Update Preview - What is coming next to Mall Craze?
Hello everyone!
It's now been over a month since the last update, and I thought it would be a good idea to take a quick look at what's coming next to Mall Craze!
The previous updates (0.1.1 - 0.1.4) were all focused mainly on bringing the management into the game, but they never fully did. They served mostly as a foudation to the management, hence their names (Management Foundations). There won't be any update 0.1.5, because over the last couple of weeks, I've been working on the update 0.2.0, which will be the first update that will truly introduce the management and economy into the game!
Small preview #1 - Finances tab, UI improvements
Small preview #2 - Build cost tooltip, delete particles
This is only a fraction of what's coming next. Overall, the 0.2.0 will be roughly 3 - 4x the size of the regular 0.1.X update. Besides these 2 small previews, there are many more finance-oriented features and improvements coming (some of which you can also see in the first picture), customer AI improvements, UI improvements, and more.
When is 0.2.0 coming? 👀
The other reason for this preview is that I don't currently have a release date for this first major update. That being said, I'm already in the second half of this development period, and I'm aiming at releasing it this month.
Until then, Thank You all for your support, and I'll see you in the next chapter of Mall Craze Early Access! - Milan, developer
Update 0.1.4 - Customers, Escalators, and Crash Reporter
Hello everyone! 👋
Today I bring U another batch of updates and changes. Are U ready? Let's dive into it!
Customers
Now, why the weird talk and the use of "U"? If you've played Mall Craze, the you're probably pretty familiar with this keybinding. So far, if you wanted to have customers in your mall, you had no other option but to spawn them by constantly pressing the U key. This was only a temporal solution (and not a particularly great one), which at least allowed you to bring some life into the mall. Not anymore!
Customers are now arriving and leaving on their own!
Customer Behavior
And that is not the only improvement to customers. The behavior has also been updated, and customers now better understand your mall. Up until now, their movement wasn't very sophisticated, and even though it made the mall more occupied, there weren't many people in the actual shops. (the movement was literally random, making the chance that they will pick a spot inside a shop small).
Customers now spend more time inside shops, and they're also actually looking at the products. The new implementation still has a lot of room for improvement, but the overall flow is now more natural.
OLD behavior - customers roaming randomly:
NEW behavior - customers looking at products:
Improved character navigation
By design, there aren't currently any collisions enabled for objects during building. This allows for huge possibilities of object combinations and creative arrangements, but also puts a lot of responsibility on the player. I've adjusted the navigation mesh properties to make sure that even tight passages and areas are more likely to be reachable. I then improved collisions for some objects to decrease the occurance of customers stepping on them (mainly benches, fountains, and other short objects).
Customer are still happy to sometimes get stuck inside objects and on the grass, so they're currently not being saved. Once these issues are dealt with and once there is an economy, saving of customers will work as expected.
Escalators
If you would think of a list of objects that represent malls better than other, escalators would probably be pretty high up on that list. Because escalators are closely related to pathfinding and navigation, I've decided to take a closer look at them. There are now 2 escalator variants in the game - 1 floor and 2 floor. Both can be customized as any other object in the game, and you can also change their direction.
(there is a small shadow and reflection flickering that is introduced with TSR and Lumen reflections - I will look at it more in the future)
Crash Reporter
Hopefully, this update marks the beginning of more crash fixes. I've written a small teaser in the previous update and today, the Crash Reporter is now in the game! Well, technically, it's not IN the game, rather it is AFTER the game. Crash Reporter should now appear whenever Mall Craze crashes. The sending of the report is not automatic, and it still requires you to press the "Send to Mall Craze Developer" button. No more emailing of the crash files is needed :) You can still look at the reports yourself by clicking at the link in the reporter.
Thank You All for your support, and I will see you in the next update! - Milan, developer
Full Patch Notes
Additions & Improvements
Customers are now arriving and leaving on their own.
Customer behavior improved: customers are now actually looking at products.
