Major Update: Level 9! Rebalancing! Tutorials!

Hello Animators and welcome to the GREAT BIG UPDATE!!

When Animation Studio Manager first entered Early Access a few months ago, I got lots of feedback from streamers and players. They liked the potential of the game, but it was rough. Over the last several months, I've been working hard to add tutorials, rebalancing and add lots of depth to the first 8 levels.

Additionally, level 9's initial rollout has begun! There are a couple level 9 features that aren't finished yet and will be included in another update coming in a few weeks - in fact, I'll be releasing a "Road Map to Completion" next week!

But for now, let's dive into the full list of updates:

Level 9!

• Now when you finish level 8 and click on the To-Do list, it continues on to level 9!
• Mom pops up to note that you two are now rivals and enemies.
• Instead of choosing a normal Corruption Perk, you are given a final Perk based on your current
• The Publicist now has access to his Level 9 Booster
• Production Employees now have their level 9 Awards Upgrades
• The final Media type is unlocked: 'Awards Bait Film'.

T-Pose Awards

• As Mom notes during the Level 9 sequence, you are now competing against Mom!
• The Awards go like normal, except you have more Coins for Pontification and must answer a few more questions for the Paparazzi.
• There will be an additional minigame in the next update as well.
• Mom texts you to briefly taunt each time she wins an Award
• Mom will always win the Best Picture Award while you're in Level 9, and she should win at least one of the sub-category Awards as well.

P.R. Disasters

As a full-blown Studio, you have a lot of moving pieces and sometimes things go wrong. That's what these Disasters are all about.
An issue will arise involving a piece of Inventory (Dialog, Storyboards, Scenes, or Designs) and you have three choices to deal with it:

1. Ignore it and Sacrifice some Employees. Depending on your XP Loyalty, you could lose nearly half of your Employees in each Department.
2. Ignore it and Sacrifice your Fan Rating. Depending on your Minimum Fan Rating Soul Perk level, you could lose up to 50% Fan Rating.
3. Fix the issue. If you started Level 9 with the Pure Perk, you'll need 100 of the problematic Inventory and 250 Positive PR. If you got the Corrupt Perk, you'll need 500 of the Inventory, 500 PR, $1,000,000 and 4 Soul Portions.

Computer Apps

• Inventory Market Buy/Sell complete rebalance
• Several Apps got a Help Button that explains the App a bit.
• New App - Plant the Seeds of Pontification
  • At level 8, you get an App that allows you to "mention" a Genre each week to start the judges thinking about that Genre.
  • You can do this once each week between Awards Ceremonies (6 weeks). If you pick the same Genre each week and then submit an Awards Film with that Genre, they judges have a much greater chance of picking that Genre as their favorite, giving you bonus Award Points. (combine this with the Writer's levels 7 & 9 upgrades to guarantee they will love your work!)
  • Your mentions reset each Award Show, though, so you must come back each week.
  

• New App - Finding Balance
  • At level 8, you get an App that allows you to trade Rotted Potato Score for Finding Balance minigame points.
  • In the minigame, you are trying to reach 100 Points in each bucket. For every 10% Rotted Potato Score you trade in, you start with 5 points in both buckets.
  • You can trade 10% each week between Awards Ceremonies (6 weeks), but the starting score resets each Award Show, so spend your Potatoes wisely and come back each week to keep boosting your score!
  

Minigame Updates:

Hackers / Virus

• Overall
  • Happen more frequently now, based on your game mode (Easy, Medium, Hard)
  • I.T. and Security Toggles have also been increased to match these more frequent attacks. .
  • The more corrupt you are, the more likely you are to get Hackers/Viruses. Especially in Medium and Hard modes, corruption can even allow Hackers/Viruses overwhelm the Toggles
  • Added a variable to ensure a week between hackers/viruses

• Hackers
  • Added a down arrow for Hackers, so you can drop the number down, without having to go around the dial
  • Since the code is non-repeating, it now prevents you from selecting a number that has already been confirmed to be part of the code
  

• Virus
  • Now flashes the word "GO!" at the beginning of the game to ensure players know to begin.
  • Better instructions for clarity, including some pictures for reference

Awards Minigames:

• Hot Seat Minigame
  • A lot more Hot Seat questions.
  • The answers that used to give 0 points now give 5 Points.

• Finding Balance:
  
  • Clarified instructions
  • Added a 3 second count-in before the game starts
  • Added sound effects for winning or losing.
  • Made Easy Mode a little easier by removing the "15" point options that fall.
  • Added a little more time to the ending results because they were too fast to read.
  • Side bars GLOW when you catch their basket.

