Game Dev Studio
What's next? #4
As you may or may not know, as of Update #20, all the features listed in "What's next? #3" have been added. With the release of this big update, my efforts for the time being will be concentrated on fixing any bugs or crashes that may have arisen in this update.
Just like with Update #19, I will spend somewhere around two weeks monitoring the situation and fixing any crashes or bugs you folks report as quickly as possible. After that, I will move on to the next stage of development for Game Dev Studio.
If you find any bugs, or come across any crashes, be sure to report them here, it helps a lot, and it makes for a better game for every one of us.
Thanks for reading!
Update #20!
This update in particular is a very big deal to me personally, because if it wasn't for modding, then this game wouldn't exist at all. To celebrate this milestone of 20 formal updates released in 6 months since game launch, as well as the release of this update, Game Dev Studio is 65% off for 7 days!
I would like to thank everyone that has played the game, and especially those that have been actively giving feedback on the game in all of its aspects. Thanks to your feedback, Game Dev Studio is now in the best shape it has ever been, and will continue getting better.
- added Steam Workshop support:
* the game features full modding support and has documentation of most classes and libraries at http://www.gamedevstudiogame.com
* comes with several example mods, be sure to check out the Anger Issues mod! (especially if you're a modder looking into the possibilities of modding in Game Dev Studio!)
- added a new tutorial, which is a lot more friendly to new players (the old tutorial is still there, and is now called 'Introduction', think of it as a final exam of the basics you've learned in the tutorials now)
- added an outline to objects when hovering your mouse over them
- various optimizations:
* optimized handling of walls, resulting in faster loading times and slightly better performance when in an area with a lot of walls, as well as a lower framerate hit when panning the camera
* optimized handling of floor rendering, resulting in a lower framerate hit when panning the camera very quickly
* optimized map tile structure, resulting in slightly lower memory usage, slightly shorter map loading/initialization times, marginally smaller save file sizes, and slightly faster save and load times
* optimized project task logic, which results in lower CPU load, especially when a lot of employees are working on a game or engine project
* optimized handling of main employee logic (both player and rival), resulting in lower CPU load when employees are idling without a task
* minor optimization done to employee rendering logic, resulting in lower CPU load
- reduced employee salaries by 20%:
* this applies only to new playthroughs
- a good theme-genre match will now slightly boost the review score, in addition to boosting the sales
- improved the distribution of review ratings: the better a game is, the lower the lowest possible rating a review can roll is (for example, previously a game worth a 9/10 rating could get 7/10, now the lowest score a 9/10 game can get is 8/10)
- new difficulty setting, adjustments to existing difficulties
- can now adjust the amount of pedestrians and disable them entirely, in case performance is an issue (or you just don't like things like that), the amount of pedestrians is now set to 50 by default (was 200)
- busy teams will now also be shown in a different color, and will be positioned at the bottom of the team list in the team selection combobox
- holding down "shift" will now make the camera pan twice as fast using WASD or arrow keys
- added "select best employees" button to convention booking menu
- added a new team interaction option to quickly move members from one team to another without dismantling it
- team info descbox now displays what project (if any) the team is currently working on
- improved the accuracy of line-of-sight checks, resulting in more consistent light source illumination behavior
- viewing interests in the character creation menu will now show the theme-genre combinations it contributes to
- demolition mode will automatically disable when selecting an object for placement in expansion mode now
- additional game project info will now be displayed when hovering your mouse over it in the project box (bottom left corner)
- can now adjust starting money in Freeplay
- can now choose to start out without any extra employees in Freeplay
- increased the sale boost from genre-theme matches from 5%, 15%, and 25% to 10%, 25%, and 35%, respectively
- increased the time before employees will attempt auto-scheduling an activity
- doors now let light pass (the visual light) through when opened
- increased platform popularity values of Mega platforms, since the odds are not stacked in their favor
- workplaces now have a smaller bounding box for mouse-over selection
- reduced the amount of popularity points a platform gets from rival-made games, so that the player's games have a greater impact on deciding the fate of platform manufacturers
- various russian localization fixes
- various UI tweaks
- fixed a crash that occured when unplugging headphones or turning off the audio output device (ie. soundcard) while the game is running
- fixed a crash that occured with game conventions under certain circumstances
- fixed a minor visual bug related to employees carrying coffee cups
- fixed a resolution change at certain points in the tutorial locking the UI
- fixed the tutorial arrow pointer not appearing after changing the resolution at certain points in the tutorial
- fixed manager absense efficiency penalty not being applied to employees when a team manager goes on vacation/hospital/etc.
- fixed employees not having their "away until" variable saved or loaded, resulting in being able to save & load after someone goes on vacation/etc. to have them instantly return to the office
- fixed purchasing the pPhone platform license dooming the player to max. contracts of a scale of x4 for the rest of their playthrough, even though the largest platform game project scale would be x20 (platforms that are too small in max. project scale compared to other on-market platforms are now discarded when evaluating the desired project scale)
- fixed female employees using the male drink, eat and sit&drink animations
- fixed being able to select some inter-conflicting traits under the right circumstances
- fixed weather intensity setting not being applied until the player zoomed in/out or reloaded their savefile/went back to main menu and started a new game
- fixed a bug with game sale generation which caused a negative genre-theme combo coupled with a positive genre-platform combo to eat up sales to the point where it could sell 0 copies
- fixed a popup not being created asking the player whether he'd like to assign a team to fix the issues after testing a project more than once
- fixed 'Bombastic Games' office having an incorrectly-placed main door (one of the restrooms) in the prefab (requires a new game for the fix to take effect)
- fixed player platform dev license cost not being saved (and therefore being reset after each game save load)
I would like to thank the people that have reported bugs in the Steam discussions.