Customer behavior improved: customers now spend more time inside shops.
Navigation mesh improved, allowing customers to better navigate in tight areas.
Collisions for navigation improved for these objects: (palm tree, grass, 2 flowers, 2 fountains, 2 pavement sides, 2 benches, 3 mannequin products).
Crash Reporter Added.
Small Changes
"U" keybind to manually spawn customers removed.
Static road with sidewalks added into the map.
Starting camera position adjusted to show road.
Directional indirect lighting slightly adjusted.
Customers now also have opacity animation when arriving and leaving.
Tutorial UI changes: Customers text updated.
Tutorial UI changes: Buttons that are meant to be static are now static (no hover or sounds);
80's Dream: map slightly updated to make room for road.
Sunny Skies: map updated to connect mall with the road.
Bug Fixes
Fixed: Game crashes when loading large save files (multiple-floor malls covering almost the entire map).
Fixed: When moving object with Free Build, the next move operation has Free Build ON as well.
Fixed: Moving objects down from upper floor makes them invisible.
Fixed: Ground floor walls are sometimes not selectable after game load.
Update 0.1.3 - Management Foundations #3
Hello everyone!
It is time for another Management Foundations update! And this time, it is all about the time! Quite literally.
Time & Dynamic Time of Day
Before this update, there was no time passing by in the game. As simple as it is, time is an important part of the whole management side of game. Without it, it would be impossible to generate monthly reports or pay your staff salaries on a consistent schedule. That's why I've decided to implement it into the game now, before I further develop other areas of the management.
With time now passing by, the natural addition to that would be to visually represent this. It was already possible to manually change the sun position and other environment settings, and now, there is a new Dynamic Time of Day option, which can be turned on or off in the graphical settings. To keep things simple, each in-game month is represented by one day cycle.
Improved Tutorial structuring
To improve the Tutorial, I've made some structural changes. The overall presentation hasn't changed yet, but no longer is it a long list of pages, where you had to guess if Material Designer was explained on the page 10 or 17.
The window is now categorized into menus and submenus, which are much easier to navigate, and it's easier to find a piece of information that you're looking for.
Still, it is not a perfect solution, but there was a need for some change.
Coming up next time
A significant portion of the work on this update was spent an a thing that isn't actually in there - better crash reporting system.
The current manual "email a file found in a hard-to-reach folder" way of reporting crashes is only temporary, and far from being a good long-term solution. The new system is ready for the most part, but there are still some things that need a bit of work. Once the new system is in place, it will be much easier to send the crash report, and I will be able to truly tackle the crashes.
Until then, Thank You All for your support, and I will see you in the next update! - Milan, developer
Full Patch Notes
Additions & Improvements
Time added into the game.
Dynamic Time of Day added.
Improved Tutorial structuring - new menus and submenus.
Lumen Global Illumination visuals slightly improved.
Small Changes
Add Area and Remove Area now has emissive materials to be better visible at night.
"Low" option for Shadows added.
Text component explanation added into Tutorial.
Staff hiring and firing explanation added into Tutorial.
Bug Fixes
Fixed: Keyboard camera rotation not properly working on QWERTY layout (Z key)
Fixed: Settings window tab buttons not visually toggling
Update 0.1.2 - Management Foundations #2
Hello everyone!
The second piece to the Management Foundations puzzle is here! This update builds upon the previous one.
I didn't mention it in the last update, but you may've noticed that the Shop Dashboard UI already had 2 tabs - the Dashboard itself, and a placeholder Staff tab mentioning that cashiers are coming in update 0.1.2.
And they are!
Hire Cashiers
The biggest new addition to the game are cashiers that you can now hire (and fire). Once the economy is added into the game (we're getting closer), more stats and attributes will be added to cashiers as well.
A lot of invisible work has been done in the background. Objects (currently cashier tables) can now have multiple "Activity Slots", that in the future will be used for stuff like people sitting on benches, waiting in queues, or customers interacting with products.
