Quick announcement to tell you about an immediate 35% discount in store from City Game Studio! Enjoy it, especially since there are updates coming soon!
I hope you are all enjoying your weekend like I am! I went on a weekend off to relax a bit and recharge my batteries. I have been working a lot and it's not going to stop so a relaxing weekend off will be healthy for me.
During this week, I worked on one thing and one thing only. Making a game with two genres and one theme. This is a huge feature, because it covers almost all aspects of City Game Studio. Starting with game creation, of course, but also game ports, remakes, games of the year, contracts, updates, DLCs...
Since it involves so many aspects of City Game Studio, it involves more work up front, thinking about how to do things so that it works well both in terms of the code, but also in terms of the interface. Currently, when you create a game, there is only one genre, and therefore only one texture to display. Being able to combine genres means that there are two textures to be displayed where there was only one originally, so it affects almost every interface in City Game Studio.
But it doesn't stop at aesthetics. Data also needs to be revised, where a simple game_genre field was enough, now it becomes an array. That's more things to change in the code so that everything connects well.
Besides all this, I want to make the old saves compatible with the new version of the game. I don't want the game to support two save formats, it would hurt the frame rate. Instead, I prefer writing a migration script to convert your savegame to make it compatible with the new version of the game.
As you can see, only one feature, but it's a big job. I hope to finish all this next week to tell you more about it.
Until then, have a great weekend. Xavier aka Binogure
Icons, icons, more icons
Hello folks,
A beautiful week has just gone by! With spring just around the corner, I'm locked in my windowless office working on City Game Studio! It's amazing how productive you can be once you cut out all the distractions a window from the real world can offer.
In any case, there are a lot of new things for City Game Studio.
The icons
We're talking about the tiny images that you might click on. All genre icons have been overhauled. They look much more meaningful and pleasing to the eye. It implies redesigning almost all of the game's icons. Meaning theme icons, or even target audience icons, have been redesigned. I still have a few icons to improve, and the end result is definitely worth it.
Mortgages
The mortgage panel is my nemesis. I implemented it in a hurry when City Game Studio was released in early access, it really deserved a complete overhaul. In other words, the new mortgage panel is much cleaner and more beautiful than before. The redesign also means optimization and stabilization. So contracting mortgages is now simpler, and especially more pleasant.
Other changes
I've been told about a problem with balancing the online leaderboards. In fact, when you make a console, it ought to give you more points. So I revised the algorithm that calculates the game score. And it is indeed more balanced this way. The catalog size of your console influences your final score from here on.
In addition, there is an animation when the game saves, or when there is an automatic save.
In short, everything is polish, visual comfort and the more it goes, the more I am proud of City Game Studio. Can't wait to try this new version? Well, you can already try it by switching to the unstable branch of Steam, however, it is at your own risk, because this branch is not stable at the moment.
It's been a busy week, and the week ahead will be just as busy! I can't wait to tell you all about it! In the meantime, I wish you a great weekend. Xavier aka Binogure
What's next?!
Hi everyone!
V1.11.0 has been released since a few days and feedbacks are very positive! I would like to thank you for leaving reviews on City Game Studio. It really impacts the visibility of the game, and inevitably its popularity. Thanks a lot for supporting the project!
And guess what, v1.12.0 is on track. It's a continuation of v1.11.0. All the game genre icons have been revised. I shared the first impressions on the discord server of the studio, and the feedbacks are once again very positive! Many of you like these changes, and if you also want to get updates about City Game Studio, feel free to join the Discord!
I also fixed some bugs, purely visual, nothing that would affect the gameplay of City Game Studio be reassured. Otherwise, mengueule, a long time player, contributed again in improving the translations of the game, thanks to him for his work!
Next week, I will continue to work on the icons of City Game Studio, plus I will start working on a feature that you will enjoy. I'm doing everything I can to keep this feature a secret from Steam news readers, but I don't think I can hold back on sharing my progress on the Discord server. Quite honestly, this feature was not planned for v1.12.0 at all, but I think it will clearly improve your gaming experience. I would like to point out that this is not multiplayer, the game was not designed for multiplayer. I'm saving this feature for my next games.
I stop here for today, thank you all for your support. Kisses ! Xavier AKA Binogure
P. S : The cake was a lie
It looks like magic
Hello everyone!
Well, here we are! Exactly, the biggest update of City Game Studio. What to say about this update? Honestly I thought about upgrading to version 2.0, that's how big this version is!
