This update touches a bit of everything and is one of the biggest single updates so far. This in part due to the addition of more audio - more on that below. There is also progress on the Events side, both in terms of balance and adding the final historic events - bringing the total to 30. To start off with, I picked at least one actual event for every other month in the game, and incorporated it into the event pool.
Please do keep sending bugs and suggestions. As always, many of the things that have been prioritized for this patch, were things you pointed out.
Additions and changes
- New button graphics - the trusty placeholder buttons from Kenney Studio have been replaced. In their place, buttons that are a bit closer to that late 90s look.
- Steam Leaderboard integration - the main game menu will now show where you rank compared to all Steam users, showing your own score in the middle, and +/- 2 positions on either side.
- New Options menu when hitting Esc - previously was just for quitting the game. Initial iteration still does that, but can also be used for toggling leaderboard submissions (affects both Steam boards and the one on the website) and whether or not music should play.
- Keyboard shortcut for toggling music on/off: m (works on all screens)
- Music added! These loops are instrumental and hopefully not too dominating. More music is planned in coming updates for additional variation.
- Historic Events for the years 2000-2002 all now have working scripts. Some have consequences based on your decisions, some are based on your newspaper's status when the events happen.
- Random events have been rebalanced slightly; later chapters have more events* in the random event pool. At the same time, the gradual increase in chance of an event triggering has been nerfed, which will space out events slightly more (about 2.5%).
I am still slowly making my way towards Alpha 8. Check out the development roadmap for a big picture overview, of what you can expect to see in the next major releases.
*Extra events only apply to games started or leveled up after this update. You can still keep playing with your existing game if you prefer, and get the extra events from the next chapter forward.