After quite some time we finally are able to present Build EA9. It contains a lot of preparation work for the Multiplayer mode, among it the Freegame start position modification which will be used to start multiplayer games as well. Here's the details:
Finally implemented a bunch of achievements. More to come!
Achievements are also displayed with jingle and screen ingame (additionally to the usual Steam notification)
Starting a free game now allows for choosing the starting position on the world map instead of a mere region selection
The company logo is now displayed on owned fields in the region view window (world map)
Reworked the colors of the oilfield dots on the region view window
Depth of Field is now deactivateable
The laptop (newsletter) now only closes with the "X" on the top right corner to prevent "clicking it away"
Removing obstacles now shows an "under construction" icon
Improved position of the tooltip (mousepointer covered the first letters)
Added Keys for selecting the gamespeed directly (default at 0,1,2 on the main keyboard)
Replaced Hector image in event message window that was too wide
Fixed regionally restricted events that were able to appear on every field worldwide
Fixed a bug preventing to switch from worldmap to oilfield
Most probably fixed not being able to save anymore. At least I couldn't reproduce it any longer
Reworked daily logistics calculation to respect logistics event modifiers
Fixed bank warnings not respecting cost modifiers
Fixed contract ranges for new contracts
Fixed enterprise logo being saved per field (and allowing to be different for each of them)
Fixed some typos and missing translations
Work now continues on the multiplayer mode, which I expect to have a first "actual gameplay" version this week. I already have a lobby plus chat in place, also including firewall port opening using UPnP. I do NOT want you guys to require an internet connection to play a LAN game, and the internet mode will be "old school", so no central repeaters that might be turned off sometime in the future. IF I get multiplayer to work, I'll do it forever, not for as long as some third party decides to keep the servers up.
There are some known issues with the current build:
The feature "oilfields have limited reserve" doesn't work, you can extract oil indefnitely
The "stats" values (total oil extracted, total contracts fulfilled) don't get saved on steam, for reasons unknown. I'm on it, but didn't want to further delay the update for this. The value is still tracked correctly for a single game session, so the "lower" achievements should be doable, but getting 100k contracts fulfilled in a single session (no loading allowed ;)) WILL be a challenge :)
Enterprise trade accounts sometimes seems to show wrong values or none at all
The stats issue particularily bugs me, because it really should work exactly like it is now. I'm investigating, but I think you'll enjoy achievement hunting as it is! Have fun, and as always, if you have any concern, any question, any feature you would like to see implemented, improved or changed, PLEASE let me know, I'm happy to talk to you and even implement whatever it is you desire - provided it makes sense ;)! And don't forget to give us your thumbs up if you enjoy what you play :-)
Edit: Hotfix 2320 (check Settings window, the last four digits) is now online:
Fixed Save games cannot be loaded any more
Fixed Crash with the accident Achievements
Sorry for the inconvenience caused by these bugs. Should there any other problems, please don't hesitate to let me know right away, bugs preventing you to enjoy gameplay have the highest priority possible!
Build EA8
Hello everybody! We finally made it to compile another stable build of Oil Enterprise, with a lot of new stuff for you to enjoy and check out. Here it goes
Special Events have been added that have a chance of 1% per day to occur. They can, among others, be fracking for your region, a tsunami doing damage or a cattle herd running amok on your field
There are special temporary modifiers now that can influence production on an oil field for a time
Obstacles on the oilfield can now be removed, with time and effort
Difficulty and a description are now displayed in the start scenario screen
Clicking "oilfield" on the top left now opens the oilfield overview if there is more than one oilfield
Open last contract window when closing view contract and when clicking the contracts mainmenu button
Changed Lighting engine to get AntiAliasing to actually work as intended. Colors should be more intense now, too
OIlfield yield has been rebalanced to provide a more fluid and interesting gameplay
Enabled changing the name of the oil field as well as the enterprise
Added a tooltip "ends at" at the duration column of active contracts
Redesigned the "Brain" window, which was the last one of an "ancient" design
Efficiency map is now visible in the main window as well and can be turned off in the settings if desired
Load game and start scenario now work by doubleclicking an entry
Show region licensing cost in the region overview window
Fixed some Problems with the settings screen
Ensured all windows are closed when showing the gameover screen
Fixed some texting problems
(Mostly) fixed Minimap icons disappearing
Fixed Building tooltips staying in place when switching to another oilfield or to the HQ
Changed forum link to the official forums at http://forum.industry-games.com
Fixed several problems when buying another region licence
Account balance on the world map now updates correctly when spending money there in Pause mode
Prevented accepting contracts that should already have begun
Buildings sometimes changed the place because of a sanity check. Fixed placement logic and turned off sanity check for now.
