Current status
The base mechanic overhaul I wanted to achieve for Alpha 11 is pretty much done at this point and I’ve been working through the new big additions to Alpha 11 this past month. I still have to do a round of bug fixing and balancing when I’ve finished the additions, which could be quick or drag out, I can’t say for sure at this point.
New additions
To reiterate what I wrote last month, product updates will not be present in the initial test release, to avoid delaying it more than necessary. I’m only working on features that would break save game compatibility for the initial release.
Iterative development
Iterative development focuses more on working through a project several times, while reconsidering the design and refactoring, to end up at a final product, as opposed to the traditional waterfall model of working out a full design initially and sticking 100% to it throughout development.
You will be able to iterate on your design several times during the design phase to increase chances of creating a good quality product without too many bugs. However, a more effective use of your time will be to iterate during the alpha phase: When you finish a software review during the alpha phase, instead of not really being able to do anything about all the frowning smiley faces, you will be able to temporarily stop development to improve the design, based on your newfound knowledge, and increase the end quality of your product.
Publishing
You will now be able to hand off some of your profits to a competitor, to avoid having to print copies or micromanage your marketing efforts. You will even be able to fund projects with a publisher to get your company off the ground early on or to lessen risk later.
Frameworks
Game engines have been a special class of software, since they are the only dependency in Software Inc. that requires supporting the same operating systems when using them for development. In contrast to using a 3D modelling or music app for development, you can’t run your game without a game engine once your game is done. This added a bunch of unneeded complexity to the game, so they are being deprecated in favor of frameworks.
You will now be able to create a framework when developing any type of software, which can be licensed to other companies and reused in future projects to reduce development time. Game frameworks will be analogues to game engines.
Service role
As all roles now have individual specializations, the marketing role is being deprecated in favor of a new Service role, which can specialize in Marketing, Support and Law.
Lawsuits
You can now be sued by your employees or other companies, which requires service employees with the law specialization to fight.
Conventions
I called this "conferences" in earlier posts, but it seemed misleading considering what I wanted the mechanic to encompass.
You and other companies will be able to hold and attend conventions in a select number of conference halls with individual booth layouts. Each booth has an area which can be filled with equipment to market and entice convention guests. This will be purely UI based, there won’t be a fully rendered conference hall full of people, as that would require a whole alpha version by itself or maybe just a different game entirely.
Other notable changes
- Lakes have been spread around maps
- You can now place sinks, which employees will seek out after visiting a bathroom to avoid spreading germs. Failing to place sinks will lead to nearby employees getting sicker more frequently
- Employee salaries are now calculated on an hourly basis and automatically scale with their hours, meaning you can now have part-time employees and you can no longer give employees extra hours without compensating them
- Employees now dislike night shifts, which you can combat with a night shift compensation benefit
- Sun position and color calculation has been revamped, adding a new colorful dusk and more striking shadows at dawn and dusk
- Most modding features have tentatively switched to TyD from XML
- Computer performance and price now dynamically scale based on other computers available, e.g. a computer from the 1980s wasn’t slow and cheap in the 1980s
- Fixed roofs being hard to place adjacent to room walls