Hello everyone! This week will be a studio update.
This week we are working on fine tuning a lot of the work related to the last update as well as many other things. The work of polishing the process of creating the components that will make up the personal computer has been fun indeed. We are also finalizing the console creation feature of the game as well as all software and game development features. It’s quite surreal as we begin to see it all come together the way that we have planned it. There is still a distance left to be travelled before release but we are moving along quite nicely. The goal is to get everything to a point where we can begin the full testing process and get this game completed.
At this stage of development most things are in and ready for polish and testing. All the work and passion poured into the game is near ready to be showcased in detail and finally released. I do not have any dates for you yet and probably won’t until we are extremely close to the date (probably a month or less). Everything takes time however and getting it right is our highest priority. There has been hiccups and challenges along the way as expected. These are the reasons we have been so reluctant to provide a solid release date. We have learned that as an independent studio we can take the time we need to get it right and not rush it to the door. There are many of you who understand this and we can’t thank you enough for your patience through our learning curve of the game development process. We are an infant company learning to crawl—to a walk—to hopefully a full sprint. As we grow we hope you take that journey with us all the way.
The task of getting our first public game to release has been a long and arduous process. I’m sure you’ve heard this before and there is so much that goes into a game like this with the goals that we have set. The task becomes even more challenging when you are working with a smaller team. However, what makes it all worth it—is how much we love the industry and this avenue of creative expression. With all the pressure, stress and challenges, we simply love every opportunity we get to work on creating this game and soon—others within our scheduled lineup.
Once Tech Executive Tycoon is released we will have a few more games large and small coming to the market as well thereafter. Please stay tuned to our website http//techexecutivetycoon.com for more on that when we cross that bridge. Again, our studio is about creating games that we are passionate about and wish to play ourselves.
Please feel free to share news of Tech Executive Tycoon with your family and friends. We want to make sure that we get the word out about this game the closer we get to release. We’ve worked with a small budget funded 85% from our own pockets as again we are passionate about what we do. However, some of you have donated to the game and it has been a wonderful help. For that we wish you to know that it was a great investment and that we work every day to honor that investment. We appreciate you all! Please feel free to let us know your thoughts and when the game is released please share your feedback with us. We will be working on this game far after it has been released to make sure that exceeds or is as close to exceeding the game you’ve hoped for all along. Expect support, updates and more after release. Thank you all for your patience and dedication. It is greatly appreciated! We’ll see you soon with more information.
Bi-Weekly Update # 25
Hello Everyone! Another update coming to you today. I hope your week is going well. Today’s update will deal with the creation of computers and consoles. We’ve talked about almost all the other product types so far and now we will deal with the second level of products that you can create. In this blog, I will also discuss something that we haven’t talked about much. I want to discuss all the products that make up the computer’s and console’s in the game. Before you begin you will need to research motherboard technology. As you research this technology, you will be able to create motherboards which is the necessary first step in creating your own computers. In Tech Executive Tycoon you cannot use third party motherboards when creating a computer, they must be created by your company. When it comes to slotting that motherboard however, you can procure each component or you can slot in your own components from your created products.
Creating motherboards is simply a task of selecting the technology level for each component slot. Once you do this, you can build a computer using that motherboard. In the following section I will provide a bit of detail about each component that you can slot to your new computer. To begin, each computer in Tech Executive Tycoon is made up of 8 different components listed below:
Central Processing Unit – The brains of the computer
The central processing units are essential to your computer ability to well… compute. You cannot create a computer without one of these in the game. You can procure one of these from external companies at an agreed upon wholesale price. Alternatively, if you decide that you want to create CPU’s at your company yourself, you can fit one of your creations into your computer. The benefits are potentially sizeable. For one, you have an opportunity to potentially offer the lowest prices for your computer as you develop your own CPU’s. This still cost you to create per unit, but as you can imagine might offer a greater competitive pricing advantage for your computers. Also, you gain the benefit of providing better support for the product. More on this later.
Graphics Processing Unit – Renders 3D objects from the computer to the display
The graphics processing unit is also very important. If you are creating a computer that is designed for heavy duty gaming or high level productivity, you will need a good GPU. The GPU is tasked with rendering 3D objects to the screen as fast as possible. There are many potential customers of computers in Tech Executive Tycoon, be sure to understand your target customers’ needs and requirements. Again, like CPU’s you can also create your own GPU’s and can fit them into your computers. In Tech Executive Tycoon, every motherboard that you create will have an onboard GPU. This GPU will be drastically less efficient than slotting an external GPU when it comes to running the best games or programs. You can create a computer without a GPU in the sense of slotting a GPU as there will be an onboard GPU by default.
Random Access Memory – Computer Memory
RAM in the game functions just as in the real world. When you turn on a computer all programs and services running are stored in RAM. So, this is also essential to creating a computer. You can create RAM in the game as a small-scale product. Just as with all other components, you can slot your own RAM products into your computers. More on this soon.
Hard Drive – Computer Storage
Hard Drives are another important and vital aspect of computer creation. In the game, you will be able to slot these from external sources just as you can with all components. You can also create your own hard drives.
Sound Card – Facilitates computer audio input/output management and usage
Sound cards can be procured from external vendors. The motherboard comes with an onboard sound chip, however not as efficient as slotting an external one.
