Hello fellow CEOs! After quite some time we finally are able to present Build EA9. It contains a lot of preparation work for the Multiplayer mode, among it the Freegame start position modification which will be used to start multiplayer games as well. Here's the details:

• Finally implemented a bunch of achievements. More to come!
• Achievements are also displayed with jingle and screen ingame (additionally to the usual Steam notification)
• Starting a free game now allows for choosing the starting position on the world map instead of a mere region selection
• The company logo is now displayed on owned fields in the region view window (world map)
• Reworked the colors of the oilfield dots on the region view window
• Depth of Field is now deactivateable
• The laptop (newsletter) now only closes with the "X" on the top right corner to prevent "clicking it away"
• Removing obstacles now shows an "under construction" icon
• Improved position of the tooltip (mousepointer covered the first letters)
• Added Keys for selecting the gamespeed directly (default at 0,1,2 on the main keyboard)
• Replaced Hector image in event message window that was too wide
• Fixed regionally restricted events that were able to appear on every field worldwide
• Fixed a bug preventing to switch from worldmap to oilfield
• Most probably fixed not being able to save anymore. At least I couldn't reproduce it any longer
• Reworked daily logistics calculation to respect logistics event modifiers
• Fixed bank warnings not respecting cost modifiers
• Fixed contract ranges for new contracts
• Fixed enterprise logo being saved per field (and allowing to be different for each of them)
• Fixed some typos and missing translations

Work now continues on the multiplayer mode, which I expect to have a first "actual gameplay" version this week. I already have a lobby plus chat in place, also including firewall port opening using UPnP. I do NOT want you guys to require an internet connection to play a LAN game, and the internet mode will be "old school", so no central repeaters that might be turned off sometime in the future. IF I get multiplayer to work, I'll do it forever, not for as long as some third party decides to keep the servers up. There are some known issues with the current build:

• The feature "oilfields have limited reserve" doesn't work, you can extract oil indefnitely
• The "stats" values (total oil extracted, total contracts fulfilled) don't get saved on steam, for reasons unknown. I'm on it, but didn't want to further delay the update for this. The value is still tracked correctly for a single game session, so the "lower" achievements should be doable, but getting 100k contracts fulfilled in a single session (no loading allowed ;)) WILL be a challenge :)
• Enterprise trade accounts sometimes seems to show wrong values or none at all

The stats issue particularily bugs me, because it really should work exactly like it is now. I'm investigating, but I think you'll enjoy achievement hunting as it is! Have fun, and as always, if you have any concern, any question, any feature you would like to see implemented, improved or changed, PLEASE let me know, I'm happy to talk to you and even implement whatever it is you desire - provided it makes sense ;)! And don't forget to give us your thumbs up if you enjoy what you play :-) Edit: Hotfix 2320 (check Settings window, the last four digits) is now online:

• Fixed Save games cannot be loaded any more
• Fixed Crash with the accident Achievements

Sorry for the inconvenience caused by these bugs. Should there any other problems, please don't hesitate to let me know right away, bugs preventing you to enjoy gameplay have the highest priority possible!