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Genre: Simulator, Strategy, Adventure, Indie

City Game Studio

Save File Optimization: Improved Stability and Performance
Hello everyone!

Things are progressing well, and I'm happy to tell you that I've fixed the save file issue. Or at least isolated the problem.
This means I couldn't make progress on mods, but I'll tell you all about it right away!

Weekly Recap


As I mentioned at the beginning, I've improved the save file management. First, I optimized the save file size. Small save files have gone from 3 MB to less than 1 MB. Meanwhile, the larger ones, I'm talking about those over 15 MB, now take up less than 5 MB. And that's really great. By optimizing the save file size, I've also optimized the loading speed, but all of this comes at a cost. Creating a new save file takes more time. But since save creation is handled in threads, this is completely transparent to you.

Loading a game isn't much faster, but listing your save files is. In fact, I rewrote the save loading algorithm to make it more stable and faster. The old save management algorithm dated back to early access. With this new algorithm, you'll no longer be stuck in-game when you save. All of this has been fixed. And as a bonus, an error report is sent if a save cannot be completed. This will allow me to find the error and fix it. This error report includes the error code, file size, and the name of the file that caused the problem.

I've also reworked some of the game's icons to make it more modern. I hope you'll like these small changes.

What's Next


Last week I told you that I needed to work on the mod rating system. Since I spent the week on save file management, I couldn't make progress on that topic. So, this week I'll spend my time improving mod support to give them ratings.

But unlike last week, I'll focus on this task, and only this task. If I manage to finish early, I'll work on the next item, which is reworking the human resources interface. But that's only if I have time to do it.

That's all from me, thank you for reading.
Have a great day!
Xavier aka Binogure

Patch v1.23.0-rc3

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible.

Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from.

Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam.

As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers.

Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.



Interface

  • Rework some icons from the game

Savegame

  • Rework the savegame algorithm:

    • Always save the game when asked no matter what happen
    • When trying to close the game while saving, it's going to close the game anyway once it's been saved
    • Add double check when writing a new savegame
    • Add compression for some models (laargest ones)

  • Rework the load algorithm, it's faster than it used to
  • Rework the game load, the first part wasn't using threads, it does now

Mod Improvements and Stability
Hello everyone!

What an incredible week!
Not only was the v1.22 release extremely well received, but Fortune Avenue, which just launched, is also getting a great reception!
I won't hide it from you, I was super stressed about releasing a new game! But now I'm relieved because it's really being well received!

So I'll be able to continue my cruising rhythm of 50% on City Game Studio and 50% on Fortune Avenue. And yes, I'll spend even more time on City Game Studio, because I want to provide you with the best video game company simulation game. And I think with 91% positive reviews, I'm getting pretty close!

I still have plenty of work to do, so here's a quick update on the latest changes in the unstable version.

The Week's Recap


I've completely overhauled the mod management system. Loading is incredibly faster now. Not to mention the mod browsing page which has undergone an amazing facelift that makes it much more pleasing to the eye. For mod creators, it's night and day - the page for creating mods is more pleasant, and listing your creations is also easier.

On top of that, there's a layer of HTTP connection optimization. This prevents your machines from being overloaded when you haven't linked your game to Twitch, for example. And other important behind-the-scenes changes have taken place. All to make the game even more stable.

What's Next


Next is continuing to work on mod management. The idea is that when you create a mod, the game assigns a score to your mod. The scale isn't established yet because I haven't defined all the criteria that determine the ratings. But the idea is to know if a mod makes the game imbalanced, or if it's a mod that will simply improve your gaming experience. The score will be automatically assigned when creating the mod, which will let everyone know if a mod is likely to harm your gaming experience or not.

Another thing I want to work on is the save system. Currently, there's a small group of people for whom saves don't work. And that bothers me tremendously. So I'll probably devote a large part of my time to fixing this bug as a priority, so they too can have a great gaming experience.

That's all from me, thank you for reading.
Have a great day!
Xavier aka Binogure

P.S:
Fortune Avenue is out, don't hesitate to grab it at a reduced price:
store.steampowered.com/app/1810050/Fortune_Avenue/?utm_source=cgsannonce

OFFICIAL RELEASE
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1810050/Fortune_Avenue/?utm_source=cgs_annonce

Hello everyone!

FORTUNE AVENUE IS FINALLY HERE!. Yes, after months of development, I'm super happy to announce that Fortune Avenue is available today on Steam! For those who have been following me for a while, you know I've been talking about it since the 1.19.0 update of City Game Studio.

What is Fortune Avenue?


