Hello folks, With immense pleasure, I'm releasing this update. As I announced in the devlogs, it's thanks to Cringer, shenryyr and their community that this update is so big. There's a lot to talk about, so let's get right to it.

The interface

Quite a few things have been revised. The studio panel now shows the number of points produced per week by your teams. This gives you a better insight into the future. In addition, tooltips have been added to explain what the points correspond to. Speaking of tooltips, from now on they won't overlap, which I think will make the game easier to read. Dark mode, accessible from the options panel, had text and panels that were barely visible, this has been fixed.
From now on, when you create a game, on each gauge, an indication appears according to your level of knowledge. There are plenty of other interface changes, but I've covered the most important ones.

The pop-ups

A confirmation pop-up is present at every important stage, when you cancel a game, a console or sell a studio, for example. But there's also another form of confirmation, and that's with console manufacturers. When you make an offer, and the manufacturer accepts it, you can henceforth retract at the last moment. The rendering of pop-ups has also been revised, and is now more polished.

Other changes

Contracts, game ports, game engines and anything else that depends on a certain number of points to be produced ends when the required number of points is reached, rather than at the end of the following week.
The environment around your first studio has been redesigned; it's subtle, but gradients have been added, as well as shadows and small grasses, so it all looks a little better.

Balancing

Adjustments have been made to the correspondence between genres and themes, to better match players' expectations. Consoles have been completely rebalanced for difficulty 2 and higher. The easiest difficulty remains unchanged. But for the other difficulties, the changes are significant. The rate of return on consoles has been reviewed, and the higher the difficulty, the more it reflects reality. As a result, you'll have to be very careful when offering promotions, or risk bankruptcy. Previously, console quality had no significant impact on the return rate, and since v1.17.0, console quality has a significant impact on the return rate. But the difficulty also has an impact. CEO, for example, can have a return rate of around 80% on a poor-quality console, whereas on the same console in difficulty 1, the return rate will be 5% at most. These parameters are accessible to modders, so you can create difficulties with consoles that are impossible to sell, or vice versa. What's more, the better your company's rating, the better your consoles will sell. To find out your company's rating, simply click on the companies tab on the right-hand side of the screen. And the bigger your console's catalog of games, the better it will sell too. These changes will be reviewed for v1.18.0, which will add a few new automations to the game. If you'd like to know more about v1.18.0, the roadmap is available here : https://github.com/binogure-studio/city-game-studio-i18n/projects/2

In-game purchases

I've been talking about this for a while, and now it's here. In-game purchasing has been revamped. You can save IAP models, name them and reuse them across multiple games. A welcome change that reduces IAP micromanagement.

Fixes

There are many fixes, most of them purely visual, such as the improved readability of dark mode. For the rest, I'll list them quickly. When you assign an HR to a studio, the salary increase could be 0%, this has been fixed, and by default it will always be 8%. When you play your first game, the tutorial asks you to make a game report, however this is not yet available if you've paused the game, from now on the tutorial waits until the report is actually feasible before offering it to you. When you're working on your virtual store, some employees weren't working. This was due to a problem assigning tasks in the code, which has now been corrected. When you send your team on vacation, the specialists weren't going on vacation. This has now been corrected and everyone is going on vacation.

Conclusion

It's been a very, very busy December for me, and I'm satisfied with the work I've done, although I still think there's a lot more to do. Especially on consoles. In the next update, console creation will be reviewed, to give you a better idea of what the console will become. For example, you'll be able to see what kinds of games your console will be compatible with, but this will only be an approximation. You'll be able to start creating games for your future console as soon as you've launched its development, but beware: cancelling the console during development will necessarily cancel the original game. The role of the producers will be slightly revised, so that they can help you create your games. They'll give you extra information on the success of a game, telling you that your team is producing enough points to make a good game. And the producers will also specialize in one or more game genres, giving you extra tips. The magazines and review sites for your games will also be revamped. I'm going to take the time to make some beautiful covers, and the most important thing will be the content of these magazines. Each gauge will have a score between 0 and 100, depending on its accuracy. Before you ask, I don't yet have a release date planned for this next update, and in the meantime, I wish you a good game, a happy new year and thank you all for your support! Xavier aka Binogure

Changelog

UI

• Reworked the studio capacities and the staff capacities to explained how many points it produces per week on average. Also adds the current capacitiy and the maximum capacities for employees.
• Rework many tooltips to improve their redability regarding points production. When unlocking a lot of feature at the same time, the UI is flooded with a lot of tooltips, overlapping each others. This has been fixed, only one tooltip at a time no more. It makes the game way more readable
• Rework many tooltips to improve their redability regarding points production.
• Training panel: Rework the employee selection (was barely readable in dark mode)
• Hire and assign greyed out: Explain there's no desk available
• Game edition: Add a label explaining you don't get any tips when acting as a publisher
• Custom-platform: Explain not to release the console right away in order to publish more games first
• Studio list: Select rent studios first and sort them by area instead of price
• Improve the game creation panel, explain how the blue area is computed.
• Improve pagination icons

Popup

• Rework the popups so they render better
• Add confirmation popup when selling/demolishing a studio
• Improve confirmation popup when buying a game genre
• Improve the popup when making a game (feature list and history games)
• Add a popup manager so it's easier to use them
• Add confirmation when canceling a game port
• Add confirmation when canceling a game
• Add confirmation when canceling a remake
• Add confirmation when canceling a game engine
• Add confirmation when canceling a contract
• Add confirmation when canceling a trade game
• Add confirmation when canceling a indie game
• Add confirmation when canceling a custom platform
• Add confirmation when canceling a game update
• Add confirmation when canceling a game dlc
• Add confirmation when selling/demolishing building from the city map

Manufacturer negotiation

• Add a confirmation at the very end

Misc

• Contracts end immediately after making the required points
• Custom-platform: As soon as a custom-platform is ready, flag it as ready
• Game Engine: As soon as an engine ready, flag it as ready
• Game port: As soon as a game-port is ready, flag it as ready
• Add the Godot Engine logo to the splash screen
• Small studios: Revamp the studios surrounding
• Code linting

Balancing

• Dragon / Animals is now a perfect match
• Custom platforms: refund rate has been rewritten in order to take into account the game difficulty
• Custom platforms: unit sold has been rewritten in order to take into account the game difficulty

Mod Maker

• Add new parameters for custom platform difficulty adjustment

Bugfix

• On the history panel and the game port panel, if you have a lot of games with very long names then you cannot see all of your games. It's been fixed
• DLC name not visible on dark mode
• Sound / Music on feedback panel
• List office: Rent/Buy instead of Rent/Price
• SteamDeck: Cannot make a sequel if the game name is quite long
• HR: Assigning an HR set the pay raise to 0% => Set it to 8%
• Game Engine: Engine list barely readable in dark mode
• Game Engine: License list barely readable in dark mode
• Spontaneous application - Reword the english translations
• Custom platform: No color on the miniature while making games for them
• Tutoriel: Fix an where you can't do the first game report
• Contract duration has been fixed, the progress bar reset too often
• Digital store feature: Sometime employees stop working on their task
• Gameport review: Next button shouldn't be visible
• Send staff to vacation: Not working properly when selecting a single studio

[ 2024-01-05 10:54:29 CET ] [ Original post ]