A new build is now available on the 'develop' branch. It adds the Game Editions mentioned in the "What's next? 7" community post. You will also notice it also changes the look of the UI in a lot of places.
As always please keep in mind that content on the 'develop' branch is not guaranteed to be stable, so if you run into any bugs or crashes please report them here!
Below is the changelog so far for Update #30:
- added multiple office floors:
* purchasable in Expansion mode
* most buildings can have up to 3 floors, with some very large ones limited to 2
* can be purchased regardless of whether your office is fully expanded or not
* removed the 200 employee limit in accordance with this new feature and all the optimizations done to the game
- added the ability to create game editions:
* the setup for this feature is available in the pricing drop-down box
* offering good value relative to the game's base price will provide you with extra cash, Reputation, and Opinion points
* filling your game with needlessly large amounts of editions will hurt your Reputation and Opinion
* offering very little value relative to the game's base price will hurt your Reputation and Opinion
- added new sub-events to game projects that occur under certain criteria:
* Word of Mouth - has a chance of occuring when a game with a rating of at least 8/10 is released:
^ it boosts the Popularity of the game based on how close it is to a 10/10 rating and the Reputation of the player
* multiple various knowledge-related boosts that have a chance of occuring when a game with a lot of knowledge is released:
Gun Nut Enthusiasm - Firearms knowledge
AI Bonanza - Machine Learning knowledge
Breathtaking Photorealism - Photography knowledge
Aging like Wine - Stylizing knowledge
- added the ability to create demo versions for your games:
* demos can be created during the Polishing stage of a games development cycle
* the demo will provide either a boost or a penalty to the game's Popularity points, depending on the quality of the game at the point of the demo's creation
* your Reputation level will act as a multiplier for the penalty and the bonus
- added a new advertisement type - Release Screenshots:
* this advertisement type costs nothing
* the result of this advertisement type depends on the quality of the game as well as your Reputation level
* the efficiency of his advertisement will decrease after every screenshot release
* releasing a lot of screenshots in a short period of time will reduce potential Popularity gain, since you're giving too much info to the players
- added a new mass advert type - Gameplay Trailer:
* the Popularity boost provided by this mass advert highly depends on the quality of the game
* it is the cheapest mass advert type and will aid greatly in making profitable games at the beginning of any playthrough provided the game is of a high enough quality
- added 4 new activities:
* Photography Course (provides Photography knowledge)
* Art Gallery Visit (provides Stylizing knowledge)
* AI programming course (provides Machine Learning knowledge)
* Parkour school visit (provides Parkour knowledge)
- greatly increased the amount of Knowledge gained from activities:
* most activities now grant more than twice as much Knowledge points
* Airsoft now grants Stealth and Military Jargon knowledge
* Paintball now grants Stealth knowledge
* Camping now grants Primitive Technology knowledge
- optimizations:
* optimized the lighting compute, developer rendering handling, textbox rendering, UI rendering
* when combined, these optimizations bring a performance improvement of up to 50% or more (may be more or less depending on your setup)
- added a "Design new" button to the genre selection popup
- added a HUD button that leads right to the game conventions menu
- added the ability to start price research from the project interaction combobox
- added the ability to disable employee retirement in Freeplay, this can be toggled at any time in the 'General' tab of the Options menu in the Freeplay mode
- added the ability to set up the amount of mass advertisement rounds to perform
- added mass advertisement info descbox to mass advertisement setup popup
- added a button for inheriting the selected related games feature setup to the New Game creation menu
- added sounds for time control, popups
- adaptive standards now lower when games with lower quality are released, which fixes an issue where it is almost impossible to reach 100% in game scores in late game
- updated sounds for when something good or bad happens
- enabled object move sound in Expansion mode
- when loading a savefile it will now be paused regardless of the speed the game was saved at
