The latest update is finally out, bringing a lot of new features into the game.
First of all a HUGE thank you, to all of you who have participated in the beta testing of this version. A lot of bugs have been found, as well as several features have been implemented and changed thanks to you. It has been extremely helpful, and have saved lots of time and frustrations, and hopefully it will bring a better experience to all of those going to play it.
-- Groceries --
The biggest feature is the new category "Groceries" which has been what this update is revolving around. It includes a whole new set of articles to sell in your stores. These are various canned and packaged foods, food for refrigeration, fruits and vegetables. Over the next updates even more articles will be added.
-- Displays --
- Complete rework -
For making this category work, the display system needed a complete overhaul. The old system only allowed for items of the same size. This system has been the main problem when we wanted to add new categories and articles. The new system allows for categories to "share" displays while still being able to maintain some unique ones for that category only. They also allow articles of various sizes, and will automatically fit that. So a table might have 4 computers, but 8 mice. So this will make it much easier to add new articles to the game in the future. The new system also allow you to place a specific article at a specific location, which the staff will now respect. So you can now create a shoe wall featuring only unique shoes,if that is what you desire.
- Shelf types -
A new type of display has also come to the game, the shelf display. This allow you to add shelves, and adjust these to the type of article you expect to show on it.
- Signs -
All displays also now has the possibility to be equipped with a billboard you can customize with various texts, colors and patterns.
- Colors -
We have also disposed of the old "Material Sphere" system. With this system, it was hard to make all interactables to be compatible with these generic materials, and also didn't allow for each display to receive a unique look. Now, the displays has received a unique look which you can colorize. The visuals for the displays will be further improved over the next updates.
- Color picker -
As this brings a lot of emphasis on colors, the color picker has also been upgraded and you can now save colors across stores.
-- UI --
For all of this to happen, the UI for all of these things needed an upgrade. So we have tried with a new look, and new functionalities that supports the future of many categories and articles better than the old one.
-- Registers --
- New types -
We have also upgraded the looks and functionality off all the registers, as well as adding new ones to the game. The queues have also been changed, so in general they will occupy less space, than their old counterparts. They are all also now equpped with a status light, showing if they are open, closed for new customers or completely closed.
- New functionality -
The registers have also been changed to allow for various amounts of customers. So the small and cheap ones only allow for few customers, while the large and more expensive ones allows for more and also occupy more space.
-- Staff UI --
We have added a menu to the hud showing all of your staff who are currently at work. From here you can assign them new tasks, or send them on break.
-- Day Progress --
- Closed for unlimited time -
If you decide to close the store for an entire day, you will now have all the time in the world to redecorate your store.
- Extra delivery -
In the HUD, a new button has also been added under "Articles". With this you can request an extra article delivery for a fee. So you can during the day order extra articles if you run out of space or if you forgot to order.
-- Save Game Issues --
Unfortunately, the new display system made the old ones obsolete to a point where they were incompatible with each other. So as a consequence, all displays have been removed from the stores. However we have compensated for this, by refunding the displays. The articles placed on them, have been added to be delivered the next day. You have received a compensation for each article that is going to be redelivered. Finally you have also received money for the rent of a missing day. We therefore recommend to close the store for a day to rebuild it, and you can request articles again and again during this day due to the new features.
We are terribly sorry for the inconveniences of this, but hopefully these compensations will ake it up to you.
-- Languages --
- Player Translations -
Our community translator also came into action during this patch. We weren't sure how it would turn out, but much to our suprise it has been widely used. We are very humbled that so many has taken their time to translate sentence after sentence. Thank you A LOT to all of you who have been assisting with this. This should have improved the existing languages, but we also tried adding new languages to the game. And even more to our suprise, some of you have taken their time to translate the game to an entire new language.
So a very special thank you to the following users:
Lucas (Translated the entire game into French) WensElf (Translated the entire game into Dutch) sztilo07 (Has translated over half the game into Hungarian) iTzAlexandre (Has translated a quarter of the game into Portuguese)
- Back to english -
Due to how these translations is made, some words might be incorrect, understood in the wrong context, extending a bounding box or missing, as the translators havent been able to test out their translations while translating, but could only see them in game when the beta was updated. Since the game automatically detects your language, you might start out your game in your local language. If you are, and you find any of the above annoying, you always have the possibility to swich back to English language.