Overall Rebalancing

• Corruption/Soul Restoration:
  • Hiring Fees. Doubled the impact that Corruption has on Hiring Fees
  • Corruption Perk: XP. Dropped XP amount to 25XP for Slightly Corrupt and 100XP for Corrupt
  • Slightly lowered the Cash payout for the levels 7 & 8 Pure Level Perks
  • Due to Inventory Market rebalancing, Soul Restoration using Themes has been reduced back to its previous cost of 250 Themes

• Employee Bays
  • Quality Control's Bay size has been reduced to match the Artist and Composer, as that is closer to the actual ratio needed. **Due to this change, if you load a saved game, you will only have the Quality Control Department head, but none of your Employees.**
  • Editor & Sound Design Bay prices have gone up slightly, but Quality Control's Bay price went down

• Media/Film Inventory Requirements
  • Slightly balanced Ads/Deals & Publicity for Films
  • Lowered Animation Requirements overall
  • Increased Story Requirements to more closely match Animation throughout
  • To make Approvals/Quality Control less confusing, the number of Approvals is now more closely aligned with the other materials instead of being 4X higher. However, to compensate, that means Q.C. now works 4X slower. So basically, this doesn't change the economy at all, it just makes things less confusing.

• Extra Credit
  • Balanced Media Requirements to match new 'Make Media' ratios
  • Increased XP output in level 2 to 25XP.

• Full TV Seasons
  • Increased amount of XP earn from Full Seasons to 50 / 100 / 250 / 500
  • At level 4, only the 11-minute TV Season unlocks to help focus the player on completing one season.
  • After creating the first Season, the Executive pops back up to explain that you can build your next season, but can't release another 11-minute until the previous one is canceled or renewed.
  • The 22-minute TV Seasons unlocks at level 5 and is now part of the To-Do list
  • The other two TV Seasons unlock at level 6, and the Streaming series is part of the To-Do list as well.

• Swag Bag
  • Lowered costs of starting high tier from 250 Inventory to 100.
  • Now Inventory requirements increase by 15 every time you use it.
  • Perk values reduced from 5%/10% to 2%/5%

• To-Do List
  • Level 3 now requires 4 more Writers instead of 2.
  • Level 5 now requires you make another Season of TV.

• Achievements
  • Genre Achievements have all been reduced to 10
  • Total Media Achievements have been reduced to 500 / 2500
  • Total Awards Achievements have been reduced to 10 / 25 / 50
  • "Cream of the Crop" now requires a Rank 5 employee in all Corporate Departments as well as Production Departments
  • 17 new Achievements, mostly related to newer features.

• Fans
  • Fan Demands happen slightly less frequently when your corruption is low, and more frequently as it gets higher.
  • Ignoring the Fan Matching Game after level 6 now results in a loss of Fan Rating as well.

• Increase Production Upgrade: Corporate Training from 10XP to 25 XP
  
• If you go Bankrupt, you lose all Employees EXCEPT Department Heads. Previously, you lost all Department heads except the Producer.
  

Random Fixes/Updates

• Hover over the "Risky Business" or "Catch a Break" navigation tabs, and a Popup appears showing you any active Perks, plus how long they will still be active.
• Added a fourth page to the Employee Clipboard for the Awards. Awards were previously stuffed at the bottom of the Media page, but it was way too crowded
• Level Up Article
  • Has been clarified to be written by the Paparazzi News, which ties into the Paparazzi questioning you in the Awards Show.
  • The 3 news links on the right side of the Article now show tips when you hover over them.

• Added a little movement to the tutorial characters so they're not just staring at your blankly!
  
• Added P.R. Disasters to the Help App
  
• The Media Tablet no longer has the "Film" button until you hit level 5 since you can't make them until then.
  
• Level 5 Tutorial - If you are playing with the tutorial on, after the Producer shows you the first two Corporate hires, the Executive takes over to show you where Corporate Training is, and shows you how to access Films on the Media Tablet.
  
• Level 7 Tutorial - The Executive explains a few things about winning awards. If you lose the awards show, the producer has a meeting right away (instead of waiting for the second failure)
  

Old saved games

Since things are really close to wrapping up with this update and the next - I will be cleaning up some code including some variables to allow old version save files to still work. As long as you load/save your files before the next update, you'll be fine. If you don't load those old games, then they will be deleted.