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Genre: Simulator, Strategy, Adventure, Indie

City Game Studio

Stability First: City Game Studio v1.22
Hey everyone!
A huge work week has just passed, and I don't have much to tell you except that v1.22 will be by far the most stable version of City Game Studio with fixes that will make the game even more stable!

Week Recap


Thanks for the welcome you gave to the last devlog, it was very pleasant to read your feedback. Even if the studio copy/paste feature is great, some people always want more, and I completely understand why!

Besides that, the latest changes greatly improve the competitors view. In fact, you'll now be able to see their game catalog directly through the competitors panel. It's super convenient, you can see the publication date, when they were removed from the market, and their score. That's already pretty good!

Well, to do this I had to work on pagination. And so, I reviewed all panels that have pagination because there were two bugs. The first one allowed viewing pages without any information to show. In the best case, it displayed nothing, but in some cases it crashed the game. This bug is now behind me and the game is better for it.

Another change this time concerns the game's log management. I completely rewrote it. The old version was slowing down your machine because it consumed a lot of I/O, while the new one will use more RAM. Don't worry, it's not even 1 MB being consumed, but in terms of performance, this will clearly impact you, not to mention stability. Using RAM returns fewer errors than using a hard drive. I should have done this earlier, but I only thought about it later...

What's Next


I plan to work on tooltips, to prevent them from making your life miserable when you want to disable them. After that, I'll work on online games to ensure the game displays the correct data.

If I have time, I'll add a filter for the published games history, so you can filter your games from those that come from competitors you've bought.

Well, this devlog is slightly shorter than the previous one, that's because I spent a lot of time debugging to understand where a crash was coming from, and why my fix wasn't working. Now that it's fixed, well, I'm pretty satisfied, and I can finally add even more features to City Game Studio.

By the way, my other game is about to release, for now it's free, so take advantage of it and go play it!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1810050/Fortune_Avenue/?utm_source=cgs

That's all from me
See you next week
Take care of yourselves
Xavier aka Binogure

Patch v1.22.0-rc5

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


Feature

  • Show the number of desks instead of employee productivity to the studio copy layout panel

UI

  • Add a list of games published by the competitors to the competitors panel

Bugfixes

  • Fix issue with paginations leading to empty pages or crashing the game
  • Fix issue with paginations with no feedback sound FX
  • Improve logger handler - No more crash due to it

v1.22 Revealed: Copy-paste and More!
Hello everyone!

The v1.21 Studio Director update isn't even two months old, and already the next update contains most of the major features I had planned to add.
And honestly, it's fantastic - I'm really happy with the work done, and thanks to this head start, I can add even more content to the next major update!

Weekly Recap


The biggest part of v1.22 is already ready. I'm talking about the ability to copy/paste studio furniture layouts. I've tested it on a large studio, and it works pretty well.
So I've made it available for you to try out and provide feedback, and maybe find some bugs. I might revisit it to add useful information, such as displaying the number of desks on the thumbnails, or make some adjustments to improve performance. In any case, I wanted to get this feature to you as early as possible to get as much feedback as possible!

What's Next


This update will be released mid-March, so I have some time to add more content. From your feedback, I've made a non-exhaustive list of elements that seem coherent and important to add to City Game Studio.

First, I'm planning to add a list of games published by competitors. Currently, we only see games that are "on sale," not "all" of a competitor's games. When you buy out a competitor, it's always useful to know their complete game catalog.

Another piece of feedback concerns the digital store. The best-selling games list isn't very aesthetically pleasing, and I'd like to make it more visually appealing.

There's also feedback about online games. City Game Studio currently displays the number of copies sold including monthly subscriptions. This means you might see more copies sold than there are console users. I admit it's not very consistent, but it's fixable.

There's also a small thing I'd like to work on: tooltips. I want to prevent the same tooltip from appearing twice in a row. Currently, it's quite annoying to see the same tooltip appear over and over when starting a new game.

Another change, more significant and in my opinion very useful, concerns the studio selection panel. Currently, when selecting a studio, the game only lists available studios. I'd like to completely revamp this panel to make it more consistent with the rest of the game interface, more compact, and list all studios, even those that are occupied.

A frequent request concerns the game history. Adding a filter to see only games made by you or by certain competitors. Maybe even the ability to completely archive a game so it's not displayed anywhere.

Regarding conventions, an interesting change could be adding a button that would let you put the same game on all stands at a convention. This would save us some clicks.

