Game Dev Masters
My Newest Game "Surviving Ceres" Now Has A Store Page
I am proud to announce that my next game in development now has a store page.
It's name is "Surviving Ceres" and the short description is as follows..
"Surviving Ceres is an open world survival game with an emphasis on crafting and base building. Export rare materials and manufactured goods to earn funding used to unlock new technologies and upgrades. Bring in colonists from earth to work advanced facilities to terraform the planet."
The game takes inspiration from many of my favorite games and combines them in an interesting, and fun way. You can find out more detail on the games page or in my discord / socials.
I would love if you take a moment and head over to wish list the game to show support. It would mean a lot to me. Thank you and have a fantastic day.
Surviving Ceres Steam Page
Capitalism and Economy Fest
I was honored that steam recognized this game as a good candidate for the sale, and because I know economic gamers out there love a good deal. We are coming in with our biggest sale to date at 75% off.
There has never been a better time to check out the very positively reviewed tycoon game, that has many players putting in 100's of hours into the competitive ladders.
With the ability to grow you're company from a one man studio into a giant conglomerate of AAA studios, the economy is real. We even have a made up crypto market you can gamble you're money into, as well as the ability to publish other studios games, acquire and train studios under you're studio, and much much more.
I hope the economic game lovers out there give the game a chance, and don't forget there is a free demo you can before you commit to purchase. However, at this discounted price, you can't lose.
Removed Halloween Decorations
Halloween Event
Happy Halloween
All four offices have had a visual update to include scary particle effects, spooky animations, and horrific vista views.
This event will run until November. At which time we will remove the Halloween visuals, and return to the original office visuals.
There have also been a few small balance changes, reality topic match changes, and some translation improvements.
Changes, additions, and improvements
There are a bunch of minor changes and tweaks that players can just experience for themselves, but I would like to highlight a few changes that have larger impact on the game.
These include;
- Added logic to bankruptcy checks. Bankruptcy will now take a greater look at your company before issuing bankruptcy. Such as, stocks, monthly income, available contracts, and more. I tested the idea of extended bankruptcy time from 2 months to 6 months, but that combined with the improved logic felt a bit to easy. So, for now I have left it at 2 months post warning for bankruptcy to occur. Let me know how the new bankruptcy feels for players, I am open to the idea of extending the bankruptcy time or perhaps ranging that time based on difficulty settings, but I didn't want to make it to easy to avoid bankruptcy removing all threat.
- Revamped a bunch of player e-mails received in game. This was done to provide more relevant data as well as include game names to feedback so players can refer back to any e-mails and know what game had what issues and so forth.
- Tweaked some game balance issues. These balance changes were aimed at the mid game to late game area. I am pretty happy with the early game progression, as well as end game. However, the mid game needed to be smoothed out and these tweaks should help address that.
- A bunch of additional translation changes have been implemented. A huge thank you to all the community members who have been a critical help when it comes to translating the game for other languages. They are still not perfect, but every patch they get better and better.
- Revamped many help glossary entries to be more relevant and up-to-date. Some systems that have been overhauled had yet to have there help entries reflect those changes. This has now been rectified.
- There is also a bunch of minor tweaks and changes to many game systems as well as some of the language in game has been improved to be more stream lined and informative. I feel it is not worth listing every small change, you can just experience them for yourself. Or if your new, the game will just be better for you when you play through.
I am currently in the process of preparing the game for release on the Epic store as well. This release is slated for October this year, which gives me a lot of time to prepare the client for Epic while also working on future updates to the game. I would love to release the next major update before the Epic launch, and this future date should allow for that.
The Epic version will be no different than the steam version. So, there is no reason for a steam player like you to feel they need to own the game on Epic. However, if you have an Epic account and you want to show your support. A quick wish list would be much appreciated. You can find the GDM store page on Epic here: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/game-dev-masters-f5d8f9
Thank you to everyone for there support and feedback. Please feel free to share your ideas, opinions, and suggestions. I will always remain open to any idea that can benefit the game.
A better quality of life
A big thank you to several players for their recent feedback, and suggestions about issues that we can and have changed to help streamline the experience for players of all skill levels.
There have been several menu changes and tweaks. Some of this was pure game polish changes, but some changes were made to streamline the over-all experience as well. This also includes some translation changes to help tighten up the game for multiple languages.
We have added several pop-up warnings for activities that could confuse players into making mistakes. Things such as creating a console with less hardware power then the current year requires to ensure sales. Instead of just letting players make these mistakes, some messages and restrictions have been added to several areas to let players know what mistakes are being made, and in some cases prevent players from making these mistakes as well.
There has also been a bunch of smaller quality of life changes that just make the experience smoother and sharper. These include highlighting certain information, reducing clicks, and many others.