- Want to help translating -
If you want to help with the translations, go to: https://translate.kingofretail.com/
-- Mac Issue --
Finally, Mac users will have to wait a bit extra for this update. We are making the game for windows, which allows for exporting to various platforms. However MacOS is not included in this. For building to Mac, Apple requires it to be done on a n Apple device. We are currently experiencing some issues getting Unreal Engine (which is the program we create the game in) to run on Mac. We are trying to solve this, but we don't want to hold back the update for windows. So we are very very sorry that we can't offer you the update right away, but as soon as we are able to, we will provide it for you also.
This rounds of the news of this update. We are very interested in receiving feedback, ideas and hearing about bug or issues you may encounter. You can do that here at Steam or at our discord: https://discord.gg/fckN6bE
We hope you will enjoy the changes, and happy retailing out there :)
Beta has been released
Dear Retailers
We have released the beta a beta version for the upcoming release.
If you want to try it out before everyone else, and help ud find bugs, and just give us feedback on what you think feel free to try it out.
-- What's new --
A quick rundown on what it contains:
- Groceries, the new category of items. - New interaction system, that removes some of the UI from the screen. - New display system, allowing you to colorize your display and adding billboards to it. - New displays, allowing you to manage shelfs and individual spots for items. - New Daily Staff Management UI. Control your employees directly from the HUD. - Special deliveries. Get a second delivery of articles during the day. - Closing for a day now gives you unlimited time to rebuild your store.
- Several new languages. We are very grateful for all of you who have taken your time to use our community translator and translated the game. It has been a major help to us, and we appreciate it very much.
A special thank you goes out to these contributers for taking care of translating the game into an entirely new language on their own.
For this beta version you also get access to the developer menu. By pressing tab you open up a special menu granting you access to various things. You will not be able to play your regular save games, as we don't want any harm to come to those while testing out the beta.
This Beta is only available for Windows, and for players who already own the game. For instructions on how to access it, go to: -> The discussion forums here at Steam -> Beta Feedback -> Guide for Beta Players
-- How to give us feedback --
We are very interested in everyting you may encounter while playing it, both old and new bugs, annoyances, ideas and impovements. Please deliver your feedback of this particlur version at the Beta Feedback forum here on Steam, or the Beta forum on our Discord.
If you are not yet a member you can join at. https://discord.gg/fckN6bE
We will update this version regularly until we will release it as a public version.
Thank you in advance for helping out :)
Letter to our Retailers (6) - New Articles, new Languages and new features.
Dear Retailers.
it is time for a new letter, and we have made quite some progress since the last one.
--- Groceries ---
Since the last letter, our main focus has been on creating content for the groceries category, and this means adding lots of articles.
We have started out with two subcategories Canned Foood and Fresh Food. All articles are sold from the 3 companies,
Tasty Dreams - The cheap solution
Organix - Fashion foods of a medium quality
Diamond Standard - Focuses on high quality foods.
Canned Food contains those items that can be placed on a regular shelf. Currently these are the aritcles that will be sold fom this category for now.
Fresh Food will need some sort of refrigeration unit to keep these cold. These are the articles made so far, however over the next couple of days, many more will be added to this category.
In addition to the articles, several display units have also been made, to complement these items. So a miniature supermarket could look like this:
In addition to this we will probably also add a Fruit/Vegetables category such that you can create such a department too. Some has also asked for beverages, however we don't yet know if there is time enought to add that also. However we are structuring the categories in a new way, so adding new types of articles should be way more easy for us in the future, than it has currently been, making room for drinks beeing added shortly after if we doesn't get around to it this time.
This is how we are going to structure it from now on, adding a third layer to the categiroes, so you will be able to sort it better. For instance, "Shirts" could have "Shirts", "T-shirts", "Sports" and "Long Sleeved". Like this we can add a lot more articles to a category, without it being overwhelming to look through.
