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Genre: Simulator, Strategy, Indie

Software Inc.

Alpha 9 release status
The bad news is that I won't be able to release alpha 9 before I move offices, but the good news is that all functionality for the initial testing release is complete, I just need to polish everything up, as all timing and balancing is completely broken at this point, and then I need to write some sentences for the new review generator.

I'll be packing down all dev equipment tomorrow and I'll be setting up the new office during the weekend. My ISP has confirmed I should have an internet connection on the 20th of December, so I'll be able to pick up work in the last couple of weeks of December. Hopefully I'll be have something ready during late December, but if not, I'll most definitely have something ready early January.

Alpha 9 progress update
It's now been almost 2 months since the last update. I'd like to say I've made huge advancements, but the truth is these have probably been the slowest months in the development of Software Inc. A lot of non-programming related work has come up during these past months. I'll be moving to a new location on the 15th of December and development should pick up again and be back to full speed from January. The good news is that the amazing support I've received from you has allowed me to work in my company for at least another 4 years, which means I'll be able to finish Software Inc. in good time and start working on a new game as well.

I'm currently done with the bulk of gameplay changes for Alpha 9. There's still a lot of polishing, bug fixes and balancing to be done, before it's ready for release. As always, I'll be doing a testing release initially, to make sure things are relatively balanced and bug free. I'm hoping to have this initial release out before I move to the new location, but if I don't make it before the 15th December, it'll most likely be out in January.

To make sure you get this release earlier, I've decided to cut some features for the initial release, but I'll make sure to “make room” for the features in the save files, so they'll be out by the time Alpha 9 is done.

Progress on Alpha 9



Development no longer works by filling up a progress bar, instead the game now differentiates between code and art progress, and the actual quality of the work done. There's no longer a clear indication of when a product is done, because that doesn't really make sense in the real world and it makes the gameplay a little too simple. To find out how good your product is during development, you'll have to do “peer reviews”, by letting your employees, other companies or clients look over your alpha and rate it.


The pre-marketing tasks have been split up and now force you to make timing based decisions. Pre-marketing will attract followers to your product, which represent guaranteed purchases, but you should be vigilant to not lose them again, and make sure you deliver a worthy product, on time. When you product is released, there is no longer a set amount of marketing you have to do each month, instead you'll just have to throw enough employees and money at it, to make sure your product has better exposure than your competitors.


Support will now play a bigger role in the game. Support tickets will dynamically follow active user count, there will be no clear indication when support has finished and bugs will have an impact on your sales in the form of refunds.


Project management has been fixed and completely overhauled. You can have more teams per phase, you can queue up your own projects at will and design and development phases can interleave. There's no longer any education needed and project management tasks are assigned directly to a leader, who must actively work to accumulate “action points” to advance projects.

There's also been a bunch of optimizations, bug fixes and improvements. Notably, you can now develop products for operating systems that are still in development.

Planned for later releases of Alpha 9


The initial release of Alpha 9 will not include these features, but I expect them to be out and compatible with Alpha 9 saves.

  • Subsidiaries, which lets you buy out a company without closing them down.
  • Discounts, the ability to change the price after release and simulate the effects of this.
  • Individual distribution channels will be removed from the game and replaced with a much simpler system, that will still allow the player to host their own online distribution channel. The player will also have to pay to have physical copies printed of each product.
  • The ability for the player to print their own or other companies' products, which will involve building product printers and hiring transportation.

Alpha 8.11.27 out
Changes

  • Added idle worker indicator button and game now specifies problem when employee is selected
  • Employees will now try to go to a water cooler to relieve stress if they are completely stressed out
  • Removed releases from "upcoming events" window, player should check "upcoming releases" window instead
  • Having HR "force roles" disabled would force employees to "any role", which was more confusing than helpful


Fixes

  • Elevator and stairs had become upgradable but would crash the game if attempted
  • Changed employee thought "Stressed" to "I feel stressed"
  • Staff list wasn't sorted correctly when sorting by arrival/departing times
  • Fixed inconsistencies in current selection when employee or staff window is manipulated


Optimizations

  • Removed unnecessary employee computations when game is paused


Alpha 8.11.26 out officially
Contains some minor fixes to the marketing window and furniture replacement window. For details see the last update.

Alpha 8.11.25 in testing

Sorry for the delays! I've had a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on and I'll be moving to a new office in december (I'm currently sharing my office with my wife).

I expect this update to be in testing for a couple of days and then I'll finally move on to alpha 9. I'll do my best to get alpha 9 out before 2017, there are still some missing pieces in regards to how the new mechanics will work together.

Changes

  • Replaced furniture upgrade with furniture replacement menu (Furniture mods will need to use a comma separated list for "UpgradeTo" and "UpgradeFrom", read more in Mod Wiki)
  • List installed mods in options window
  • Pick team for porting and save choice


Fixes

  • Insurance withdrawal and depositing was not scaled by currency
  • No matter how many employees are educated at a time in HR or AutoDev, the same amount is charged
  • Marketing window not using last team picked
  • Updated "Employees" and "Build Mode" tutorial, BUILD MODE2, EMPLOYEES9, EMPLOYEES11, EMPLOYEES12 and EMPLOYEES13
  • Pressing X would close the tutorial window
  • Build mode search only worked for lower case characters
  • Fixed wrong rotation for furniture on tables when upgrading tables
  • Lasse fixed clothes clipping errors
  • Fixed needs not correctly appearing in design document for some software categories present in mods


Alpha 8.11.24 in testing
Updated to Unity 5.4.1 to test whether the Nvidia Optimus issue has been fixed, nothing else has changed.