Another change, which I think will be part of a separate update, is about the marketing specialist. I'd like to give them the ability to automatically manage promotions for your games and consoles. Basically, the marketing manager would promote games when an update is released, or when a sequel is announced/published. For consoles, we can do the same thing when a Normal/Large or AAA game is announced or published, to boost sales before the game's release.

So that's what I plan to add to City Game Studio in 2025, if I have time to implement everything. But I'm also planning to work on City Game Studio's mod support. Make it more robust, and show which mods might "break" the game.

I haven't prioritized all this feedback yet. So if you also have feedback or want any of these suggestions to be added as a priority, please share your opinion in the comments because it will influence the next City Game Studio updates!

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

Patch v1.22.0-rc4

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


Feature

  • Can copy/paste studio's layout (only smaller studios to the same area or bigger)

Misc

  • Optimize convention generation
  • Optimize post-mortems generation
  • Optimize game creation
  • Optimize buying out a competitor
  • Optimize contract generation
  • Optimize yearly report generation (financial report)
  • Optimize GoTY generation
  • Optimize remake generation
  • Optimize competitor staff generation
  • Optimize marketing campaign archives

Bugfix

  • Console parser now removes invisible newlines and replace them by spaces.

v1.22 Development Update!
Hello everyone!

Another week comes to an end, and I've made great progress on v1.22. Actually, it's moving along faster than I expected.
However, I also had to work on some unexpected things, so let me tell you all about it!

Weekly Recap


This week, instead of pushing the unstable update on Wednesday as usual, I released it on Tuesday. The reason was simple: I wanted to start working on the studio layout copy/paste feature.

Release candidate 3 includes quite a few changes, particularly regarding console data adjustments. I've added the upcoming Nintendo Switch based on predictions from specialized websites, along with adjustments to other console data.

We've also fixed several bugs that were introduced with the studio director feature. Notably, there was an annoying bug preventing update cancellation. If you've encountered this issue, you'll be happy to know it's already fixed in Steam's unstable branch. There might be other bugs I haven't found yet, and I really appreciate your patience and understanding regarding all these issues.

What's Next


I've made significant progress on v1.22's flagship feature: the ability to copy studio layouts. All the underlying code is ready, and now I'm working on the interface. I already have a clear idea of how to implement this and have started working on it.

When furnishing a studio, you'll be able to use automatic furnishing for either a regular studio or a data center (servers). A third option will appear allowing you to copy an existing studio. When you select this option, the game will display a list of all your studios.

There are some limitations to note: you won't be able to copy a larger studio into a smaller one, and copying studios between different save files won't be possible.

Each preview card will show the studio's name, number of desks, number of servers, happiness level, productivity, surface area, monthly maintenance costs, and the total cost to copy this studio. I believe those informations should be sufficient for making informed decisions.

Once you've selected a studio, you'll confirm with another button, and the entire layout will be copied to your new building. This feature actually led me to make some deep modifications to various parts of the game.

I wanted to optimize the function since studios can be quite large. In doing so, I found a method that's 4 times more efficient than the current system for duplicating objects in City Game Studio.

4 times faster is no small improvement. If you're running a large company, you'll definitely notice the difference. I've implemented this algorithm in many other areas of the game: convention generation, game reports, game creation, annual financial reports generation. It's affected quite a few different systems. I'm still verifying that nothing has been broken, but I think by next week you'll be able to try this new version with all its improvements.

To sum up, while I've made good progress, it's not quite finished yet. I should be able to deliver this feature by next week.

That's all for now - I'll keep working on this. Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions or if you think these feature limitations might be problematic, please share your thoughts in the comments. As always, I read everything and try my best to address your needs.

See you next week,
Take care
Xavier aka Binogure

Patch v1.22.0-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.



Changelog


Balancing

  • Adjust Grantendo swap data
  • Adjust Gamestation 4 data
  • Adjust Gamestation 5 data
  • Adjust VBox series V data
  • Add end of life for the VBox zero and adjust data
  • Add end of life for the Vega Vita
  • Add end of life for the Grantendo 3DS and adjust data

Platforms

  • Add Grantendo Swap 2

Misc

  • When updating a game and having a very large company, it might makes the game really slow

Custom-platform

  • When setting the custom-platform price, the game computes it's profit per unit then dynamically adjusts the console's price based on it's profit when the manufacturing costs gets cheaper.

