EMPLOYEES/OFFICE SIZE

[karaholic1004]

Hi guys
can someone please explain which employees belong to which rooms. is it game designer/programmer for development room etc. what impact would having sound artist have if in development room instead?

Second question, what is the optimal room size for different rooms?

Thank you

[Kyouko Tsukino]

If you check the "icon" connected to each room, you'll get a pop-up menu, on the bottom row there's an icon that looks like a person. Click this, and on the top of the window that pops up it will tell you which employees are okay to use there.

A caveat for the Development room: Although it lists four kinds of employees that can go there, you really only need Game Designers there. Once you unlock the specialized rooms, the other types of employees that "can" work in Development should be placed in their specialized room instead. Sound and Graphics employees are mediocre at best when placed in the development room, as they give far less "points" for gameplay, tech, and sound/graphics, while giving a slight boost in graphics/sound, which you can live without in most difficulties.

"Optimal" depends on what your game style is. The more employees per *type* of room you have, the better in the long run. However, larger rooms tend to create some issues with the AI's pathing. I limit myself to ten people per room, and add more rooms if needed.

[karaholic1004]

thank you Kyouko Tsukino
perfect answer i was looking for
i remember in last version i had huge numbers of staff in one room due to lack of room but i guess the big map will allow me to have smaller rooms which suits me perfectly

[FenomeN✈]

Disagree about the development room. I always keep all kinds of employees there. It is not clear why there should be game designers in the later stages. Game designers also have their own "Quality Control" office (to improve the quality of gameplay, and testers to quickly fix bugs). Therefore, I always make several of these rooms - for different tasks. The development room can also only contain programmers - for quick fulfillment of contracts or quick game updates. Here everyone may have their own strategy)

[StrayDogFreedom]

My usual setup is to do a Development Room that is 6x7, with 10 desks. 2 Graphic Designers, 2 Sound people, 3 Programmers and 3 Game Designers. A goal I always have is to have my Development room team be max in every area, of course this takes a considerable amount of time. It works really well for me, though. Particularly in the early game. Towards the end of the game I usually increase the team by 1 or 2 people in each category or just have other dev rooms play supporting roles.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Originally posted by FenomeN✈:

Game designers also have their own "Quality Control" office (to improve the quality of gameplay, and testers to quickly fix bugs.)

Game Designers add a small amount of points to one single stat when placed in Quality Assurance, as opposed to them adding a good amount of points to design and tech, and less to sound and graphics. Also, if placed in the QA room, game Designers will actively be slowing down your bug-killing process, as Game Testers are the best bug hunters in the game, and by placing "not Game Testers" in that room, you're slowing down the debugging process, which in turn slows down your game's improvement (having the QA room take longer to start polishing.)

If the only determinant on where to place people was "they add points while being there" you might as well place scientists in Sound Studio then, because the "can" add music points when placed there. There can be lots of gameplay styles, yes, but that doesn't mean all of them are actually following a sensible/effective/non-stressful path. It's basically like how the Greek managed to guess a few things right, even though all they did was sit down, look at stuff, and guess - a "different" kind of scientific method.

I know you like to produce games at a very slow pace, which may explain why you wouldn't notice any difference - only testing quick production of games will tell you why each of the development rooms is only fit for one type of employees, as you'll see a lot of difference in your game's quality and polishing results depending on who you have in each room.

Some people swear programmers are "better" in the Development room, even... I frankly can't see where they got that data from. My average in non-contract games is close to 95% even in early game nowadays, so I'll respect people's choice to play the game different, but that doesn't mean I'll agree with their methods as I've got semi-quick (one game every three/four months) game development figured out. And heck, here's the list of things I simply don't use anymore, because I can already break the game without them:

- Free updates.
- Game marketing.
- Add-ons.
- Self-publishing.
- MMOs.
- F2Ps.
- Any and all sort of budget-type games.
- Retro games.
- Porting. I won't be bothering with it until I see porting from computers to consoles to handhelds is a thing in the game.

Focused gameplay lets me have my kind of fun: Being able to 95%+ whatever I choose to develop. I'm not interested in min-maxing or being a "jack of all trades" or developing for platforms I know will not be worth a crap two months later. I don't even care for the summer/christmas cycle - my games are in the market long enough that whatever sales I lose from summer slump, I win back with Christmas sales - I've run enough tests on this to know they counter-balance each other and are meant to only be damaging to short-lived games.

