Thanks for the feedback. The major change to update v1.06 is the addition of China. In the real movie world China has over the last few years grown rapidly to become one of the largest sources of box office for Hollywood movie studios. Top films frequently earn over $100 million – however you cannot just release a film in China – you have to get their approval.
In v1.07 you gain the ability to edit the game's start data for the talent (Scriptwriters, Directors, Composers etc.) that appear in the game.
Now on to the details of the updates...
China
On the International Panel for a film you'll see in the bottom left hand corner a new panel with two buttons on. Submit is used to submit your film to China for release. The China button displays a panel showing what's going on at the Chinese box office for the Movie Studio Boss studios – including how your submission is proceeding and the box office (note the box office figures from China are added into the international figures that appear on the other screens in the game).
Submitting a film will cost you $25 million dollars (this covers all aspects of getting the film ready for release in China) however there is no guarantee that the film will be accepted. If rejected your money is lost however if you release the right sort of film the rewards are huge and China may turn out to be the biggest single market for your film.
Every four weeks China will look at the films that have been submitted and decide which one to take. They may decide to not take any! Films most likely to be accepted are high quality, big budget productions with plenty of action. Having great special effects helps. So don't try and get your Z quality films released. Also don't leave it too late to submit your film. China won't want films that have already been out for several months.
Should your film be accepted it will automatically be released 4 weeks later and you'll see the box office figures start to appear. The film will remain on release for around 3 months.
You can also access the China panel from the updated Production Slate screen introduced in version 1.05. Just press the China button.
Film Info Panel
On the Coming Soon panel if you right click a film the new film information panel will appear on the right, showing information about that movie. It works just the same as the personnel/actors information panel – moving the mouse over the films on the Coming Soon panel will update the film info panel.
This allows you to see, for example, if your big action film is going to be released against other big action movies which could affect box office.
Other
Reduced the number of extras needed for certain genres of animated films.
Edit Talent
On the start screen if you press the Settings button you will now see an Edit tab on the panel. This gives you two options – the first Create Talent File – press this to generate a talent file which holds all the talent in the game and their attributes. You will be asked to name the talent file for example MyGameData. Note it will be saved as MyGameData.talent in your game folder.
Next step is to press the Edit Talent File button. You then get to select the talent file you wish to edit. It will be loaded in and you then can select the type of talent you wish to edit. For example if you want to put yourself in the game as an Actor press the Actors button and a screen containing the Actors and their attributes will appear. Click on their name to edit it. Left click on any of the attributes to increase them or right click to decrease them. Note salary is automatically calculated by the attributes you set for the person. Press Save to save your update and Save & Close when you've finished. Note don't make everyone brilliant (and therefore expensive) or everyone useless otherwise the game balance will break and studios will find themselves unable to function profitably.
When finished editing your talent file press Save & Exit. To use this talent file when starting a new game on the Company Details panel do not start the game by pressing Start Career but select the Use Talent File to Play button. You will then be able to select which talent file to start your game with.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Version 1.05 - Production Sheet and Reports!
Thanks for all the feedback. v1.05 is now out of beta and available to players of the game. Here are the details of the update...
Update v1.05 Update 1.05 brings an alternative – stats based - way to run your movie studio. You can still play Movie Studio Boss The Sequel the old way by clicking on buildings but this new way focuses on having the information you need to run your studio on screen all the time.
To display the new screen, called the Production Sheet, click on the Movie Slate button (the stack of film cans top left of the screen) or press P. You can now – if you wish - play the game from this one screen!
The Production Sheet The top of the Production Sheet shows you your money, the number of your films in production and on the far right the date.
The body of the screen shows you your films and what information you see will depend on the production phase the film is in plus if you click on the information for that film what happens next depends again on the exact status of the film. You can use this screen as the base to play the whole game from!
You can start making a film by pressing the New Film button at the top. The new film panel appears and you can set how you are going to make the film in the usual way.