Network Card – Facilitates network communication management and usage
Network cards are essential for certain fans and the further you progress into the game, the more vital it will become. Most motherboards you build your computer with will have an onboard card. However, as with most components that have onboard counterparts, slotting external will provide much better functionality and efficiency.
Power Supply Unit – Powers the computer and all its components.
The power supply unit is vital in the creation of any computer. You will come to realize that each component has two power consumption values; one for when it is running idle and one when it is pushed to the limits of its functionality. When slotting a PSU, you will be required to make sure you can supply as much power to each component based on its highest consumption rate.
Operating System – The software facilitating the management and operation of the computers core hardware/software functionality to the end user
The operating system is vital in the creation of your computer. You customers will need a way to use and navigate the capabilities of their new computer. Every computer must have an operating system.
So just as in the real world (minus a few mundane details) you will need to slot your computer with each of these units. You will have options available to you for each, however to stay competitive you will be able to negotiate wholesale prices. This is where your purchasing or procurement team comes in. When you go to purchase your wholesale computer parts, your purchasing team, which is a part of your Sales group (Purchasing and Sales are currently combined into one department in Tech Executive Tycoon) will have already completed the negotiation process depending on their skill level. At this point, you can proceed with the purchase if you like the price or you can start the process of negotiating with that company again which can have mixed results—again based on the skill of your employees. You must weigh this decision carefully as you should make sure that your computer can be competitive on the market.
So once again thank you for reading and I hope you share your thoughts or questions in the comment section. We will be writing to you again in two weeks!
Bi-Monthly Update #24
Hello everyone, here I am for another bi-monthly update (Please see: http://techexecutivetycoon.com/note-updates-changing/). Today I want to discuss a bit about the game development path that you can choose to take in Tech Executive Tycoon. As you know there are currently a number of product types that you can create to sell to your customers. Game development just like the others has its own style of gameplay to go along with it. So let’s talk about a few of the things that cover this path.
When creating a game, you must first consider what genre of game you wish to create. We plan to have a very wide variety of genres to allow you to choose from. Shooters, role playing, strategy, etc., just to name a few. The genres will have an impact in the game as there are fans for each, some more than others. You will have to also consider the popularity of the genre for whatever time period or trends that are currently taking place in the game. This is a good time to say that it will be beneficial to stay up to date on world events in the game.
After selecting the genre, you will need to consider the game engine that you will use to create the game. You will have to choose from a list of currently available engines in the game world, or the game engines you might have created yourself. Later, we will discuss this further. The game engines are a huge part of the process as they determine the max level technology your game can potentially reach. The game developers on your payroll working at the studio(s) will be responsible for making the game reach its full potential. To explain further, a game engine is the key to the full potential that a game can reach in the different aspects of what makes up a game.
Let’s discuss that a bit further. A game will have a few or all of the following to varying degrees:
Art / Graphics (Visual Quality)
Animation / Environments (Bringing the game to life)
Sound Design (Music and Sound FX)
Story (Narrative)
Multiplayer (Networking)
So naturally a game engine has to create the capabilities and framework for the game developers to maximize these areas of the game that they are creating. So here is a near final list of what the
game engines will do/provide to your dev teams in the game:
Input – Game controls
Graphics – Art Rendering
Sound – Music and Sound FX
Networking – Multiplayer aspects
Physics – Animation and Immersion
Performance – How well it can perform when pushed to the limits
So as you can imagine, if you have the greatest game development teams using a not so great game engine, they may be able to pull out every bit of potential from it and can make some very, very awesome games, however they will be capped based on the technology limitations present. If on the other hand you give them a next gen game engine, they might be responsible for the next gaming marvel. Now that doesn’t mean you will always need the latest engine to make great games as mentioned above, on the contrary with good developers you can make old game engines create great games. However, the idea is that when or if you decide that you want to push the gaming industry forward technology-wise, making games on older engines will absolutely get in the way of that goal.
CornerDeskHow do you create game engines? Well in this game, your game developers (Artists, Animators, Sound engineers, writers and game designers) will NOT be the ones to create them. Your dev team uses the game engine; they do not create them. Your software engineers will be the employees of choice for this task as it is quite the technical undertaking. Whereas game developers are focused on using the tools (game engines) to create great games. So software engineers create productivity software and the coding aspect of game development. In this game—game engines are labeled productivity software and not games. So to reiterate, software engineers are responsible for coding your gameplay for games, so they are indeed completely involved in the game development process. Your game dev roles however are more design focused. Software engineers are your coders across the board from games to all software that you can create in the game. So that means you can have an awesome game idea, with great graphics, animations, environments, sound and story… but horrible gameplay and bugs if your software engineering teams are subpar for the task of bringing it all together.
After this your dev team takes over and begins to focus on each aspect of the game being created. The artists that you have hired at the studio you designate to create the game will begin working on the art style you have chosen for the game. So you will still be making all of the choices regarding the development of the game from art style to the sound technology you wish to have. The skill and experience of the team members will be directly tied to the level of quality that is in the final game.
You will have to be mindful of the type of games you wish to create in advance of hiring because not every artist is created equal. So you will have artists who are good at different art styles over others. So if you wish to create a game using pixels over vector art, you might want to hire an artist with those skills and experience. More on this later.
There is more involved but this is a small bit of the process of creating a game in Tech Executive Tycoon. I don’t want to give it all away so we will show more a bit later. As always, thanks for reading!