Behind this update there is a lot of sweat, tears and even BLOOD. There are so MANY changes that it's going to be hard to detail everything here, but I'm going to do it anyway!
Let's go for the presentation of the v1.11.0
Events
You know that little icon at the bottom of the screen that looks like a letter? Yep, that's what we're going to talk about. Events have been added in 2019, and barely changed since then. So I had to roll up my sleeves and add some icons here, some formatting there. Consoles' announcements have been grouped together, so your mailbox is going to be lighter. In addition, there are new recurring events. From now on, your fans are going to write to you. Sometimes they are happy to hear from you, and they tell you so, sometimes they are not so happy. So when they ask you for something, I advise you to listen to them, your wallet will be grateful. Fans are going to contact you mostly to talk about your games, to ask you for updates, sequels... When you release a game, there is a slight chance that it impacts the popularity of the themes. When it happens, as my great-grandfather would say, cool beans!
Your consoles
There have been some changes. The console sales algorithm has been revised, it's a bit more balanced than before, especially when you release several consoles. But the biggest change is the ability to make your consoles backwards compatible. That's a great feature.
By making your console backwards compatible, you ensure that you can port your entire game catalog with 100% compatibility. This means that porting a game will cost you less and make you more money. However, making a console backwards compatible is not cheap either.
The interface
The pièce de résistance! Almost the whole interface has changed. Gonzi, a player of City Game Studio, helped me a lot to improve the aesthetics of the menus of City Game Studio. Icons, buttons, panels, so many things have been changed, and for the better, I hope! The dark theme has been improved, making it easier to read all the text and images. The comfort of the dark theme is as good as the default one.
Selling a studio, what an ordeal. Where is this button? In which menu? Well, from now on you can sell a studio directly from the bottom menu, right next to its name. Very convenient! Renaming a studio works on the first try, and every time! The staff management panel has been redesigned as well, replacing some hidden icons with visible tabs. All this for a more instinctive result, and therefore more pleasant.
Optimizations & fixes
Playing with a modded version of City Game Studio could be a bit of a pain. Game slows down during some periods of the year, and freezes most of the time. Sometimes it even hangs completely. Well, I did my best, and I think City Game Studio is much better optimized. It now uses a unique resource loader system, so there's no need to load the same resources several times in a row. Shaders have been standardized, stored in a nice folder, and their invocation is done through an interface that saves me from duplicating shaders to replace existing ones. Some shaders could not be deactivated properly, so the game slowed down on old machines
As for the fixes, there are many. The Game of the Year stopped working when there were not enough contestants to elect a game. City Game Studio had to be restarted to make it work again. It was also impossible to develop a game of the year, well, that's fixed too.
Currency adjustment
Don't worry, the game's price will remain unchanged in Euros and USD. However, other currencies are going to be adjusted thanks to the new tool that Steam provides. Indeed City Game Studio's price has barely varied in other currencies for the last 4 years, so I think an adjustment is in order.
To conclude
I have not listed all the changes, there are really many, some are less visible than others, I have listed the most important. But City Game Studio is more and more complete and stable.
I still have some changes to make in the game. I would like to add the possibility to make games with 2 genres, add achievements, and maybe review some other things. In the meantime, this new version of City Game Studio should delight the most ardent of you.
That's all for today. I wish you a good game. See you soon for the rest. Xavier AKA Binogure
Changelog
Feature
Add events when a player releases a game gets a chance to:
Theme trends event: A theme can gets trending via an event
Community's excited, so they should publish an update ASAP
After 3 years, if a game has more than 90% score, fans can ask for a sequel
Add backward compatibility for consoles
Add the backward compatibility to the existing platforms (Grantendo, Saga, Gamestation...)
Add tooltip on platforms (add name of the backward-compatible platform)
Rework the custom-platform algorithm to take into account the backward-compatibility feature
Rework the gameport-algorithm, to take into account the backward-compatibility
Digital store: Can port a game to the digital store via a game update
Misc
Update the console market share (Gamestation 5, VBox Series V, Grantendo Swap, Teamdock)
Number of competitors (use the game creation to define how many of them)
Group platforms announcements
Add following items to the yearly financial report:
Furnishing studios
Buying servers
Building studios/universities/convention
Acquiring a competitor
Buying competitors stocks
Bugfix
GOTY: Stopped even with competitors spawned
GOTY: Cannot dev a GOTY
Game crash when upgrading computers
Custom-platforms: When releasing the next-gen platform, sales of the old-gen doesn't fall.
