This Grand Life
New test branch is live
Now that things have calmed down a bit, I've created a test_public branch which contains the new Stock Market feature. If you'd like to help test it out, you can switch to that branch under Properties -> Betas. Note the Stock Exchange location will only appear on a new map.
If no issues are reported in 1-2 days, I will release the update to everyone else and write a proper update post.
This Grand Life is live on Steam!
If you've seen This Grand Life around and aren't sure if it's for you, remember there's a Demo available that you can try first!
Demo is now available
It contains the current tutorials where you play as Max E. Mumm, a good-for-nothing son with a failed Kickstarter campaign. Your dear mother, Minnie Mumm, just wants you to get a job and finally become a functional adult.
Alpha 1.7 - Home Services and Unicode support
The Stock Market is partially implemented in 1.7 but hasn't been test enough so is currently disabled. Having said that, 1.7 has two notable features.
One of the things I've been thinking about is late game repetitiveness. You're making 6 figures, run your own business and have reached your Wealth goal - why are you feeding yourself like a peasant? My solution to this conundrum - Home Services. These are services offered in the higher tier homes, such as a Personal Trainer or a Personal Chef. They help automate fulfilling your needs at the start of each week, but they're expensive. The question you have to ask yourself - is my time worth the cost? Could I make enough money at my high-paying job that would offset the cost of these services?
The second change is an overhaul of the events spawning system. Previously, events were completely random and you could end up with back-to-back Steam Sales and the like. With this new system, I can now set different parameters for event spawning. For example, I can say the minimum number of weeks between Celebrity Concerts is 6 weeks, and they only start from week 26 onwards. It also allows regular events like New Year Celebrations to happen at the same time each year. In the future I'll be able to add location-specific events based on holidays in that city (Thanksgiving in New York, Ocktoberfest in Munich, etc).
My apologies for the lack of video this update, but I thought it was important to fix the language support issue now rather than later.
Here's a full list of changes from 1.68 to 1.7:
This Grand Life - Analysing The Stock Market
I've been working on This Grand Life for a while now and keeping a dev blog on my website. I'll post the updates here as well now and see if people like it. Starting off we have a preview of the next big feature - the Stock Market.
Video - Analysing The Stock Market
Each listed corporation on the stock market is influenced by economic conditions. The better the economy, the higher the corporation's earnings. Higher earnings means they are able to acquire assets faster (and have higher equity) and use those assets to earn even more money.
You can see in the above charts the stock price and equity of two corporations changing over time. They both follow the same general dips and rises based on the economy. However, MONEY Group has only increased its equity by about 15% while Horizontal Corp. has increased its equity by around 80% in the same time. The performance difference of these two stocks is due to company management. Good management leads to higher earnings over time.
If a company has bad management in a bad economy, they even have a chance of going bankrupt. Do you stick with the company and hope the economy improves or leadership changes before they go bankrupt? Or do you sell your shares now and recover some money? You won't know for sure how good a company's management is, but you can stay informed when a company changes leaders by subscribing to the Financial Dimes subscription.
There are other aspects such as dividend payouts and taxation of your trading profits, which are calculated on a first in, first out basis. You might want to delay selling your shares for a profit if you already made a lot of money this year and expect to make less next year. It will help to reduce the amount of tax you pay.