Early Access 0.2

Hello to all you fine businesspeople!

It's time for an update. Not just a hotfix - this is EA 0.2!!

Okay, let's get the bad news out of the way - due to some awesome new updates, there are two new special buildings in the game! Unfortunately, this means that if you owned either residential building, 28 4th Ave or 6 6th Ave, you will find yourself with a refund for anything inside the building.

New Special Building:

Keep Calm and Squat On

So where did these buildings go? The first building, 28 4th Ave, is now the location of "Keep Calm and Squat On" the city's new gym! Check it out! After paying the gym's entrance fee, you're ready to go! Wait, you're not still wearing your normal work clothes, are you? Run to the back and put on your gym clothes!

Now you're ready to access to all the equipment:

• Bench Presses
• Punching Bags
• Treadmills
• Gym Mats for doing Crunches

Just keep an eye on your energy, you don't want to pass out from exhaustion!

Or if you'd rather avoid working out in front of everyone, you can buy a Treadmill or Pull-Up Bar from Ika Bohag for your apartment! Just make sure you also get a wardrobe so you can change into your gym clothes.

Either way, exercising is a new way to stay healthy and gain happiness. Plus, this will be expanding even further in EA 0.3 with a new Player Health variable - the gym is just the beginning!

Employee Benefits:

Health Insurance

Speaking of being healthy - that brings us another new feature - now each of your HR Managers can manage a contract with the hospital to get health insurance for the employees they manage. Be sure to visit the hospital to set your employees up with an insurance plan.

After requesting an insurance plan from the Health Insurance Manager at the hospital, they will contact you back after a day with their price-per-employee offer. You can accept, decline, or try to negotiate a better offer, but don't insult them with a low offer or you might have to start the process over!

There are three levels of insurance:

• Gold
• Silver
• Bronze

And it's just in time too - some of the employees have started demanding different levels of insurance, so make sure you check on your employee demands!

New Wholesale Store:

Total Produce Trading

Now what about the other building that was replaced? The second building, 6 6th Ave, is now a new Wholesale store, Total Produce Trading!

In addition to selling a few familiar items like Flowers and Salad, it also brings some new items:

• Apples
• Bananas
• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Pears
• Tomatoes

You can also import these new items from SeaSide Internationals! Keep in mind, if you already have an existing contract with them, the contract should be updated to included new items, so you should be good to go!

New Business:

Fruit and Vegetable Store

Of course, those new items need to be sold somewhere, which brings us to the Fruit and Vegetable Store! Keeping in the healthier theme of this update, you can now provide the city a healthier food option for when they're done working out with this new store.

You'll need a retail building and Customer Service Employees along with:

• Shopping Baskets
• Checkout Counters
• New Item: Digital Scale

At Square Appliances you can find the digital scale along with wooden display stands and wooden crates you can use to sell your fresh produce from Total Produce Trading.

New Business:

Graphic Designer

But a new retail store isn't enough, so we're also bringing a new office job: Graphic Designer!

The Graphic Designer operates similarly to the Law Firm and Web Dev agency, but in addition to the regular computer workstation, Graphic Designers can demand a few new items found at Mr. Scott's Office Supply Store:

• Mousepad
• Graphic Tablet
• Graphic Tablet with Screen

You can hire Graphic Designers from City Workforce, Inc. and assign them to a desk in your new Graphic Designer Office!

Donuts in the Bakery Showcase

Not everything needs to be healthy - let's talk about donuts!

Donuts now have been switched to use the Bakery Showcase instead of the Industrial Fryer. If your shops had donuts, your Industrial Fryer will automatically be replaced with a Bakery Showcase, and you will be refunded the difference in price between the two!

Many players noticed the F1 help guide's Donut section was accidently updated to mention this in our last patch. Sorry for the confusion, but now it's true! Plus, now the F1 guide has been heavily updated with lots of new information, including these new jobs, furniture, and employees!

Increased Pallet Delivery Size

We heard the complaints - many players felt that 18 items were too few, and were frustrated that they couldn't order from more than one store at a time to the same location.