- mouse-hovering over a building in expansion mode will now display some general information of that office in the upper left corner of the screen
- can now click and hold on mouse-hovered objects for 0.5 seconds to start moving them while in office expansion mode
- removed the "N employees can't reach the office exit" dialog when trying to exit Expansion mode with some of the employees blocked off somehow, they will now instead be returned to their workplace
- enabled object sell sound
- when an employee retires with the "skip retire dialogue" Office Preference enabled, the element will now display which team they were part of (if any)
- job seekers are now more likely to appear when searching for an employee when selecting interests they should have
- increased maximum platform advertisement duration to 6 months (was 2 months)
- increased the amount of maximum visitors per day on small Game Convention booths
- managers will now report a price point one notch above the ideal price to ensure players make a profit
- hovering the mouse over a game project element in the project box will now display the largest remaining work chunk by skill in the current stage
- when a neutral rival goes defunct an element will be added to the event box (previously it would only show a popup if the rival was hostile to you), which also fixes the 'Ravioli & Pepperoni' campaign being impossible to finish
- text over residential buildings will no longer follow the mouse when hovering your mouse over them in Office Expansion mode
- improved multiple UI elements
- improved compatibility of mods that add genres/audiences without ensuring that all the other genres/mods have the genre-audience matches
- increased the amount of review remarks from 2 to 3 in accordance to the new game editions gameplay mechanic
- the task/project box now becomes hidden when there is nothing happening
- fixed auto-assigning managers not displaying the result in the event box, instead creating a regular popup
- fixed time until employees ask for raises being reset after loading (which meant it could've taken them more or less time to ask for it depending on how much time there was left)
- fixed sale display bars occasionally displaying an out-of-bounds bar
- fixed monthly costs being incorrectly calculated, with some objects adding costs that they shouldn't even add
- fixed incorrect rendering of the office workplace display in employee assignment mode
- fixed prefab editor incorrectly saving wall positioning
- fixed prefab editor not tracking mouse movement when placing walls/floors
- fixed attempting to find a publisher for a game not working properly later in the game
- fixed expansion mode display disappearing when moving an object
- fixed finishing the tutorial not granting the 'Back to Basics' achievement
- fixed finishing the 'Introduction' scenario on the hard difficulty not being subject to granting the 'Mount Everest' achievement
- fixed scheduled events not activating properly under certain circumstances
- fixed a potential memory leak with pedestrians enabled
- fixed incorrect scaling on game convention result popup on aspect ratios that are anything but 16:9
- fixed incorrect scaling on role filter UI elements in the employee assignment menu
- fixed "Radio Station Ads" mass advert type not unlocking
- fixed a minor UI glitch which was creating an unused descbox that wasn't displaying anything nor was removed until you'd quit to the main menu/load a savefile (and it would get created again then)
- (MODDING) added gameProject event FILL_GAME_INFO_SCROLLER, fired when opening the Project info menu; 4 arguments: project object, scroller containing all the elements, category element, finances element
- (MODDING) gameProject event OPENED_INTERACTION_MENU now has the comboBox instance argument passed into it (2nd argument, 1st is the project object)
- (MODDING) fixed loadComponents calling incorrect load and save methods
Thanks for reading!
Regarding hard-to-get 100% scores
Hello!
Recently people have been bringing up the fact that they are having trouble reaching 100% of a particular Quality type in game reviews after releasing games. This is a quick community post to let everyone facing this issue that this is a bug and is currently being looked into. You can expect this to be fixed in Update #30. In addition to this fix, Update #30 will be the biggest game update so far, and is going to bring a lot of new content and replayability value.
A new build is now available on the 'develop' branch. Changes since the last one are the inclusion of the ability to release screenshots to market your game(s), and the addition of a new mass advert type - gameplay trailer. These new advertisement options are using placeholder assets while I'm waiting on the artist to deliver them, so bear with me!
