First step towards an improved system for calculating high scores. Now, whatever money is left in the bank will also give players points, as if it had been invested it on infrastructure. We thought this would be a good way to start addressing the concerns that players have expressed without breaking backwards compatibility too much. In the future, players will also get bonus points for keeping the satisfaction level high throughout the entire game.
Now if players load a game that was saved at midnight in strategic mode (or autosaved) it will be paused when you load it again.
Redesign power lines load overlay. Now low voltage power lines have a completely different pattern, making it easy to tell them apart from the high voltage ones. See image below.
Display how many influence points a player can get by playing a level when hovering over a level icon on the globe.
Reduce the intensity of the overlay that indicates valid placements for power plants, as it was overpowering the terrain, not letting players see what was below.
Performance improvements to the code that was displaying the "unpowered building" icons. This one should provide a few extra FPS when the screen is cluttered with icons.
Fix bug in sandbox mode window that would cause players to get stuck if they deselected all power plants and went back to step 1. This used to require a restart of the game to fix it.
Fix bug that would cause special event buildings (such as water heaters and research centers) to spawn in locations that are unreachable by power lines.
Fix bug that would cause the game to become unstable if demolishing a power plant while trying to upgrade it at the same time.
Fix bug that would, in extremely rare occasions, make cities spawn with no roads at all, causing the game to become unstable or crash.
Add Discord and Twitter buttons on the bottom-right corner of the main menu.
Future Plans
It's been over a week since we released Power to the People. It has been a thrilling experience and we're so delighted to see the community engaging so much, providing awesome feedback. We have been taking notes about all of your ideas and bug reports, and made an action plan to address them, with the hope of making our game even better.
Short term
First of all, we are going to use the next few days to keep working on a new small update. We have released a few patches already, but there are still some minor things we need to get fixed. This first update (which will be called v1.0.9) will address a few bugs and provide some usability improvements. You can expect this patch to arrive early next week if all goes according to plan!
Mid term
Next up, we have a series of deeper changes that we'd like to tackle. We have received plenty of feedback regarding if the game should have pause or not and if the sandbox mode should allow you to play every map and every building since the very beginning or not. Those two topics seem to be very controversial but we think we are about to reach a solution that should leave, hopefully, everyone happy.
This next patch won't only address those concerns, but also provide meaningful quality of life updates, giving players better tools to make decisions regarding their power grid design. Probably arriving towards the end of February or so.
Long term
The long term plans are not as clear cut, but there are still some bigger things that we feel need to be addressed. The big one is finding a new way to calculate high scores. A few people have correctly pointed out that the current scoring system has its flaws and they need to be fixed.
There are also some major gameplay changes that we want to incorporate as well, including better ways to decide which substation powers which buildings, the ability to build new infrastructure deep into cities, and tools for better planning of the power grid. We also want to include a brand new tutorial, explaining some of the more advanced concepts in the game.
We are aiming to have all of this ready by mid-March or so, but we'll keep you updated about how development goes.
Dreams for the future
If all goes well, we have a lot of exciting ideas we want to implement in the future, after all of these updates are out. We intend to keep adding new content and new features, including new power plant types, new levels and new game mechanics. If time and resources allow, we'd also love to work on some support for player-generated content, such as sharing sandbox setups in the Steam Workshop or maybe even a level editor. But we'll keep you posted about those... We don't want to get ahead of ourselves!
Conclusions
We'd like to thank you all for all the valuable feedback you've provided. You are helping us make the game even better and we are very grateful for it. Hopefully, our development team will be up to the challenge of addressing these concerns and you'll keep providing Power to the People for a long time!
And if you want to keep providing feedback to us, it's always a good idea to:
v1.0.8.1: Big performance improvements + minor fixes
Hey everyone! After working overtime for a few days, we're proud to announce a brand new build of Power to the People. This time around we have been mostly focusing on performance improvements. But we're also delivering a few minor fixes here and there.
Massive performance improvements, particularly when multiple power lines fail at the same time or when there are tons of power lines being built at the same time.
Fix bug that didn't allow players to place low voltage power lines on bridges sometimes.
Fix visual glitch that made it look like power lines were conducting electricity when they weren't if placed very close to other power lines.
A few localisation fixes for the French version.
v1.0.7.1: Even more fixes!
We kept working throughout the weekend to bring you an improved version of the game. Here is the change log:
Steam Achievements now get unlocked as you play instead of all of them at the same time when exiting the game.
A few improvements to the soundtrack here and there.
Fix "A Green World" achievement, that was not being triggered if using offshore wind turbines.
Fix issue with titles in the research tree sometimes getting cut off when playing in 1440p.
Fix some tutorial texts that were being displayed incorrectly in German, causing words to be displayed too close to each other.
Fix bug that caused the sound effects in the level selection screen to ignore the UI volume setting.
Fix potential crash related to the usage of Crytivo Club with a slow or unstable internet connection.