--- Community Translator ---
In the last letter we had just released the community translator. Primarily to improve current languages, but we also added some new languages to see if there were any interest in these also. Much to our surprise there have been persons kind enough to translate some in both categories. We are very happy to see it being used, and also extremely grateful that you have taken your time to make these translations. ːsteamhappyː ːsteamhappyː
Because of this, we have opened for new languages to enter the game in the future. These are:
French
Spanish
Italian
Russian
Depending on how much is translated for a given language, we might feature it as soon as the next update. Since untranslated sentences will be shown in english, you will then have the opportunity to play the game partly in your language, partly in english, and if it is too annoying, you can always go back to full english.
If you want to help us translating, go to:
https://translate.kingofretail.com/
--- Other features ---
We have also been working on other things that will improve the gaming experience.
Since the new display units for the groceries cateogry, are colorable and have billboards, we have converted the existing displays to this system also. This means that you can design them by colors of your choice, and design their billboard.
To help with this system, it is also now possible to save and load colors when working with the color picker.
Finally we have also made the access to your staff easier. So the HUD when in store, will now show all employees currently at work, as well as having the possibility to change tjeir task directly from the menu.
This is all for now. We aim to release a beta to test out this version, as it helped us quite a lot in the last update.
Feedback is very welcome, and a lot of you have joined our discord making it a fun place to be, along with providing with lots of ideas for us to work with.
If you haven't already, you can join at:
https://discord.gg/fckN6bE
Until next time :-)
Letter to our retailers (5) - Translation system and progress on groceries.
Dear Retailers
It is time for our next letter, explaining what we have been up to.
- Translation System -
Yay, our translation system is finally up and running!
Over the time a lot of you has offered help with translating the game, both in existing languages, but also into new ones we haven't supported. And while we would love your help, setting up and handling the logistics was one of the main reasons why we have turned down the help. In December we finally set the time aside to create a system, where you can assist in translating as little or as much as you want to, and last week we were able to set it public.
To help out with translations go to:
https://translate.kingofretail.com/
As the system is completely new, feedback is also very welcome :)
- Displays -
In our last letter we were preparing for groceries, and by that changing the displays to allow various sixed items. Most of the time has been spent on progression with these systems.
They are finally at a place where we feel they are as we want them to be. However some of the systems as you know them as changed.
Some displays will be as you know them. Shirt displys will have the same amount of shirts as previous. However tables will carry as many as can fit in the width. So a table can maybe carry 4 computers but 6 mice, removing a lot of the wasted space on the smaller items.
The new shelf type, allows you to add shelves, and move them up and down so that it fits a lot ot articles without wasting too much space.
Displays will now be colored by your choice, rather than using the "Material orb" system. The orbs allowed for various materials, but the downside to this is that you cant make the various displays look up to their best, as they all have to fit these "generic" looks also. Instead you will now be able to select which colors your displays should be, allowing for a more customizable look for your store. In future this will also allow that you can get more than one "skin" for each display. These skins are made specific for each display allowing them to look much more detailed than previsously. This also means that we have some work to do changing the existing displays, but hopefully it will bring an inprovement to overall graphics.
As an added bonus, all displays will allow for the option of adding a billboard to them. These borads can also be customized in various vays. This time it will go out as a test, but in the future this can be expanded so you will be able to hang these boards down from the ceiling, and also add your own graphics to it.
- Groceries -
With the displays in order, we have just started yesterday adding articles to the groceries category, with the very first items being Cereal Boxes, with the two companies Tasty Foods and Organix fighting for the market.
Over the next weeks this category will of course be expanded with a lot of interesting articles, such that you can create your own supermarket.
Until next time Oh.. and don't hesitate to join our discord at: https://discord.gg/fckN6bE
Happy sales
Letter to our Retailers (4) - Preparing for groceries.
Dear Retailers
It has been a little over a week since our latest release, and it seems you enjoy playing it. This allows us to look at the next update, instead of focusing on ironing out this one.
So what do we have planned?
--- New category: Groceries ---
At our discord we had a vote on what you wanted the most. And the answer was without a doubt a new grocery category. So we started doing just that.