Below is the full changelog so far for Update #30:
- added multiple office floors:
* purchasable in Expansion mode
* most buildings can have up to 3 floors, with some very large ones limited to 2
* can be purchased regardless of whether your office is fully expanded or not
* removed the 200 employee limit in accordance with this new feature and all the optimizations done to the game
- added new sub-events to game projects that occur under certain criteria:
* Word of Mouth - has a chance of occuring when a game with a rating of at least 8/10 is released:
^ it boosts the Popularity of the game based on how close it is to a 10/10 rating and the Reputation of the player
* multiple various knowledge-related boosts that have a chance of occuring when a game with a lot of knowledge is released:
Gun Nut Enthusiasm - Firearms knowledge
AI Bonanza - Machine Learning knowledge
Breathtaking Photorealism - Photography knowledge
Aging like Wine - Stylizing knowledge
- added the ability to create demo versions for your games:
* demos can be created during the Polishing stage of a games development cycle
* the demo will provide either a boost or a penalty to the game's Popularity points, depending on the quality of the game at the point of the demo's creation
* your Reputation level will act as a multiplier for the penalty and the bonus
- added a new advertisement type - Release Screenshots:
* this advertisement type costs nothing
* the result of this advertisement type depends on the quality of the game as well as your Reputation level
* the efficiency of his advertisement will decrease after every screenshot release
* releasing a lot of screenshots in a short period of time will reduce potential Popularity gain, since you're giving too much info to the players
- added a new mass advert type - Gameplay Trailer:
* the Popularity boost provided by this mass advert highly depends on the quality of the game
* it is the cheapest mass advert type and will aid greatly in making profitable games at the beginning of any playthrough provided the game is of a high enough quality
- greatly increased the amount of Knowledge gained from activities:
* most activities now grant more than twice as much Knowledge points
* Airsoft now grants Stealth and Military Jargon knowledge
* Paintball now grants Stealth knowledge
* Camping now grants Primitive Technology knowledge
- optimizations:
* optimized the lighting compute, developer rendering handling, textbox rendering
* when combined, these optimizations bring a performance improvement of up to 47% or more (may be more or less depending on your setup)
- added a "Design new" button to the genre selection popup
- added a HUD button that leads right to the game conventions menu
- added the ability to start price research from the project interaction combobox
- added the ability to disable employee retirement in Freeplay, this can be toggled at any time in the 'General' tab of the Options menu in the Freeplay mode
- added the ability to set up the amount of mass advertisement rounds to perform
- added mass advertisement info descbox to mass advertisement setup popup
- added a button for inheriting the selected related games feature setup to the New Game creation menu
- added sounds for time control, popups
- updated sounds for when something good or bad happens
- enabled object move sound in Expansion mode
- when loading a savefile it will now be paused regardless of the speed the game was saved at
- mouse-hovering over a building in expansion mode will now display some general information of that office in the upper left corner of the screen
- can now click and hold on mouse-hovered objects for 0.5 seconds to start moving them while in office expansion mode
- removed the "N employees can't reach the office exit" dialog when trying to exit Expansion mode with some of the employees blocked off somehow, they will now instead be returned to their workplace
- enabled object sell sound
- when an employee retires with the "skip retire dialogue" Office Preference enabled, the element will now display which team they were part of (if any)
- job seekers are now more likely to appear when searching for an employee when selecting interests they should have
- increased maximum platform advertisement duration to 6 months (was 2 months)
- increased the amount of maximum visitors per day on small Game Convention booths
- managers will now report a price point one notch above the ideal price to ensure players make a profit
- hovering the mouse over a game project element in the project box will now display the largest remaining work chunk by skill in the current stage
- when a neutral rival goes defunct an element will be added to the event box (previously it would only show a popup if the rival was hostile to you), which also fixes the 'Ravioli & Pepperoni' campaign being impossible to finish
- text over residential buildings will no longer follow the mouse when hovering your mouse over them in Office Expansion mode
- improved multiple UI elements
- improved compatibility of mods that add genres/audiences without ensuring that all the other genres/mods have the genre-audience matches
- fixed time until employees ask for raises being reset after loading (which meant it could've taken them more or less time to ask for it depending on how much time there was left)
- fixed sale display bars occasionally displaying an out-of-bounds bar
- fixed monthly costs being incorrectly calculated, with some objects adding costs that they shouldn't even add
- fixed incorrect rendering of the office workplace display in employee assignment mode
- fixed prefab editor incorrectly saving wall positioning
- fixed prefab editor not tracking mouse movement when placing walls/floors
- fixed attempting to find a publisher for a game not working properly later in the game
- fixed expansion mode display disappearing when moving an object
- fixed finishing the tutorial not granting the 'Back to Basics' achievement
- fixed finishing the 'Introduction' scenario on the hard difficulty not being subject to granting the 'Mount Everest' achievement
- fixed scheduled events not activating properly under certain circumstances
- fixed a potential memory leak with pedestrians enabled
- fixed incorrect scaling on game convention result popup on aspect ratios that are anything but 16:9
- fixed incorrect scaling on role filter UI elements in the employee assignment menu
- fixed "Radio Station Ads" mass advert type not unlocking
- (MODDING) added gameProject event FILL_GAME_INFO_SCROLLER, fired when opening the Project info menu; 4 arguments: project object, scroller containing all the elements, category element, finances element
- (MODDING) gameProject event OPENED_INTERACTION_MENU now has the comboBox instance argument passed into it (2nd argument, 1st is the project object)
- (MODDING) fixed loadComponents calling incorrect load and save methods
This is a quick post to let you guys know that a new build is available on the 'develop' branch. The new features found in this build is the ability to adjust the amount of mass advertisement rounds (repetitions of the entire campaign), and the addition of a button which inherits the settings of the related game that you've picked.