Significant Drag Build Performance Optimizations
A lot of reports mentioned poor drag build performance, where things would start to lag a lot once you wanted to build a larger area. This issue was present for everyone, regardless of computer performance (myself included). The exact numbers will vary for everyone, but on my PC, I was able to achieve a 16x decrease when making adjustments to the build area of roughly 50x50 (1 seconds -> 0.06 seconds)
Camera Rotation Keybinds
Besides Middle Mouse Button, it is now also possible to rotate the camera with QEYX buttons (QE for side to side, YX for up and down). These controls can become useful when playing with touchpad.
Full Patch Notes
Additions & Improvements
Cashiers can now be hired and fired.
Staff Info & Staff Hire tabs added into Shop Dashboard Window.
Mall Management Dashboard: overall staff number added.
Significant grid build performance optimizations.
Camera rotation keybindings added to QEYX.
Small Changes
Cashier Tables can now only be deleted when there are no cashiers behind them.
Graphical settings: changes were made to "Lumen Low" option to decrease flickering.
Bug Fixes
Fixed: Mall Management and Shop Management tab buttons not visually toggling
Until next update, Thank You for your support, and take care! - Milan, developer
Update 0.1.1 - Management Foundations #1
Hello everyone!
The first Management Foundations update is here. Given that this is the very first management update, it serves as a foundation to the foundations.
Mall Management Window
The biggest addition is the Mall Management Window, which at this moment contains 3 new tabs:
Mall Dashboard
Shops Overview
Customers Overview
You can access the window by click on the new circular button in the lower left corner of the screen. At this moment, the dashboard still has a lot of free space for new features, which will be added in future updates.
Shop Management Window
To maintain the same UI design, I also updated the Shop Management Window. It is now possible to rename shops without the need to enter shop construction mode. Edit and Delete Shop buttons were also moved to the Dashboard tab.
Updates 0.1.2 and 0.1.3 will enable additional features from Mall & Shop Management Windows which are now greyed out.
Camera Improvements
To better indicate the current camera mode (normal or flying), I've added a new icon for the toggle button when the camera is in flying mode.
The Customers Overview tab from the Mall Management window makes it possible to follow a single customer.
There were no boundaries for the flying camera, which made it very easy to accidentally fly inside the ground. This has now been improved.
Default Graphical Settings
I've lowered the default graphical settings for Shadows, Global Illumination and Reflections. Some people may have had issues to start up the game, because Lumen and Virtual Shadows were turned on by default. These settings can still be manually turned on and saved in the Settings.
Full Patch Notes
Additions & Improvements
Mall Management window added.
Dashboard tab added into Mall Management window.
Shops Overview tab added into Mall Management window.
Customers Overview tab added into Mall Management window.
Camera can now follow a single customer.
It is now possible to rename your mall.
Shop Management window updated.
You can now rename shops from Shop Dashboard.
Each camera mode now has it's own icon to better indicate the current mode.
Small Changes
Edit & Delete shop buttons moved to Shop Dashboard tab.
Default graphical settings changed (Lumen and Virtual Shadows (High & Screenshot) now turned OFF by default).
Material Designer: entrance hint text changed.
"Construction" building tab in the main UI renamed to "Mall".
Fixed: Being able to fly through ground in flying camera mode.
Early Access Release And The Near Future
Hello everyone!
Yesterday, Mall Craze released into Early Access, and I would like to address your initial feedback.
As a first thing, I would like to thank everyone who gave any kind of feedback, new ideas, and observations here on Steam (forum and reviews), Discord, or email. I'm reading all of it, and I've already reevaluated a couple of things.
Your biggest concern so far has been the Management side of the game, or lack thereof. The game has released as a creative sandbox game. Looking at things now, I should've used a more straightforward name, and call Mall Craze a mall builder game instead, which I will do from now on, until the game has seen some management updates. I will also reflect this change in various places throughout the Steam Page.