So your new film is added to the Production Sheet listing with the phase of Development. The status column shows you need a scriptwriter and a director. So if you click on the status column the game will open up the scriptwriter screen for you to hire a scriptwriter. Once you've hired a scriptwriter the status column will change to show you now just need a director. Click on the status again and the hire director screen will appear! Once you've hired your director if you click on Status you can see how the script is progressing and press the Greenlight button when you want to move the film into pre-production!
Note: clicking on the film's title brings up the credits screen.
You can find out more about the film's content by pressing the Content button or more information by pressing the Info button. Press the Status button to go back to seeing the film's status.
For a film in Pre-production the status screen works in the same way. Every time you click, a screen needing your attention will appear until you've hired all your talent and made all the decisions you need to make for this phase. You can then start filming the motion picture.
Should a problem occur during filming you can click on the Status and the production issue panel will appear for you to deal with the issue.
Once filming ends the phase will change to Post-production and you can now click on the status column to hire the talent needed to finish the film. Each week you will then be told the progress and can click on the Status column to move the film into the Release phase.
For a film on the Release phase you are shown for the US market the film's awareness and the currently set release plan. Click on the US part to display the marketing screen where you can set what you want to happen. You are also shown the release information for the International and home retail (DVD/Blu-ray) markets.
Once a film is launched you'll see how much money that market brought in last week (LW) and cumulative.
As you play you might end up with handling 100s of films. The filter section allows you to show just the films you are interested in.
Reports Information is vital when running your studio so select which report you want to see and they will appear to the right of the Production sheet. You have a choice of 10 reports. Including:
Studio Ranking – how well you are doing against the competition.
Studio Film Development – shows for each studio how many films they have in each production phase.
Film Overall Summary – for each film see how much it cost to make, their income, how profitable they are and how many awards they've won.
Box Office Summary – see which films have taken the most money.
Opening – see the opening week's figures for films.
Last Week's Box Office – see how films did last week.
Financial Position – see how you are doing financially.
US Figures – see the US figures for your films.
International Figures – see the International figures for your films.
DVD / Blu-ray Figures – see the DVD/Blu-ray figures for your films.
How many reports you can see on screen depends on the width of your screen resolution. The wider your screen resolution the more reports that can be shown. For example really large screens (1920 x 1080) can show 9 reports!
To close a report either click on the report's OK button or press the button you used to display the report.
Panels You can display the Licensing, Awards and News panels without leaving the Production Sheet by clicking the buttons here.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Update 1.04
Thanks again for all the suggestions, the first update of 2016 adds the Coming Soon panel along with an adjustment to the budget levels for category A films. The level now starts at $70 million.
Coming Soon Panel On the three Marketing Plan screens (US, International and DVD) there is now a Coming Soon button (to the right of Current Market Awareness). This displays the new Coming Soon panel where you can see what films are coming out from the competition. You might want to view this before deciding on your release date - for example to avoid your big blockbuster clashing with a category A film. The competitions films are added to the Coming Soon panel once they are definitely ready for release. Where a release date is unknown a ? printed.
Thanks again for all the great feedback on the Community Hub!
Update - October 21st!
Thanks again for all the feedback and suggestions. This update introduces two new features.
SPEC SCRIPTS - Script Submissions
Like Hollywood Studios your studio will get sent scripts - by reputable agents of course. Each week new spec scripts may arrive and if any do it will be announced in the News. So when you decide to make a new movie (New Film button) a new option is now available – Spec Scripts.
Select this and you will see the scripts that have been sent to you. You'll be shown the sort of film it is, it's setting and the quality level needed to fund the film. If you like the look of one just select it - you'll then see the script's content (e.g. how much action/comedy etc. it contains) and have the opportunity to revise it before signing it.
You'll have to pay $150,000 but you'll get a script almost complete.
You'll still have to sign a scriptwriter to give it a final polish and oversee any re-writes plus a director of course but it will fast track this phase of production as the bulk of the screenplay has already been written.
