Dear Retailers The last update arrived just before Christmas, and time sure does fly. It's already mid February! However we didn't have a long vacation, but have instead been working hard on bringing you a big update featuring a lot of improvements to the game. But let me go into the specifics of it.

--- Store fronts ---

Now that I have the assistance of a graphics artist the graphics of the game will get a lot more attention than before. One of the largest areas where this already came to show, is the rework of the store fronts.
So instead of having to deal with the simple facade, there is now a wide variety of store fronts to select from. All of them customizable in various ways, to allow you give your stores an even more unique look. In the future even more customizablility will most likely be added to these store fronts.

--- Showcasing ---

However these store fronts have been added for other reasons than just looking good. Almost every store uses the possibility of adding focus to various articles by showcasing them in their windows. This is also possible now, as each store front have several areas where you can showcase a specific article. This will add more hype to articles, making the customers want to buy them even more. In this way you can better influence the customers to buy what you want them to. But also remember to change your window once in a while, as the customers at some point will have seen and purchased that article making it less effective over time.

--- Build system ---

One of the first things that was added to the game, was the system that built the floors, walls and the store itself from various data. And that system has just been built on and built on until now. However as that system was built in the early phase, where I knew a lot less than I do now, that system had a lot of limitations. So to be able to do some things I wanted to add, this system needed to be completely rewritten, which has taken quite some time. But why was this actually done? Well first of all to support the new store fronts of varying sizes, which can also be moved around. But also to allow for something a lot of you has asked for, for some time now. That is placing walls wherever you would like. So now you can add walls and split up your sales areas in smaller compartments if you would like to.
And since the UI of that menu also needed an upgrade as many found it difficult to use, I gave it a complete overhaul also, making it lot easier to use.
This also now allows for you to change floors and walls in stores you can't expand, so you still have some possibilities in that regard.

--- Other graphics upgrades ---

Since the looks of the store recieved this upgrade, I decided to focus on upgraded more areas such that the looks of the store would change completely

--- New ceiling ---

First of all the ceiling of the store has been upgraded to a much better look, as well as allowing you to select its color.

--- New walls & floors ---

Also there has been a large addition to the selection of floors and walls you can select from to customize the looks of your store.

--- Smaller implementations ---

There have also been made some smaller changes to other areas of the game - Selection of floor plans in campaign mode The biggest flaw of the old build system, was that it didn't support transitions of floor plans in an easy way between being in and out of the store. With this fixed, you can now select between various floor plans before you buy or rent a store in the campaign mode.
- Single store category selections Before you start a single store game you are asked which categories you wish to sell. As having more articles requires more performance from your computer, I hope the possibility of selecting more articles will help those of you who have trouble running the Single Store mode.
- Outer materials As a minor preparation to give the areas your stores lie in various looks, the outer wall of the building you reside in will now have a random material, instead of only having the same dark gray color for all buildings.
There are plans of adding unique environments for all major areas in campaign mode, however this is quite a task, so it is held off for a bit. - Bigger area The new system required a change in the available area of the store, so this area has been made a bit bigger. Minor Changes - Audio settings now saves when changed - You can change the name of your store from your office in Single Store mode - You are now asked if you want to leave the store when using the HUD. - In some areas the currency was not used properly. - Adjusted collision on displays so they fit better against each other.

--- Save games ---

All of this comes with a bit of bad news. All of these changes weren't fully compatible with your save games. So when you load your stores the next time, you will notice a few changes. - First of all your walls and floors will be painted in the default materials, as these are reset to support the changes. - Some of your doors might have been moved. The new system couldn't easily figure out where a door was when loading an old store. So a door between your areas will be placed at random, which might lead to down packing of inventory, and areas that are hard to access. - In some of your campaign levels you have the possibility to expand your store even though you shouldn't be able to. I always try to make all of your saves compatible from update to update, and spend a large amount of time in doing so. Unfortunately these changes were too big, so I am sorry for this, and the inconvenience it causes.

--- Translations ---

The translations to the various languages are also improving at a steady rate.
Danish, Dutch and Russian are translated in house, so these languages will not be updated as frequently form the translate as the rest. To help with translations, go to https://translate.kingofretail.com.

--- Active users on discord ---

There have been a good amount of activity on the discord lately, and especially in regards to testing the beta. A lot of bugs have been found and great feedback have been given, making my work much easier. And in this regard there have been some users who provided an exceptional amount of help, so I would like to give these an extra appreciation. These are: wfa, CrspyChcknLickn, El Caponey, eclipsifuggs and exapsy. Thanks a lot for the help :-D Make sure you join us on Discord!
This was it for now. I hope you will enjoy the new changes and possibilities, and as always i am very interested in listening to your feedback, ideas and any bugs you encounter. I will head off again to start work on the next batch of improvements. So until next time, happy sales. //Daniel

[ 2021-02-18 13:55:23 CET ] [ Original post ]