We are still in the warly planning stages, so we have not decided what to put into it. We will probably start by making foods in various forms. Fruits, meats, vegetables and bread both in packed form (Boxes, bags and cans) and in fresher forms, such that these articles also fit to various types of customers. (Hint: So now is the best time for letting us know which articles you would like in these categories :) )
--- New Display Types ---
One of our issues with adding categories like this, was the various sizes of the different items. This is currently shown with computers and mice, where the mice has an extraordinary large amount of space on these displays. Furthermore the category grouping would have to be based on their sizes and not their types. So a category for foods might be "Canned Goods" and "Boxed Goods", because the displays would fit these sizes.
This is a big limitation, and has been one of the major reason on why we have held back on adding various articles.
So now we have changed the display system entirely, and allowed for some more general displays. These displays fit automatically fit to the size of the item displayed. As you see at the image the computers and mice fit on the same display, but with various amounts shown. It also allows for mice and computers to be shown on the same shelf, and still keeping individual sizes for it's spot.
So now we can tag items to the types of displays that can carry them. For instance shoes can be tagged "Shoes" and "General". This allows for the creation of specific displays, while also allowing for multi-article displays.
--- New Interaction & Display UI ---
These display types require a new method of handling, and this allowed us to kill two birds with one stone. We would like to clean up the UI and make it take up less space on screen. We would also like to make the UI just a bit more modern that the current '90's look it has. So the UI when interacting with things in-store will receive an overhaul. The original system was one of the first things we made when starting building the game, and therefore suffered from our general lack of knowledge on structuring a game.
The new system will allow for even more control of a display. Now you can manage each individual spot, instead of only an area, which for instance allows for a shoe wall with a different shoe on each spot and correct refilling by the staff.
These are the main features we will focus on during this update, and we look forward to continue working on them and telling you aboutthe updates. Comments are as always appreciated, and feel free to join our Discord at: https://discord.gg/fckN6bE
Until next time :)
V. 0.8.0 "Corporate Management" is released
Dear Retailers!
The latest update is finally out.
It has focused heavily in improving the corporate experience, by improving your HQ and all of its functionalities. We have also balanced out some of the gameplay, and changed smaller inconveniences. We hope you will enjoy it ːsteamhappyː
--- The new HQ ---
New design
The initial HQ was very barebones, so it has now been completely overhauled. It consists of several floors to run your corporation. The ground floor is for corporation control, and where you manage your new lots, as well as the hiring of managers.
Each concept then has its own unique floor. Here you administer talents, design, as well as interacting with the concept managers.
New managers
You can now hire managers for various jobs. Both for the corporation in general, but also for the individual concepts. So will you spend money on an Area Manager that improves stores run by the Daily Manager, or a Sales Manager that affects the customers in the store you are currently at. But they also require a wage, so think about when it is time to expand. It takes time for these managers to learn their skill, and become familiar with their new role. They are also influenced by various events happening in the game, so you will need to manage these, and make sure the perfect manager doesn't join another company.
You can also promote a manager from one of your stores to the HQ, and that person will gain a bonus as the employee already has experience with working at your corporation.
Company awards
At your HQ you can also boast of the achievements earned with your corporation. Show off the Employer of the month, or the Customer Satisfaction Award in your trophy cabinets.
No City Hall
To allow for this, there will no longer be an office at the CIty Hall, as it will be at the City Map instead.
--- Balancing and improvements ---
Letter for our retailers (3)
Dear Retailers
A lot have happened in the short time since our last letter, so it's time to fill you in again :)
Getting close to the next update.
We are sooo close to bering done with this version. The last week han been focused on finalizing smaller things, polishing a bit, playtesting and bugfixing. Managers are fully implemented into the game, and influence various areas of running your stores. Likewise does different events influence your managers, so you will need to keep at good atmosphere at your HQ.
A few convenience features have been added. You can set a corporation fee, which are deducted from the profits of your stores, such that you wont have to remember to go back and withdraw funds from your stores.
Also, the mailman now arrives earlier than before, giving you a precious 20 mins extra to unpack your articles.
The finance board, has received an upgrade, showing more info overall, and at the end of the day, you see all your final paymensts, thus finally making all payments along the day known to you.
Beta-testers for the new features.
