EA Launch time is nearly upon us.
This is a rather large patch I have been working on for a while now. It contains all sorts of suggestions, tweaks, and QOL improvements. These come from demo players, as well as content creators / streamers who have had time with the game. Both early players, and demo players especially, those present in discord have been instrumental in helping to improve the game. Honestly, I consider all of you to be apart of the development team for this game, and together we can make a really great tycoon experience. Now lets get to the details.
I lied there is one more thing before we get into it. I HIGHLY recommend you use a new game save, not an old save with this version. I decided not to deny old saves they will work if you really want, but when they try to write to new structures that do not exist in the old save. You may have a game crash. It should just close down though nothing to serious, but ya play a new save please.
Fixes
-Subsidiary companies who released games in January could sometimes not release there game.
-Fixed a rare issue where you could click through the review hud, and have a worker popup menu stuck on your screen. Only one Panda has ever done this :)
-It was possible to overlap the tips / guides menus on the main menu screen over top of the seed window. These tip windows now hide the main character creation screen until you close them.
-Conventions held in December could end in week 1 not giving you time to book them for your games.
-There was an issue where a variable was not resetting properly after creating DLC, this could be used to exploit other special work.
-It was possible to have $0 sales for DLC or Console Ports if you created them to quickly after launching a game. Especially if you made use of multiple workers using "Rush". I was looking at your current sold copies, not your calculated totals. This is now correctly looking at totals, and you can crank out as much DLC as you want. Go all Pay Day up in here.
-A sound cue for the bubbles was left out of the sound class override. Meaning even at 0 sound you would always hear those bubbles.
-Fixed an issue where you could use company programs during contract work.
-Fixed an issue where the right serious of choices during game creation could trigger the dev cost to get messed up. This can no longer occur.
-Fixed an issue where you could launch a convention with no game selected resulting in negative fans being gained.
-Fixed a small issue where if you saved and quit during a worker doing a task then immediately continued that game, he would till be flagged as on the task. This caused you to have to start and finish a task in order to fix his state. This now resets properly.
-Fixed, well changed the idle animation used during character customization, and for screen capture to put your pictures in the staff tabs. The previous idle animation was good, but this one is better.
-Changed the story / quest slider in stage 1 to be more design based than tech based.
-fixed an issue with a house upgrade in the second office triggering the wrong size value change to your monthly costs. Instead of reducing your rent by $10,000 it instead increased it by $15,000,000. No big deal :)
-Fixed an exploit you could create with loans by taking / paying a loan back over and over for a profit gain. This can no longer be abused.
-Fixed an issue with deep dives where if you had one topic up selected a few things, then changed topics and selected those same things it would instead of adding research remove it from the cost. This allowed you to pay -RP causing game crashes.
Changes
-Changed the "Game Report" task in office 1 to now be "Complete Contract Work".
Some of my procedural, and more detailed players have an issue with this task. I don't want to waste your time with a ton of reports, as such we aren't getting reports for games we already know the match quality for. Due to this if a player always researched there matches before making games, a game report can never be made.
-Changed the way license costs, and dev costs worked for consoles. This was confusing people. Now the first time you buy a console you will have to pay the dev cost, followed by the dev cost for each game you make, listed correctly.
-Added the ability to see which game seed each save slot was playing on.
-Added a variety of QOL additions to the menu system. You can now go menu to menu without closing each one. There are some exceptions, but you can click most menus regardless of what is open now, including if you have a worker popup, but you want a studio command.
-Added the ability to go back on the main menu. You can now return to the char creation / main menu or base model depending what step you are on of character creation.
-Added the ability to choose a random logo on creation instead of manually cycling through.
-Added the ability to randomly color your office. This creates some completely wild and terrible results, but you asked for it you got it. However, I personally will take my time and choose my own palette.
-Removed the chance for it to snow in April. I guess for you non Canadians this seemed like an odd choice. Must be nice.
-Added a quick jump to researching of a genre you don't know when creating a game. The warning message now allows you to go back / research that genre / or just make the game anyways cause reasons.
-Added a Highly requested feature. I present to you the glorious PAUSE button. You can now click play / pause on screen or press space as a hotkey. You can move through menus, start games / marketing, assign tasks to every worker all while staying paused. You can then hit play when you are ready. I hope this helps make life easy for people, I know I am already loving it.
-Added your picture to the training menu cause I could, and I thought it was cool. Oh, and I formatted the training menu to encompass all levels of each task type. If you jump to any stat you can now click onto any task level easily.
-Added the engine used to the archive menu for players to easily see which engine was used for a release. This helps you know if your current engine is the same and would hurt to make a sequel.
-I have changed some of the language in the tutorials to better teach the player the rules of the game. In particular I have made it more clear with sliders that Very low is 0-20 Very high is 30-100 not 20 / 30, The range is yours to use as you see fit for your games.
-I have added a few more sections to the help section such as Fans / Requirements. The requirements menu describes the scaling minimums as the years pass.
-I have renamed all of the Studio Commands thanks to some feedback from DyCart on twitch. I have made them all more concise.
-Added the tech + design total requirements, and the tech requirements to each stage HUD. This should help you decide if you need to put in more features to crank totals, or maybe slow it down, and focus design balance.
-I have completely reworked balance in Office 1. After watching multiple new players try the game, I realize some of you like to take your time, and don't want to rush to office 2 as fast as I had envisioned it. Plus you want some more room to stumble, and play your way until you are ready to move onto office 2. What I have decided to do is have the minimum tech + design totals scale to a factor of 60 + (10 * year) This means your expected minimums will go 70 / 80 / 90 / 100 instead of 75 / 150 / 225 / 300. These were virtually impossible to hit with one worker. You can now comfortable make games in office 1 as you grow your fan base / sales until you are ready. The next addition continues this trend.
-I have completely reworked Contact work. Contracts are now basically free money for time. Instead of you get xx for completing or pay me xx for failing. They are now you get xxx + xxx for completing and xxx for failing. Honestly, this decision to have you lose money makes no sense. Contract work is considered an early game tool. I was making sure it was more of a nightmare previously. I have also scaled down the requirements to instead of just using the year, they use your stats an number of workers. The pay for contracts will rise every year, but they will always be within your range of completing. Even if you don't they are still a great tool to keep you a float in the early game now as they should of always been, and you will likely waiting for January / July to roll around for fresh contracts.
-Added a warning mail to be sent to you in September in a year where consoles will drop in December. If you are working on a game when the consoles change this will not affects sales, it uses old console information. However you can not port an older console game to the new consoles when you finish. You could later make a remake, but they need to be the same generation in order for a Port.
-I have slowed the breaking news scroll speed down by a good margin. On top of this when the breaking news is your critical game feedback, you will also receive a mail you can open when you wish to view it. This tells you up to 3 things you did wrong design wise, and is great information. Some players were missing this in the news, and wanted there own copy. Also you can pause the news when it scrolls into view for other breaking news events if you need to.
-Added a slight name change to an engine when you upgrade it, Ver 2.0 is added to the name. This lets you see if your engine has been upgraded at a glance.
-If you own any subsidiary companies. When they release games you will now get a mail telling you when it was released, what your percent is, and how much you made.
Conclusion
This is a great patch on the road towards polishing the game, and improving the experience for players. I am so grateful to everyone who has supported me with there amazing feedback, kind words, and of course amazing suggestions. Just having people talk about the game in Discord makes me smile.
This patch has only had minimal testing, but I am pushing it live so my early players can help me test it over the next few days. You can expect a small patch to come soon to address any issues found with the patch.
This is now live on the EA client. This update will be made available for the Demo client later today.