Buildings in the HQ can now be built correctly
Deleting savegames now also deletes local copies
There was one particularily nasty problem where after some time playing "end game" in the pause menu or on the gameover screen doesn't take you back to the main menu, but simply hangs the game. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything wrong in my code, and I'm afraid it is a problem of the Unity Engine in use. I have upgraded to the very latest minor upgrade there is, hoping that the problem is solved there. But I'm already in the process of doing the major version upgrade (to Unity 5.1), so if this last upgrade did not fix the problem, the next one certainly will.
Anyways, why upgrade to another Unity Version at all? We have heard your feedback, and some asked for opponents to play against. Well, there is an idea that it would be great fun for Oil Enterprise to have multiplayer, without any central server, just peer2peer or "LAN". We think that this would be a wondrous addition, along with sabotaging the others and a stock market, enabling hostile takeovers. And of course, after human opponents are in place, it is just one step further to computer-controlled ones, improving the single player experience as well.
BUT: No promises yet, I still have to look into all the stuff required, and I can't tell if Multiplayer is doable at all! Stay tuned, I'll keep you updated, I will definitely know more by the end of the week!
Build EA7
Greetings esteemed CEOs! We have put a great deal of work in listening to your concerns and updating our game "big time", so try it and enjoy it!
The minimap now displays the efficiency ratings of the oilfield when needed (for 5 seconds after a test drilling is done, and while building placement is active)
Contracts are now sortable
Added 6 new scenarios, 3 easy (Talk is not enough, Dreaming of new oil, Power center), 2 medium (Family bonds, Ice age), one hard (Capitalist)
Added 5 new HQ buildings (2x construction time, 2x construction cost, 1x market opinion)
Regions now give different boni and mali
Region window on the world map reworked to display region differences
The unit detail screen now displays tooltips with detailed information how a specific value is calculated
Game speeds (normal and fast) are now configurable in the settings, to make fast go
really* fast
Included settings for Fullscreen AA, VSync and frame limiting
Rebalancing of buildings for correct cost per capacity and TCO24 progression
Improved contract help texts
Fixed steam cloud saves, they are now operational as intended
Oilfields now can only have one "big" obstacle at the most
Expand oilfield/headquarter should now have correct filters
Fixed Settings screen in the main menu, now fully operational
Fixed shifted minimap, it should now always be in the correct place
Fixed contract prices, they should now be in the range of 60% to 110% (depending on contract level) of the oil price current when the contract was created
Fixed scenario state screen for games without any goals
Fixed headquarter quality setting problems
Fixed automatic region licence grant for starting region
Added 5 new (small) obstacles
The random generator for contracts now ensures that there is always at least one contract of every level available
Fixed some wrong user interface overlays
Fixed a bug of maintenance, autorepair should now work as intended
Another big step towards a stable and fun version of the game!
Coming up next:
Extended and reworked tutorial to give you a better start (fetched my wife as guinea pig ;))
(a lot) more Special Events with a visually improved message box
Still can't wait to hear from you ;).
Build EA6
Hello again fellow CEOs! We have worked hard and long hours to get you something sweet, and here it is! Highlights of this build are highly improved balancing, headquarter bonus buildings and the ingame help. In details:
Implemented a comprehensive ingame help and filled it with lots of content. It can be accessed from every window, jumping to the right topic, or via "help key", currently defaulting to "X"
Headquarters can now be extended with mighty huge bonus buildings that apply to all active oil fields
Added the first batch of 10 bonus buildings, each can be built only once
When viewing building details, Hektor's hat now bears the according icon, and the first line "type" was added to inform about the purpose. Also, the help key (top right "lightbulb") will lead to the according help page explaining the building
Rebalancing: Maintenance and Safety productions have been doubled
Rebalancing: Upkeep has been reduced for all buildings, several construction prices have been changed (pumps, refinery)
Rebalancing: Maintenance now not only stops building decay, if surplus maintenance is available, buildings are constantly repaired. See help for the details!
