Game Dev Masters
Hot Fix number 2
- Fixed an issue with the max a hype campaign milestone not firing correctly
- Fixed an issue with the trailers on IGM market campaign that caused hype to go from 50-40-60 instead of the correct 40-50-60
- Fixed an issue with the Genre window being squished in German translations
- Fixed a few errors in the German translation
This should be the final hot fix needed for the 1.4 patch. However, things happen. Shout out to TechEnthusiast and ZoneWalker for there great feedback.
1.4 Hot Fix
Shout out to TechEnthusiast for the report. Commercial engines once they made AI sales would no longer be usable by the player when making games, and this also caused an issue with engine deconstruction.
This is now fixed and should be working correctly. There may be another hot fix soon if any additional issues are found, if not then the next update will be the Halloween Update as planned, but we will hot fix anything necessary.
Update 1.4 is Live~!
New Season
First off today marks the beginning of the next season of play. All the top 10 players in each leader board have been added to the "Hall Of Fame" and the boards have been reset. Older game saves can still be continued, but only fresh saves made after Oct / 01 / 2022 have the ability to post scores to the current season's leader boards.
This next season will run until the end of this year, and the winners will be crowned as the 2022 release champions, and be featured along our EA champion Dycart.
Thanks to some amazing help from players such as DoorFail, Brandon, and Copendub from discord, I feel the game is in a really good place issue wise. Provided there are no major issues in the 1.4 update I did not catch myself. I am very confident in the current games balance, and I believe there are no current exploits. We have had a few exploits that were found that caused issues with leader boards, but I think we have found and fixed most if not all of them. I am sure a SpiffingBrit could come along and find a way to break the game, but outside of that I believe the game is very stable and I look forward to a balanced season of competition on the leader boards.
Fixes
Variety Of Small Fixes
There have been several small fixes and changes. These include such things as balance changes, HUD changes, continuity changes, and other small tweaks and improvements. Much credit goes out to the player base on this one for reporting all these issues in discord for me to fix up. Small changes have a small impact, but when you do enough of them they add up to a massive improvement to the game. Thank you to everyone for the continued feedback and support, it means a lot to me and the game.
Worst Game Of The Year Fix
Fixed an issue that would cause the worst game of the year to be given to no one if you owned every AI company in the game, and did not make a poor game that year. This will now use one of the large game companies as the worst game of the year if this occurs.
Milestone Fix
Fixed an issue with the 1,000,000 Fans milestone giving the incorrect message.
Language Fix
There has also been a number of grammar, spelling, and translation fixes. The translations are still far from perfect, so please continue to give feedback with translations to help improve their quality.
Engine Revenue Fix
Fixed an issue that cause engine revenue earned to be incorrectly collected. This will now show the correct engine revenue earned from AI using your commercially licensed game engine. Each engine will show there specific sales if they are the currently active commercial engine or not.
Changes
DLC Change For Self-Published Games
DLC for self-published games has had its scaling adjusted for late game to be more of an effective option. DLC is best used for digitally published games, but I wanted to ensure it is still viable for any self-published games as well. This was not an issue with small and medium sized games, but it did fall to far down for large and AAA games.
Custom Console + Digital Stores
Games made on a custom console can now be published digitally. Once packaged they can be placed on any of the 3 digital platforms. I wanted to create a player made digital store aspect for custom console games. However, it does not fit with the current progression of the game. In the distant future I hope to add a 5th office, and a new tier of milestones which will allow for some additional ideas to be added tied to meaningful progression. I didn't want to just add a huge feature without a progression tie in, so for now you can use your custom games on the existing digital platforms until the day comes that we have custom player stores.
Training Change
Training acquisitions now start at the lowest setting not 50%, you can then raise it from there.
Publishing Change
You can now offer your console when attempting to publish other company's games. If you have a custom console on the market, it will be available to suggest when negotiating about publishing. If you use your own console, there is a slight boost to the success chance.
Contract Change
When doing contracts, the contract button is now disabled. It will become enabled again when you are able to start a new contract. This will allow players to spam the contract button as they complete a contract without opening it to soon when they could not start the next contract.
Hard Mode re-balanced
Hard mode has seen several changes to better balance the experience. I sent out a survey to the hard mode players and got back some really great feedback that I used in helping to make the decisions for how to improve the experience.
