Hi everyone!
Beta 19 is now available! Restart Steam to get it right away!
Beta 19 is now live, which mainly focused on optimizing the game - making sure it’s ready for the future of Startup Company! We fixed a lot of issues and listened closely to what the community had to say.
As always, we’re incredibly excited to hear your ideas, while also being nervous at the same time - since new Betas are always scary for developers!
With each Beta release we just want to make sure that you’re aware of the fact that there might be some bugs. Jonas is standing by to make sure anything that might go wrong will get hotfixed as soon as possible, but it should be a smooth sailing with this release since we tested it a lot.
Performance Improvements
Since the Early Access release Startup Company hasn't been the most optimized game and everyone who had 180 employees know what we're talking about.
The main reason for the bad performance has always been the way the office was rendered (DOM elements). This was a decision we took early on, as Startup Company at the time wasn't that "big" of a game. People usually had 10-20 employees.
Now as the game has progressed, it's time to move on to WebGL and something called canvas. This is all geek talk, but what it really means is the game is going to be incredible efficient compared to the latest Beta 18.
Here's some early stats showing the improvements (all based on i7 7700K and a GTX1060):
| Test | Beta 18 | Beta 19 |
|---|---|---|
| 30x30 office with 100 employees | 84 fps | 144 fps |
| 60x60 office with 200 employees | 27 fps | 144 fps |
| 150x150 office with 400 employees | Unable to load | 102 fps |
More employees in the Skyscraper
The maximum desks in the skyscraper has been increased from 180 to 260. We plan on increasing the limit even more, as more performance improvements gets introduced in the future.
New desks
We’ve added two new desks to the game, one that is perfect for managers and one that grants your programmers, SysAdmins and designers an amazing setup! Here are the images of these setups:
The executive setup
The ultimate setup
New overlays
We’ve included new overlays which shows a lot more information in a much cleaner way!
Improved-Clickable-Area
It has been a pain to move certain items, especially when you had a bigger office with more items in there. We've now significantly improved the clickable area from where you can select items that you previously placed on the office floor. This will allow you to remove and/or change items in your office a lot easier.
New location for Mods
The location where mods are stored has been changed. In addition to that, when you’re upgrading to a newer version of Startup Company mods will automatically deactivate. You will need to manually enable them again in the mods section in the game itself.
FAQ about Beta 19
Beta 19 feels much slower than Beta 18. Shouldn’t it be faster?
This can be the case if your setup is below our minimum requirements. Beta 18 was relying mainly on the CPU. Beta 19 is different and is now utilizing the GPU instead. Make sure to play the game with a dedicated graphics card.
Is there a way to upgrade existing racks to the new 42U rack?
Unfortunately not at this time. It’s on our radar, together with a ton of other features.
The toggle overlay and the new desks are missing translations. Is this intended?
Yes, as Beta 19 almost contained no new translations, we have postponed translation of some strings until Beta 20.
As always, we're dedicated to make sure everything runs smoothly by fixing potential issues, listening to the community and continue the development by working towards Beta 20. In case you're wondering what's coming up in Beta 20 make sure to take a look at our updated roadmap from December 7, 2018.
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game?
Check out our Conflux board.
Best,
Jonas & Robert