Custom-platforms: Cancelling a platform might lead to random behavior
Custom-platforms: Do not send platform bought event for custom platforms
Map shader: Cannot deactivate the season shader
Optimization
Switching between studio takes less CPU/memory
Optimizing navigating through menus ("creating a new game" panel should load faster)
Use a ResourcePreloader instead of preloading all resources at launch
Add paginations for staff instead of yielding
Refactor models and controllers to use node system instead of dictionaries
Trade panel: Tooltips optimizations
Improve studio/map background rendering
Add C++ function to sort IntArrays
UI
Replace "filter by" by "sort by" on the right panel
Shop: Replace button by switch (auto-furnish) and add a tooltip
Game engine: Add a tooltip when creating a new engine while there's no studio available
Improve feedback on game creation
Can sell a studio from the studio list
In dev items: Revamp all the panels
Replace staff panels icons by tabs with text (more readable)
Mods
Difficulty: Add moddable parameters for fan based events
Famous employees: Cannot rename famous employees
Waiting for something?
Hi everyone!
Well, are you waiting for something? Just kidding, I've been working hard this week too with adding details to the game like wearing glasses. So yeah, that's pretty useless, but it's done. Maybe later I'll add the option to wear a mustache or to customize your character more. I'm not sure that's super important for a management game like City Game Studio, so you tell me.
Otherwise, this week, I fixed a major bug that made City Game Studio crash. Also, it's the stabilization of the unstable version, I corrected about ten minor bugs this week. In other words, I'm giving you an update with little details if you know what I mean.
Preparations for the anniversary update of City Game Studio, which is going to celebrate its 4 years already, are going very well, we're in time. Come on Tuesday, there will be a lot of cake!
See you on Tuesday, Have a good weekend to all Xavier aka Binogure
Coming soon!
Hello all, I hope you are all well,
I hope you are in good shape because this week I have been busy.
On menu:
- Game optimization
Improvement of the popup
Redesign of the achievements
Where do I start?
Game optimization is mainly about the competitors. When loading mods in City Game Studio, very often they add many competitors. City Game Studio had a hard time to manage several hundreds of competitors. So I worked on it, I had to simplify a small part of the interface, however the game remains fluid even with many competitors.
As for the pop-ups, it's the continuation of last week's work. I've redesigned the icons so that they look better on big screens and also on smaller screens. The background of the pop-up is darker, to better read the text. Also, the pop-ups themselves are more attractive, with nice curved shapes!
So let's talk about the biggest part of the job. I struggled to find the right idea of how to manage the achievements in the game. I was worried about adding too many pop-ups, and drowning you in a lot of useless information. And in fact, the way I set up things works pretty well, it's actually really nice as it makes you feel like completing all the achievements. And I have plans to add even more achievements. Let me give you a sneak peek. You get an achievement if you can make a AAA game in the 90s or if you can make a console before the 90s.
Well, that's for next week. Oh boy, it's already the 10th, the next update is coming soon!
I'm going back to my keyboard, coding stuff! Have a great weekend everyone! Xavier aka Binogure
A lot of improvements
Hello folks,
As usual on saturday, I'm going to tell you about the latest developments of City Game Studio! Like last week I made a lot of work on optimization but also on the interface.
Adjustment of the price of the game in some currencies
No worries, the price of City Game Studio remains the same, 15,99€, or 15,99$. The only thing that will change is the price in some other currencies, such as the Turkish Lira, or the Argentine Peso. Steam has implemented a new tool that automatically adjusts game prices for different currencies. Previously I was doing this poorly, now Steam will take care of it.
Optimization
Shaders management in City Game Studio has been harmonized. It helps me to better manage the shaders and their options, but also to manage how they are loaded. On top of that there are new optimizations when it comes to load the game resources. In short, City Game Studio should start faster and feel smoother in general.
Interface details
Much work has been done this week on the interfaces of City Game Studio. For example, all the panels of the games in development have been overhauled. It's more pleasant to the eye and better optimized. I figured out a trick to avoid using shaders while having the same result, kudos!
As you may know City Game Studio is using Godot Engine v2.1, a rather old version, but it's open source. Thus I can add features and fix bugs that may be present in the engine. Why I'm talking about this, well it concerns directly the interface of City Game Studio. All popup icons are slightly blurred on high resolution screens. I added a scaling system for the popup icons to be able to use high resolution images. As a result, the image is much sharper.