Fortune Avenue is my new baby! Imagine a revisited Monopoly with a bunch of mechanics that will make you love (or hate) your friends:
  • A voting system to collectively decide on certain actions
  • A helicopter that completely changes the game dynamics
  • A Fortune Wheel to add that little chance factor that makes games unpredictable
  • Special cards that can turn the situation around at any moment
  • And many other surprises that I'll let you discover!


An offer you can't refuse


To celebrate the launch, Fortune Avenue is available with a 40% discount during the first 15 days! That brings the price down from $4.99 to just $2.99!

It's the perfect time for City Game Studio fans to discover my new project. And if you liked the way I've developed and improved City Game Studio over the years, know that I have the same plans for Fortune Avenue.

But rest assured...


City Game Studio isn't being abandoned! As I announced previously, I'm still working on:
  • Revamping studio furnishing with copyable templates
  • Reducing console manufacturing costs based on sales volume


These features will arrive as planned. I just wanted to take the opportunity to tell you about Fortune Avenue, which is really close to my heart.

New updates for City Game Studio


For those who might have missed it, I've just released v1.22 of City Game Studio, which has completely revised and fixed studio management! This update brings many improvements that will make your experience even more enjoyable.

A little thank you


I really wanted to thank you for your continued support. It's thanks to you that I can continue to create games like City Game Studio and now Fortune Avenue. Your feedback, suggestions, and passion are what motivate me to get up every morning (even when I have to fix a bug at 3 AM).

Don't hesitate to share your impressions of Fortune Avenue, and if you enjoy it, a small review would be greatly appreciated!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1810050/Fortune_Avenue/?utm_source=cgs_annonce

I wish you excellent games, whether managing your video game studios or bankrupting your friends on Fortune Avenue!

Xavier aka Binogure

P.S: For those who made it this far, the next update for City Game Studio will focus on better mod support! You'll be able to filter them more easily and improve their download experience. I'm working hard to offer you the best possible experience with mods!

Patch v1.23.0-rc0

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible.

Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from.

Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam.

As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers.

Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.



Changelog


Mod support

  • Rework the mod loader algorithm
  • Rework the mod creation panel (looks better)
  • Rework the mod list (looks better and loads all the images now)

Misc

  • Rework the HTTP requester, used by mods to load images. Remove the Thread dependency, so it's now crash-free.

Twitch

  • Do not try to connect when there's no need to open a connection

v1.22.3: Optimization Update
Hello everyone!

This is another small update, but one that optimizes code I wrote back in 2018. It's been quite a while and definitely deserved some attention.

From now on, adjusting the gauges during game creation will be much easier and consume significantly fewer resources.

There are also other changes such as two fixes for rare crashes that needed to be addressed!

I believe this completes version 1.22, and now I'll be focusing on v1.23!

Happy gaming to all!
Xavier aka Binogure

Changelog


Optimization

  • Optimize the gauge setting panel
  • Optimize the panel loading algorithm

Bugfix

  • Fix an issue with the game over panel
  • Fix an issue when canceling a game made by the studio director by selling all your studios (crash)

v1.22.2 Crash fix
Hey folks,

Here a very short update, to fix a crash when you sell all the furnitures from a data center.

Xavier aka Binogure

Changelog


Bugfix

  • Salary wage raise computation error
  • when selling a datacenter (or a studio with servers, it leads to a crash

An Update That Refines the Experience
Hey everyone!

Version 1.22 has been out for almost a week now, and frankly, the feedback has been excellent. The feature that lets you copy/paste studios is highly appreciated, even though it contained a small bug that I've now fixed!

And the rest too—having console manufacturing costs automatically adjust with the number of units sold, the new studio selection panel. In short, all these changes have been really well received, and so it's with pleasure that I bring you this update which fixes the few remaining bugs.

First of all, the studio selection panel wasn't working very well. Being able to deselect studios is important in some cases, and by default certain filters made this action a bit more difficult if you had a free studio. I stumbled upon this issue and made a fix.

A user provided me with several super useful pieces of feedback. One of them concerns game updates. For games that remained on the market for more than 15 years, publishing an update would kill sales. This was a very specific case, and I've made the process much smoother. From now on, the game will perform a more complex calculation for updates. So, when you load your game, sales might suddenly jump—don't worry, it's just the game automatically adjusting and "giving back" the sales you should have had.

That being said, two other fixes have been implemented. The first concerns an error that prevented the end-of-life table of a game from displaying, and the other bug caused the number of copies sold to become negative. These were simple display bugs that are now fixed.