The following are some major changes to the mode;
- Paragon points up from 8 to 12
- Removed the ability to use IP's
- Removed the ability to buy a Paragon Reset earning more paragon points
- Tweaked the balance numbers for a variety of aspects
By removing the ability to paragon from hard mode we ensure that this leader board is not based on play time but instead on pure skill. You can attempt to run a hard mode clear as many times as you want, but you will always just have the 12 paragon points to diversify your strategy. This will make the mode all about how well you cleared the game, not how many times have you cleared the game.
The re-balance also brings more difficulty to the later stages of the game, while keeping the early game difficult but possible.
I will be listening closely to any player feedback from the hard mode players to help continue to balance the experience to be the penultimate difficulty for GDM.
Additions
New Languages
We have added 4 additional languages to the game. They include Swedish, Polish, Japanese, and Korean. These are a first-round translation done by me with google, and will have some issues. I wish I had the finances to pay for professional translations but the game has not even made enough money to pay for this service. I ask for your patience and understanding as we give time for the community to help improve the translations through feedback and reports. If you are a new player from a non-English language, and you are unsure if the translation is good enough to play the game. I encourage you to try the DEMO for free and test the translation before you decide if you want to support the game financially with a purchase.
New Hotkeys
Added the middle mouse button as an additional hotkey to pause the game. The space bar still works for this function, but now so does middle mouse. This was requested by a player who wanted an easier time playing one handed, and it sounded good to me. I may just add a way to rebind hotkeys in a future update. It was never really my intention to even add hotkeys, but it made sense with the time controls. I think a rebind section for those keys might make sense as well as not everyone uses 1/2/3/space.
New Auto Work Icon
Added a new icon attached to worker task bars that is visible when doing consecutive auto work. This makes it easy to see what workers are on auto, as well as you can click this icon to issue a stop auto work command.
New Crypto Buttons
Added new crypto buttons that allow you to sell all owned coins, and show the max number of coins you can afford to buy. You still need to click buy after showing the max, this ensures no one can miss click and blow all their money by mistake.
IP system Re-work
The current IP system has been re-worked and we have added the ability to create your own custom IP
Now when you go to the IP menu and purchase a famous IP it will just be added to your list of owned IP licenses. When you are creating a new game there is an additional button to access your IP's and select one to use for that games creation. The price of the IP's has also been drastically reduced to make them much more accessible. This was done to counteract the fact that the custom IP which will be free to use will eventually outperform the IP's you can license. So, I wanted to make them cheap enough to use early game before you have a powerful custom IP at your disposal.
After creating one or more games that have not made use of any IP, those games will be available to be turned into an IP from the IP > Custom Ip menu. You can only create one IP and this choice cannot be switched during a play through, so choose your IP wisely.
Once you select a game you wish to turn into and IP and create the IP you will see its current sales boost. The initial value for this boost is based off the game size and quality of the original game made.
Games made using your custom IP cannot have sequels or remakes made from them, only new games that also use that same IP. Every game using that IP is technically a sequel, so the sequel feature was removed for that reason. You can use your custom IP the same way you use licensed IP's by selecting it during game creation. It has also been colored differently from licensed Ip's to ensure its visibility.
Every time you release a game using that Ip you will increase the current sales boost of the IP. This increase is based off the game size and quality of the game.
The custom IP can and will eventually reach a 100% sales boost (maximum) granting you a fantastic boost with every future game created using this IP.
We may look into adding additional ways to improve or use your IP in the future, but for now it is just there to give you your own custom IP with a fantastic sales boost.
What's Next
As per usual I will be setting my own new scores in the current season's boards while engaging with the community for feedback on the 1.4 update. I work hard to ensure each update is as close to bug free as I can make it, but things happen. I will be ready to hot fix any issues that players may discover.
Beyond any soon to follow hot fixes the next update will come in the middle of October featuring a HALLOWEEN event in game.
German Translation Fix
Announcing This Seasons End Date
The current championship season will end on September 30.
At that time the new champions will be crowned, and the top 10 players from each leader board will be recorded into the "Hall Of Fame" to forever show their dominance over the game and its player base. You have until that day to post new high-scores.
On October 1 we will launch update 1.4 and begin the next season of play.
This update also contains some really great improvements to the German translations. A huge thank you goes out to "CrazyDuck" in discord for his work proofing the German translations. He is not 100% done, but he got back to me with some great changes that I wanted to push live right away for our German players.
That is all for now, have fun and good luck to everyone posting scores. It is still a bit early to talk about the 1.4 update, but I can confirm the IP system is being revamped and expanded on. Soon you will be able to brand your own famous IP based on your created games that you can use, and improve through your studio's game dev journey.