As always please keep in mind that content on the 'develop' branch is not guaranteed to be stable, so if you run into any bugs or crashes please report them here!
Below is the full changelog for Update #30 so far:
- added multiple office floors:
* purchasable in Expansion mode
* most buildings can have up to 3 floors, with some very large ones limited to 2
* can be purchased regardless of whether your office is fully expanded or not
* removed the 200 employee limit in accordance with this new feature and all the optimizations done to the game
- added new sub-events to game projects that occur under certain criteria:
* Word of Mouth - has a chance of occuring when a game with a rating of at least 8/10 is released:
^ it boosts the Popularity of the game based on how close it is to a 10/10 rating and the Reputation of the player
* multiple various knowledge-related boosts that have a chance of occuring when a game with a lot of knowledge is released:
Gun Nut Enthusiasm - Firearms knowledge
AI Bonanza - Machine Learning knowledge
Breathtaking Photorealism - Photography knowledge
Aging like Wine - Stylizing knowledge
- greatly increased the amount of Knowledge gained from activities:
* most activities now grant more than twice as much Knowledge points
* Airsoft now grants Stealth and Military Jargon knowledge
* Paintball now grants Stealth knowledge
* Camping now grants Primitive Technology knowledge
- optimizations:
* optimized the lighting compute, developer rendering handling, textbox rendering
* when combined, these optimizations bring a performance improvement of up to 47% or more (may be more or less depending on your setup)
- added a "Design new" button to the genre selection popup
- added a HUD button that leads right to the game conventions menu
- added the ability to start price research from the project interaction combobox
- added the ability to disable employee retirement in Freeplay, this can be toggled at any time in the 'General' tab of the Options menu in the Freeplay mode
- added the ability to set up the amount of mass advertisement rounds to perform
- added mass advertisement info descbox to mass advertisement setup popup
- added a button for inheriting the selected related games feature setup to the New Game creation menu
- added a button for inheriting the selected related games feature setup to the New Game creation menu
- mouse-hovering over a building in expansion mode will now display some general information of that office in the upper left corner of the screen
- can now click and hold on mouse-hovered objects for 0.5 seconds to start moving them while in office expansion mode
- removed the "N employees can't reach the office exit" dialog when trying to exit Expansion mode with some of the employees blocked off somehow, they will now instead be returned to their workplace
- enabled object sell sound
- when an employee retires with the "skip retire dialogue" Office Preference enabled, the element will now display which team they were part of (if any)
- job seekers are now more likely to appear when searching for an employee when selecting interests they should have
- increased maximum platform advertisement duration to 6 months (was 2 months)
- when a neutral rival goes defunct an element will be added to the event box (previously it would only show a popup if the rival was hostile to you), which also fixes the 'Ravioli & Pepperoni' campaign being impossible to finish
- fixed time until employees ask for raises being reset after loading (which meant it could've taken them more or less time to ask for it depending on how much time there was left)
- fixed sale display bars occasionally displaying an out-of-bounds bar
- fixed monthly costs being incorrectly calculated, with some objects adding costs that they shouldn't even add
- fixed incorrect rendering of the office workplace display in employee assignment mode
- fixed prefab editor incorrectly saving wall positioning
- fixed prefab editor not tracking mouse movement when placing walls/floors
- fixed attempting to find a publisher for a game not working properly later in the game
- fixed expansion mode display disappearing when moving an object
- fixed finishing the tutorial not granting the 'Back to Basics' achievement
- fixed finishing the 'Introduction' scenario on the hard difficulty not being subject to granting the 'Mount Everest' achievement
- fixed scheduled events not activating properly under certain circumstances
- fixed a potential memory leak with pedestrians enabled
- fixed incorrect scaling on game convention result popup on aspect ratios that are anything but 16:9
- fixed incorrect scaling on role filter UI elements in the employee assignment menu
- (MODDING) added gameProject event FILL_GAME_INFO_SCROLLER, fired when opening the Project info menu; 4 arguments: project object, scroller containing all the elements, category element, finances element
- (MODDING) gameProject event OPENED_INTERACTION_MENU now has the comboBox instance argument passed into it (2nd argument, 1st is the project object)
- (MODDING) fixed loadComponents calling incorrect load and save methods
Thanks for reading!