Remember to change the name of the film from the film's subject to one that means something to you.
By the way the agents will also be sending these scripts to the other studios so you might find that a script that you saw last week is no longer available.
MARKETING PLAN
You can still use the current marketing system but now you can plan out the marketing in advance of the film's release. You can do this once a film is ready to release – after post production is complete which means you've got the marketing material to really start promoting the film.
On the screen for US, International and DVD Income there's now a Marketing Plan option. Select this to open a new screen where you can set the release date, release details and how you want to spread the marketing budget.
To setup the marketing budget...
First select the Approx. Projected Spend box and enter a figure (probably many millions of dollars).
Adjust if you want (by typing in) the number of weeks before launch you want your campaign to run.
Then adjust if you want the number of weeks post launch you want to support your film for.
Then using the sliders adjust the projected spend for the four phases...
Weeks leading up to launch (Pre Release) - represented by the space before the first marker on the top slider bar
Week before release - space between the marker on the first slider bar and the marker on the second slider bar
Week Released (week of launch) - space between the marker on the second slider bar and the marker on the third slider bar
Weeks post launch (post release) - space between the marker on the third slider bar and the end of the slider bar
Important: once you are happy activate your marketing plan by clicking the Change button at the top.
Note: You will be alerted by an icon message (bottom left of the screen) just before a film is actually released. This give you the opportunity to revise any plan if your original plan has not achieved your goal.
Thanks again for your feedback.
Trading Cards are now available!
You can now earn trading cards as you play Movie Studio Boss: The Sequel!
Trading Cards will be added to your inventory as you play, offering opportunities to get emoticons, profile backgrounds and even craft badges!
Update 1.01 Now available!
First I'd like to thank the community for their feedback/suggestions. Here's what's in our first update...
- 50 years play. After 10 years of play you can continue on for another 40 years giving 50 years of play.
- Rights/Licensing - made the rights/licensing screen/system clearer. Now when you click on something a panel will appear confirming what the deal is and what it is for.
- Save games - Currently when you leave the main game by clicking on the settings icon and then pressing main game or exit game the profile you are playing with is updated with your current progress. When you restart playing the game you continue where you left off. With the update this has not changed however you now have another option - to store your current progress away. On the settings icon you now have the option Save Progress. You can then save a file (up to 30) containing the game's progress as at that point. To use this saved file when you start a game each profile now has a Load Game button. Select that to load in your saved game. Loading in a saved game will overwrite the Profile you selected.
- Sort by Genre now available on hire Actors, Actresses, Scriptwriters, Directors, Editors, DofP and Composers screens. This should save you time when trying to find the right person for the job.
- News stories - added a new story which covers when an actor's skills have changed.
- Warn on confirmer of strong Personality - to further warn you - when you are hiring talent (such as Actors, Actresses, Scriptwriters, Directors, DofPs) - of people that can be difficult/demanding to work with.
- Show News at end of turn for your Studio - The News Screen will now appear at the end of each turn. A filter is available on the screen that can turn this option off. Also you can select whether only stories that relate to your company are added to the news.
- Automatically show Production Issues - The Production issues screen will appear at the end of the week if any of your films has problems. There is a filter that can switch this off.
- Negotiating with Actors - tweaked negotiations code to make it easier to hire actors/actresses.
- Hiring Extras - you can now type in the number of extras you want.
- Sequel - We now list and highlight the Actors, Directors, DofPs, Composers and Screenwriters that worked on the previous version.
- Select number of Opposing Studios - at the start of a game you can now reduce the number of Studios you are up against. This can make the game less daunting and easier to play for those new to the game.
- Show A Person's History on Hover - if you right click on a person on a hire screen a panel will appear showing their history. The panel will stay and as you move over the other people in the list the new panel will get updated. This works for Actors, Actresses, Scriptwriters, Directors, Editors, DofP, Composers.
Note: your old Profile should load and get updated to run in the new v1.01 version.