Management Updates
Speaking of management updates, this is the main topic that I want to talk about today.
Looking at the original Early Access Roadmap that I released a couple of days ago, you can see that I had Management Foundations planned for Stage 1, Management Refinement planned for Stage 2, and a whole new game mode - Business Mode planned for Stage 3.
After your feedback and inputs, I've decided to put a much bigger emphasis and focus on these things. Today, I've already started to work on the foundations of management features. I'm also moving Management Refinement into Stage 1 and Business Mode into Stage 2.
Management Foundations & Management Refinement
These terms by themselves are pretty vague, so let's define them better here.
By Management Foundations, I mean the first iteration of particular features, namely:
hiring staff
basic economy
sales reports for products, shops and mall as a whole
customers actually arriving and leaving on their own
These things and a couple more will serve as a baseline for future updates.
Management Refinement will then add new features, and build upon the existing ones.
By the time the game is in version 0.2.0, it will be in a state as it probably should've released into Early Access in the first place. Between now and 0.2.0, I will release smaller updates, each introducing a small portion of the features I mentioned above.
The first update with a couple new management features - 0.1.1 - will release at the end of next week.
In the meantime, Thank you very much for your support, and take care! - Milan, developer
PS: Reporting Game Crashes If you experience game crash, sending the crash file would help tremendously with fixing those issues.
Link to crash reporting guide: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1223530/discussions/0/5904838286204458210/
Hotfix 0.1.0.1
Game Crash Reporting
This hotfix introduces changes that make it possible to report game crashes.
If you're experiencing game crashes, you can help me fix them by following the instructions in this forum post.
I'm sorry if you experienced frequent crashes. Fixing these issus is currently my priority.
- Milan, developer
Early Access Roadmap
Hello everyone!
We are almost there! Mall Craze is releasing into Early Access tomorrow! ⏰ But before I press the Release button, I still have one last thing to talk about - the Early Access Roadmap.
Without further ado - here it is, and I will talk about it in more detail below:
As you can see, I've divided the timeline into 4 stages. each having it's own objectives. There is no particular order for implementing things within a single stage, and the exact dates may slightly change during development.
Stage 1
September 2023 - December 2023
The main focus for the rest of 2023 is to continue laying down a solid foundations that the game can then build upon. The theme for the first couple of weeks (1 - 3) will be bug fixing, gathering feedback, and releasing some smaller content patches - things that I will do throughout the whole Early Access.
After this initial period, I will then start adding new things and features into the game. For the Stage 1 it's a new shop type, fountains, escalators, and first management features.
Stage 2
January 2024 - May 2024
This is a continuation of the previous stage - more management features and new shop types. Besides those, I will also start working on a completely new class of vendors - stalls. At this point, the default map environment should see a nice progress over it's current state, and completely new maps will also be in the making.
Stage 3
June 2024 - December 2024
Once again, more of everything, but the main focus for this stage will be to yet again expand the array of shop classes - not to be confused with "shop types", which are different shops within a single class (e.g. Class - normal shops, stalls, restaurants, services; Types of normal shops - clothes, music, sports).
Restaurants (food court) and Services - those are the things that will be coming into the game at this stage.
Stage 4
2025 - ???
Starting with 2025, Stage 4 will be a time of 2 big additions - Movie Theater and Fitness Center. Personally, I'm really looking forward to working on these two! Besides that, more services will be added into the game, and the maps should receive a new traffic update.
Using Early Access Potential
As you can see, the timeline currently doesn't have an end point for 1.0 Release. At this point, I don't want to give a definitive date when Mall Craze will leave Early Access, because it's almost impossible to estimate exactly.
My main goal is to use the potential of Early Access to it's fullest, and together with you, create the best version of Mall Craze that I can!
Let's get into it! We're starting tomorrow!🎮
Until then - Thank you for your support, and take care! - Milan, developer
Price Reveal & Release Times
Hello everyone! September 19 is now so close, that instead of using the date, I can start using the day of the week 🙂.
