Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
So what have we done since the last post? We've received a lot of little bug reports over the last few days with the influx of Winter Sales players. I've cleaned up most as I got them.
Here is what I've marked down:
-Fixed bug in trim naming system that does not carry the name over to advance design.
-Fixed bug in Local Inventory reports which showed wrong inventory levels in certain circumstances.
-Fixed missing data bug in View Details panel for factories.
-Increased Click timeout rate as Crimson AMD drivers are having frame rate issues with shadows.
-Decreased Shadow texture quality. May disable high quality shadows for AMD Crimson drivers. (Getting too many negative reviews from people who won't email me if the game is crashing constantly on their computers :'( )
-Fixed bug with mouse wheel that did not update mouse position over lists. (Thus allowing for incorrect clicking positions)
We've also been working on some features:
-Administration costs and employee levels now increase linearly with the number of active marques you have.
- Restructured Marketing internally. This should improve marketing performance (and save game file size) dramatically by combining budgets for each vehicle into a single row instead of individual rows.
Please note, you may have seen an important thread I linked here about moving marketing to the branch level: http://steamcommunity.com/app/285110/discussions/0/451848855019800454/ I have pushed back this decision until 1.19.2 since it will not be that difficult to implement with this new restructure. (Most likely we'll be doing it, but I'm still leaving it open for debate to see what folks have to say!)
-Marketing information (Such as costs or employees) are now pulled from a past saved record instead of directly from the current funding. (Meaning expense reports will show what you did last turn not what you're doing this turn...)
-Marketing employee calculations have been simplified, employee count has increased.
-Updated all third party libraries to the newest versions. (Still requires stability testing.)
-Recompiled everything with _secure_scl disabled, this should greatly improve turn times, however stability testing is still required and may be re-enabled.
Some vector and sqlite db transaction optimizations have also happened. Until 1.19.2 rolls around I'm just touching these when ever I come across them to reduce the load when I have to do all of them.
Today I started working on the Employee Benefit system. Which you may have heard me refer to it as the Pension system. However using this word typically creates confusion. In most of Europe/Australasia, pensions are viewed as a government only form of retirement payment system collected via taxes. But a pension is actually a term for any type of retirement savings not controlled by the individual. In most places with skilled unionized workers a corporate pension system will exist along side government ran systems and private systems. Such systems have slowly died off in recent years... Anyhoo this is an explanation to a forum post from a few years ago. And I've digressed.
Employee Benefits are much broader than pensions. In GC we'll be implementing two types of Employee Benefits, Defined Contribution (DC)[en.wikipedia.org] and Defined Benefit (DB) [en.wikipedia.org]
DC- is a monthly payment to employees. We'll be using this to cover other monthly employee benefit expenses besides retirement. This system will cover their health insurance, life insurance, payroll taxes, 401k's, etc. For instance in the USA, if you worked a company with a 1:1 match on your 401k, for every dollar you invest in your retirement the company will invest a dollar into your retirement.
Gameplay wise you won't have to worry about the fine detail. You will simply be presented with dialog and/or a slider that will adjust the percentage of your employee salaries you pay out.
DB- Is a little more complex. The Defined Benefit system was the most popular type of retirement savings outside of government programs up until 401k (DC) started to push them out in the 90s. DB can be extremely dangerous if the funds are not properly managed, one can argue that DB liabilities are what lead to the bankruptcy of companies like GM.
So what is it? There are a number of different types, but I'll explain the most simplest in the simplest form. In short, employees are required to pay into a fund. The company manages this fund, invests the money, and tries to grow it. Once the employee retires, he withdraws an agreed upon amount for an an agreed upon amount of time (typically life.)
The easiest payment method to calculate (and the one we'll use in game) is called Money times Service. For instance. You're 20 years old. You pay a fee of $100 a month or so. For every year you work, you'll get $10 a month when you retire. You work 45 years, retiring at 65. 45 year * $10 = $450/month in retirement. If you live for another 10 years, the company will pay you a total of $54,000 while you're retired. In this case, the fund would break even because you paid in $54,000. But what if you lived 15 years? Your payment would be $81,000... The fund would have to make up the other $27,000...
Gameplay wise, you will have to worry about fees (how much employees pay), payouts (how much you pay per year of service), and unfunded liabilities.
Both systems will be manageable by the AI so you don't have to micromanage if you don't want.
