It's now been almost 2 months since the last update. I'd like to say I've made huge advancements, but the truth is these have probably been the slowest months in the development of Software Inc. A lot of non-programming related work has come up during these past months. I'll be moving to a new location on the 15th of December and development should pick up again and be back to full speed from January. The good news is that the amazing support I've received from you has allowed me to work in my company for at least another 4 years, which means I'll be able to finish Software Inc. in good time and start working on a new game as well. I'm currently done with the bulk of gameplay changes for Alpha 9. There's still a lot of polishing, bug fixes and balancing to be done, before it's ready for release. As always, I'll be doing a testing release initially, to make sure things are relatively balanced and bug free. I'm hoping to have this initial release out before I move to the new location, but if I don't make it before the 15th December, it'll most likely be out in January. To make sure you get this release earlier, I've decided to cut some features for the initial release, but I'll make sure to “make room” for the features in the save files, so they'll be out by the time Alpha 9 is done.

Progress on Alpha 9

Development no longer works by filling up a progress bar, instead the game now differentiates between code and art progress, and the actual quality of the work done. There's no longer a clear indication of when a product is done, because that doesn't really make sense in the real world and it makes the gameplay a little too simple. To find out how good your product is during development, you'll have to do “peer reviews”, by letting your employees, other companies or clients look over your alpha and rate it.
The pre-marketing tasks have been split up and now force you to make timing based decisions. Pre-marketing will attract followers to your product, which represent guaranteed purchases, but you should be vigilant to not lose them again, and make sure you deliver a worthy product, on time. When you product is released, there is no longer a set amount of marketing you have to do each month, instead you'll just have to throw enough employees and money at it, to make sure your product has better exposure than your competitors.
Support will now play a bigger role in the game. Support tickets will dynamically follow active user count, there will be no clear indication when support has finished and bugs will have an impact on your sales in the form of refunds.
Project management has been fixed and completely overhauled. You can have more teams per phase, you can queue up your own projects at will and design and development phases can interleave. There's no longer any education needed and project management tasks are assigned directly to a leader, who must actively work to accumulate “action points” to advance projects. There's also been a bunch of optimizations, bug fixes and improvements. Notably, you can now develop products for operating systems that are still in development.

Planned for later releases of Alpha 9

The initial release of Alpha 9 will not include these features, but I expect them to be out and compatible with Alpha 9 saves.

• Subsidiaries, which lets you buy out a company without closing them down.
• Discounts, the ability to change the price after release and simulate the effects of this.
• Individual distribution channels will be removed from the game and replaced with a much simpler system, that will still allow the player to host their own online distribution channel. The player will also have to pay to have physical copies printed of each product.
• The ability for the player to print their own or other companies' products, which will involve building product printers and hiring transportation.

[ 2016-11-26 23:59:34 CET ] [ Original post ]