Hey everyone!
Thanks for being so many to still read me, it really makes me happy! And this week I kept my promises and even a little bit more!
Let me tell you all about it!
This Week's Recap
Last week I promised to work on in-game notifications. And that's what I did. Now when you get info that a new component for your game engine is available, you can click directly in the notification to open the game engine panel! It's a detail, but it makes notifications a bit more dynamic, and that's beautiful.
It's been a while since I had to do it, so I spent a full day reworking the update and DLC interfaces. I like the result, I think it's more consistent with the rest of the game. You now see the three stages of game development, which makes everything much more readable.
I also got feedback from games with over 1000 employees. And if you didn't know, City Game Studio supports up to 1000 employees - beyond that, it's going to start lagging. But since I felt like it, and it makes you happy, I spent a few hours looking at what I could optimize so the game runs better when you have over 1000 employees. And the improvements are visible. In debug mode, which is slower than release mode, the game barely manages to reach 30 fps with 1500 employees, where before it had barely 7 fps. The gain is interesting, and these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt since I didn't test with the production version, but with a debug version, which is much slower. So I think you should be able to play with a bit over 1000 employees without too much lag with this version.
Oh, one last change that should make you happy. I added a grid when you place furniture in your studios. I tested it, and it's true that having a simple grid makes it easier to place furniture. It's crazy how a small change can bring so much comfort!
What's Coming
I'm going to have to tackle it, and I think the coming week will allow me to start working on saves. I'm not talking about optimization, but about how saves work.
The idea is to have an auto-save that will allow you to create autosave files, which will be offered when you load your game. So, rather than having an auto-save that overwrites your save, you'll have an auto-save that creates a new save.
I still have work to do, because after the save system I'll have to work on the banker to enrich his proposals. I'll talk to you about it when the time comes.
Well, I'm already done, I'm really happy to be able to continue working on City Game Studio, already 9 years I've been working on this project, and I still have some great updates to offer you!
Thank you for reading me.
See you next week, in the meantime take care of yourselves
Xavier aka Binogure