The real benefit of this system will be in expanding the Union negotiations. :)
With a bunch of new people comes a bunch of community relations and tech support work from me. I've found out that I broke the shadow system in 1.19 on newer video cards. Sadly I can't release a hot patch because I've changed the entire build system for speed improvements in 1.19.1
Anyhoo, work on the benefits system continues and we have implemented most of the backend for this system. Now I just need to implement the front end. (Allowing you to adjust benefits payouts, fees, and contribute funds. Then finally get the AI to do the same thing.) I haven't done as much work on this as much as I wanted the last few days. But as the current sale ends, roadmap assigned ticket pace should get back to normal.
So the last 4 days was mostly focused on bugs and tech support issues people have submitted. This is an incomplete list as I did not make tickets of the recent posts, emails, and PM's you all have given me. Instead I just fixed them as I got them, and ticketed the ones I don't plan on fixing it asap (Mostly because that segment of the game will be completely changed or it's too much work to do on the fly while I have half the current internal development build broken.) Here is what I can remember or see off the top of my head:
-Fixed crash when switching back to office while in the middle of creating a custom district on the world map.
-Fixed bug in Mega Menu and World Map which did not list vehicles that were for sale but production had ended.
-Fixed bug when closing a factory it does not remove engine contracts assigned to it.
-Fixed bug when taking over a company you do not inherit contracts.
-Fixed bug engine contract breach bug.
-Fixed remove contracted engine from factory bug in Assigned Contracts window.
Typically most translation run about a full major version behind. (Legacy Build)
Please take the conversation to this thread: http://steamcommunity.com/app/285110/discussions/0/617320168157664050/
As the progress thread is for progress updates on v1.20. A lot of people are subscribed to this thread purely for updates. ;)
Sorry if it was already asked, I didn't see it !
I've made adjustments to the transportation costs, city infrastructure ratings as well as local gas prices on both ends (factory/branch) now play more of an effect.
Merchandising revenues have been added. If your Global Image or Racing Image is above 50 points and the year is greater than 1925, you'll start to receive revenues from selling out your company's IP to clothes makers, toy companies, video game makers, etc. This is currently modeled after Ford and Ferrari's merchandising income levels. Might need to be adjusted down.
We don't show you what kind of merchandising your selling in the world. Use your imagination. :P
This system also takes into account your Marketing Skills as well the number of branches you have. (For example, no one in America buys Citron merchandise because there are no Citron branches here...)
I've now started on racing revenues. This will be broken down into 2 phases. The first phase, what I'm working on now, you will receive income for providing support to multi-team based series like MASSCAR. These sort of series you typically supply a few engineers and components to companies who build engines or cars for many teams. This sort of revenues will be generated automatically.
The second phase will be implemented in v1.23. In that phase we'll be working the revised contract system into racing, thus making you have to produce vehicles/engines for more generic racing type events like "La Mens" series which supply hundreds of vehicles.
-Defined Contribution Benefits System and other monthly Employee Benefits
-Defined Benefit (Corporate Pension) payouts and funds system.
-Adjustments to shipping costs
-Merchandising Revenues
-Adjustments to Marketing Skill growths
-Fixed 1997 Hong Kong Flag Crash
-Fixed Racing "Signed Teams" bug
Racing results have also been tweaked. The calculation speed should increase greatly, as well the winning results should now be more distributed among teams. Also the results should now be a bit more realistic (No more 1hp engines beating 14hp engines for example...) These fixes were needed for the racing revenues system otherwise revenues were really lumped toward the winners...
Also fixed number of minor bugs in the Racing UI and the missing View Competition button has been brought back.
Fixed a crashing bug in Mega Menu when switching factories when you don't have any. Also fixed a few other missing factory/branch bugs in Mega Menu. (Need to double check if this works on OSX.)
Fixed issue in Magazine Model Compare which causes incorrect data in the right column.
I've rewritten the backend to the strike/moral system which should improve speed and will make it easier to implement the new planned features.
I attempted to merge car manufacturing employees into a single employee/wage/moral for each factory. I got about halfway done before I ran into roadblock which would prove to be too much work and too much rewriting for very little gain. Instead I will implement a GUI shim in the office HR for v1.21 which will allow you to adjust all factory employees/wages for all production lines (Thus replacing what is there now.) But internally the system will remain the same. (The main reason for this is the upcoming Employee "Furlough" system which will effect your moral for constantly firing and hiring employees.)
So now I am implementing Racing Engineer Employees into the Researching Employee stuff. I will also be creating a GUI shim for Research HR (allowing you to hire all engineers as one with HR) in v1.21...
After that I begin implementing the new Union negotiation system. Benefits effects on moral and negotiations. AI implementation of these features.
Currently 1.19.1 is sitting at 68% finished, the above things and employee furlough system are the only major tickets remaining, the rest can be taken care of rather quickly. So we're about 2-weeks away from an update. :)
-Racing Revenues
-Revised Racing Results
-Racing View Competition
-Fixed Racing Champ series selection breaking Racing Funding and View Competition windows when both are open.