🚀 Mall Craze is launching on Tuesday! 🚀
Now, the question is: When exactly, and for how much? That's what I will answer today!
Release Times
On the map below, you can see the exact release times for various time zones:
Early Access Price
The initial Early Access Launch Price for Mall Craze is as follows:
$14.99
€14.79
£12.79
All other currencies will be automatically calculated by Steam's regional pricing.
During the first week after launch, the game will also have a launch discount of 10%!
That's it for today's quick announcement! Tuesday is just around the corner - only 3 sleeps left!
Thank you everyone, and take care! - Milan, developer
Approaching Early Access Release Date
Hello everyone!
September 19 is coming closer every day, and today, I would like to talk a bit more about the Early Access itself - why I've decided for this type of release a year ago, and how I plan to use it.
There are 2 main reasons - to give you the ability to play the game during it's development, and to provide additional funding for the game, which would mean that I can continue working on it full time to release frequent updates.
Without beating around the bush - the reason why I'm talking about Early Access, is that I've suggested (and I should probably use the word promised) that the game will contain the Management features by September 19. All throughout August, I was slowly coming to the realization of the fact that that probably won't be the case. I've underestimated the time needed to implement those features to the level of quality that I would find release-worthy.
With that, I'm now facing 3 possible scenarios:
Release the game with Management features that are half broken, half missing.
Continue working on the Management during Early Access and release the game with Building and Customization available.
Delay the Early Access launch (possibly into the Q1 2024).
The decision
Mall Craze will release on September 19, 2023 as a creative sandbox game, with the roadmap to implement Management features during early stages of Early Access.
I will provide a full roadmap later this month, as well as a detailed patch notes for the Early Access version. I will also update the Steam page in the following days to reflect this change.
Now, what are these things that I've been working on? Some of them will be available on launch, and some of the them will be added later.
Main Menu (available on launch day)
The game now has a proper Main Menu that, apart from the usual options, will also include a 'News' section for the latest updates.
Level Selector (available on launch day)
Gone will be the days of only starting on an empty map. You will now be able to start a new game with one of the pre-build malls as well. You can then expand and transform them to your liking.
Product Detail Panel (available on launch day)
This one was quite a grind, but every single product or product table/rack/wall now has all of its products listed inside the Product Detail Panel. With the current implementation, you can see their names and discover some interesting facts about them :)
New Graphical Options (available on launch day)
Depth of Field, Field of View, and more options to dynamically control the environment.
New Objects and Shop Designs (available on launch day)
To give you more options to creatively decorate and stylize your mall. All designed with a modular philosophy in mind, allowing for some interesting combinations.
New Design Picker (available on launch day)
Memorizing if 'Design 4' is a brick or wooden wall wasn't very convenient. Every shop object that can change it's visual design will now have the new Design Picker instead (floor, walls, windows, entrances, and cashier tables).
Product Detail Panel - Finances (to be added during Early Access)
The Product Detail Panel will also have a second tab. This one will contain an overview and details of the sales for the particular product.
Mall Dashboard Window (to be added during Early Access)
Similar to Shop Dashboard - your mall will also have it's dashboard with useful stats and options. Most mall-level management will take place here and inside it's tabs.
New Research Tree (to be added during Early Access)
If you've played the old Demo based on UE4, you may remember that the Research was Product-based. For every single shop, you had roughly 40% of products available and the rest was behind research. That was the case for every single shop, even if you've already build the same shop type before. After some time, it felt more like a chore than anything else.
The new Research Tree is Shop-based, meaning that instead of Products, you'll be researching new Shops and other things from the game like new decorations or utilities.
I do realize that the Management postponement is a bit of a letdown, and I'm sorry for it, but I'm still fully committed to the game.
As I always say at the end of these updates - it is time for me to get back to work! Even with only a little more than two weeks to go, there's still a lot that needs to be done!
Thank you all for your support, and I'll see you later! - Milan, developer
