Game Dev Studio
Recent patches
I generally don't make community posts regarding such small patches since I consider them not worth a mention, because in most cases it's a single bug of some kind being fixed. But since some people have been wondering what these updates were, I thought I'd make it clear what they are.
The recent patches mostly consisted of fixes related to the Russian translation of the game. The small update today fixed a bug related to the lighting compute optimization in Update #23. The bug that is fixed in question was the light source color not being changed after choosing one of the lamp preset colors. Hopefully this clears up the confusion.
Thanks for reading!
Update #23
- the game now supports Ubuntu 18.04
- added sub-genres:
* these become available when you have at least 6 genres researched
* they match together with genres, and can either hurt or improve the game sales; discovery of subgenre matches is the same as it is with other match types in reviews
* selecting a sub-genre will add 15% more work to the project
- added annual game awards:
* like the name suggests, this event occurs once per year
* the player can choose to skip this event
* if the player chooses to participate, they will need to select the game to nominate released in the year that the awards take place
* the player will also need to write a celebratory speech in case they win the Game of the Year award
* the winner can earn reputation
- optimizations:
* optimized the tilegrid visibility handler
* further optimization and parallelization of the lighting compute
* when coupled together these two optimizations bring a performance increase of up to 50% (your mileage may vary) in CPU-bottlenecked scenarios
- added buttons for instantly accepting and refusing all job candidates
- added target team selection for job candidates
- review ratings now also show 1/10th of the score
- added an option to disable the fly-in animation of popups
- when selecting a related game in the new game menu features that were present in the related game will be marked with a different color
- the date display remains visible in the upper left corner of the screen in any menu you open up, for quick reference of the current time
- fixed a bug that allowed you to quit the construction menu during tutorials which would then mess up various game functionality if you proceeded to load a savefile
- fixed an issue related to the selection bounding box of objects
- platform popularity boost popup will now be shown only once per playthrough, rather than once per every platform
- (MODDING) fixed a crash that occured when removing a downward or left-facing wall in the prefab editor
As usual, if you find any bugs or crashes, make sure to report them in the Bug & Crash Reports thread.
Thanks for reading!
Progress update #19
This update will be officially released in about a week, once I am sure that everything is smooth.
Thanks for reading!
Progress update #18
Update #23 is nearly finished, right now the remainder of things to do on my list is to integrate visual assets for the Annual Game Awards feature.
With that said, the game now features a Linux build on the default (non-develop) branch of the game. This does not mean that the game officially supports Linux yet (it will when Update #23 is released). However it does mean that support for it is right around the corner. So if you have any friends that have been interested in the game, but weren't able to play it because they run Linux, now is a good time to tell them that this is about to change! As usual, because this content is still in-development, there may be stability issues with it. It's best to wait until Update #23 is formally released before trying out the Linux build of the game.
You can expect the update to be released in about 1-2 weeks, once I integrate the art assets for the aforementioned Annual Game Awards feature, and ensure that it all works well.
Thanks for reading!
Windows 10 Build 1809 crash on startup fix
The issue in question, as described by one of the developers of the LOVE2D framework, was because "Windows 10 version 1809 changed the behaviour of an API love uses during startup, unfortunately.".
With that said, a new build of the game with a fix for this issue has been uploaded, so as usual, wait an hour or so for the game to update on your end, or simply restart Steam to instantly queue up an update, and let me know whether this has resolved the issue for you.
Thanks for reading!
Progress update #17
The content in question is the addition of sub-genres. These can be selected once you've researched at least 6 genres. Selecting a sub-genre will require you to put more work into the game, but if the genre + sub-genre combination is good, it will bring in even more sales. Just like with most other matches in the game they can also hurt your game sales in case the combination you've chosen does not work that well.
You might also notice that the game is running better now. That is because I started out Update #23 by optimizing certain parts of the game which require a decent chunk of CPU processing power, namely the lighting computation, and the tilegrid visibility handler. The lighting computation optimization brings the bulk of the increase in performance, and with these two optimizations taken into account they bring up to 34.6% higher performance in the same scenario! (on a laptop with an i5 5200U processor, your mileage may vary) This is especially useful for laptop owners, because the game will use less power to run the game at those 60 FPS like before, or, if have a really old/very low-spec laptop now you'll be closer to hitting that 60 FPS mark if you weren't able to reach it.
As always, please keep in mind that because the content on the 'develop' branch is work-in-progress, it might not be 100% stable.
Thanks for reading!
Update #22
- added the ability to control the timescale in the new game menu, as well as the "General" tab of options menu while in-game
- added the ability to assign an employee to research tech via employee context menu
- added the ability to close menus by pressing the same key they're opened with
- added an option to raise request dialogues to approve & enable auto-approval of raise requests
- added an option to the vacation request popup to approve & enable auto-approval of vacation requests
- added a new office preference - refuse all contract work offers
- activities rebalanced:
* amount of gained Drive from any activity increased 4 times (ie. enjoyment rating of 80 used to give 8 Drive points, now it gives 32 drive points)
* activities now increase the time until an employee has to go on vacation
* to counter this huge buff, activities will now be on a global cooldown that lasts 2 months regardless of how much enjoyment was had, in addition to being on a per-activity cooldown. Going on another activity shortly after one was had will yield very low enjoyment gain.