We try to learn of our previous mistakes, and would therefore like those of you who are interested to test it out, such that we get bugs out of the way, and get your feedback on the new features. The beta-version will run until the version is released, however in this version we will open up for the coveted "Developer menu" giving you money and instant reputations, such that you can test the game however you like.
We hope that you will try it out, and help us outin the never ending quest for bugs.
This will only be available for players already owning the game.
Check out our Steam-forum "Beta Feedback" for more info on how to activate it, backup your saves, and provide us with feedback.
Our very own Discord
To get closer to our community, we have setup a Discord server of our own. Join in to chat, see new features, share ideas, show off your store, and other things.
We hope you will join us. It can be done through the following link: https://discord.gg/fckN6bE
Letter to our Retailers (2)
Dear Retailers
We have made some progress during the last week, although a bit slowed, as Tympanix (One of the two devs) has been focusing on his final project at the university. He is also the one working on the translation system we told about in our last letter.
The Translation Issue
It is no secret that a large portion of the players are German-speaking. This is why this was our test-language (along with Danish which are our native language) to see how difficult it is to manage multiple languages. We found out that programming and implementing a language was relatively easy (after some cleanup in the code), however all the logistics surrounding it was tough to deal with.
First of all currently the game contains rougly 10.000 words that needs to be translated, which in itself takes quite some time even if you are fluent in the language. Secondly, the game continually evolves. This means that between each patch, some words are removed, some are changed and new words are added, meaning that after a couple of weeks a new revision would be needed. Third of all, the text needs to be understood correctly. So when all these texts are exported, they show up as the pure text only, and nothing more. So the translator might have to translate "Rent" properly. But does this mean the price you pay to rent something, or performing the action of wanting to rent it, which in danish is two very different things.
Having to manage these things for each patch is very time consuming, and is why we in the later patches have resorted to Google Translate.
Many of you have very kindly offered your help in assisting with the translations in various languages which we are very grateful of. However we didn't know how to organize this in a way that makes it easy and efficient. The thought of handling several translators via mail or facebook, having to merge translations into the same document and so on seemed like an excessive workload, which would redice the time spent on developing a lot.
But we still wanted to allow for several languages, so what to do?
The Community Translation System
We evaluated several options online that could assist with this, however they required a (for us) hefty monthly fee. So in december we decided to make our own instead, and this is what Tympanix has been spending his time on (along with university) since then. The bonus of this program should then be that every player can contribute to the translation of the game. Firstly by a webpage that you can log in to using your Steam-account, and secondly within the game itself. Here you can search for existing sentences, mark them as wrong, submit your own translation, or vote for an already submitted one. We can then review these translations make the necessary changes and upload them to the game. This also allows for translations in event more languages. Hopefully this makes for better translation without it taking up to much time.
We expect to have the webpage-solution ready near the end of the month :)
Progress since last letter
I have then been working on the game itself, making progress with the HQ. I am also happy to say that almost everything has been implemented, with a few things missing.
You now control each concept on each individual floor, on several whiteboards, making it easier to quickly see how it goes. At the ground floor you manage the unassigned buildings, and at the reception you can request the building of an additional floor. As the floors now serve as the concept limit, the allowed number of floors in an area tells how many concepts you can have. This also means that the first office you rent at the City Hall has been removed. As this also seemed it was a too hard to find, it seemed better to make accessing all HQ's similar and as such they are now all at the city map. It has also been connected to the flow of the game, such that applications to the HQ comes and goes, negotiation and renegotiating is possible, as well as swapping managers, and promoting staff from the stores to the HQ.
The only thing left, is to make optimism changes of your managers, based off the events in your corporation, such that you actively need to manage the personnel at your HQ.
The bug list
This week also made us aware of some new bugs. The loan system is relatively new, and we know there are somme issues with games having been created at a time of the old system, and is played in the new one. However this concealed another issue, doubling loans each time a store is loaded, making the game contain more loans than the 3 there are showed, eventually requiring an insane amount of repayment funds. These should be taken care of in the update, along with fixing the savegames themselves.
We have also fixed an issue of stores not being sold correctly, and other issues reported to us here at steam.
Please let us know of other bugs you might find, as the period leading up to the release of the next update will focus on playtesting and bug removal.