Toggle speed (default: Spacebar) now also works when normal windows are open
Market-Opinion prerequisites have been fixed to align with market opinion display at the top
Fixed building details window staying open after dismantling a building
Fixed tooltip display issue on available contracts
Removed variable oil field yield, it now stays fixed over its lifetime (before: curve)
Fixed display issues in the message log (top right)
Building-mouseover now correctly changes the cursor to the pointy hand
Added tooltips for the main menu entries
With all these changes, we are closing in fast to a stable state of the game that is worth another go. So if you didn't enjoy your time playing so far, be it because of an "abysmal" tutorial or because of stuff going on that wasn't explained properly, now is the time to dig into the ingame help and give it another try. I tried to touch every topic asked in the past days since early access launch, but I'm sure there will be more questions to come, so please, as always, ask away!
Known Problems
Key Setup (Settings screen) and the help window don't work in Main menu (only in the game)
Coming up next:
Minor window adaptions where necessary ("Brain" Button)
(a lot) more Special Events with a visually improved message box
Can't wait to hear from you!
Build EA5
We seem to be slowing down a bit, as the "easy + quickly done" stuff gets less and less, and the more comprehensive features, like the Headquarters, ingame help and special events, take up more time. Anyways, enjoy your weekend with Oil Enterprise and the following improvements
Added UI sound effects
Activated ingame music
Added Scenario scoring window, allowing you to check what exactly gets you points for the specific scenario
Keys for controlling Oil Enterprise are now configurable. Mind that this list will be extended with new keys as they are needed
You can now change speed with Space if there are no windows currently open. Changeable in the new Keyboard config
Market opinion now only sinks if there are no signed contracts
Repaired broken market opinion
Reworked oil price calculation algorithm. There are now mechanics to keep the price from falling too far on easy scenarios, and rising too high on harder scenarios.
Savegame screen now works as intended
And, as a little sneak peek to the upcoming headquarter buildings, here are some of them.
Enjoy, and as always, feel free to post any bugs, concerns, wishes and suggestions to our forums, thank you!
P.S.: Ronny killed the Headquarter scene - sorry for that :(. Next update will fix this, but as there was nothing there yet anyways, I hope you can live with "just green" for a littlebit.
CEOs assemble...
for tonights Oil Enterprise update. We finally got around to adding more scenarios, and more stuff:
Added 4 more scenarios. Careful, they are a bit harder than the ones so far
Modified some scenarios for easier playability
Display prospecting cost in the choice dialog (Region window)
Windows can now be dragged around (header bar) and remember where they were. Doubleclick on the headerbar resets the position
Reduced no-maintenance state drop of buildings from "100 to zero in 6 months" to 2 years, cutting back on repair cost and necessity
Updated free game starting conditions to NOT include any buildings
Fixed missing button captions on the contract details screen
Fixed misbehaviour of build mode, when not canceled via button but via clicking on a menu button, artifacts remained on screen
Fixed Performance drops in headquarters screen and added a message informing about "not being ready yet"
Fixed cogwheel icon click
Updated selection boxes with more readable colors
Updated Tab highlighting colors
Fixed serious bug where savegames got corrupted when saving after an Event (Increased / Reduced deposit size) happened
There are some known probles at the moment, namely:
Market opinion gets corrupted rather quickly, displaying no bar indicator and a question mark as value
Market price development doesn't work as intended as of yet, it should be rather confined within 40 and 120 Credits per Barrel, and move around rather realistically. It doesn't.
Save/Load Screen doesn't display properly and scrolling doesn't work, either
Coming up next: We went over our plans for the headquarters today, and weren't quite satisfied with it. Original plan was to have HQ as a rather static "extendable building" with a level of 1 to 7, limiting the number of region licences and oil fields one can control. Instead, we're now going to use the oil field building mechanic for the HQ as well, and make you build "bonus buildings" there, to increase building capacities throughout your company. Moreover, we want to have a single (visually unique) building for every region licence you buy. Along with a limited size of the space you can build on, this should be more interesting than "spend money, get access".