Don't get me wrong, I also don't do some stuff I've seen mentioned, like "have five development teams to do five games per month so you get your consoles all the way from 1% market share to 2% market share in one year." That sounds like a stressful micromanagement hell to me, but some people have fun with it.

So, if you are having fun by putting people in the wrong places, more power to you - just don't deny they're the wrong places when they've been proven to be. That's just mean. ;P

[Sol]

Originally posted by karaholic1004:

thank you Kyouko Tsukino
perfect answer i was looking for
i remember in last version i had huge numbers of staff in one room due to lack of room but i guess the big map will allow me to have smaller rooms which suits me perfectly

It is acceptable to have a Star Employee who is a Graphics, Sound, or Programmer person in the development room - as they do not add Hype from those specialized rooms. Even then, I would keep it to one of each type.

[FenomeN✈]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Originally posted by FenomeN✈:

Game designers also have their own "Quality Control" office (to improve the quality of gameplay, and testers to quickly fix bugs.)

Game Designers add a small amount of points to one single stat when placed in Quality Assurance, as opposed to them adding a good amount of points to design and tech, and less to sound and graphics. Also, if placed in the QA room, game Designers will actively be slowing down your bug-killing process, as Game Testers are the best bug hunters in the game, and by placing "not Game Testers" in that room, you're slowing down the debugging process, which in turn slows down your game's improvement (having the QA room take longer to start polishing.)

If the only determinant on where to place people was "they add points while being there" you might as well place scientists in Sound Studio then, because the "can" add music points when placed there. There can be lots of gameplay styles, yes, but that doesn't mean all of them are actually following a sensible/effective/non-stressful path. It's basically like how the Greek managed to guess a few things right, even though all they did was sit down, look at stuff, and guess - a "different" kind of scientific method.

I know you like to produce games at a very slow pace, which may explain why you wouldn't notice any difference - only testing quick production of games will tell you why each of the development rooms is only fit for one type of employees, as you'll see a lot of difference in your game's quality and polishing results depending on who you have in each room.

Some people swear programmers are "better" in the Development room, even... I frankly can't see where they got that data from. My average in non-contract games is close to 95% even in early game nowadays, so I'll respect people's choice to play the game different, but that doesn't mean I'll agree with their methods as I've got semi-quick (one game every three/four months) game development figured out. And heck, here's the list of things I simply don't use anymore, because I can already break the game without them:

- Free updates.
- Game marketing.
- Add-ons.
- Self-publishing.
- MMOs.
- F2Ps.
- Any and all sort of budget-type games.
- Retro games.
- Porting. I won't be bothering with it until I see porting from computers to consoles to handhelds is a thing in the game.

Focused gameplay lets me have my kind of fun: Being able to 95%+ whatever I choose to develop. I'm not interested in min-maxing or being a "jack of all trades" or developing for platforms I know will not be worth a crap two months later. I don't even care for the summer/christmas cycle - my games are in the market long enough that whatever sales I lose from summer slump, I win back with Christmas sales - I've run enough tests on this to know they counter-balance each other and are meant to only be damaging to short-lived games.

Don't get me wrong, I also don't do some stuff I've seen mentioned, like "have five development teams to do five games per month so you get your consoles all the way from 1% market share to 2% market share in one year." That sounds like a stressful micromanagement hell to me, but some people have fun with it.

So, if you are having fun by putting people in the wrong places, more power to you - just don't deny they're the wrong places when they've been proven to be. That's just mean. ;P

I wrote that I have different quality control departments. Some are for the testers, others for the game designers. Who will slow down whom will not be clear. Everything works perfectly for me and is tested. In the development department, all skills are added little by little. But quality control with game designers adds a lot of gameplay points, just like other specialized rooms. That's what I need. Why are you giving me unnecessary information. I know inside and out in this game. I just expressed my point of view and it is correct. About programmers, I said that a separate development department containing programmers will faster fulfill contracts and update games. I don't understand why you wrote all this to me) In any case, playing on the legend with full randomness, I do not make games worse than 97%.