Bugfix

  • [DE] Translation: "Time since last used" and "Game Type" are switched around (at least in the german version?). In my case it read (translated): "You have already released a Cyberpunk-8-Game in the last RPG Months"
  • Cannot cancel a game update
  • When loading a savegame with a game that's is being updated, then you cannot update this game anymore

Game Updates & Future Plans
Hello everyone!

I'm happy to be back with you. While I didn't have much time to work on v1.22 last week, I still managed to implement what I promised.

Week in Review


When updating a game, you can now add 4 in-app purchases per update. I initially said 8, but 4 seems better for performance.
I've verified and tested this - it works well and models adapt automatically. There shouldn't be any performance impact.

I also fixed a minor bug that prevented games without microtransactions from getting them through updates. This issue is now resolved.

Another small bug concerning the studio director has been fixed. Now the director will continue making games even after canceling the last one. Thanks for reporting this bug!

What's Next


There's still much to do, but I plan to tackle studio copy/paste and other furnishing improvements. However, these modifications will likely take more than a week, so there might not be an update next Wednesday, or if there is one, it could be very unstable. I'd prefer to avoid that.

Overall, v1.22 is progressing well, and I'm very pleased with its direction.
Actually, with all these City Game Studio updates, I feel like I could keep working on this game for years and never be finished.

But fortunately for me, and especially for you, City Game Studio 2 is in the pipeline. Though I haven't started working on it yet, there are already game design ideas that would make it a distinct entry in the series.

That's all for this week,
Thank you for reading,
Xavier aka Binogure

Patch v1.22.0-rc2

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


Game update

  • Increase the number of IAP when updating a game (+4 per update)

Bugfix

  • Studio director doesn't start a new game if they cancelled the last one
  • When updating a game and adding micro-transactions using a template, it doesn't work

Smarter Studios
Hello folks!

I'm delighted to be back today with more news about City Game Studio! And during this past week, I've been working like crazy on the game.

Week in Review


I've adjusted the email you receive when your console gets manufacturing cost reductions. Actually, the game will now suggest a more attractive price and will also send you the email at the right time, so you have time to adjust the console's selling price before it impacts sales. Thanks to MoonRacer for bringing up this issue!

As I mentioned last week, I've been working on the studio director. I couldn't do everything, but I still managed to add two important features. The first one allows you to automatically "filter" games. You can now tell the studio director not to publish a game if it doesn't reach a certain score. It's super convenient and prevents your company's score from taking a hit.

The second change is more about smoothness. It allows you to hide the magazines that come to review games produced by the studio director. Handy.

I've also made some fixes concerning the list of studios at the bottom left and their associated buttons. All of this is minor but it took me some time.

What's Next


For what's coming up, it's a whole different story. The next unstable update will focus on game updates. Updating a game helps boost sales, and generally, it's a good thing to update games.

However, games with in-app purchases don't benefit as much from this spotlight as other games. That's why, when you update a game, you'll be able to add more in-app purchases. By default, you can have up to 32 in-app purchases in a single game. This number will increase by 8 with each update you make. So, after the first update, it will go up to 40, then 48, then 56, and so on. Since City Game Studio wasn't originally designed to increase this value, it will require a bit more work.

What About the Studios?


Yes, v1.22.0 is mainly about studios. And I plan to work on that and implement this system. But I must admit that I might look into changing two or three other things along the way. See if I can improve certain things that bother me at the same time. I prefer not to talk about it here because I'm not sure I'll have time to do everything.

In any case, what's certain is that the next update is already packed with content!
Thank you for reading, and if you have any ideas, suggestions, or comments, don't hesitate - I read everything as always (and even if I don't respond in the suggestion forum, it's usually because I'm waiting to have something interesting to show before responding most of the time).

Have a great day
Xavier aka Binogure

Patch v1.22.0-rc1

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


Custom-platform

  • Adjust the timeframe when the email is sent
  • Adjust the suggeted retail price for the email

Bugfix

  • Fix an issue with game-type costs computation (might lead to a crash)
  • [Windows] Fix issue with mouse cursor that's off
  • [Windows] Fix issue where you cannot close the game usig ALT+F4 with confined mouse cursor
  • Can buy the same studio more than once

Studio director

  • Add an option not to publish bad quality games
  • Add an option to hide the magazine/website reviews

UI

  • When hovering a studio => if it's rented show the rent value, otherwise show it's value
  • City map button not visible enough

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