Now you can ship up to 54 items at once and your pallet can hold 54 items, even if they're from multiple stores. This allows you to:

• Can order up 54 Items from one store
• Orders from multiple stores can arrive at the same time, if the pallet total is 54 items or less
• Can order items with an existing delivery pallet waiting, if the pallet total is 54 items or less

Just remember when ordering a pallet delivery - don't stand or drive on the delivery location, or the delivery will fail!

"The walls and floors are so ugly here"

Customers have been making this complaint when entering player stores, but it was hard for the player to know what is needed. So we've updated this a bit to improve the experience!

For starters, every business now starts with bad quality "default" walls that are falling apart. Next, Uncle Fred will guide you to make some upgrades, with a little more information this time.

Next, when you open interior designer, you'll see your current interior score. This should help you know where you currently stand, so you're not just blinding upgrading your walls! And finally, to complete the experience, there are new wall and floor variations to choose from.

Change to Autosaves

Previously, the "Continue" button only loaded your most recent manual save, and the autosave had to be loaded from the "Load" menu. Unfortunately, many players didn't realize this and so they didn't load their autosaves, and then thought they had lost all their progress!

Now the "Continue" button plays the most recent save, whether it's a manual save or autosave. Of course, you can still go to the load menu and choose whatever save you'd like, but this way, you know you're always getting the most recent save!

Player Experience

• Tired of Uncle Fred's objectives? Call him and tell him to stop! You can always call him back when you're ready to start back up again
• Added the ability to delete text messages from your phone
• Made dirt more visible while cleaning
• You can now order (for free) items from your own store's cash registers!
• Chair automatically snaps to the desk at a larger radius as players were having trouble connecting them
• You can now add your own music to the radio playlist! Go to options and click on the music folder to drop your music into the folder. It will be added to the radio playlist!
• Added option to drive the car with the mouse
• Made it easier to walk into the underground parking ramps using point-to -click
• Time moving too fast? You can slow down how fast time passes in the options
• Improved building fading when it's between the player and the camera
• Decreased Casino Boat animation time
• TVs and Computer monitors now have footage on the screen while in use
• Added more customizable key bindings
• You can now place paperbags on your tables
• You can now create a more advanced customer queue for your cash register
• Employee Skill level increases while working
• BizMan automatically sets up a schedule of 0800-1600, Monday-Friday
• BizMan has a "temporarily close business" option so you don't have to change any settings, but can still close
• Employee Demands
  • New Demands for Insurance & Graphic Designer
  • Demands are now based on the employee skill level
  • "High", "Medium", "Low" demands are now "Critical" "Important", "Nice to Have"

• F1 Menu has been heavily expanded and updated

Graphics / Art

• Many businesses have gotten new interiors / layouts
  • Jensen Capital / Vantander Bank
  • McCain's eMarketing / City Ads
  • City Cars / General US Trucks / Manhattan Luxury Cars
  • IRS
  • Gas Stations
  • Business School, also now has students and studying animation
  • New AI Shop Layouts: Clothing, Coffee, Fast Food

• New Items:
  • Fruit & Vegetable
    • New Fruit and Vegetables
    • Digital Scale
    • Wooden Display Cases
    • Wooden Crate

  • Graphic Designer
    • Laptop
    • Mousepad
    • Graphic Tablet
    • Graphic Tablet With Screen

  • Tables
    
  • Barriers
    
  • Counters
    
  • Shelves
    
  • And more!
    
• Character Hair / Clothing
  • New hair style for both character variations
  • Gym / Activewear
  • New color variations
  • New Doctor Gowns
  • New Cargo Pants

• Better item attachment /animation for character hands while holding items such as:
  • Mops
  • Handtrucks
  • Boxes

• Improved Character variation / randomization
  
• Fixed some characters outfits that were clipping
  
• Added an Exit sign to the Casino
  
• Increased the Ika Bohag sign to make room for freight trucks
  
• Fixed the lighting in the L1 building
  
• Fixed the handicap-sign at Ika Bohag

Fixes / Optimization

• · Vehicle Issues
  • You should no longer fall through the Parking Garage walls on 16 2nd Ave & 13 3rd Ave
  • Truck Garage is no longer listed as always closed
  • Vehicles should no longer spawn inside your vehicles in the underground parking
  • Traffic should now give you space if you're trying to park