Happy sales out there :) //Dohlar
Letter for our Retailers
Dear Retailers
We would like to wish you a happy new year, thank you for a great 2019. Since our last update in December we decided to slow it down a bit, as December is always a busy month.
But now we have reached January, and daily life is back to normal, but with a whole new set of ideas to try out, this being one of them. We have always wanted to keep you informed of what is happening at our side of the screens, but we have not been consistent in doing so.
Therefore we will start making a regular newsletter here on Steam to tell you what we are working on, along with other things of interest, and let you know that the game hasn't gone quiet. This will also allow you to give feedback to our ideas, and perhape make them even better even before we are finished making them.
So as always, don't hold back with any comments you might have :)
Since the last update
Although we have had a busy december, we haven't been idle at all.
We have 2 projects we are working on simultaneously.
HQ improvements
Since we released the Corporation Mode, we have been focusing on making this a more stable experience by removing bugs, and unintuitive implementations. As the bug reports went down, it was time to carry on with the improvements. We know that the bugs are still out there, so please, PLEASE let us know of the ones you find :-)
At the release of the Corporation Mode, your HQ only had the bare necesseties for playing the game. As we want this to be a more focal part of running your corporation, we wanted to improve this area.
The main floor is dedicated for control of the corporation itself, with each of your concepts occupying an entire floor of it's own. This will allow for more control and more possibilities, as these areas gets filled out with content. So hopefully it will make more sense to why you must expand your HQ to allow for more concepts.
The first thing we have started out with, was implementing various corporate managers. So each concept now has space for 3 managers.
An Area Manager, which affect the stores that are run by daily managers. A Sales Manager, which affects your staff, your customers, and new stores. A Marketing Manager, which affects the traffic into your store.
Then the corporation itself will have 2 managers.
A Financial Manager, which affects rents, loans and owned property handling. A Corporation Manager, which affects all of the above mentioned managers.
This should mimic the structure of a larger corporation with a hieracy of leadership.
For aquiring these managers, there will be an interview process like when hiring staff, where you can interview the person for a certain role. You can then appoint an interviewed person for that role, or move one of your other managers. It will also be possible to have one of your staff in your stores to send an application to your HQ. In this way it will be possible to take your rookie employee all the way to the top, to become manager for the entire Corporation.
Each manager has to familiarize themself with your corporation, and with their role before they can use their abilitiesto the fullest. So this erquires you to make a decision. - Hire a person from the outside, who has to spend more time familiarizing. - Take another manager, who only need to learn the new role, but leaves another role unmanned. - Promote one from your store, who might need a replacement, but is very familiar with the ways of the corporation.
All of the will be handled from your manager's office in the ground floor.
To interact with the managers themselves, you will need to go to their office and do your business. That being spend their talent points, offering them a raise, or taking the dreaded talk of letting them go.
All of the above is already implemented into the game.
The next thing to do is to influence their optimism, such that you also need to keep them satisfied, and to implement their actual skills into the game. After that CorpManagers v 1.0 is ready, and the next update will be released.
In our next letter we will tell about our other project, which is the community translator tool, with which you can help improve, or create new translations in the game.
Until next time :-)
Aaand... 0.7.3 is out
Yet another patch has been released, to fix a bunch of bugs.
- The Mininimum storage system, had a minor bug where it could get stuck in a loop.
- Summary screen. It has finally been remade and works properly again.
- Adding categories to concept had a bug where it didn't affect already existing stores. This should be fixed, such that all stores in a concept always carries the most recent articles.
- The box containing articles if the storage is full had turned invisible. Now it is possible to see it again.
- Customers will wait longer for a sale if staff are heading towards them.
- Sellers in general have a better chance of making a positive sale to customers
- Resolution changes now requires a confirmation, as many of you have had problems with reverting to the original resolution
- Buying / Renting a lot now has a new screen, as many of you were confused on what the daily payments contained.
Thank you for all of your reports. We are following the forum closely, and try to resolve all issues you find. So don't hesitate to keep them coming. Our focus is currently on making regular patches at shorter intervals to remove bugs. and to make the corporation mode more user friendly.
