Hey people, it's time for another major update!
I’m super excited to announce the release of 0.6.0 & the completion of the game engine port!
This is by a wide margin the largest update so far, not necessary in terms of new content, but instead the sheer amount of work done to the ‘framework’ of the game.
With the release of this update, I can finally start to focus on releasing new content & game mechanics without fear of the old game engine losing compatibility with steams API and thus losing the ability to release new patches.
You can read more about the porting process & why it was necessary in the progress update I posted a few weeks ago.
So, aside from being on an updated engine, what else is new? Lets get into that:
I’ll post the full changelog at the bottom.
Architecture & Performance Improvements
Firstly, as part of the port the game is now using 64bit architecture. In addition to this, a lot of work has been done to improve performance because I know games like this tend to be popular on lower end devices like small laptops/notebooks in addition to desktop PCs.
Players should also expect the game to feel smoother & less jittery, even on mid-high end desktop PCs.
Here is a before & after comparison of the same save file loaded on the new update 0.6.0 vs 0.5.3 showing a significant 30% increase in actual, uncapped fps.
While every player can expect a noticeable boost to performance, the amount of performance gained will depend on your PC.
Achievements
This is something people have been requesting since release & I kept putting off because I felt the game was changing so fast that many achievements would become obsolete & need to be deleted or reworked between major patches.
Since this is no longer the case (to the same extent) I’ve decided to start adding them.
I’m starting off with a modest 24 achievements, but keep in mind I plan to add a lot more over time.
This is just the first wave, it’s mostly a mix of ‘firsts’, income milestones with a few difficult ones.
I really like the idea of achievements that present unique & difficult challenges that you wouldn’t normally unlock unless you specifically target them throughout your playthrough, so expect a few like that down the track!
Construction Planner
Another addition I’ve had requested for a long time. This (and the next few changes) is something I briefly mentioned in the update post a few weeks ago.
All construction can now be planned out in advance without committing to anything.
Here’s a screenshot showing how it works:
As you can see a new ‘Planner’ button has been added to the bar at the bottom of the screen.
When clicked, you enable ‘Planner Mode’. From then on you can continue to build as you normally would, except all walls, floors & doors you place are considered ‘plans’, and won’t be built unless you click ‘Execute Plans’ in the planner window at the top left of the screen.
If you hold ‘Shift’ while the planner is up, you can click & drag to remove any plans you have placed.
Buy/Build Menus
Both the Buy & Build menus have been completely remade from scratch.
These menus also have no noticeable impact on performance, whereas the old ones could have a significant performance impact on older machines.
As part of this port I cleaned up a lot of messy code & added all the information about objects & construction to databases which meant I could easily sort/filter them all any way I like, so I added this nifty little mouseover tooltip that shows a bit more detail about what you’re buying.
Ceilings Overhaul
The old ceiling system was a relic from 2018, about a year before the game was even first released. And were just awkward rectangles that told the game where to draw shadows. They could overlap each other & even exist entirely within larger rectangles, and because they were placed whenever the ‘Room’ tool was used, this was fairly common.
For example, if you built a ‘room’ entirely inside another room, a completely unneccessary, invisible ‘ceiling’ was added on it, quietly requesting shadows be drawn there even though there already are.
By late-game some users that relied heavily on the ‘Room’ tool could experience significant performance loss because of it.
So, like I’ve done with many other parts of the games framework this year, I recoded how it works from scratch.
Now, it works on a simple grid system & has only a fraction of the performance impact the old system had, regardless of how much ceiling space you have.
Here's an example of how it looks now when you are adding/removing ceillings:
As you can see, ceilings are no longer colored squares & now have a nice visual display to show whether or not a ceiling tile is built, or in progress.
Visual Improvements
There are too many visual improvements overall to list here but I'll go through some of the biggest ones.
- The skin & hair color of all NPCs is no longer just a few pre-set options but now varies on a wide spectrum of color, saturation & brightness
- To reflect this, there are some new new customisation options to choose from when starting a new game:
- A couple new hair styles & a bun to choose from, some new facial hair options & a variety of new clothing colors & options
- Trees now have accurate shadows instead of blobs
- Customers actually lay on pool chairs rather than just stand on them
Camera Rework
The game camera (what the player sees) has been significantly improved & now allows for zooming in & out much further, zooms smoothly rather than in chunks & will move towards the mouse while zooming in.
There are numerous other small changes like the ones above which you can find in the changelog.
I've decided to skip listing bug fixes & many minor changes this time because there's just too many to list & many of the major changes this patch have rendered old bugs obsolete anyway.
Full Changelog
Rec Center Tycoon is now running on an updated engine!
What does this mean for players?
• First thing, all old saves are fully compatible with the updated engine & should remain so with future updates
• Players should expect a significant boost to framerate & much smoother game performance
• A larger focus on developing new game content from now on instead of mostly behind-the-scenes framework upgrades
• The game is running on 64-bit architecture
―Notable Changes―
• The first 24 achievements have been added
• A construction planner has been added allowing players to design their building layouts before committing to them
• The hair color of all NPCs is no longer limited to just a few set colors & now varies based on a wide spectrum of color & luminosity
• Skin color has also been expanded to support many different tones
• Ceilings have been overhauled & are now based on grids rather than awkward squares. The end result is easier to manage & should result in a performance increase for large Rec Centers
• The camera-view (what the player sees) has been recoded from scratch & now supports zooming in & out much further in addition to zooming & scrolling being smoother
• Significantly reduced performance cost of having many NPCs on screen
• Buy & Build menus have been remade from scratch
• Wall-Mounted lights are now placed directly on walls, also their brightness & size has been increased
• Pool Chairs have been reworked & customers now properly lay on them
• Tree shadows are now more detailed
• An new tooltip shows more info about what you are buying like:
if it rotates, has alternate skins, uses electricity or stock & more
―Balance Changes―
• Trainers now drop 30% less mess than in previous patches
• Various additional objects now require maintainence
• Some new objects require electricity to use like the First Aid Terminal
• Many electricity costs have been slightly rebalanced to account for this
• Vending Machines stock capacity has been increased from 10 to 20
• Income from memberships has been decreased by roughly 10%
• Slightly reduced base stats of job applicants without Poaching tech
• Significantly reduced the cost of computer parts & some software
―Minor Changes―
• Various new clothing colors & designs have been added
• Events & classes are now displayed separately in the finance page
• The top bar now has a 'Manager' icon that targets them directly
• Membership prices are based on 7 day weeks instead of every 4 days
• Cooks' AI has been improved & they should no longer get stuck in place
• Picking up injured customers is now prioritized over repairing
• Money popups now show the correct amount when upgrading computers
• Tax Advisor & Employee Wages techs now apply instantly
• Improvements made to Reception/Cafe queues
• Added & color corrected many menu & button icons
• Added many more object & building tooltips
• Many object & equipment sprites have been improved
• Construction sounds now vary in pitch
• A new, more detailed error logging system is in place
• Far too many additional bug fixes & improvements to list
Final Note
This is an extremely large update in terms of code & framework changes to the game, this means that there are likely to be some new bugs & crashes still lurking undiscovered, despite the 2 week beta this patch had (Which turned out to be very useful, thank you to all those who participated & reported bugs!).
I know it's been a while since the last patch, & this will hopefully stay the longest period between major patches. Especially now that I can focus more on developing actual game content rather than framework upgrades/porting.
Thanks for sticking around & I hope you enjoy!
