Current Status

Ive finished all planned feature overhauls/additions at this point (except for conventions, more below). Now I need to do some usability, bug/testing and balancing passes, and finally rewrite tutorials and mod documentation, before I can release the initial testing build.
Alpha 11 development is now creeping on its 6th month. Alpha 10 took about 5 months from start to the initial testing release and alpha 9 took about 4 months. As the game gets more complex, overhauling core features takes longer, due to all the side effects a change has on the games systems. With this in mind, Im now pretty certain Alpha 11 will be the last major alpha release before I move on to the beta phase, so I avoid spending an entire year on yet another alpha. Beta doesnt necessarily mean I wont add new features, it just means I wont be touching the core gameplay mechanics.

Convention mechanic delayed

Ive decided to scrap conventions for the initial testing build. I dont want to delay Alpha 11 any further. In Software Inc. terms, I havent even finished the design phase on this mechanic, so Im putting it off for now.

Curve tool

You can now use a tool to click and drag walls to make them curve. Each segment of the curve must be at least 1 meter wide to allow for doors and windows, but the segment widths can be scaled dynamically while you are creating the curves.

Fires

A number of furniture now have a chance to start a fire when they break. Fires will spread and burn down furniture if not stopped, and die out after some time. All elevators in a building are disabled while the fire is ongoing. You can place fire alarms to alert people in a building and sprinklers to stop fires faster in a room.

Burglaries

Burglars will appear now and again and steal whatever they can. You can place security cameras around your premises to alert the police and hopefully apprehend them before they steal too much. Inventory lost from burglaries and fires can be recouped by a new contents insurance feature.

Other notable changes

• Updated to Unity 2017 for a ton of bug/crash fixes (This will deprecate support for Directx9, 32-bit OSX and Ubuntu version < 14.04)
• Improved the porting task so you can add and remove operating systems and not get stuck on in-development operating systems
• Software review system has been overhauled to give more control and be less vague
• All mods can now contain localizations, which makes localization handling better in mods and allows a single mod to contain translations of its written content in several languages
• You can now individually pick specializations in the new game screen

[ 2019-08-24 10:54:32 CET ] [ Original post ]