To stay up-to-date with the games development, join the community discord, or just sit tight and wait for the update to land in October.
https://discord.gg/WfbXE4cDVA
Thank you for your continued support, and remember to review the game if you are willing.
Emergency Hot Fix
A small but critical exploit was found in the crypto market. So, I had to push out a quick emergency patch.
Huge thank you goes out to a few players, but most of all to BrandonS for showing me how to replicate it, leading to the fix.
I will not be punishing any player who abused this exploit to get insane scores on the leader boards. Ultimately the fault falls to me not the players. They can keep their scores for this season, but hopefully going into the next season of play we will have no exploits left in any of the games many systems.
Even large studios with huge QA teams end up having exploits. Especially if "The Spiffing Brit" comes along. For just a one-person team I try my best, but I do rely on players to help me find any issues I might miss.
I never thought about selling a negative amount of crypto causing it to work as a reverse purchase, but it did. However, this will no longer occur. It will now turn to zero if you try to use a negative. Thank you to everyone for the help and support, and please continue to attempt to break the game. I will continue to work hard to fix anything you can break.
The next major content update is still slated for October / 01 / 2022 tied to a new season of play. This update will feature major changes to the IP system including the ability to create and brand your own famous IP from your created game. I also plan to complete the custom digital store front tied to custom console games. Check out the discord to stay up-to-date, or check back in October to see it in action for yourself.
Hot Fix 4 for Update 1.3
- Fixed an issue that prevented auto researching genres properly
- Added milestone completion checks to spending paragon points. Now if you use paragon to unlock 25k fans or a big starting bank, it will correctly fire a check on the milestones for completion.
- Fixed an exploit with bank loans. It was possible to take a loan, and then immediately owe less than the loans value to pay off the loan creating an infinite money glitch. This is caused in the early game when your company valuation is low, and numbers end up being rounded down to there minimal levels. As a temporary fix you will now get a loan that matches what you have to repay, whether that is higher or lower than you expected.
The banking fix I have implemented is not perfect as you may get a loan higher or lower than you expect in the early game to prevent any abuse, but it may seem confusing to get a higher or lower value loan. In the near future I will be reworking the math and the bank system, but for now this will serve as an emergency measure to prevent any exploiting. This only really affects the early game, as once your valuation is much higher than the initial $250k the math works out a lot cleaner. This will be fully fixed and rebuilt in the next update, but for now this will prevent any abuse. Big thank you to DoorFail from discord for bringing this to my attention via DMS to prevent it from spreading.
This should fix all remaining issues from the 1.3 update, I will now be working towards the 1.4 update set to drop October / 01 / 2022. Thank you for your support, and have fun developing.
Hot Fix 3 for Update 1.3
Fixes
- Fixed an issue with the new reset function for paragon players.
- Fixed an issue that allowed you to purchase engine discovery when no features remained.
- Fixed an issue that allowed you to book a convention with no valid game causing a weird blank convention result that could bug out your game.
- Re-balanced conventions for self-published games. These have been improved in most cases, especially for the small convention.
- Convention sales for self-published games now go to the end of your sales weeks instead of running immediately.
- Fixed an issue with the leader board that when selecting the "Hard Mode Heroes" board would light up the "Top Games AAA" category.
- Re-aligned and re-sized the office navigation menu that is added in office 4 to better align with the new studio bar.
- Made changes to the new game and continue game details display to include the new hard mode details correctly.
- Fixed an issue with using the paragon system with the new hardware system that was incorrectly resetting your workers hardware and locking you out from upgrading.
Thank you to everyone for your continued support, and positive feedback. I will continue to work to improve the game in every way. I hope to explore the possibility of a mobile port as well as steam deck verification, followed by the next major content drop for GDM slated for October 1.
Hot fix 2 for Update 1.3
- Due to translation issue the hall of fame section menu was empty for release hall of fame
- Restart in paragon menu caused your genre to reset to action. You can now pick a new genre and perk if you make use of this quick reset option.
- The close option for the difficulty review menu inside of hard mode was not working correctly, it now does.
- I accidentally left a dog inside of office 4 when I was testing / fixing the previous navigation mesh issue. As you might expect they did not like each other. The extra dog has now been removed.
Hotfix patch for update 1.3
- Fixed an issue preventing marketing upgrades from being purchased
- Fixed an issue preventing auto genre research from being enabled
- Fixed an issue with navigation mesh for company pet in office 4
That is all for now, if any new issues come in you can expect another patch to follow. Happy game developing to you all.