Hey everyone!
Has it really been a week already?! Time flies at an incredible pace! This update is a tiny bit meatier than the last one, so let me get into it.
This Week's Recap
I focused more on your feedback than on what was lined up on the roadmap. So I went off-script and crammed in more than planned, but that's pretty normal at this point.
First up: an improvement to the in-game DDoS attack. You now have the option to pay $1,000,000 to never have to do that mini-game again. I figured that's the right price, not too cheap, not too steep. On lower difficulties, $1,000,000 comes fairly easily, but it's more of a real challenge on harder ones. I can always adjust it down the line if needed.
You also gave me feedback about publishing offers. Basically, when you want to work with a publisher, the deals they propose just aren't appealing. So I reworked the algorithm that generates those offers to make sure they now come at you with genuinely attractive combos that actually make you want to work with them. And since I was already in there, I threw in a few optimizations to stop the game from generating 100 publishing offers for no reason, because producing that many is actually expensive in terms of computation. From now on, there's a maximum of 24 active offers at any given time. That's a maximum, so there can be fewer. However, if you have 30 competitors, you'll get 30 publishing offers, at least one per competitor, with a cap of 24. The first condition wins out over the second.
On top of that, I made an adjustment to translations. Month names were always displayed in English, and I took the time to fix that so they properly adapt to each language. Same goes for number formatting. It's now translated and even adjusted for Chinese players. All of this also let me squeeze out a bit more performance from the way numbers are displayed in-game.
What's Coming Next
I'd like to revisit two small things with studio directors. I want them to produce quality games even in CEO mode. That's going to take a fair amount of work, but I think it's worth it so you can switch into macro-management mode more quickly.
I'd also like the game to generate an annual report, delivered to you by email. Those are the next two things I want to spend time on. But as always, I read everything you write and I can always change course based on your suggestions. So go ahead and post your comments!
Alright, that's it for me. Quick shoutout for anyone looking to follow me on social media: I'm on Bluesky ( https://bsky.app/profile/binogure-studio.com ) and I post quite a bit of stuff directly related to game dev.
Okay, now it's really over, see you next week.
Take care of yourselves in the meantime,
Xavier aka Binogure