Industry Giant 4.0 News

Happy Holidays, industry giants and business tycoons!

The Holidays are upon us, and we hope you find as much harmony in your worlds as you do in a perfectly planned production chain and flow of goods! May your progress in the new year 2025 run as smoothly as an optimised economic cycle in Industry Giant 4.0!

We wish you a wonderful Holiday season and a happy new year, when we will be back for you!

Looking back at the busy weeks since we launched into Early Access, we want to also thank you for the constant stream of constructive criticism and valuable feedback on our game design, mechanics and features. With several updates we have since added 4 new maps, a dozen new features and quality of life improvements such as the Production Chain Navigator and expanded City Overview. While we are going to continue working on this, drastic improvements have already been made to overall game performance and stability. Last but not least, more than 100 critical and minor issues have been fixed.

But this is obviously not the end of the road as we want to share our development roadmap for the first quarter of 2025 with you:



Stay tuned for more updates to this roadmap in 2025 and keep the feedback coming, your input is crucial to a successful Early Access phase.

Of course this news would not be complete without “one more thing”, so today we are also rolling out another major update to the game. See changelog below:

[h2]Changelog 0.4.1 (13555)[/h2]

[h3]Added [/h3]

• Two new maps have been introduced to the game: Mountainpass (10x10) and Ryusei (10x10).
  
• A new simplified mode is now accessible for line managers, streamlining the line creation process. Players also have the option to switch back to the advanced mode at any time.
  
• The game now incorporates individual town demand, enhancing the diversity of gameplay and creating a more engaging experience for players.
  
• We added a text-to-speech functionality to the tutorial, including a Play/Pause button at the relevant message popup (English and German only now).
  
• We have adjusted the balancing of market prices on the ‘Neighbours’ (4x4) map and would welcome your feedback on this.
  
• The UI of the city overview has been enhanced and is now showing demands at different levels within the city.
  
• High-tech Industry has been added to the game.
  

[h3]Improvements [/h3]

• The Production Chain UI now enables users to select and build structures directly from the overview.
  
• Enhancements to the rendering performance.
  
• The game now features a direction indicator that appears when players begin constructing new roads or rails.
  
• The town window now displays enhanced information based on the building level of each town.
  
• English and German localization for the new Maps feature have been added.
  
• With left SHIFT, it is now possible to delete multiple sections of a track/street or entire connections with the Bulldozer tool.
  
• Further performance and stability optimizations.
  

[h3]Fixed[/h3]

• Skyscraper town buildings not appearing after the year 2050
  
• Improvements have been made to address various tooltip and wording issues.
  
• The flickering issue observed around buildings has been successfully resolved.
  
• The “In-game UI Scale” feature has been moved from GAMEPLAY settings to GRAPHICS settings.
  
• Foundry can now store coal.
  
• Fixed for the tutorial step with the second wood production.
  
• Improved train connections.
  
• City growth behaves now better across city boundaries.
  
• Minor bug fixes.
  
• Fixed misleading text in Shop UI (EN and DE)
  

[hr][/hr]
The same update will be available on the Public Beta Branch, including terraforming tools as an experimental feature:

Players can now modify the terrain of a map during the game and use a brush tool to adjust the height or depth within the selected radius. Additionally, the edges of the modified areas can be smoothed. Important: Maps edited with this tool will require more storage space, which means the size of the save game is increasing.

[hr][/hr]

PS: If you fancy some ice and snow, why not try the Permafrost demo!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3197110/Permafrost_Demo/

[hr][/hr]

[hr][/hr]

Hello everyone!

We’re using a separate branch to test updates before they get applied to the “live” version. You can check out changes here first.

[h3]How to join the public beta?[/h3]
Some of you probably have not done this before, so we have a small guide:
Prerequisite:
You must have Industry Giant 4.0 in your library – obviously.
The procedure

• Open your game library.
  
• Right Click on Industry Giant 4.0 there.
  
• Open properties.
  
• Select the tab "BETAS".*
  
• Select the branch public_testing
• Press Close
  

Steam should now download this version of the game.
*Steam labels all those builds as "betas” albeit they’re not betas, so do not be too confused!

Please report bugs or issues found there
[h3]in this forum [/h3]
and – if you are on Discord in
[h3]#ig4-testbranch[/h3]

[hr][/hr]


[h2]Changelog[/h2]

[h3]Added [/h3]

• Two new maps have been introduced to the game: Mountainpass (10x10) and Ryusei (10x10).
  
• A new simplified mode is now accessible for line managers, streamlining the line creation process. Players also have the option to switch back to the advanced mode at any time.
  
• Players can now modify the terrain of a map during the game and use a brush tool to adjust the height or depth within the selected radius. Additionally, the edges of the modified areas can be smoothed. Important: Maps edited with this tool will require more storage space, which means the size of the save game is increasing.
  
• The game now incorporates individual town demand, enhancing the diversity of gameplay and creating a more engaging experience for players.
  
• We added a text-to-speech functionality to the tutorial, including a Play/Pause button at the relevant message popup (English and German only now).
  
• We have adjusted the balancing of market prices on the ‘Neighbours’ (4x4) map and would welcome your feedback on this.
  
