Game Dev Studio
Update #29 patch #5
This small patch fixes a few issues.
- fixed object culling sometimes hiding objects it shouldn't have hidden and optimized it too (lower CPU load)
- fixed MMO expansion packs being pirateable
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!
Update #29 patch #4
This announcement is a congregation of bugfixes released today following the release of the optimization patches (#2 and #3). The fixes mentioned here were an oversight on my part as a result of the optimizations.
- fixed employees standing still outside the office when hired
- fixed a crash that occured when starting a motivational speech with one of the participants in a conversation with another employee
- fixed a crash that occured under certain circumstances related to the status icons of an employee
I apologize for the issues that arose as a result of the optimizations, but it should be smooth-sailing from here. If you come across any more issues be sure to report them here.
Thanks for reading!
Update #29 patch #3
This small patch further optimizes the game in preparation for the multiple building floors feature.
- optimized several systems:
* optimized employee visual update logic, developer path recompute queueing, object drawing loop, and developer actions
* when coupled together, these optimizations bring a performance uplift of 18% or more (depends on the situation, your mileage may vary)
- chance that an employee will leave to work elsewhere in the event of the players Reputation dropping reduced to 10% from 35%
- fixed object culling not working properly
- fixed tech discussion conversation sometimes not working properly
If you've been following the update logs of all the updates closely, you might be aware that the game has received numerous optimization updates. At this point I am fairly sure that the game performs two times better than it did at launch!
If you encounter any bugs or crashes, please report them here.
Thanks for reading!
Update #29 patch #2
This small patch addresses a minor HUD issue and optimizes the game some more in preparation for the multiple building floors feature.
- optimized several systems:
* optimized visibility handling of employees and pedestrians
* optimized the animation library (used for pedestrians, employees)
* when coupled together, these three optimizations bring a minimum performance uplift of 10% (your mileage may vary), with some systems seeing an uplift of up to 25%
- fixed depth of objective notification element in the HUD (sometimes it would be under the objectives HUD element)
If you run into any bugs or crashes make sure to report them here.
Thanks for reading!
What's next? #7
With update #29 released it's time to talk about what's next for Game Dev Studio.
#1 - Game editions.
Ever wanted to release a "premium" edition of your game? With this feature implemented, you will be able to in one of the future updates! The general balance of the game will remain the same if you choose to just keep releasing just the regular game editions, but releasing multiple editions of your games may bring you extra cash and reputation, or it might accomplish the opposite...#2 - Multiple building floors.
People have been asking for larger offices, and I hear you! In one of the future updates I will add multiple floors to buildings, so that your employee count can go from 100 to 200! Just don't forget that you'll need to pay their salaries...#3 - More random events.
As mentioned in What's next? #6, more random events will be added to the game.
#4 - Trading cards, emoticons, and backgrounds.
With each update of Game Dev Studio you got more and more value in terms of replayability and content for the same price you paid when you purchased it. With the addition of trading cards (and all that they entail), you'll get even more value outside of the game itself!With all that written down, I have to say I'm quite eager about implementing multiple building floors. This is something I considered when I was developing the game, but brushed aside in favor of adding more gameplay mechanics and focusing more on the game development side of things. With all these updates released, and with all the new features implemented it's time to get back to the feature I once considered adding to the game.
As always, the features listed here may be implemented out of order and you might see 2 or more features be added to the game in one update.
Thanks for reading!
Update #29 patch #1
- fixed a crash that occurred when customers would get suspicious of the legitimacy of the reviews of the players games
- fixed Managers constantly bugging you about the price of a game being too low/too high when attempting to release a game with the price not being the one suggested by the Manager, making it impossible to release the game on any price but the one the Manager suggests
I would like to thank the people that have reported the bugs fixed in this patch. If you run into any bugs and/or crashes, be sure to report them here.
Thanks for reading!
Update #29
Update #29 brings a new gameplay mechanic and improvements to existing game elements just as promised!
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
- 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
- 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
- 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
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the visual update!
Progress update #23
Work on 'Update #29' is nearly finished, and right now I'm in the process of improving the UI of an area that saw the least love: the employee management menu.
Aside from all the changes listed in 'Progress update #22' this update will also feature an updated Expansion mode UI and numerous other UI improvements. It will also feature several balance adjustments that make it somewhat easier to play.
The update will be released in less than two weeks, so stay tuned!
Thanks for reading!
Progress update #22
I'm pleased to announce that the upcoming 'Update #29' is now on the 'develop' branch. As always please keep in mind that the content you see on the 'develop' branch might not be stable. You can opt into the 'develop' branch by going to the properties of 'Game Dev Studio' in Steam, switching to the "BETAS" tab and enabling 'develop' from the drop-down menu. If you run into any bugs or crashes make sure to report them here.
The current changelog is:
- 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
- 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
- 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%
- 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
- various UI fixes and improvements
Thanks for reading and testing the game on the 'develop' branch!
Update #28 hotfix
- fixed "Firmware update" element in the project box not disappearing after finishing, resulting in being able to crash the game if choosing to cancel it when it is finished
Thanks for reading!