IMPORTANT

This is a testing release, meaning your saves might break and the game might become unplayable sooner or later. You can enable backups in the options window. I will be watching the bug reports closely and patching often. You shouldnt play the game right now, if you want a stable experience. You can find information on joining the testing branch here.

What has changed

Base mechanics The entire flow of the game has changed, with the intention of making the game a little less chaotic and cryptic and making software more customizable and personal. To accomplish this, difficult to follow feature inter-dependencies have been removed. Software is now clearly split up into specializations and you no longer need to toggle all features to achieve good sales. Furthermore, Ive added tech levels to replace patentable features, which are much more general and allow the market to run procedurally with no hard limits. Finally, Ive added submarkets to make each product feel more unique and give the player more of a choice to define their product.
Upgrade to Unity 2017.4 The game has been through Unity 4, 5, (5.6) and now 2017. The major reason for wanting to update once again was to solve a bunch of crash issues and benefitting from Unitys long-term support. The version of Unity I used for Alpha 10 hasnt been supported by Unity for almost 2 years. There are some drawbacks here, of course. Mainly compatibility. You can no longer play the game using DirectX 9, which means Windows XP is out (Minimum requirements have always been Windows 7, to be fair). The game no longer supports 32-bit OSX, i.e. it only supports OSX 10.9+, which deprecated 32-bit. To me, these feel like minor concerns compared to the benefit of getting a game that is a great deal more stable, I hope you agree. Other cool stuff The progressbar has returned to the alpha phase! I know this was a big point of contention for many of you, but the changes Ive made, coupled with the iteration mechanic, has made the progressbar suitable again. A lot of you also disliked all the physical distribution stuff (I dont know if this was because you guys thought you were forced to own printers?), but you can now let a publisher handle all that stuff. The wall curve tool!
Game engines are gone, and you now have software frameworks instead, which work for all software types. Check the patch notes! Modding Old data mods will no longer work. Period. Software has changed completely, both in structure, granularity and file type. Ive not yet updated the modding wiki, Im very sorry. I will get it updated before the official release of Alpha 11, so you have time to check the new stuff out. For now, Ive uploaded the base game files so you can get an example of how software looks now: https://softwareinc.coredumping.com/wiki/index.php/Modding#In-game_content All mod files that used XML now use to TyD. Furniture, material and localization XML files will still load, for backwards compatibility. You can read about TyD here: https://github.com/TynanSylvester/TyD/blob/efe423af6569e9c8bd7a2eee4837dd0f04421d51/Readme.md You can convert your localization XML files to TyD files by using the console command: CONVERT_LOCALIZATION_TYD YourLanguageNameHere

Patch notes

Alpha 11.1.4 fixes (2019-10-03)

• Roads would flicker on OSX
• Some geometry became black when looking in top-down mode (Z)
• Having SSAA disabled would break mouse projection when toggling top-down mode (Z)
• Design tutorial will now continue when marketing window is closed, instead of requiring a press release, to avoid getting temporarily stuck
• Having food go bad could break game under certain circumstances
• You can now change operating system support in the design document after adding an OS exclusivity publishing deal, to avoid going back and fourth
• Publisher wasn't registered properly for printing or marketing, so they never did any
• Added publisher information to player release window and product detail window
• You can no longer toggle build mode while a modal window is open

Alpha 11.1.3 fixes (2019-10-03)

• Game would fail to load if non-existing language was set in the settings file
• Save game would faild to load due to (Clone) name sticking around from Unity, saves broken due to this bug should work again
• Moving company does not retain leasing mode status in new building

Alpha 11.1.2 fixes (2019-10-03)

• Game sometimes failed rebuilding all furniture after fires and burglaries
• Error message when clicking on empty areas in specialization star chart
• Crash dump and log file location was wrong in Windows build
• New default buildings weren't updated

Major changes

• Overhauled feature system, with special scripted features
• Added submarkets
• Added tech levels
• Overhauled skill and specialization system
• Added iteration mechanic to development phases, removing over-design mechanic and adding back progress bar to alpha phase
• Added publishing deals, currently only offered by AI to player
• Added software frameworks
• Overhauled marketing -> service role and added lawyers and lawsuits
• Added wall curve tool
• Employee salaries are now evaluated on an hourly basis, which enables part-time employees and adds a monetary penalty for working them for longer than usual
• Upgraded to Unity 2017

Minor changes

• Added bathroom sinks and germs
• Added fires and burglaries
• Added contents insurance
• Overhauled software peer reviews
• Computer price and performance scales dynamically based on available computers on the market
• Sitting near other employees with no cubicles or walls in-between will now affect how quickly social need deplete, depending on compatibility
• Employees now dislike working at night, but can be compensated for it to increase their mood
• Added lakes that will be spread around maps and block plot purchases
• Overhauled sun position and color and made it affect skybox and fog
• Software needs are licensed monthly during development and operating systems are bought per employee during development
• Removed delay phase during development
• Added different animals to each biome

UX

• Overhauled design document window to be multi paged
• Print ordering window now starts out with a suggested value
• You can now add and remove operating systems from a porting job and the entire task won't get stuck on an in-development operating system
• Added new tip speech bubble that will replace some hints
• Changed hiring window compatibility rating to be least compatible person on team, rather than average
• Overhauled console to have almost unlimited history and be height adjustable
• Added color blindness UI colors

Modding

• Added new atlas material for modded furniture, allowing having multiple textures for one piece of furniture that can be mixed and matched by the player
• Data mods and localizations are moving from XML to TyD
• All mod types can have a Localization folder with relevant localizations and they will be appended to the main localization files
• Base features no longer exist
• Implemented a compiler/interpreter from scratch to allow custom scripts in software feature definitions

Fixes

• Employee skill when hiring is now based on benefits rather than company reputation
• Fixed not being able to mod roof and path materials
• Fixed furniture interaction sound effects not playing since updating to Unity 5.6
• Roofs are now offset based on surrounding rooms, making it easier to build roofs up against rooms
• Fixed longstanding bug where the clock would never actually hit 59 seconds, effectively skipping an in-game minute every hour adding up to almost 5 hours in a year

[ 2019-10-03 11:47:05 CET ] [ Original post ]