Hello everyone.
The playtest of Software Company starts today at 6pm CET.
So, I want to take the opportunity to answer some frequently asked questions and explain what is to be expected in this playtest.
First of all: There WILL BE bugs and that's one thing, what this playtest is for. Finding as many bugs as possible and fixing them.
So if you are scared of bugs, this playtest may not be your cup of tea and you might want to wait and take a look at the game, when it is released.
To make identifying the reasons for bugs easier, Unity's own debug-console is active in this playtest version. If you encounter a bug and you want to report it, it would be great if you could provide a screenshot of the error message displayed in the console.
The console can always be closed, if it becomes disturbing or is in the way of an UI-element.
How much of the final game is in the playtest-version?
The playtest-version is around 35% of the final game. You will see that there are already some things in this version that don't have any deeper function or are limited.
More features are already being programmed, but are not ready yet to be implemented.
During the 3 weeks of playtesting, there will be a chance that I unlock more features. Depending on how it goes.
What features are available from the start of the playtest?
Here is a quick rundown of features already available right from the beginning in no particular order, in brackets you will find more infos and features may be unlocked in upcoming patches.:
- 3D-Low-Polygon graphics with day-/night cycle, changing weather based on seasons, roaming pedestrians and so on.
- Animated menus with sounds (some buttons may have missing sounds)
- Character- and studiocreation.
- Small tutorial, that helps you get going. (You have to play through the tutorial each time you start a new game right now).
- Save-system. (Loading a saved game is only possible through the main menu at the moment.)
- Game-development function.
- Research (Themes and genres are all unlocked from the start in this playtest for balancing purposes)
- Conversation-system (Only for hiring new employees at the moment. Later you will have more conversation options like talking to your employees to boost their morale, firing them. Also you will be able to try and convince staff from other companies to join your studio)
- Economic and financial stats. (More detailed overview over deeper statistics of your company and those of your rivals will be added later.)
- Advertising. (Or a very basic form of it)
- In-game website about games produced by you and other companies. With reviews and sale-charts. (In the future there will also be news around the industry and more to find here, as well as online-statistics where your made games will be compared to games from other players from all around the globe)
- 6 rival companies. (They hire employees. produce games and have the same options at their disposal as you do. All those companies are there right from the start. In the final game, they will show up on the market based on the first appearance of their real-world counterparts)
- 5 gaming systems to develop for. (All available right from the start. They also will be released based on the release dates of the real-world consoles. Market-shares are fixed values right now, later those market-shares will dynamically shift over time.)
Where can i report bugs and make suggestions?
Feel free to use the steam-discussions page to report bugs and post your ideas and feature-requests. I will try to take everything in consideration and be active there as much as possible to talk to you guys.
I hope you guys enjoy what I have prepared for you and contribute as much as possible to help me make this game as good of a product as I can.
Expect patches every 2-3 days during playtest.
In the upcoming weeks, there will be a roadmap posted here, where I lay out the future plans for this game, as well as a release date.
I am really looking forward to your guys' opinions and experiences.
Regards
Sascha[/b