* activity result & confirmation UI has been improved
- vacation requests will now display the role and employee's main skill level (or, in the case of a Jack of All Trades, the highest skill level in general)
- the amount of platform users available at the beginning of a playthrough now depends on the starting year of the campaign (every year past 1988 adds extra platform users)
- fixed wall grass decals being drawn under the southern walls
- fixed a crash that occured when zooming in/out during the rain under the right circumstances
- german translation fixes
- minor UI tweaks
Thanks for reading!
What's next? #5
With Update #20 released, and all the features I had planned on adding to the game since release finally implemented, my next step is to add some new gameplay mechanics that people have been asking for. With that said, starting from Update #20 (or update #21 for that matter), I will be taking extra time to ensure that the newly-added content has less bugs, in other words, updates might take slightly more time to release, but they will generally be far smoother than before.
With this update, I took a different approach to developing it. In most previous updates, I set myself a personal time limit within which I wanted to release some certain piece of content. While that did allow me to release a decent amount of content in a relatively short period of time, I did not have enough time to consider lots of cases for potential bugs, and so the new content would, most of the time, be released with bugs, or worse yet, crashes. The extra time taken to release Update #20 ensured that the release was smooth, and I was very, very delighted to see that the launch of the biggest update so far saw the least amount of bug and crash reports as of yet.
Please do keep in mind, that I am the only person working on the game, and this is the first game I've ever released!
Moving onward I will start with implementing small community-requested features, and once those are taken care of, will move on to picking out some of the larger features people have suggested. Please keep in mind that because I want to maintain the vision of the game I've had since the beginning, features that stray far from the game development side of things will most likely not be implemented. However I am willing to make an exception here and there, if I like the idea of certain features that people suggest, and it seems like something that would add a nice amount of content or gameplay variety to the game.
With that out the way, my to-do list for the time being looks like this:
#1 - Ability to adjust the pace at which time is passing by. People have voiced their concerns that the game time passes by too quickly, and it's hard to make more than one game for a single console generation. While the original vision for the game was to provide a rather realistic insight into how much time game development takes up in real life, a lot of people don't like that. I will be adding a slider to the new game menu, which will allow you to adjust the speed at which in-game time passes by. It will affect the speed at which time passes by, but not the speed at which employees work, so reducing the speed at which time passes by will make the game easier. When opening the main menu, the time slider will always start out at the speed which is true to the game's vision.
#2 - Ability to select more than one genre for a game. This is something the community has requested, and I will for sure be adding this to the game.
#3 - Annual game awards. A feature that people have suggested, but one that I refrained from working on because I couldn't come up with interesting gameplay mechanics for. With a clearer head following the release of this update, this is something you can expect to be added to the game in a future update.
#4 - Various small community-suggested improvements. You folks voice your suggestions, and I listen to them. There were various quality-of-life improvement suggestions, and I will be happy to implement them. Don't be afraid to share your suggestions, I read through all of them, even if you don't see me reply to your threads!
#5 - Japanese translation. A community member has reached out to me and has offered to provide a Japanese translation. I am most grateful for this help, and you can expect this to be added in one of the future updates.
#6 - Linux build of the game. Until now, I've been focusing my efforts on ensuring the game's overall stability, as well as focusing on one platform for the time being to not be overwhelmed with potential issues that would be isolated to specific operating systems. As of today, I am happy with the state of the game, and will be working on a Linux build of the game for one of the future updates.
As always, the points you see on the list will be implemented out of order, and some gameplay mechanics that weren't mentioned might make it into the game in one of the updates.
Thanks for reading!
Discord Server!
So, without further ado, you can join the server by this link: https://discord.gg/eHq2dNp
If you wanted to get in touch with me very easily, have a bug/crash to report, or you wanted to find other modders to collaborate with for your Steam Workshop mods, feel free to join! I will be posting various info on upcoming updates for Game Dev Studio there more often than on Steam, since it provides a very simple platform for spreading such news.
Don't worry, even with this new Discord server I will still make progress update posts on Steam, as well as all the previous types of posts you've seen so far.
Thanks for reading!
Update #21
- fixed good theme-genre matches 5 extra points to the rating, and very good theme-genre matches providing a whole 10 extra points to the review score, resulting in 9/10 games being achievable for a game that is only worth 1/10
- (EDIT) fixed overhype reputation loss penalty being applied multiple times under some circumstances
- (EDIT 2) fixed being able to leave office expansion via pressing escape while the game was limiting clicks (during tutorial sequences)
- (EDIT 2) fixed a crash that occured in the prefab editor when exiting it after placing walls
- made preparations for the Japanese translation
If you encounter any bugs or crashes, please report them here.
Thanks for reading!