hi for some reason i can't comment so i post it here
this mod looks awesome and i want it :D
but my problem is that i don't have the steam version can you upload to a site so we non-steam can use it too

thanks

Do u plan one doing something like Phone Operating Systems and like apps? Would love it :)

@dannehj
Here, I uploaded it on Zippy: Link[www108.zippyshare.com]

Originally posted by Shadowmaster:

@dannehj
Here, I uploaded it on Zippy: Link[www108.zippyshare.com]

thank you! :D

Originally posted by Mc_Marcel15:

Do u plan one doing something like Phone Operating Systems and like apps? Would love it :)

Currently I'm researching the information I need for a detailed implementation of the things I would like to add. Among them are things like monitor, cloud, phone etc. So they will defintely come sometime, but don't ask me for a date or month at the moment ;)
Problem here is this could take a while, due to the scope of it and I have to do that in my free time after working^^

There are many things I can't implement like I would and I have to compromise, because the modding/game capabilities are not so advanced as I would like them to be, but hopefully this will change int the future.

@Shadowmaster thanks for the info :)

Very nice mod, congratulations and thanks for creating and updating it.

I have not tested it yet in depth, just started a new game with it.

So one suggestion so far:

I think hardware development should rather need more designers than artists. Also the design phase could take the longest time, no idea if you can mod that to design phase take longer than development.

Another reason for more designers is that designer salary standard is (much) higher than artists, so it would better reflect the engineering knowledge cost behind a hardware product.

One final thought, maybe you could add a "hardware manufacturer" printing machine for greater impression, perhaps with different cost ranges (most expensive is CPU, etc.).

Sorry if I missed something, still learning this mod :-)

Another one: maybe you could add hardware dependencies to softwares, for example a new OS need a processor, ram, etc, and possible software features would depend on hardware features too (Hyperthreading, Virtualization, multiple CPU support, etc.)

Perhaps it would make development for some softwares very difficult, so not sure it's a good but an idea.

I'm glad to hear that you like it. You have good ideas and I've already thought about changing the design/code ratio, since some small glitches have appeared of it, caused by the game itself. Since the artist/designer were split up (I developed this mod before that splitting), I have to look if I can change that directly.

Hardware manufacturing printing machine (actually a silicon chip fabric like TSMC was one idea) would be nice, but I can't implement it the way I thought of, because sadly the game hasn't progressed far enough to let me freely mod what I want to. Maybe i can add that later when it's possible. You could use the "build devices" category as a replacement for the time being ;)

Dependencies are a tricky thing. Too many are bad, too less either. The idea behind it was that the software is the starting point. When an OS like Windows, Linux or Mac is working on different hardware, how can I make a dependency to a special hardware? In another case it would run on an ARM processor with a different instruction set than an Intel/AMD processor etc. This would be too complex for people without the knowledge based on this and be at some point no more fun for them.
My ultimate goal was to start from getting resources like silicon etc. -> manufacturing/processing them -> build product -> then sell it. But at this stage there is no chance to integrate that, maybe it will never be, but let's be optimistic^^

Thus I had decided to say 'okay, regardless which hardware get a feature like USB, it needs an OS with USB support, otherwise you can't use it. If you turn that around that is no problem, because you can have an OS with USB support, but use a mainboard with no USB ports (which you can switch later with a newer model).

The biggest problem actually is you can't mod either... or and excluding decisions in the game. You must build on the feature from before. That shrinks creativity also to a certain degree.

Hehe, thx for the reply.

Yea all what you wrote makes sense, I thought too that HW dependent OS features would make the design too complex.... Maybe if the game will reach a final release phase, so you'll know the game mechanics wont change anymore, a mod with such complex features can be done.

Meantime I was trying to look into modding and found out that to modify design / development ratio you have to make a DLL mod. The game author pointed out in documentation that you have to include Software Inc_Data\Managed\Assembly-CSharp.dll library to your DLL mods.
I decompiled this DLL file to peek into, and I found that there is a static DesignRatio variable in the SoftwareType class, so you cant mod design time length with an XML file, because it does not read any data from files, just setting DesignRatio = 0.3333333 variable.

I posted a question about this ratio modifying in the game mods help topic, maybe dev will give an answer one day, or make it XML moddable in a future release.