Progress update #26
Hello!
I'd like to let you know that the 'develop' branch has a new build. The multiple building floors feature was thoroughly tested by the community, so the content on the branch is relatively free of issues.
The new build features some balance tweaks and the addition of several new events that can further boost the popularity of your game.
With these features in place, I move on to working on the last feature on my to-do list: game editions. You'll be able to create new game editions and select what goes into them. Once this feature is finished, I'll be putting it up on the 'develop' branch like I did with the features present there now.
- added multiple building floors:
* purchasable in Expansion mode
* most buildings can have up to 3 floors, with some very large ones limited to 2
* can be purchased regardless of whether your office is fully expanded or not
- added new sub-events to game projects that occur under certain criteria:
* Word of Mouth - has a chance of occuring when a game with a rating of at least 8/10 is released:
^ it boosts the Popularity of the game based on how close it is to a 10/10 rating and the Reputation of the player
* multiple various knowledge-related boosts that have a chance of occuring when a game with a lot of knowledge is released:
Gun Nut Enthusiasm - Firearms knowledge
AI Bonanza - Machine Learning knowledge
Breathtaking Photorealism - Photography knowledge
Aging like Wine - Stylizing knowledge
- greatly increased the amount of Knowledge gained from activities:
* most activities now grant more than twice as much Knowledge points
* Airsoft now grants Stealth and Military Jargon knowledge
* Paintball now grants Stealth knowledge
* Camping now grants Primitive Technology knowledge
- optimizations:
* optimized the lighting compute, developer rendering handling, textbox rendering
* when combined, these optimizations bring a performance improvement of up to 47% or more (may be more or less depending on your setup)
- added a "Design new" button to the genre selection popup
- added a HUD button that leads right to the game conventions menu
- added ability to start price research from the project interaction combobox
- mouse-hovering over a building in expansion mode will now display some general information of that office in the upper left corner of the screen
- can now click and hold on mouse-hovered objects for 0.5 seconds to start moving them while in office expansion mode
- removed the "N employees can't reach the office exit" dialog when trying to exit Expansion mode with some of the employees blocked off somehow, they will now instead be returned to their workplace
- enabled object sell sound
- added the ability to disable employee retirement in Freeplay, this can be toggled at any time in the 'General' tab of the Options menu in the Freeplay mode
- when an employee retires with the "skip retire dialogue" Office Preference enabled, the element will now display which team they were part of (if any)
- job seekers are now more likely to appear when searching for an employee when selecting interests they should have
- fixed time until employees ask for raises being reset after loading (which meant it could've taken them more or less time to ask for it depending on how much time there was left)
- fixed sale display bars occasionally displaying an out-of-bounds bar
- fixed monthly costs being incorrectly calculated, with some objects adding costs that they shouldn't even add
- fixed incorrect rendering of the office workplace display in employee assignment mode
- fixed prefab editor incorrectly saving wall positioning
- fixed prefab editor not tracking mouse movement when placing walls/floors
- fixed attempting to find a publisher for a game not working properly later in the game
- fixed expansion mode display disappearing when moving an object
- fixed finishing the tutorial not granting the 'Back to Basics' achievement
- fixed finishing the 'Introduction' scenario on the hard difficulty not being subject to granting the 'Mount Everest' achievement
- fixed scheduled events not activating properly under certain circumstances
- fixed a potential memory leak with pedestrians enabled
- fixed incorrect scaling on game convention result popup on aspect ratios that are anything but 16:9
- fixed incorrect scaling on role filter UI elements in the employee assignment menu
- (MODDING) added gameProject event FILL_GAME_INFO_SCROLLER, fired when opening the Project info menu; 4 arguments: project object, scroller containing all the elements, category element, finances element
- (MODDING) gameProject event OPENED_INTERACTION_MENU now has the comboBox instance argument passed into it (2nd argument, 1st is the project object)
- (MODDING) fixed loadComponents calling incorrect load and save methods
Thanks for reading!
Progress update #25
I'd like to let you guys know that the multiple floors feature is now on the 'develop' branch. If you would like to try it out and give feedback, that'd be very appreciated! In order to try out this new feature, switch over to the 'develop' branch by opening the properties of 'Game Dev Studio' on Steam, going into the 'BETAS' tab, and picking the 'develop' branch in the drop-down menu.
