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Month: January 2020

What’s new in version 0.19?

What’s new in version 0.19?

Hello!

Time for another devlog and another update!

Version EA.0.19

Controls
– Fix for camera balancing to horizon. Before, when rotating the camera around itself, sometimes the camera would start tilting or glitch out. Now it stays stable at all times. NOTE: This needs additional work to function well when the camera has been tilted manually.
– Fix for planar movement mode camera movement slowing down when camera facing down or up. Speed is now also more consistent than before.
– Options menu updated to clarify rotation and movement options.

Minor feature additions and tweaks
– High currency value now affects local economy.
– Citizen reps now give some advice on what they feel could be improved.
– You can now click home and work icons in the citizen reps panel to view the rep’s home or place of work.
– Local area effects now affect residential, commercial and industrial buildings differently. High fire safety is more important for industry than for residences for example.
– Local effect distance fall off adjusted. Basically, the further away (for example) a police department is, the less of an effect on crime it has.

Major bugs fixed
– Global economy was inconsistent between saving and loading a city. This has now been improved and cities should load with economy and demands developing in the same way every time. There are some additional tweaks necessary in order to fix it further.
– Fix for master economist achievement. It would sometimes trigger based on a resource group demand curve instead of the global economic status.

Minor bugs fixed
– Tooltip sometimes “getting stuck” fixed.

Other
– Global time step lowered a bit (economic status changes a bit faster).
– Atmofleet now emits a particle when leaving the atmosphere.
– Traffic and props hidden when enabling a view mode.
– SFX volumed adjusted.
– Adjusted music trigger conditions.
– Super absorbent now plays proper sound when clicked on.
– List of owners in owner view pushed together a bit more so that it doesn’t overlap with menu if opened at the same time.

As mentioned last week, I will be updating the game more frequently, but with smaller updates for a few weeks. The reason for this is to get some much needed QoL improvements into the game without too much delay.

Focus this week has been to start adding in some control improvements. This time around, there are no new additions, but rather fixes to existing control schemes. There has been an issue where rotating the camera upside down would sometimes cause the camera to tilt even when the control mode is set to not allow tilting. This has now been fixed and enabling “balance against horizon” will keep the camera stable at all times.
When enabling planar movement, previously when the camera was rotated down, the speed of movement would drop. This has now been fixed and movement speed is now constant. This mode has also changed name from “planar movement” to “Relative to camera rotation/Relative to horizin”.

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I’ve also fixed the global economy not being consistent between saving a city and loading it up again. Before, a city could be enjoying an economic boom, then suddenyl a recession next time the city is loaded up. There are still some related issues left to be fixed, primarily related to how labour is distributed across industry, this requires additional work to fix, so a fix will come later.

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Citizen representatives are now given a home and a work place (unless they are unemployed), that can be viewed. They now also give you advice about things that they feel need to be addressed in the area they live in or policy that affects them. There will be more advice items added over time.

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The local area effects are now handled differently. Instead of them being added upp similarly for all types of buildings, they are not given weights that depend on whether the affected building is a residential, commercial or industrial building (or other). Fire safety is more important to industry than residence for example. The effect distance falloff is now a bit steeper.

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I’ve also started adjusting the system for placing buildings to allow for click and drag multiple building placement. I’m hoping to get this fully done for the update next weekend.

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For next week’s update I also hope to get more advisor and citizen rep advice added, an intermediate tutorial and another set of control options/tweaks.

EA 0.18 is live!

EA 0.18 is live!

Hello!
Version 0.18 will be live in just a minute. It’s been a while since the last update so this is a pretty comprehensive update.

Changelog 0.17 > 0.18

Version EA.0.18

Major updates
– Local area effects added. This system will get tweaked over time, but currently crime, education, health, wealth, fire safety and pollution levels are calculated. The area effects affect quality of life for residents and businesses and will lower efficiency in a building by up to 25%. Specifics on some of the effects can be found below. Education and wealth effects are currently not updated to the new system, but can be viewed in game.
– Crime level calculation changed. Now it is based on the result of the local area effects of crime after policy effects are applied, as opposed to a calculation of total population minus policy effects.
– Similarly to crime, health is now calculated based on the result of the local area effects of health after policy effects.
– Fire safety is now also based on the sum of local effects of fire safety.
– “Other safety” is now the sum of crime safety, fire safety and welfare availability.
– View modes changed to accomodate for the addition of local area effects. Instead of cycling through modes, button now opens a menu with the different modes. Cycling can still be done using the tab button.
– Advisors added. Unlocked when building city hall. Advisors will give tips on things that need to be adressed in the city. This is the first iteration, so it’s a basic implementation. More help topics and features will be added over time.
– Citizenreps added. The current implementation is very barebones. In upcoming versions you will be able to get advice from the reps regarding things that they want adressed in their neighborhood and display their places of work and their homes.

Minor updates
– Value of exports and imports (and trade balance) added into trade panel.
– Middle and upper tier residential, commercial and industrial buildings no longer require clinics, fire departments and police departments. Instead, buildings built in areas with high crime etc. will receive a penalty (see local area effects above).
– Added a 0.5 size vactrack piece. Vactracks will be getting a slight overhaul in one of the upcoming versions, so it might be a good idea to not go wild building massive vactrack systems as they might break!
– Now only one City hall, National bank, Customs house and lab is allowed per city. Saved cities with more than one of these buildings are not affected.