-Fixed Mega Menu Factory Change crash when no factories in company
-Fixed Mega Menu Branch assigning when there is no branch in city.
-Fixed Magazine Model Comparison bug that caused incorrect data on right column.
-Rewrite Strike Timing System and Strike Wage Check system.
-Adjusted Moral Decline/Gain based on wages.
I've spent the last week mostly cleaning up the Strike/Union/Benefits system. I'm trying to get it closer to production ready than Early Access ready since we're only ~6 major versions (1.25) from being finished. I want to go back over and clean up as little as possible in future builds. ;)
So what have I done?
-Racing Employees (They're tied to Researching Employees)
-AI assigns benefits
-Employee Moral Effected by poor benefits, strikes may happen now even when using auto-wages.
-Union Benefits Action Memo
-Strike Action Memo
-Removed Unions from Phone Menu in Office. All Strikes will now cause Action Memos.
-Changed Agreed Strike Wages checking system. Should be less buggy.
-Union Benefits Demand Negotiations. (Might be able to save a few % if your company is doing poorly)
-Benefits Systems is opt-in. If you play the game on Easy or Medium you will have to check Benefits System on in the Advanced Settings. If you play the game on Hard the Benefits System will automatically be on in the Advanced Settings.
-HR Employee Hiring now shows Strike Agreed Wages instead of Average.
-Agreeing to new benefits package will reset department moral.
-Adjusted down branch employee numbers.
-Fixed incorrect amount of branch employees on new game starter branch.
-Automatically increase the amount of branch employees needed every year.
-1 additional branch employee needed for every 100 vehicles sold.
Currently I'm working on the Factory Employee Furlough System. When you adjust production numbers which results in people not working they will go into the "Furlough Pool." When you hire people to work in production they will pull from the "Furlough Pool," Over time this pool will decrease in size as people quit or are laid off. The amount of employees you have in the pool will reduce employee moral. However people who disappear from the pool will decrease moral even more.
After the Furlough system is completed, I'll be down to one more feature ticket, which may be pushed back, and 4 bug tickets. Which means I should get a couple days of play testing to make sure all these new features work well in the game. ;)
Every month the ratio of employees furloughed to working will effect your employee Moral. There are limitations to the effects. Likewise every month roughly 10% of these furloughed employees will be laid off or quit. This pulls down moral a little more, but your ratio of furloughed to working will be less the next month.
Another minor cost feature was added to factory production. The more distinct components you produce in a factory will increase the factory monthly costs by an additional 2%. This means if your factory is producing two vehicles using the same chassis/engine/gearboxes then there is no penalty. However if you're producing 10 cars all with different chassis/engines/gearboxes, expect 60% increase in monthly factory costs. (These numbers may be adjusted before 1.19.1 comes out.)
I've added a Low Definition texture toggle to the settings. This should make the game playable on very old video cards such as the Intel i915 as well make mobile/embedded GPU (such as PowerVR) support more likely. (ARM and MIPS support anyone?) ;)
Here are a few things I've Implemented and fixed since the last post that will be included in 1.19.1:
-Employee Furlough System
-Fixed Wealthy car index (Limos, Landu, Supercars) insane margins bug.
-Disabled Dynamic Popularity for wealth index car types above 6 (Luxury Sedans, Limos, Landus, Supercars)
-Monthly Factory Costs increase based on how many different components are being produced at the factory.
-Fixed bug in assisted chassis designer, does engine fit tool.
-Low Definition Texture toggle.
-Improved decal system selectability. (Modern Headlights/Tailights and up coming stuff such as door jams.)
-Fixed compositor and shader crash in OSX
-Fixed possible crashes in OSX
-Fixed upgrading factory bug which charges 2 additional months of construction costs.
-Minor boost to buying populations in normal and hard mode.
There is probably another 10-25% I can squeeze out not including possible gains from AI and Stock Market improvements. But I'm going to wait until I improve the AI first before switching back to optimizations.
Since turn times are moving faster, I can now take that saved time and use it to improve the AI. On top of this I plan on making the AI more efficient as well. Hopefully net-net we'll have both a faster AI system and a better AI system.
***Currently simulating the game from 1900 to 1930 with full AI on easy using my AMD Phenom 9550. No player interaction. 24.5% gains before optimizing the consumer AI, 45.3% after optimizing consumer AI. Changes to consumer AI flow has caused some AI to go bankrupt faster, so speed gains may not be as high after I have improved the AI.
Also if you crashing issues with shadows or alt tabbing in the past, please try out 1.19.1 and let me know if you still have these issues. Thanks!