Please keep in mind that savefiles saved on the new game version (1.0.8.0) will NOT be compatible with the game version that is currently on the regular, stable branch. (1.0.7.7)
If you want to try out the new feature and be able to load back to your savefiles on the version present on the stable branch, I suggest either starting a new playthrough, or loading an existing one, saving it, and naming it appropriately to not accidentally overwrite the old one.
As always please keep in mind that content on the 'develop' branch is not guaranteed to be stable, so if you run into any bugs or crashes please report them here!
Here is the changelog for Update #30 so far:
- added multiple building floors:
* purchasable in Expansion mode
* most buildings can have up to 3 floors, with some very large ones limited to 2
* can be purchased regardless of whether your office is fully expanded or not
- added a "Design new" button to the genre selection popup
- added a HUD button that leads right to the game conventions menu
- added ability to start price research from the project interaction combobox
- mouse-hovering over a building in expansion mode will now display some general information of that office in the upper left corner of the screen
- optimizations:
* optimized the lighting compute, developer rendering handling, textbox rendering
* when combined, these optimizations bring a performance improvement of up to 47% or more (may be more or less depending on your setup)
* reduced memory usage by pathfinding and lighting compute threads, this also reduces loading/new game initialization times
- removed the "N employees can't reach the office exit" dialog when trying to exit Expansion mode with some of the employees blocked off somehow, they will now instead be returned to their workplace
- enabled object sell sound
- added the ability to disable employee retirement in Freeplay, this can be toggled at any time in the 'General' tab of the Options menu in the Freeplay mode
- fixed time until employees ask for raises being reset after loading (which meant it could've taken them more or less time to ask for it depending on how much time there was left)
- fixed sale display bars occasionally displaying an out-of-bounds bar
- fixed monthly costs being incorrectly calculated, with some objects adding costs that they shouldn't even add
- fixed incorrect rendering of the office workplace display in employee assignment mode
- fixed prefab editor incorrectly saving wall positioning
- fixed prefab editor not tracking mouse movement when placing walls/floors
- fixed attempting to find a publisher for a game not working properly later in the game
- fixed expansion mode display disappearing when moving an object
- fixed finishing the tutorial not granting the 'Back to Basics' achievement
- fixed finishing the 'Introduction' scenario on the hard difficulty not being subject to granting the 'Mount Everest' achievement
- fixed a potential memory leak with pedestrians enabled
- fixed incorrect scaling on game convention result popup on aspect ratios that are anything but 16:9
- fixed incorrect scaling on role filter UI elements in the employee assignment menu
- (MODDING) added gameProject event FILL_GAME_INFO_SCROLLER, fired when opening the Project info menu; 4 arguments: project object, scroller containing all the elements, category element, finances element
- (MODDING) gameProject event OPENED_INTERACTION_MENU now has the comboBox instance argument passed into it (2nd argument, 1st is the project object)
- (MODDING) fixed loadComponents calling incorrect load and save methods
Thanks for reading!
Progress update #24
Hey everyone!
This is a quick post to let you guys know what's happening with the development of Update #30.
The current feature I'm working on are multiple building floors. Progress is going nicely and I estimate that I will be putting up this new feature on the 'develop' branch in about 1-2 weeks. The main part is pretty much done, right now I need to add some more UI elements that will make it easier to understand what's happening in offices between the floors, and ensure that it all works well.
The biggest difference between the development cycle of previous updates and Update #30, is that I will be taking more time to release it. So while you will be able to try out the new content on the 'develop' branch, it will be officially released later than usual. The good thing about this is I will have much more time to test out the feature(s) I add, and I won't feel like I'm on a time constraint for the new content.
Aside from that I also bring good news for people with old/slow computers: so far Update #30 will bring a performance uplift of up to 37% over Update #29! The optimizations increased FPS in that particular scenario from 140 to 191. As usual your mileage may vary and the figure I mention here was measured on a laptop with a dual-core 4th generation intel processor.
I am super excited for these optimizations because for the 1.0 release I set myself a target of 150 employees with acceptable performance. With these optimizations, the employee count target may as well go up to 300, and this is perfect because with multiple floors come lots of new additional workplaces!
Players that are fine with having up to 100 employees are in for much better performance, and players that want huge offices and ridiculous amounts of employees will get just that!
Thanks for reading!