• The UI of the city overview has been enhanced and is now showing demands at different levels within the city.
  

[h3]Improvements [/h3]

• The Production Chain UI now enables users to select and build structures directly from the overview.
  
• Enhancements to the rendering performance.
  
• The game now features a direction indicator that appears when players begin constructing new roads or rails.
  
• The town window now displays enhanced information based on the building level of each town.
  
• English and German localization for the new Maps feature have been added.
  
• With left SHIFT, it is now possible to delete multiple sections of a track/street or entire connections with the Bulldozer tool.
  
• Further performance and stability optimizations.
  

[h3]Fixed[/h3]

• Skyscraper town buildings not appearing after the year 2050
  
• Improvements have been made to address various tooltip and wording issues.
  
• The flickering issue observed around buildings has been successfully resolved.
  
• The “In-game UI Scale” feature has been moved from GAMEPLAY settings to GRAPHICS settings.
  
• Foundry can now store coal.
  
• Fixed for the tutorial step with the second wood production.
  
• Improved train connections.
  
• City growth behaves now better across city boundaries.
  
• Minor bug fixes.
  
• Fixed misleading text in Shop UI (EN and DE)
  

Hello everyone!

We’re using a separate branch to test updates before they get applied to the “live” version. You can check out changes here first.

[h3]How to join the public beta?[/h3]
Some of you probably have not done this before, so we have a small guide:
Prerequisite:
You must have Industry Giant 4.0 in your library – obviously.
The procedure

• Open your game library.
  
• Right Click on Industry Giant 4.0 there.
  
• Open properties.
  
• Select the tab "BETAS".*
  
• Select the branch public_testing
• Press Close
  

Steam should now download this version of the game.
*Steam labels all those builds as "betas” albeit they’re not betas, so do not be too confused!

Please report bugs or issues found there
[h3]in this forum [/h3]
and – if you are on Discord in
[h3]#ig4-testbranch[/h3]

[hr][/hr]

[h2]Changelog 0.4.1 (13320)[/h2]

Hello fellow Industry Giants!

We have an update previously from the test branch for you today, which includes the changes listed below.

More fixes are on the way! We thank you for your support in reporting any issues!


[h2]Changelog[/h2]

[h3]Added [/h3]

• We have added a new map to the game: Peninsula (8x8). We hope you like it, and we are looking forward to your feedback.
  

[h3]Changed [/h3]

• We integrated the welcome message into the main menu screen and removed the existing window solution, so you don't have to close it whenever you start the game.
  
• We have lowered the demands of cities to make it easier to fulfill them.
  
• Cities grow a bit slower but upgrade a bit faster. This will increase the amount of demand for new goods added while decreasing the demand-increase for goods already in demand.
  

[h3]Improved[/h3]

• Ctrl key now toggles between straight and curved mode when building roads
  
• We improved the loading times for save games that include maps with a lot of roads.
  
• We improved the road and train rendering performance.
  

[h3]Fixed[/h3]

• We fixed miscellaneous issues at the tutorial.
  
• We fixed a deadlock with vehicles, caused by traffic lights in the cities.
  
• When buying trucks or trains via a depot, this depot is now auto selected for the contract.
  
• We fixed an issue that caused wrong name tooltips of buildings that were renamed previously.
  
• We fixed an issue with overlapping fonts in message windows in Chinese language.
  

Hello everyone!

We’re using a separate branch to test updates before they get applied to the “live” version. You can check out changes here first.
[h3]How to join the public beta?[/h3]
Some of you probably have not done this before, so we have a small guide:
Prerequisite:
You must have Industry Giant 4.0 in your library – obviously.
The procedure

• Open your game library.
  
• Right Click on Industry Giant 4.0 there.
  
• Open properties.
  
• Select the tab "BETAS".*
  
• Select the branch public_testing
• Press Close
  

Steam should now download this version of the game.
*Steam labels all those builds as "betas” albeit they’re not betas, so do not be too confused!

Please report bugs or issues found there
[h3]in this forum [/h3]
and – if you are on Discord in
[h3]#ig4-testbranch[/h3]

[hr][/hr]


[h2]Changelog[/h2]

[h3]Added [/h3]

• We have added a new map to the game: Peninsula (8x8). We hope you like it, and we are looking forward to your feedback.
  

[h3]Changed [/h3]

• We integrated the welcome message into the main menu screen and removed the existing window solution, so you don't have to close it whenever you start the game.
  
• We have lowered the demands of cities to make it easier to fulfill them.
  
• Cities grow a bit slower but upgrade a bit faster. This will increase the amount of demand for new goods added while decreasing the demand-increase for goods already in demand.
  

[h3]Improved[/h3]

• Ctrl key now toggles between straight and curved mode when building roads
  
• We improved the loading times for save games that include maps with a lot of roads.
  
• We improved the road and train rendering performance.
  

[h3]Fixed[/h3]

• We fixed miscellaneous issues at the tutorial.
  
• We fixed a deadlock with vehicles, caused by traffic lights in the cities.
  
• When buying trucks or trains via a depot, this depot is now auto selected for the contract.
  
• We fixed an issue that caused wrong name tooltips of buildings that were renamed previously.
  
• We fixed an issue with overlapping fonts in message windows in Chinese language.