If you like the game, consider leaving a positive review, every little bit helps!
Thank you for reading!
Progress Report #16
Another change is the addition of more information displayed about a project when hovering your mouse over the project progress display in the lower left project box. This should help new players with understanding what certain icons mean.
When selecting the Freeplay game type, you can now adjust the starting money amount, and can now disable the starting employees that the scenarios give out on the selected map. I've seen people mention that having such functionality would be a nice addition, and since the Workshop update focuses on improving the game beyond just adding Steam Workshop support, I've finally freed myself up and got around to taking care of this little feature.
Lastly, the prefab and map editors have undergone a slight UI change to make them more user-friendly, and the object outline (when hovering over some kind of office object or an employee) was further tweaked to be even more visible.
Thanks for reading!
Progress Report #15
It also adds an outline to objects you hover your mouse over, so that indication of the object you're about to select/click on is a lot easier to see.
As always, it would be great help if you could switch over to the 'develop' branch and let me know whether the performance is any better for you, as well as reporting any issues you might be running into.
Thanks for reading!
Progress Report #14
All in all, while this update was meant for community content creators, you can still provide some feedback on the added steps for the new tutorial, and the new review text layout, which would be much appreciated.
Thanks for reading!
Progress Report #13
Overall I am estimating that this update will be released in about 2-3 weeks. Since this update is a very big thing to me personally, I want to put some more work into it to make sure the release of this update is smooth.
Thanks for reading!
Progress Report #12
Another new addition is the ability to control the amount of pedestrians on the streets. So in case you're having performance issues, or if you don't like the visual noise that they bring, then you can simply reduce the amount of pedestrians, or remove them altogether. Prior to this update, the amount of pedestrians out on the streets was 200, with the Workshop update it has been reduced down to 50, and the option allows you to further reduce, increase, or completely remove the pedestrians.
On the gameplay side of things, genre-theme matches now affect the review rating of games. Now, along with boosting the game sales, it also boosts the review ratings themselves, which means that picking a good genre-theme combo will be more beneficial than it was before, and will make up for some short-comings of your game when it comes to the quality itself.
Another thing that was changed is the distribution of review ratings: the better a game is, the lower the lowest possible rating a review can roll is (for example, previously a game worth a 9/10 rating could get 7/10, now the lowest score a 9/10 game can get is 8/10, and that is only if the game's rating is barely over the 9.0 mark)
The 'develop' branch has been updated with the changes mentioned here, and your feedback on the new tutorial would be very appreciated. So if you'd like to help out in that regard, just start up the game, play through the tutorial, and let me know whether there's anything that is in need of improvement.
Thanks for reading!
Progress Report #11
With Steam Workshop support integrated, the next step for the Workshop update is creation of a couple of more example mods for developers, and then moving on to improving the tutorial by splitting it up into multiple separate parts, instead of having one big tutorial scenario. The existing tutorial will remain in the game, but will be renamed to something different, since while it does introduce people to the game, it is also very challenging and punishing. Think of the current tutorial as a final exam of the player's abilities after the initial, easier tutorials that will be added in this update.
Once that is done, I will be moving on to further optimizing the game, while working on a rather large Workshop example mod in parallel, to further showcase what can be done with mods, and how it all works, which is very important for developers, as the more reference material they have, the easier it will be for them to get into modding, and start making all sorts of cool content.
If you wish to start making mods for the Steam Workshop of Game Dev Studio, then switch over to the 'develop' branch of the game, read up on the documentation, and check out the example mods.
Currently the Steam Workshop is accessible through the tab at the top of the Community Hub, since the update is not yet fully released.
Goes without saying that the first couple of weeks (or maybe even a month or two) will see very little mods, but as people get familiar with how the game code words and how mods are made, you can expect all sorts of mods to be made from the community.
Thank you for reading!
Progress Report #10
The site contains documentation for almost every single class and library, and I will soon finish documenting the rest of the classes.
I will be uploading the Workshop update to the 'develop' branch shortly after I'm done with the documentation, and once that's done you'll be able to make mods in case you're interested in that. Once the game is up on the 'develop' branch and the documentation is finished, I will get to work on the mod which will showcase how a lot of the various systems work. Aside from that, I'll also be uploading several small mods to further showcase how the systems work, so that those interested in modding can download them and take a look at what the mod does, how it interacts with other systems, etc. I will also be uploading the source code of many classes and libraries so that in case the game documentation is not enough, you'll be able to simply take a look at the source code and see how it all works there.
Over the course of all this I will also be working on optimizing the game where possible, improving the tutorial, and polishing several mechanics of the game. Once the Workshop update is released, I will be going back to working on new gameplay mechanics and adding more content to the game, as well as improving existing features.
Thank you for reading!
Progress Report #9
With that said, I'm sure that the big question a lot of people have is:
What can be modded?
The answer to which is: everything! You can make any mod you wish, and if you know what you're doing, you could go as far as to make a mod which would allow you to go into a rival studio office and shoot everyone there. (this sounds a little bit weird now that I type this out)
The game, as I'm sure most of you know, uses LÖVE2D. The game was written in Lua, and as such any part of it can be easily changed, or added on top of.
I will provide more details on the modding documentation, as well as instructions on how to upload your mods to the Steam Workshop for Game Dev Studio once the update has been released.
Thank you for reading!