Fix potential crash when trying to repair a power line at the same time that nearby power lines are being built or demolished.
v1.0.6: More improvements and fixes
Add a warning icon to modal dialogs that prompt potentially destructive actions (such as demolishing a power plant, deleting a saved game or making a planned power cut). Also made modal dialogs slightly wider to better accomodate longer texts (such as those from random world events).
Fix position of NIMBY circles for small buildings (such as the local substation).
Fix bug that prevented players from demolishing power lines or buildings when having negative money in the bank.
Fix bug that was causing high scores to be calculated slightly inaccurately under specific circumstances.
Fix bug that could cause the game to become unstable when placing power lines close to the edges of the map.
Small localisation improvements for French language.
Post-release Announcement
We did it!
We have finally released Power to the People after two and a half years of very hard work. We hope you are having a blast with it so far, and that you'll continue to enjoy the game for a long time, keeping the lights on!
First patch
Today we have released our first patch for the game! As you might have seen already, this includes a couple of minor bug fixes and some localisation tweaks in Spanish and French. We might need to continue pushing small fixes during the following days, depending on what problems our players encounter. So far it seems that the game is, for the most part, running in a very stable way and without major issues.
Your feedback
Your feedback is very valuable to us. We are keeping an eye out for the discussion forums here on Steam as well as our Discord channel. We sadly don't have time at this very moment to reply to all of your questions and concerns in a timely manner, but we are trying our best. And we are definitely listening to your comments and making notes.
The future
For now, our plan is to keep pushing small fixes as soon as we detect our players are having problems, and we'll keep working on improving the quality of localisation to different languages. Afterwards we'll start a new round of development, bringing many Quality of Life upgrades for our players, before we start focusing on the addition of new content. Hopefully we'll have more concrete news on those fronts for you all next week.
For now, stay awesome and keep the lights on!
v1.0.5: Small bug fixes
Fix bug that caused energy storage facilities to ignore the power distribution profile.
Fix potential crash during the "Lumberjack Challenge" event.
Minor localisation fixes for Spanish and French.
v1.0.4: Minor localisation fixes
Just a few localisation fixes for Russian and French.
Development Update #15
Even though we haven't posted a development update in a couple of months, we can assure you that we have been very busy people! We have been working hard to get Power to the People ready for its launch in February. We are now feature-complete and mostly taking care of polishing the small details and tweaking the game's balance before it's ready for its launch! Without further ado, here are the latest news:
New levels
We have added two new levels to the game, bringing the total up to 14. These are Maracaibo in Venezuela and Muharraq in Bahrain. They are both intended to be high difficulty and for experienced players only. Which reminds us... did you know that there is an "everlasting storm" just around Maracaibo, where lightning bolts strike roughly every two seconds for hours on end?
Weekly challenges
We are happy to announce we have added a brand new way to play Power to the People. Every week there will be a new randomly generated challenge for you to try! Can you make it to the top of the weekly leaderboard? Or will you struggle to provide power to a hypothetical snowy version of Rio de Janeiro using only solar plants while disasters happen all the time?
Steam achievements
20 Steam achievements are implemented and almost ready to go! The only thing we are missing at the moment are the icons for them, but they will come soon enough. Just as a sneak peek, these are the names of some of them: "A green world", "Leave me a loan" and "Going nuclear".
Power building charts
Who doesn't like charts? Now you can see the detailed performance of each one of your power buildings for the past 24 hours. This brand new feature will help you diagnose problems and make your power grid even more efficient and reliable!
New high voltage towers
This one was a long time coming. We completely redesigned the 3D model for the high voltage transmission lines and now they look better than ever. Just take a look:
New car 3D models
This game isn't about keeping traffic running smoothly. But that doesn't mean that we can't have some pretty 3D cars driving around cities to make things visually more appealing. So we added a whole bunch of new 3D models, including some that are specific only to certain regions... Keep an eye out for those Tuk-Tuks in Cambodia, for example!
DualSense controller support
Power to the People now officially supports the Sony DualSense controller, for those of you who enjoy playing with a gamepad instead of keyboard + mouse. You can now play the game with Xbox One, PS4 and PS5 controllers. Other controllers will also probably work but they haven't been tested.
Performance optimization
In terms of performance optimization, we have been focusing on two areas in particular: sound effects and the power grid simulation. Doing a bit of work in the first area helped us solve a few issues we were experiencing with sound effects getting choppy or cutting off under some very specific circumstances. Now everything is running smoothly! We have also been working hard at making the power grid simulation algorithm run faster and use less memory. Now the game runs smoothly even if you have lots of big cities and dozens of power plants spread all over the map. Success!
Closing remarks
We are now entering the final stretch of these two and a half years of development in which we have done everything in our power to create the best game we possibly can. With the release date quickly approaching and some final tasks to take care of, this might be the last development update until February 8th comes along and you are able to finally give Power to the People. For now, thank you for keeping us company during this journey. Happy holidays to you all!