I'm not showing you anything, I'm just talking, it's all voluntary. When the update arrives, on February 21, 2023, I want the announcement to blow your mind. And for that, I need some new images of the game. Obviously if you have already tried City Game Studio on the unstable branch of Steam, you know already how the update should look like, but for the 90% of you who stay on the stable branch, you should like it a lot!
Well, we are already at the end of this post, I hope you liked it! While waiting for the next update, don't hesitate to play again!
On that note, have a good weekend! Xavier aka Binogure
Optimizations and interface
Hello folks,
I do hope you like these posts! I intend to write one post a week to update you on the progress of City Game Studio!
Last week I worked hard to optimize City Game Studio, fix bugs and enhance the interface!
Optimization
Buying, selling or even changing studios used to take up to a few seconds, and sometimes even crash the game. I took a look at the studio loading algorithm, and it should take one or two seconds to load the biggest studios, and almost instantaneously to load medium and small studios. When switching between two studios, no studio is displayed, which makes it go faster.
Additional optimizations include the use of ResourcePreloader. A node that I didn't know existed until recently and that is incredibly useful because it allows you to keep previously loaded game scenes rather than loading them into memory each time you use them. Very practical, mainly because it improves the stability of the game on OSX.
Interface
Again there are some changes. New tooltips have appeared. With much more meaningful statements. In fact the interface has been revised to help new players to better understand City Game Studio.
In addition to that, there is a slight redesign of the themes, well, how they are displayed. Instead of showing the first and the last theme, the panel will show the 3 most popular themes.
In fact there are many other changes, and you can already taste them if you switch to the unstable branch of Steam. In the meantime I haven't implemented everything yet, I still have to make a panel for the annual results of your company.
What is sure, is that I am still going to add a lot of features, and still rework a lot of things!
For those who are wondering, the 1.11.0 update should be released on the anniversary of City Game Studio, that is February 21, 2023. It will be 4 years since the game is available on Steam.
On that note, have a good weekend Xavier aka Binogure
A passion for work!
Hello everyone!
Once in a while, I like doing a post to share the content of the upcoming version. Well, I've been working on it for about 6 months already, let's imagine how big the update will be! Think even bigger!
What's already available on Steam's unstable branch
In-game events
At first, the update was supposed to contain only in-game events. Which is a rather large chunk. The first event is about theme trends. Suppose you publish a game, no matter how good it is, you get a chance to impact theme trends. Of course it impacts the sales, it doubles them for the first month, and afterwards, it's degressive.
Clearly, you might want to tap into this and release another game with the same theme. Nevertheless, you will have to use a new genre to avoid the malus that prevents you from publishing the same genre/theme combination too often or you will get a poor rating. This means working on several different genres.
Now tell me if some fans fall in love with your game. Well, they will immediately ask you to update it. You are going to get a notification that your game is popular. Depending on the difficulty you will have a certain amount of time to publish any update. For easy, it's 12 months, while for very hard, it's 5 months.
I considered adding events saying a game has a bug and you have to fix it as soon as possible. However, it's an event which can negatively impact the game experience, therefore I chose to do something else instead. For example, let's say you make a great game, we're talking about a game that has a score above 90, and you don't make a sequel, well, you're going to get a letter from your fans telling you how much they love your game and how they're desperate for a sequel! If you decide to make a sequel, and you publish it, the reaction of the fans will be based on the quality of the sequel. I won't tell you more.
Interface
A gamer called Gonzi, a City Game Studio enthusiast, is helping me to revamp some of the game's interface. He is doing a wonderful job, I believe you are going to love it. The main interface has been revamped, and enhanced.
On top of that, notifications management has been reworked. When hovering the mouse over a notification you can view its content, it is no longer necessary to open all notifications to understand what it is about. Also, consoles' news are grouped together whenever possible.
What is not yet implemented
I intend to add a success mechanism to the game. I'm doing this for folks who play offline or who play on platforms other than Steam.
In addition to all that, I want to rework the interface a bit to add an annual report to give a short summary of what happened in the past year.
There are other additions that I won't list here, as I'm keeping several surprises for you! Anyway, I think it's time for me to go back to the City Game Studio and do some coding!
Have a nice weekend Xavier aka Binogure
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
