Hello everyone!
A warm welcome to this v1.10.0 update! Do you remember a year ago (already), City Game Studio left early access, I felt that the game was already complete! But that' s without counting on your suggestions.
Many of you have joined the studio's discord server. Thus we discuss about the game, but also about the mods you make, the next updates, bugs, we share a lot. Anyway, I invite you to join us!
Without further ado, let's talk about this update!
Video game consoles
I drew them in 2017. Ever since, they had remained unchanged, although in the meantime I got a bit better at drawing with Inkscape. Being impressed with the mods you made, and a bit jealous of their quality, I decided to redraw all the City Game Studio consoles. Personally, I find them beautiful, obviously the more a console will be cult, the more details it will have.
While I was playing, I realized that it was difficult to recognize the OSes, Skylight, GNU/Linux... Therefore I spent some time assigning textures to them, this way it becomes easier to distinguish these platforms. It's all about adding immersion, I hope you'll like it.
Game over
Endgame is huge. so I decided to rework all of that. From now on, you're going to be able to go bankrupt, it depends on the difficulty, from the easiest to the hardest, it goes from a $250,000 bankrupt to a $50,000 bankrupt. So that' s to make the game less punishing when you're struggling.
The end of the game has also been changed. From now on, you will receive an email in 2025 to let you know that a special event will take place by the end of the year. This will allow you to better prepare yourself for the endgame.
Immersion
The rivals are going to release games that are inspired by real games. Someone is going to release Metal Gear Liquid, and it's going to be a hit. Plus it's fully moddable, which means you can expect a bunch of new mods that allow you to replay the story of the video game as it really happened.
New components for the game engines have been introduced. Thus allowing you to create Open Worlds from the 80's ! I also took the time to name all the components of the consoles, no more components that are called "#1", they will now have real recognizable names.
Misc
I spent a lot of time optimizing the game and the rendering of the game so large maps with lots of competitors could be played on low end configurations. Several menus have been optimized. I also improved the user experience by allowing for example to change the color of a console while it is being developed. Or letting you change the studios that work on the game ports, or the games of the year.
SteamDeck and Linux
These are the most important changes for Linux users. City Game Studio now uses the Steam SDK Runtime, which means that the game should run smoothly.
In top of that, there is also support for low resolutions. Fonts will now adjust according to the resolution, allowing SteamDeck users to read all texts easily. In addition, a virtual keyboard will automatically appear when you click on a text input field (only for the SteamDeck).
Closing words
There are quite a few other minor changes, some not so minor that I haven't presented, but either you can read about them at the bottom of this post or experience them by launching City Game Studio!
For those of you who can't wait to see what's coming next, I invite you to take a look at the roadmap. There's some heavy stuff coming up, and I think you'll really enjoy it!
In the meantime, take care of yourself, launch City Game Studio, and have fun.
Cheers !
Xavier
Changelog
End game
- Add a warning panel one year beore end of the game
- Revamp the end panel so the keep playing button is more visible
UI
- Custom logo: Rename the "Load" button for "Import an image"
- Release panel: It is now resizable
- Remember theme trend sorting
- Improve charts rendering
- Added an identity card for spontaneous applications messages
- Training: Add new filter for studioless employees
- Improve Dark mode rendering
- New gauge for contracts on the difficulty selection panel
Balancing
- Remake: Adjust the number of point to produce according to the difficulty
- Publishing offer: Adjust penality to the difficulty
- Contracts have been re-balanced
Competitors
- Games: Name, genre, theme, release date, number of units sold are now inspired from reality.
- Add new competitor: Kanomi
- Studio are going to get named using their name (ie: UbiHard (#01))
Game creation
- Add a tooltip when releasing a game showing the number of genre points obtained.
- Do not hide "Do the game report" disable it and explain why it is disabled
Platforms
- Rework all the platforms visuals
- Add proper textures for OS platform type
- Adjust GPU power for the Gamestation 4 (81 instead of 71)
Custom platforms
- Edit colors while developing
- Give proper name to component parts
ModMaker
- Custom platform components: Add mod validation, was broken before and never checked anything
- Concurrent game: Can add new concurrent game
- Concurrent game: Can rename existing concurrent game
- Custom platforms components: Add a new mandatory field 'id'.
Cheat codes
- Can complete one/all gameports instantly
- Can complete one/all game-of-the-years instantly
- Unlock all hints
Misc
- Game of the year: Can edit studios while being in dev
- Game port: Can edit studios while being in dev
- City map: Optimizes generation and rendering
- When building a studio, can choose it's facade
- Listing studios to buy takes forever (optimization)
- Improve SteamDeck compatibility
- Improve font rendering
Game Engine
- Add Open World component
- Add Sandbox environment component
- When acting as a publisher select the right game engine
- Balance Motion Control component costs
- Add tooltip to engine licenses to explain pros/cons
Bugfix
- Publishing: indie studios don't take your default game engine
- Mortgage: Computation doesn't take into account stocks
- Dark mode: Custom platform component selection panel has white labels on a white background
- Mod & Custom-platform: Fix an issue when you first start a game on Windows then keep playing it on Mac.
- Studio manager not rendering properly when the studio skin is no the default one
- ModMaker: Saving a game while making a custom-platform with mods leads to a corrupted savegame.
- ModMaker: Swichting a savegame between MacOS, Windows or Linux erases the custom-platforms' cases textures.
- ModMaker: Competitors game mods were not validated properly by the game.
- ModMaker: Custom platforms components mods were not validated properly by the game.
- Shop Menu: Item placement might bug sometime
- ModMaker: Cannot load more than 50 mods
- ModMaker: Cannot make games using mods because some features aren't available anymore
- Game sales events: Game name isn't shown for third published games and remakes
- Game update: Cannot update competitors games when you buy them
- Online player count: Labels are misleading
- Digital store: Checkbox compatibility missing tooltip
- Convention: Grey out Attend button when you cannot afford attending a convention
- Marketing campaign: Show currency and add tooltip explaining it is too expensive
- Game over: When going bankrupt, don't lock the currency panel, give the player the opportunity to keep playing untill he/she reaches the hard-threshold