Hi All,
Today I'm throwing the switch on the Utilities Update! This update brings a range of new utilities for you to build, alongside a large number of bug fixes from the beta branch.
I'm really happy to bring this update to you as, aside from our festive Christmas Tree update at the start of the month, it's the first of many updates to expand the tech tree, bringing you new items and more options to the experience.
New content
It's been about 6 months since launch, and in that time the game has come on leaps and bounds in terms of stability and experience. A lot of things have been ironed out, which is now I'm able to start focussing more on new content, refining and expanding the game. I'm depending on your feedback to help guide me, so do let me know what you think in the Steam forum, on Discord or on Twitter.
The gift of GIFs
This update also brings in the GIF exporter. To use this, press f11 and the game will save a .GIF of the last 5 seconds of your play. This is off by default, but you can turn it on in Game Options. You can also configure what dimesnions you want your .gif to be here. You can find your .gifs here:
C: > Users > YOURUSERNAME > Documents > My Games > Overcrowd > Saves > GIFS
I'd love to see some GIFs of some nice stations - tweet them to me here :)
(Season's Greetings from me and Sarah)
Is Overcrowd Indie of the Year 2019?
I'm also hyped to say that, thanks to your votes, Overcrowd is shortlisted in the Realistic Sim as Indie of the Year in the esteemed IndieDB annual competition. This is a public vote competition - and your votes have taken us into the top 100. Thanks for everyone who voted!
Let it snow!
I already added an Xmas tree, but as a final festive gesture, we've updated the outside weather system to create snow instead of rain - just for the festive season. Come the new year, we'll be bringing back a mix of rain and snow.
General maintenance
Here are all those changes I mentioned. As ever, a huge thanks to those who have helped to test the game in the beta branch in Discord. I am indebted to your patience! Thanks also to everyone who has given us a review this year, as well as tagged the game, especially tags like "City Builder". This really helps the game find it's best place in Steam.
New Utilities:
-Adds power generator level 3
-Adds new air conditioner level 1
-Adds new level 1 fuel barrel
-Adds Wheelie bin level 3
-Adds Trash Compactor. Trash compactors cause litter to cost half as much when collected
-Updated tech tree for new tech items
Other fixes, tweaks and balancing changes:
-New GIF exporter! Enable in game options - press f11 to export an animated gif of the last 5 second of your game. Then tweet it to me ;)
-Litter created on bin destroy is on correct cell and will not spawn on perimeters
-Fixed rare crash if rats spawn out of map perimeter
-can place objects even if reserved area in front of it has litter
-can build adverts and alarms on exteriors of rooms.
-can build adverts in corner cells
-as tech advances, the overall gradient of reputation change becomes shallower. In English this means as you advance, it is slightly harder for reputation to make sudden changes.
-when you select staff, the staff perception area is drawn in gold. You can see the perception area of all staff, and there zones will be drawn in a faded white. This is to help in later levels distribute your staff. This could be made a toggle option if you find it distracting so let me know.
-areas correctly reserved for multi celled objects to prevent illegal building/issues when cancelling moves
-cancelling correctly cancels green glow on kiosk and phone
-wall objects can be toggled to opposite faces on corners and corridors
-fixed a rare issue where selling shops in various situation would leave the selling process broken for remaining shops (most often causing tickets prices or other stock to be sold as -1)
-thermal imaging does not rewrite wall data, so does not trigger automatic sale of all wall objects
-moving 2 celled objects or shops correctly removes placeholders so can build in place where object was.
-rep scaling on tech progression on hold
-removed incorrect version label on menu in game
-New required goal. Build X entrances (the later the zone, the greater the number). You must meet the footfall bonus for each entrance to complete a station. Closing or selling any way in entrance resets all footfall bonus (to prevent exploiting and doing 1 entrance at a time). The purpose is to force players to expand and not take the easier option of using only 1 entrance.
-Rep on easy is weighted to make gain easier. Rep on Hard is weighted to make loss easier.
-Increased min and max shop requirement slightly to increase baseline shopping needs
-Corrected rep weighting
-fixes resetting floor illumination correctly when moving/placing new objects with floor focus mode on
-Fixes to overlapping Chinese text in certain situations
-Tutorial no displays bound keys (not hardcoded)
-updated language translations to include recent changes
-Commuter shopping needs have been raised slightly and they feel bad about no shops slightly more easliy to raise pressure to build shops slightly earlier
-reduced number of entrance to build to finish a zone requirement in campaign slightly (only ever up to 3) to ensure not too hard
-GM2 should correctly force laptops to use dedicated GPU if available
-Can build ads on room walls, even if there is an object on other side of wall
-Ads will not sell themselves if building on other side of a room wall they are placed on
-Entrances cannot be built on top of waypoints/access areas in front of shops
-Fixed rare issue where the entrance would fail to build, leaving the pavement cells with no wall or entrance after clicking (would occur if building while nearby lights were powering on)
-Options menu in campaign screen now scrolls and functions correctly
-adjusted navigation code to try and prevent erroneous "NO SHOP" message. Adjusted shopping rates slightly, reducing them