully expect some weird behavior or unbalanced quests. Let me know if you spot anything by posting in the Steam Discussions, or logging a bug directly via the game's website.
Changes in Alpha 8.1
New Win Criteria: Meet 100 Strategic Goals to win the game.
New Game Over Criteria: Fail 4 goals to lose the game.
New Way to End: Retire the game if you want the final bonuses before starting a fresh game. Button available under Reporter Management.
Quest System: Pick 1 of 3 Strategic Goals (aka quests) to pursue. After a goal is completed (whether successfully or not) each new passing day has an increasing chance of triggering a new goal selection. There are 9 basic types of procedurally generated goals. Choose wisely!
Strategic Goals: You can pursue 1 Strategic Goal (aka quest) at a time. Each goal has a deadline and (hidden) difficulty rating which is used to generate a reward of game score points, Cash, and Angry Letter forgiveness, based on a weighted ratio.
New background graphics on the Main Menu, Upgrades, Reporter Management and the Office screen
Options: You can now toggle full screen/windowed mode via the Options Menu (Esc). F9 still works as well.
Map: Data under the active reporter now includes the genre of the story, if one is assigned to that reporter.
Keyboard shortcut: In Reporter Management, you can now use the right arrow key to deselect all reporters (restoring the "Buy Lunch" / "Retire" buttons).
Monthly Award Event: Reworded to fit better with what is actually going on in the game.
Balance: Award Win criteria has been changed to 50 awards, down from 100.
Balance: The minimum score needed to win a monthly themed-issue award was lowered from 65% to 52% above your issue average.
Balance: Happiness decrease now has a less steep curve as you level up through the chapters. Previously chapter 3+ was too aggressive.
Balance: Reporters with kids are 3% per child less likely to quit from unhappiness. They suck it up and make it work for the kids!
Bug fix: After winning an award for Theme of the Month, the theme would not reset and no further awards were offered. Now fixed.
Bug fix: If you donated ad space to the homeless that you didn't have, they would respond as if you'd rejected them. Now triggers a separate response.
Bug fix: In Reporter Management, if you use the mouse you no longer have to click the name to select a reporter. Anywhere on the line will now work.
Bug fix: Story Card would remain floating if you kept the right mouse-button pressed. Now they follow the icons as expected.
Bug fix: Reporter Cards now switch sides around Reporters on the map, instead of getting cropped off screen.
UPDATE: Mini hot-fix aka Alpha 8.2
After learning that alpha 7 games would end due to too many failed quests (before you even got one), I issued a small fix that could potentially save alpha 7 games unless you already got that error.
I recommend starting fresh, but understand if you're attached to your newspaper and want to try and keep playing. So, if you haven't updated yet, make sure the main menu says 0.0.8.2 at the top, before you load the game.
The Quest for Strategic Goals
Sorry, but there is no patch this week, simply because the big new addition to the game isn't ready. The quest system, also known as Strategic Goals is what I'm talking about. Check out the screenshot above for a glimpse at what it might look like.
You may also notice some new backgrounds on other screens. I am phasing out the pixelated placeholders in favor of something more in tune with the feel of the game.
Quests and Where to Find Them
Quests fill find you, actually. If you're not currently working on a strategic goal for your newspaper, there is an increasing chance every day that the Owner will call you in for a meeting.
Here you will be presented with 3 different goal options, and asked to pick one. There are 9 different types of quests with varying difficulties and deadlines, and rewards to match.
At the time of writing, all of what's described above is already in the game and working. You can pick a quest, and it saves it and the game continues. At least in every other way than with regards to the strategic goals. What still needs to happen is to test for quest completion and counting down the deadline. Those aspects have not been implemented yet, and thus the patch is not ready quite yet.
Alpha 7.8 : Music, New Buttons and More Events
This update touches a bit of everything and is one of the biggest single updates so far. This in part due to the addition of more audio - more on that below. There is also progress on the Events side, both in terms of balance and adding the final historic events - bringing the total to 30. To start off with, I picked at least one actual event for every other month in the game, and incorporated it into the event pool.
Please do keep sending bugs and suggestions. As always, many of the things that have been prioritized for this patch, were things you pointed out.
Additions and changes
New button graphics - the trusty placeholder buttons from Kenney Studio have been replaced. In their place, buttons that are a bit closer to that late 90s look.
Steam Leaderboard integration - the main game menu will now show where you rank compared to all Steam users, showing your own score in the middle, and +/- 2 positions on either side.
New Options menu when hitting Esc - previously was just for quitting the game. Initial iteration still does that, but can also be used for toggling leaderboard submissions (affects both Steam boards and the one on the website) and whether or not music should play.
Keyboard shortcut for toggling music on/off: m (works on all screens)
Music added! These loops are instrumental and hopefully not too dominating. More music is planned in coming updates for additional variation.
Historic Events for the years 2000-2002 all now have working scripts. Some have consequences based on your decisions, some are based on your newspaper's status when the events happen.
Random events have been rebalanced slightly; later chapters have more events* in the random event pool. At the same time, the gradual increase in chance of an event triggering has been nerfed, which will space out events slightly more (about 2.5%).
I am still slowly making my way towards Alpha 8. Check out the development roadmap for a big picture overview, of what you can expect to see in the next major releases.
*Extra events only apply to games started or leveled up after this update. You can still keep playing with your existing game if you prefer, and get the extra events from the next chapter forward.
Alpha 7.7 : Hot Fix and Procedural Sign-Offs
Several people reported continued crashes related to event triggers after the last patch. Thanks for the heads up - every report with additional detail helps me fix it quicker. I spent the night digging through the code and rewrote a bunch of things related to the event trigger.
I won't bore you with the details, except to say that I've simplified things some, and I *think* this will catch the majority of issues with events.
But because no patch should be bug fixes only, I did also add one new tweak to the Angry Letters. Before, everything but the sign-off greeting was based on your progress, but that greeting was just random. Now the sign-off itself is also based on exactly how mad your readers are.
My apologies to anyone who have experienced crashes in the last patch. Once again, you guys are awesome in your support. Much appreciated!
Alpha 7.6 : Recognition Awards and Historic Events
New feature: Recognition Awards Themed issues build your recognition in the media industry and can lead to "Recognition Awards". These are earned through cumulative work, so the more themed issues you publish, the greater the chance of winning one of these.
Revisited Historic Events These are being revamped and rewritten. The first 2 years of the game are being done first, and these are already added in this patch (1998-1999). Historic events are non-random events, based on actual things that happened on that date. Some will ask you to take a stand or make a decision, others have a general effect. A historic event is triggered at least every other in-game month.
Angry Letter Forgiveness has been tweaked, so it is slightly easier to raise the limit beyond chapter 2.
Crash fix: "Your mom called" event had a typo in it.
Crash fix: Burglary event.