There are still some additional quality of life changes in the works that I was not able to complete by the end of the month, but plan to bring in soon. Such as allowing your plugged in subsidiary companies in office 4 to create games if you wish to take a break from using them on AAA games while you train or do any non game creation related tasks. I also have slider presets for sequels in the works to speed up game creation for sequels, and the ability to mass command workers to use specific skills.
I hope to bring the rest of the quality of life features into the game shortly, but I hope you enjoy the changes going live today. Keep making those games, and having fun. I will keep working to improve the experience in any way I can. I also have some long term plans for this year in terms of major content additions to the game. More on that in the future, for now just get in there and have some fun while you try to dominate the leader boards.
New Year / New Season
Today marks the start of a new season of play, as well as we have crowned the 2022 retail champion for GDM.
Congratulations to "ZoneWalker" for becoming the 2022 retail champion. This player has not only dominated the boards in our championship season, but they have provided lots of feedback and German translation improvements to improve the game. A well-deserved victory, and I appreciate all of your support in the past year.
You can find "ZoneWalker" permanently listed in the Hall of Fame alongside of EA champion DyCart Gaming. On top of crowning the new champion, the top 10 scores from each leader board have been recorded into the hall of fame for everyone to see.
All leader boards with the exception of the "Hard Mode" board have now been reset, and only new saves created after Jan / 01 / 2023 will be eligible to post scores to the new leader boards. Previous saves will continue to work in this latest version, but they will not post scores.
This patch also contains a variety of balance changes meant to smooth out the progression curve from start to finish, and are based off feedback received over the previous season of play. I am not going to go into detail about this as it is many small value changes. Returning players can just experience the new balance for themselves, while new players should have an even smoother time getting to know the game across all difficulty levels.
We have also added many translation improvements to the "German", "Portugese", and "Russian" translations. A big shout out to "ZoneWalker", "MA€STRO™[PT]", and "Davink" for their contributions. No translation is perfect, but these changes are one step closer to having clean translations for the many languages in the game.
There were also some changes made to the Crypto Market to try and bring the displayed information more in-line with the correct values. There is still a known issue that can throw the display off, but I have had issues trying to track this down. For the most part the information should be accurate, and the actual prices when buying and selling are deadly accurate and heavily filtered to ensure no exploits exist, but some data can get thrown off for the listed previous weeks. I will continue to debug this minor issue in the future until it is deemed perfect.
I have some big ideas and features I would love to work on in 2023 for GDM, and this current season will likely run until I have more detailed information regarding these big updates, and when they will be ready to launch. I will keep you up-to-date on here, but to keep 100% in the loop with everything going on, please consider joining the discord.
Thank you to everyone for your support over the last 2 years with GDM, and I still have more to come. I hope you all have a fantastic 2023, and that perhaps GDM will bring you some more entertainment in the new year. Have fun, and play hard.
Quality improvements and a friendly reminder
Patch Contents
- Spelling and grammar fixes.
- Translation improvements.
- Fixed a rounding issue causing workers at 100% to be over worked. This is now 101%.
- Decreased the difficulty to achieve "Game Of The Year" in Hard Mode a little bit.
- Lowered the review strictness by a small amount in Hard Mode
- Reduced the reduction made to AAA games in Hard Mode
- Fixed a rounding issue that could cause an issue to flag a correct % as to low or to high.
- Changed a few text messages to be more concise.
- Tweaked a few difficulty scaling differences
- Cleaned up some redundancies to optimize the game overall
Just as a reminder to everyone. The current season will end on Dec 31 00:00am EST. At this time, we will crown the 2022 retail champions for both procedural and reality seeds. They will then be spotlight featured alongside our EA champion "Dycart". At this time, we will also record the top 10 scores from each leader board into the "Hall Of Fame". A new season will then begin on January 1st.
Note that Hard Mode is not a part of the season ladders. It is a separate mode without the ability to paragon reset, and is meant to run long term. Hard Mode will be reset when we drop the next big content update in the new year.
There will not be another patch until the new year as I have some obligations and holiday stuff to manage, but you can expect big things in 2023 for GDM. I hope you all have a great holiday, and new year. Thank you for your continued support, and remember to join the discord if you want to stay up-to-date on everything going on at all times.
Removed Halloween Decorations and Fixes
This small patch also contains a few tweaks, changes, and fixes. Including several improvements to multiple translations.
A huge thank you to everyone for there amazing reports, and I hope you guys have a great rest of the year. Remember that the current season of play will run until Dec 31. At that time we will crown the 2022 retail champions who will be permanently featured along side our EA champion Dycart. Good luck to everyone, and please note any future patches this year will not reset the ladder. That will happen Jan 01 for a fresh season in the new year.
GDM Halloween
We have added in some festive visuals for Halloween.
These visual changes have no impact on the game other than bringing a Halloween vibe to each office. These visuals can be found in every office, and even come with a few particle effects and animations.
This seasonal update is available in both the full and demo version of the game. Have a great and safe Halloween this year, and enjoy the visuals.
This update will be removed in early November and the normal office visuals will return.