While Ronny designs those new buildings, I'll get into more bugfixing as well as getting the help system and scoring system in place. So stay tuned, there are no plans to slow down now :).
Enjoy, and as always, feel free to post any bugs, concerns, wishes and suggestions to our forums, thank you!
Build EA3
Good evening CEOs!
Welcome to the Update summary of EA3. Without further ado:
Buildings now visually change when "in construction", when an accident happened or when they are repaired
Active contracts now show which Region they are assigned to
Introduced "repeat last step" for the tutorial (top right corner)
A message window is displayed the first time the main menu is entered whenever there was an update
Deactivated some Laptop newsletters that didn't really make sense
Free game reactivated and implemented (with fixed visuals)
Reworked contract details window
Fixed Dialogue-Window Close-Button (top right corner X)
Fixed Worldmap UI, on all resolutions this time!
Fixed bug where clicking "no" on "Do you really want to cancel this contract" didn't have the desired effect
Sorry, we didn't get around to adding new scenarios today, but we'll try again tomorrow! Enjoy, and as always, feel free to post any bugs, concerns, wishes and suggestions to our forums, thank you!
Our Plans for tomorrow (no promises :)):
More Scenarios
Build EA2
Greetings fellow CEOs!
As promised, we'll continue to issue Builds in rather quick succession, so stay tuned, Oil Enterprise is bound to improve with huge paces :). Here's the changes for today:
Right mouse button now closes the active window (just like the Escape key)
Added status icons for inactive buildings
Added keyboard controls for moving and rotating the oilfield camera (WASD/Cursors for movement, QE for rotation)
Fixed stopper bug when failing a contract (time is now stopped, also the Event window is closable by RMB/Escape)
Fixed worldmap bottom-left UI
Reworked region window, added more information like expected and actual yield, extracted amount and so on
Fixed some texting issues
Deactivated accidents and breakdowns in the tutorial
Fixed missing contract list translation texts
Contracts are now from 100 Brl/Day and in 50-Barrel-Steps instead of 200
Reworked general bottomleft UI to be "less jumpy"
Changed oilfield tooltip colors for better readability
Fixed several typos and wrong texts (like containing "tons" instead of "barrel")
Fixed synchronization issues of the production overview with the main user interface
Enjoy, and as always, feel free to post any bugs, concerns, wishes and suggestions to our forums, thank you!
Our Plans for tomorrow (no promises :)):
Free Game
More Scenarios
P.S.: Sorry, just saw that there is still a problem with the Worldmap bottom left UI in certain resolutions. Will fix it with tomorrows patch.
Build EA1
Hello folks!
As promised, we are releasing our latest build as of right now. We plan on having a rather high update frequency (about every other day, next build is planned for Monday) until the game is stabilized in a way that it is enjoyable for you folks, this will mean adding more scenarios for you to enjoy, ironing out some rough edges we have been made aware of and so on. Anyways, as for the release today, here is the summary:
Reworked scenario choice
Updated Laptop graphics
Fixed some texting issues
Deactivated accidents and breakdowns in the tutorial
Fixed several tutorial issues
Fixed control area (bottom left) for worldmap and headquarters
Added 5 new scenarios and fixed the first one (is now on position 5)
Fixed worldmap oilfield window, which makes it possible to buy more oilfields and new region licences
Turned off clouds
Turned off SSAO
Turned off Free Game button, as it linked to a seriously outdated version of it
I turned of SSAO for the time being because it didn't add all too much quality, but made a lot of problems, as can be seen in one of the screenshots around here.
Please, if you have anything you want to tell us, any suggestion, any annoyance, anything you dislike about the game or want improved, don't hesitate and tell us! We went for early access to get your feedback, and we feel that with this build we addressed at least part of your concerns, but I'm sure there is plenty more, so go ahead and hit us with it! :)
As for our plans, after stabilizing we want to add some more features, but we'd like to have your input on those. I'll be happy to discuss them as soon as we enter that phase, but you are of course free to bring up your own suggestions!