So there you have it. I've gathered your feedback, and v1.23 will be enhanced with magnificent interface changes that will make the game even more enjoyable. As you know, I publish an update approximately every 3 months, which means that by summer you should have an update that addresses most of your feedback.

For example, when creating a console, being able to compare it with those present on the market, or being able to better manage employee schedules so that only designers work during the design phase, for instance. Or sorting employees by those who have just been hired, or being able to train employees directly from the employee panel.

In short, all of this, if I have time, will be part of v1.23, which is already full of great things. As a reminder, being able to list former games of the year, or game ports from the catalog. Showing a company recap or even thoroughly reviewing mod management. I haven't listed everything, but these are the main changes that should be included in v1.23.

Thank you all for reading,
I hope you're enjoying the new version of City Game Studio!

In the meantime, see you soon for the first RC of v1.23 (normally in a few days).

Xavier aka Binogure

The Architect v1.22
Hello everyone!

I've been working on this new version of City Game Studio for months, and I hope you're as excited as I am about this new update. There's a ton of things to talk about, so without further ado, let's dive right in.

Copy Studios


This is one of the oldest feature requests for City Game Studio: the ability to duplicate the furniture of one studio to another! And I understand why. Because even though automatic furnishing is stylish, it will never be as cool as when you furnish your studios yourself! So this feature is now available in City Game Studio. From now on, you can duplicate the content of a studio to another studio of the same size or larger.

For the moment, it's not possible to duplicate the content of a studio from another save file. There are many things to take into account, such as the year, since not all furniture is necessarily available. So it's possible that this improvement will come in a future update, stay tuned.

Your Consoles


Manufacturing costs for consoles now adjust based on the number of units sold. The more a console sells, the less it will cost to produce. Of course, you'll receive a notification to inform you of the change in production costs, but there's another thing that has changed!

When you set a price for a console, you specify the profit you want to make per console, and the game will set the console price based on the profits you want to make. This makes it much harder to go bankrupt due to a pricing issue. The advantage of this method is that the console price will automatically adjust with the reduction in production costs, and consequently, you don't have to do anything to manage console prices once the console is released.

Other Consoles


A new console makes its appearance, the Grantendo Swap 2! Yeah, I've made some educated guesses for the sales figures, since we only have estimates, but I'll adjust over time to make it match reality as closely as possible.

I've also updated the data for the Grantendo Swap, the Gamestation 4 & 5, as well as the VBox series V. I've added end-of-life dates for the VBox Zero, the Vega Vita, and the Grantendo 3DS, so the game matches reality even more. I hope you like it!

Studio Director


Many of you use the studio director and have sent me suggestions! Among them, two caught my attention. The first is the ability for the studio director to only publish games with a certain minimum rating. This helps you avoid producing flops and doesn't tarnish your company's image.

The second option is being able to hide review magazines when they publish a review. This makes the game experience more streamlined, and it really does feel good!

Interface


There are quite a few changes here. First, competitors. Now you can list their games very easily as soon as you open the competitors panel.

For the bottom menu bar, the Map View / Studio View buttons weren't visible enough, so I added a bit of juice to make them stand out more.

The panel containing game creation, history, ports, or remakes has been revised to add more filters. You can search by name or by genre. In short, there are many more filters than before, making the interface more pleasant and intuitive.

And since we're on this panel, I want to tell you about the other big change. It concerns the studio selection. It has been completely redesigned to make it more intuitive. City Game Studio now displays more useful and condensed information than before. I know this change has been well received by beta testers.

Among other changes, there are notably some icons that have been redone to better integrate with the game interface. The digital store has also been slightly revised to make bestsellers look better visually.

And the last visual change concerns the game end-of-life panel. In fact, when you publish an online game, City Game Studio displays the combination of sales with subscriptions. You might think a game was selling billions of copies even though the console didn't sell more than a million units. This is now fixed as the game now displays an additional line to distinguish subscriptions from sold copies. Thanks to those who reported the problem.

Updates


This is an anticipated change, I think, regarding game updates. The number of in-game purchases will increase with each update, allowing you to add new items to buy.

I've also revised the update algorithm, because for older games, making an update was hurting their popularity. And that wasn't at all what I wanted. From now on, even older games will benefit from a sales boost during an update!

Optimization


This is a frequently mentioned topic, so I work on it often. City Game Studio uses Godot Engine 2.1 with a programming language integrated into the engine, which means it's not the most optimized. So, I wrote a benchmark for this specific language. This benchmark allowed me to know which function executes most efficiently. Thanks to this benchmark, I was able to improve the overall performance of the game. The display of certain texts is 40% faster on average than before. Meanwhile, the generation of GotYs, or the purchase of competitors, is much faster than before. We've gone from 5 seconds to less than 100 milliseconds.