Tweaks
– Building range increased slightly.
– Costs of policies tweaked, specifically those aimed at crime and health.
– Tax on pollution formula tweaked and overall simplified.
– Happiness from health is now calculated in a different way.
– Trade balance now affects currency strength.
– High currency affects wages and labour demand.
– Onclick sound volumes tweaked.

Major fixes
– Fixed issue where sometimes a good/bad building would not register when built in very densely packed areas.
– Fixed bug where in certain locations, buildings would incorrectly register a nearby good or bad.
– Reduced food shelf life research effect fixed. Incorrectly increased food consumed, rather than reduce. Drinks consumtion is now also reduced.
– Building unlocks were bugged out at times – fixed!

Minor fixes
– Lab given resource priority (similar to how farms and power plants have priority).
– Incinerator was incorrectly affected by the global economy. This is fixed now.
– Destruct hologram fixed for city hall.
– Fixed bug where display price of goods would not match up with actual revenue/cost when selling/buying resources.
– Collider for recycling center fixed.

Possible fixes
– Menu crash bug hopefully fixed.

Other
– We’re back to the usual spring/summer theme!
– Lighting adjusted to make “underside” of cities brighter.
– Cross fading applied for LOD:s. This makes LOD groups fade in, rather than pop in. This also means I’ve been able to switch LOD distances and make high poly versions of buildings visable only from close distance.
– Tweaked tree shader
– Swedish localisation updated.
– Fallbacks to english added for missing translations in German, Spanish, French and Russian to avoid missing texts. The missing translations will be added in an upcoming update making all localisations equal and complete (for now).
– Atmofleets spruced up a bit.

First of all, the update adresses a handful of bigger bugs related to buildings not registering properly or incorrectly registering as a nearby good or bad building. Building unlocking from population targets being reached were also bugged out at times before, this has now been fixed.
There’s been a crash bug that occurs sporadically when going to the main menu from a city. I’ve not been able to reproduce the issue after making some changes to how threads are handled, so that should hopefully be fixed now.

The biggest change in this version is how crime, health, pollution and fire safety is now calculated on a local level, instead of a city wide basis as it was before. Education and wealth levels have also been added into this system, but education is still calculated based on city wide values as before, and wealth currently has no function. They are viewable in the view mode though, so you can still see for example which areas are poor, and which aren’t.
More tweaks to these systems will be made over the course of the upcoming versions.

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Advisors have been added. Currently they only discuss a handful of issues, but more help entries will be added in the upcoming few versions. This system will serve as a sort of tutorial for issues as they arise in a city. Advisors are available once a city hall is built. On the subject of city halls, from now on, only one city hall, customs house, national bank and lab is allowed per city.

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Similarly to advisors, but available at all times as long as population conditions have been met, is the system with citizen representatives. Currently, the implementation is very bare bones and you will only see the reps in the rep panel, but they will not provide you with any information. This system will be expanded upon in the upcoming few versions and finalized fairly soon.

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A smaller addition is that trade balance will now be displayed in the trade panel. For smaller cities this is not relevant, but once there’s a large amount of goods moving in and out of the city, keeping an eye on the trade balance can be important as it will affect the value of currency, which in turn affects wages etc.

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The upcoming few versions, aside from focusing on advisors and citizen reps, will be geared specifically towards QoL improvements, localisations and tweaking and improving the controls and adding more control schemes. These changes will be added into smaller updates released on a weekly basis, starting next sunday!

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On the upcoming version

On the upcoming version

Hello!
Long time no log! Aside from holidays taking up time, I’ve been under the weather for much of the past two weeks, but it’s finally getting better. Devlogs will now be back on a weekly basis.

The next version of the game, 0.18, will be going live next sunday (the 19th). This is a bit later than I had planned at first, and due to my recent bout of illness. Moving forward beyond that version, I’m hoping to get back to more regular updates and will be taking some time off of my day job to allow for more dev time.

In the upcoming version, a few completely new systems will be introduced. They will not be fully finished, but usable and active.
First off, local area effects will be added. The current effects are: Crime, education, fire safety, health, pollution and wealth. These effects will work in tandem with the building requirements, but overall, the number of required nearby buildings to grow a dense city will be fewer. For example. Buildings will no longer require nearby clinics, police departments and fire departments. Instead, a densely packed area will get less fire safety and thus over time require a fire department to improve the situation. All these effects are calculated in sum, and if a building is in a polluted area with high crime and no fire safety etc, then it incurrs a 20% effeciency penalty (might change over time).

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Each building, when built, gets local area effect nodes around it. Each building adds or subtracts the local area effect, for example crime. If an area is dense, then a lot of crime is added. Each building then gets an average of each node’s values. Below is an image of buildings negatively affected by nearby pollution.

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I’ve also started adding citizen representatives. These are a sample of citizens from your city. Currently you can only see their stats and view their home and place of work. In future versions they will provide you with information about their neighborhoods so that you can tweak them and improve them. They will essentially advice you about local area effects and give advice on policies that affect them negatively.

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Advisors will also be added in with version 0.18. Currently, their topics of advice are rather limited, but over time I will add more and more into it and they should be able to provide players with a lot of information about issues in the city. Unlike the citizen representatives, their main focus is city wide rather than local, and they will be geared more towards optimizing the entirety of the city and maximizing ouput.

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Currently there’s only a placeholder image for the avatars, but there will be actual images of advisors and citizen reps once I have a good idea of what kind of style I’m going for. Any ideas? Shoot!

The winter theme will also be shifted out, so now we’re going back to the usual spring/summer theme. In future version, the seasonal themes will be toggleable in game.

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That’s it for this week!