• Fixed several issues that could cause soft-locks including:
  • Releasing the handtruck after queuing in line
  • Getting stuck between a handtruck and a bench
  • Kicking yourself out of a building with an executive desk
  • Getting stuck in Map Preview
  • Double-tapping Esc during the vehicle purchase cut-scene
  • Dragging a menu while leaving a building
  • Pausing before purchasing a casino ticket
  • Grabbing an item while using the elevator

• Overall UI fixes and optimization
  • UI Notification list should no longer lag when opening large savegames.
  • You can now sort categories in the warehouse
  • Improved Logistics Manager / Purchasing Agent UI for simplicity/clarity
  • Improved Character animation / interaction
  • Fixed the "Will retire at day 0" text message
  • Customers now say "All the queues are full" instead of "I can't find a register"
  • Fixed split-shift schedules not displaying UI properly
  • Fixed expired UI notifications that wouldn't go away

• Fixed Handtrucks blocking entrances
  
• Restaurant Booth can now seat 4 customers instead of 1
  
• Fixed items in boxes not being sold if terminating a contract on a building
  
• Disabled saving on Casino Boat
  
• Fixed character stuck walking after working at the cash register
  
• Fixed Timemachine causing some computers to turn bright white
  
• Fixed Player Hunger so it no longer goes above 100%
  
• Fixed character not running after working at cash register
  
• Fixed 12 8th Street Warehouse so it's no longer broken
  
• Fixed 13 3rd Street Office so it's no longer broken
  
• Fixed Boat ownership icon not appearing on reload
  
• Fixed missing collider for a building on the pier
  
• Allowed small speakers to be placed on a regular table
  
• Performance: Increased performance of pedestrians/customers
  
• Performance: Added low detail city map setting
  
• Performance: General Optimization

Balancing

• Seaside Internationals
  • Minimum purchase has been reduced to match other Importers
  • Paperbags have been added

• Furniture Balancing
  • Industrial Coffee Machine increased customer capacity from 10 to 30
  • Industrial Coffee Machine price decreased from $15,000 to $12,500
  • Industrial Freezer increased customer capacity from 25 to 30
  • Industrial Freezer's price decreased from $20,250 to $17,500
  • Industrial Fryer Machine increased customer capacity from 20 to 30
  • Bakery Showcase increased customer capacity from 10 to 20
  • Hotdog Grill increased customer capacity from 20 to 30

• Product Balancing
  • Customer Behavior change:
    • Clothing customer volume decreased slightly
    • Fast Food customer purchasing volume increased
    • Coffee Shop customer purchasing volume increased

  • Customer Market Price change:
    • Burgers increased $4.10 > $4.90
    • French Fries: increased $2.00 > $2.75
    • Cup of Coffee: increased $3.10 > $3.90
    • All Clothing: decreased by $5
    • Cheap Gifts decreased from $20 > $18
    • Expensive Gifts decreased from $48 > $32

  • Wholesale cost decreased on burgers from $1.10 to $0.90

** Note, the price multipliers have been reduced, so you may need to check your prices if you had them maxed out.

Known Bugs:

• On Macs, sometimes the audio will cut out. It seems to happen frequently when opening the map or Bizman Apps
• If you have a controller plugged in, it's challenging to click the "Continue" button at the beginning of story mode
• If you click on equipment/furniture that employees are trying to use, they can behave strangely.
• Auto-Schedule / Auto-Park don't always work perfectly
• Customers complain about missing uniforms for employees that aren't currently working
• If you place a casino bet EXACTLY at closing time, it will keep your money
• If you put items you own on a forklift, then grab items from the NY Distro shelf, you'll lose your items
• Cars take some damage when entering/exiting parking structures
• Interacting with the UI sometimes moves the character as well
• Some UI scrolling behaves incorrectly
• On the roulette wheel, you must select the color first, then the number
• Bling Crib Achievements don't always add up properly
• Sometimes the gas tank refills itself for free
• Extremely large investments don't display their graph properly

Hints:

• If your vehicle is stuck, call the tow truck
• If your character is stuck, "Options" > "Others" > "Unstuck"
• To use WASD "Options" > "Control" > "Controller Type" > "Controller"
• Every employee that is assigned to a business must be wearing a uniform - even cleaners or employees who aren't scheduled for that day

From the team at Hovgaard Games, we really hope you enjoy this update! Now go earn some money and make Uncle Fred proud!