Update 29 recap
Hello!
This post is a recap of all the changes in Update #29 and all the patches that followed its release. Going through multiple patch notes can be annoying, so I figured I'd do one big post in which I mention all the changes. The consequent patches brought significant improvements for the performance, which I thought was worthy enough of a mention in one separate big post, so here is the full change log of Update #29 with the changes in all of its patches accumulated:
New gameplay mechanic: Piracy
An issue as big in Game Dev Studio as it is in real life. A lot of people pirate games before they decide to purchase them in real life, and now they do too in Game Dev Studio. If your games are good - have no fear, your piracy rates will be low! If they're bad, however, now that's a whole different story...
This gameplay mechanic will add more challenge to the late game stage, when people have a high Reputation level and a lot of funds. Players can additionally counteract the piracy rates of their games by implementing Digital Rights Management (DRM) into their games, but that doesn't mean that your customers will be happy about that either. This directly extends into a new player stat: Opinion.
New player stat: Opinion
The Reputation stat in Game Dev Studio in a way acts as fame. The higher your Reputation value is, the higher your sales are because you are more well-known. This type of currency is hard to attain and easy to lose.
With that said, there is now a new player stat: Opinion. This stat affects what people think of you as a company and it directly ties into the Piracy mechanic introduced in this update. The Opinion stat determines how badly your games will be pirated in case they are not good, or your customers are outraged by some kind of decision you've made. Just like Reputation, Opinion is hard to attain and easy to lose. Releasing lots of bad games will surely bring a hit to your Opinion value. This is further amplified by your Reputation - the higher your Reputation is, the harder it is to attain more Opinion points, and easier to lose it.
Gone are the days when players with a very high Reputation level would get a slap on the wrist by releasing bad games. Releasing lots of bad games now will result in a low opinion value, which in turn will drive piracy rates of said games sky-high.
A re-make of the HUD.
It is no secret that people love with their eyes and let's be real here: the HUD in Game Dev Studio was not exactly very appealing to the eye. If you're going to be spending hours looking at the HUD as you play the game, then it should look better! With Update #29 this is addressed: the games HUD has been remade and is more intuitive, and easier to navigate both visually and with your peripherals.
Player stats are now displayed at the top with additional tooltips when hovering the mouse over certain elements, and all the buttons leading to various menus are now positioned at the bottom. Simple, yet so much better than what was there before.
A new Tutorial stage.
People were confused as to what all the employee stats do, and I don't blame them with how many there are. Now there's a new tutorial stage which shows you where to check them, what they do, and how much progress they have towards their next level.
With that said, here is the full changelog:
- added Piracy:
* the base sale amount (which is then affected by a multitude of various factors) was increased from 10000 to 13000 in accordance with this new mechanic
* the Piracy rate of every game is affected by your Opinion level, how good the game is, and can be delayed by implementing DRM:
* the time until DRM is bypassed depends on several factors including by your Opinion level (if people hate you, the pirates will want to crack your games faster just to spite you!)
* Piracy only affects non-MMO game projects
- made player platforms a lot easier to succeed on:
* base chance to get a new developer every month for a player platform increased from 10% to 15%
* the amount of people that will switch over to a player platform increased to 200% (ie. 1000 instead of 500)
* base amount of people that can switch to a player platform increased from 5000 to 10000
- added the Opinion stat:
* it is gained by making good games and properly managing your MMOs
* it maxes out at 1000 and has the lowest value of 1
* it is lost by making bad games, and not managing your MMOs properly, having bribe offers revealed, and being busted while shilling
* it is a general indicator of how good opinion of your studio is and affects how heavily your games will be pirated
* when loading a pre-1.0.7.0 savefile, the Opinion value will be 500 (half of maximum)
- sequels and expansion packs can now boost the popularity of the game they're made for:
* in the case of an expansion pack: the efficacy of the boost depends on how close the expansion pack is to completion
* in the case of a sequel: the efficacy of the boost depends on the scale of the new game
- HUD remake:
* the top part of the HUD is now clickable and displays extra info when hovering over the various stat bars
* the bottom part of the HUD has all the functionality that was in the game before
- optimizations:
* optimized visibility handling of employees and pedestrians
* optimized the animation library (used for pedestrians, employees)
* when coupled together, these optimizations bring a minimum performance uplift of up to 30% or more (your mileage may vary)
* at this point the game runs two times better than it did at launch!