Alpha 8.11.23 officially out
This update should fix the employees never leaving issue (Could also cause them to not eat and socialize). It also replaces the furniture rendering system, so out-of-memory crashes should be eliminated. I'm keeping my finger on the rollback button for now, as I've updated to the next major Unity version, which could cause incompatibilities, but I've successfully tested it on Ubuntu and OSX.

The new trailer should be up later today, which features music from Chris Sinnott (Sinnott Soundworks), who's currently working on the soundtrack for Software Inc.

I still have some non Software Inc. related stuff I have to take care of, but I should be back to full speed within the month and alpha 9 should be out before we hit 2017. Hopefully, I'll be moving to a bigger office with less distractions next year, which will help me getting more work done. After alpha 9, I have some major mechanics left to implement and then I'll move on to the beta phase, where I'll focus more on content and balancing. I still expect to add new features during beta, but it won't as often as it is currently. Between now and beta could take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years.

Alpha 8.11.23 out on testing branch
EDIT: Alpha 8.11.23 - Potential fix for employees not leaving at full speed and some other fixes. I expect to release it officially in the next couple of days, then I'll have a new trailer ready and start work on alpha 9.

I've updated Unity to 5.4.

Due to the large amount of different colored furniture the game has to render I developed a solution some months ago, where I combine all furniture into one big object for the graphics card to render all at once. This trades in memory for performance. However, the game has been crashing for some people because the GPU would run out of memory.
Unity 5.4 introduces GPU instancing, which allows me to draw each type of furniture all at once, no matter their color. This might slow performance as all furniture is no longer being drawn at once. If you have a lot of varied furniture from mods, this will be slower, but on the other hand, if you have a lot of similar furniture, like many tables and computers, these will be rendered very quickly. I've traded some performance for stability, but overall the game should still perform a lot better compared to last year.

Note that GPU instancing only works for DirectX11+ and OpenGL 4.1+, if your computer is very old or hasn't been updated for a long time the game might see a big performance hit with a lot of furniture present on screen at once. If your computer is that old it would probably crash out of memory at that point anyway, though.

Since new versions of Unity can prove quite unstable, I'm keeping this in testing for a while to see if the game suddenly stops working for some configurations.

Fixes

  • Road visible from basement after loading game


Optimizations

  • Switch to GPU instancing for furniture
  • Switch to GPU instancing for cars
  • Switch to GPU instancing for roads


Alpha 8.11.21 officially out
EDIT: Alpha 8.11.21 includes some fixes and I replaced the deposit/withdraw labels in the insurance window with textboxes to deposit exact amounts and made rounding more intelligent.

I'm sorry development is moving at an extremely slow pace right now. I have some logistics I need to take care of, and since I'm only one person, there's no one to pick up the slack. I will be back at full speed again soon enough. Unity 5.4 has introduced GPU instancing, which will fix the out of memory crashes some of you have been experiencing and could potentially boost performance, as I'm currently cramming the GPU with batches of furniture to avoid performance issues. I'll be looking to move to Unity 5.4 before I move on to alpha 9.


Alpha 8.11.20 includes minor bug fixes and improvements



Changes

  • Ability to filter work by selected rooms/employees
  • Hovering over room noise now lists sources of problem
  • Updated Unity to 5.3.6p2
  • Choose team before accepting contract
  • Remember teams chosen for different tasks and auto select them next time(Does not work for work assignment)
  • Add ability to change arrival time for multiple staff members at once


Fixes

  • Using the rectangle building tool to split a room in a specific way could cause the game to break or crash completely
  • Upgrading a server and a table at the same time spawns the server in the table
  • Added some debugging and made a small change to try and fix the employees not going home issue, please send your save file if you run into this problem
  • Fixed work items sometimes not initializing in GUI after loading game
  • Fixed bugs in furniture look function causing employees to make undesirable choices when picking furniture to use
  • Hole in ground stays after deleting room above staircase from basement
  • Elevator snapping distance too big, making it hard to build adjacent elevators when elevators on other floors are already built
  • Wall building sometimes fails with intersection error when it should have split the wall


Alpha 8.11.19 patch
Work on alpha 9 has not started yet, as I'm still working on marketing materials and focusing on the business side of running a company. I've fixed some bugs that have cropped up since the last patch and I've updated to Unity 5.3.6f1, which encompasses several months worth of UI patches. As I'm not completely sure how it will affect the game, I'm keeping the patch in testing for some days.

Alpha 8.11.19 changes



  • Hovering over room noise now lists sources of problem


Fixes

  • Upgrading a server and a table at the same time spawns the server in the table
  • Added some debugging and made a small change to try and fix the employees not going home issue, please send your save file if you run into this problem


Alpha 8.11.18 changes



  • Updated Unity to 5.3.6p2
  • Choose team before accepting contract
  • Remember teams chosen for different tasks and auto select them next time(Does not work for work assignment)
  • Add ability to change arrival time for multiple staff members at once


Fixes

  • Fixed work items sometimes not initializing in GUI after loading game


Alpha 8.11.17 changes



  • Updated Unity from 5.3.5p3 and Unity UI from 5.3.4f1 to version 5.3.6f1


Fixes

  • Fixed bugs in furniture look function causing employees to make undesirable choices when picking furniture to use
  • Hole in ground stays after deleting room above staircase from basement
  • Elevator snapping distance too big, making it hard to build adjacent elevators when elevators on other floors are already built
  • Wall building sometimes fails with intersection error when it should have split the wall


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