I know that overall there's still work to be done, but it's moving in the right direction, and I'll continue to work on it so you have the best possible gaming experience.

Fixes


There are many, so I'll just list the most important ones.
  • You could buy the same studio multiple times
  • When you updated a game, you couldn't use templates
  • Impossible to cancel an update
  • Pagination issue that could crash the game
  • The log system was crashing the game
  • Improved console for cheat codes


Other Changes


Added to this is the integration of a mod into the game. It's a mod that translates the game into Mandarin. Given that the feedback from users of this mod was excellent, and that the mod was well maintained, I took a week to integrate it directly into City Game Studio. This makes the simplified Chinese version more natural. There have been other fixes for translations, but they're not as significant.

Also added are new cheat codes. No, you still don't need to pull out your credit card; cheat codes are free in City Game Studio!

The Next Update


I've had quite a bit of feedback that I would have liked to include in this update, but couldn't fit in due to time constraints.

The v1.23 will be devoted to mods, but not only that. The idea is that you can load mods and know which ones will modify your gaming experience, unbalance it, or slow it down. But I also plan to add other elements based on your suggestions.
I'm thinking about making it so that when you automatically assign employees, they are distributed as efficiently as possible across studios. Or having a summary panel for your company. Or even a summary of all the previous Games of the Year. And for the history panel, adding more information about game ports.

That's what I plan to do, and I have 3 months to do it. Since I publish an update quarterly on average. I know I've already talked to you about the sequel to City Game Studio, but it's not for right away. In less than 2 weeks, I'm releasing my next game, which is a chaotic multiplayer Monopoly game. The idea was to make an original Monopoly game. So you vote for new rules, you draw cards, and most importantly, you roll the dice. You can play in teams, it all uses the Valve Anti Cheat system, and will cost less than $5 with a 40% discount to celebrate the Early Access release.

So if you like the project, or if you want to support me, please wishlist Fortune Avenue because it will clearly help me make it a successful release. And a 40% discount at launch is not to be missed either.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1810050/Fortune_Avenue/?utm_source=CGSV122
That's it, it's already over, thank you for reading.
I wish you a great time playing City Game Studio!

I'm already looking forward to working on the next update
See you soon
Xavier aka Binogure

Heading towards 91%: City Game Studio v1.22 arrives in one week!
Hello everyone!

This week, I spent a lot of time reading your feedback, going through comments on GitHub, bug reports, and the forms you filled out!
Overall, you like the game, and honestly, that makes me happy, but there are still things to improve. We're now less than a week away from the release of v1.22, so I'm focusing solely on fixing bugs and gathering new ideas for the next version.

Weekly Recap


This time, it's very brief: I mainly focused on fixing 3 bugs. Two of them concern Game of the Year titles. In fact, when you published a Game of the Year, even if you assigned specialists, they weren't actually being taken into account. Thanks to a bug report that you took the time to send me, I was able to notice this problem and fix it. Just to give you an idea, this bug must have been around for several years, so I apologize. The second Game of the Year bug involves studio directors. If the original game was made with a studio director, then the Game of the Year would also pay royalties to the studio director - even if they weren't the one publishing it. I've fixed this issue, and now you get to keep all the cash.

The third bug concerns the revenue generated by game ports. Actually, on the right panel where game ports are displayed, the number of fans gained was truncated, making it impossible to know how many fans a game port had generated. Rest assured, I didn't just fix this bug - I completely revised this section, and now the right panel is slightly more pleasing to the eye.

What's Next


First, v1.22... and next is the release of this new version. But I started this post by telling you that I was gathering ideas for v1.23, and I'm continuing to do so. I really want City Game Studio to be as complete as possible, and I think version 1.22 is the best version of City Game Studio. In fact, you're saying this more than I am since when the game was released in February 2019, only 70% of Steam reviews were positive. Now it's over 90%, and that's thanks to you and the time you take to leave reviews on Steam! Not to mention that the game could "maybe" reach 91% positive reviews in the coming months. That would be amazing and truly awesome.

In any case, all of this motivates me even more, and I'm already looking forward to you being able to play v1.22! Oh, but I'm silly - you can already play it by going to the beta branch on Steam!

I already have quite a few suggestions for v1.23, but I'm taking more if you have any. Actually, I'm looking for suggestions to improve the interface at the moment!
That's all from me, thank you for reading!

Have a great day,
Xavier aka Binogure
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