- updated the Expansion UI
- updated the Employee Assignment UI to be more intuitive and easier to use
- extended the "Employees" tutorial to acquaint the player with the "Employee info" menu, where a lot of employee info (ie. stats, skills, interests, attributes, etc.) is displayed
- increased advertisement strength of contractors; contract jobs are now more worth it
- added a new task for game projects: DRM
- development costs now track QA costs as well
- loan interest rate reduced from 5% to 1%
- the game project info popup has been improved to show more info
- overall MMO server complexity value increase from MMO tasks reduced to 80% from 100%
- chance that a platform specialist will become busy with another project each month when available reduced to 5% from 30%
- reduced specialist busy time range from 1 year to 3 years to half a year to 1.5 years
- showing time until a platform specialist becomes available
- "CGI Trailer" advertisement now provides a hype increase boost to sequels with a good previous game
- increased Popularity value on C-EXPI platforms, which should help them not become bankrupt as easily
- managers will now always tell you whether or not the price for a game is too low/too high when you go to release it
- chance that an employee will leave to work elsewhere in the event of the players Reputation dropping reduced to 10% from 35%
- reduced MMO database corruption event chance to 0.5% per week (was 1% per week)
- capped MMO database corruption event chance to a maximum of 2% (was uncapped, resulting in potentially very high chances the more complex a MMO is)
- fixed the "Employee" tutorial not working when loading a saved game that was saved at a certain point
- fixed month fund change not being saved
- fixed the upcoming game awards notice disappearing after changing the resolution/window mode
- fixed 'CGI Trailer' advertisement not applying a penalty when making a sequel to a game that was bad
- fixed certain advertisement related functionality not being executed when a game that has re-entered the market goes off-market
- fixed a game going off-market not clearing some Let's Player related data if any of them were doing playthroughs at that moment, resulting in potential crashes later
- fixed employees not getting to work after returning from being away
- various UI fixes and improvements
- can no longer create savefiles with nothing in their name
- optimizations mentioned in Patch #2 and #3 bring a performance improvement of 30% or more in CPU-bottlenecked scenarios
If you're interested what's next in store for Game Dev Studio in terms of content, have a look here!
Thanks for reading!
Update schedule
Hello!
Content for Update #30 is currently in development, and I wanted to let you guys know of the change in the scheduling of content updates for Game Dev Studio.
Previously I would develop about one new feature and release it as an update. While this meant you guys would get new content quickly, it also meant that sometimes these features were not well-balanced because they were pushed out as soon as possible. Starting with Update #30 I will be taking more time to release updates, since the majority on Discord voted in favor of this.
What this means for you is that content updates will be fewer in-between, but they will bring more content than before. Getting into the game after an update is released now will have more "wow" effect for you, as well as have more content for you to play with and discover.
Patches for the game will be released as usual: when bugs are reported I make them my #1 priority. I usually drop everything I'm doing, fix the bugs, and upload a patch fixing them as soon as possible. So whenever a bug is reported you can rest assured that it will be fixed very quickly. (just like before)
The new content I'm currently working on for Update #30 are multiple building floors. You'll be able to acquire additional floors for buildings! You might have noticed that the game has been receiving a lot of optimizations lately, and that is no coincidence. The reason is simple: the game needs to run better in order to accommodate two or three times more employees. The better I can make the game run, the better the experience will be for everyone with employee counts beyond 100. Naturally this means optimizing everything to the best of my ability, so that even on a low-spec computer the game would be playable with 200 or even 300 employees.
With that said, besides working on new content I am also optimizing the game. Despite the game increasing in complexity due to the addition of multiple building floors, the optimizations I'm applying to the game are yielding extra performance. Rest assured I will do my best in making the game run as good as I possibly can!
Thanks for reading!
Update #29 patch #6
Hello!
This small patch fixes a couple of issues and makes the "database corruption" MMO event less of a nuisance.
- reduced MMO database corruption event chance to 0.5% per week (was 1% per week)
- capped MMO database corruption event chance to a maximum of 2% (was uncapped, resulting in potentially very high chances the more complex a MMO is)
- fixed employees standing still in certain cases while the walking animation plays out
- fixed incorrect positioning of the yearly goal tracking HUD element
- fixed employees not getting to work after returning from being away
I would like to thank the people that have reported the issues fixed in this patch.
If you come across any more issues be sure to report them here.
Thanks for reading!
