Mall Craze News

Hello everyone!

The first Management Foundations update is here.
Given that this is the very first management update, it serves as a foundation to the foundations.

[h2]Mall Management Window[/h2]

The biggest addition is the Mall Management Window, which at this moment contains 3 new tabs:

• Mall Dashboard
  
• Shops Overview
  
• Customers Overview
  

You can access the window by click on the new circular button in the lower left corner of the screen.
At this moment, the dashboard still has a lot of free space for new features, which will be added in future updates.

[h2]Shop Management Window[/h2]

To maintain the same UI design, I also updated the Shop Management Window.
It is now possible to rename shops without the need to enter shop construction mode.
Edit and Delete Shop buttons were also moved to the Dashboard tab.



Updates 0.1.2 and 0.1.3 will enable additional features from Mall & Shop Management Windows which are now greyed out.

[h2]Camera Improvements[/h2]

To better indicate the current camera mode (normal or flying), I've added a new icon for the toggle button when the camera is in flying mode.



The Customers Overview tab from the Mall Management window makes it possible to follow a single customer.

There were no boundaries for the flying camera, which made it very easy to accidentally fly inside the ground.
This has now been improved.

[h2]Default Graphical Settings[/h2]

I've lowered the default graphical settings for Shadows, Global Illumination and Reflections.
Some people may have had issues to start up the game, because Lumen and Virtual Shadows were turned on by default.
These settings can still be manually turned on and saved in the Settings.



[h2]Additions & Improvements[/h2]

• Mall Management window added.
  
• Dashboard tab added into Mall Management window.
  
• Shops Overview tab added into Mall Management window.
  
• Customers Overview tab added into Mall Management window.
  
• Camera can now follow a single customer.
  
• It is now possible to rename your mall.
  
• Shop Management window updated.
  
• You can now rename shops from Shop Dashboard.
  
• Each camera mode now has it's own icon to better indicate the current mode.
  

[h2]Small Changes[/h2]

• Edit & Delete shop buttons moved to Shop Dashboard tab.
  
• Default graphical settings changed (Lumen and Virtual Shadows (High & Screenshot) now turned OFF by default).
  
• Material Designer: entrance hint text changed.
  
• "Construction" building tab in the main UI renamed to "Mall".
  
• "Add Walls" & "Remove Walls" renamed to "Add Area" & "Remove Area".
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed: Being able to fly through ground in flying camera mode.
  

Hello everyone!

Yesterday, Mall Craze released into Early Access, and I would like to address your initial feedback.

As a first thing, I would like to thank everyone who gave any kind of feedback, new ideas, and observations here on Steam (forum and reviews), Discord, or email. I'm reading all of it, and I've already reevaluated a couple of things.

Your biggest concern so far has been the Management side of the game, or lack thereof.
The game has released as a creative sandbox game. Looking at things now, I should've used a more straightforward name, and call Mall Craze a mall builder game instead, which I will do from now on, until the game has seen some management updates. I will also reflect this change in various places throughout the Steam Page.

[h2]Management Updates[/h2]

Speaking of management updates, this is the main topic that I want to talk about today.

Looking at the original Early Access Roadmap that I released a couple of days ago, you can see that I had Management Foundations planned for Stage 1, Management Refinement planned for Stage 2, and a whole new game mode - Business Mode planned for Stage 3.

After your feedback and inputs, I've decided to put a much bigger emphasis and focus on these things.
Today, I've already started to work on the foundations of management features. I'm also moving Management Refinement into Stage 1 and Business Mode into Stage 2.

[h3]Management Foundations & Management Refinement[/h3]
These terms by themselves are pretty vague, so let's define them better here.

By Management Foundations, I mean the first iteration of particular features, namely:

• hiring staff
  
• basic economy
  
• sales reports for products, shops and mall as a whole
  
• customers actually arriving and leaving on their own
  

These things and a couple more will serve as a baseline for future updates.

Management Refinement will then add new features, and build upon the existing ones.

By the time the game is in version 0.2.0, it will be in a state as it probably should've released into Early Access in the first place. Between now and 0.2.0, I will release smaller updates, each introducing a small portion of the features I mentioned above.

The first update with a couple new management features - 0.1.1 - will release at the end of next week.

In the meantime, Thank you very much for your support, and take care!
- Milan, developer


PS: Reporting Game Crashes
If you experience game crash, sending the crash file would help tremendously with fixing those issues.

Link to crash reporting guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1223530/discussions/0/5904838286204458210/

[h2]Game Crash Reporting[/h2]

This hotfix introduces changes that make it possible to report game crashes.

If you're experiencing game crashes, you can help me fix them by following the instructions in this forum post.

I'm sorry if you experienced frequent crashes.
Fixing these issus is currently my priority.

- Milan, developer

After gathering your initial feedback, I've decided to significantly speed up the introduction of new management features. These are the Management Foundations, Management Refinement, and Business Mode from this roadmap.

The first management update - version 0.1.1 - will be released at the end of next week (around September 29).

You can read more info about this decision in this article:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1223530/announcements/detail/3718340776821456456



Hello everyone!

We are almost there! Mall Craze is releasing into Early Access tomorrow! ⏰
But before I press the Release button, I still have one last thing to talk about - the Early Access Roadmap.

Without further ado - here it is, and I will talk about it in more detail below:



As you can see, I've divided the timeline into 4 stages. each having it's own objectives. There is no particular order for implementing things within a single stage, and the exact dates may slightly change during development.

September 2023 - December 2023



The main focus for the rest of 2023 is to continue laying down a solid foundations that the game can then build upon. The theme for the first couple of weeks (1 - 3) will be bug fixing, gathering feedback, and releasing some smaller content patches - things that I will do throughout the whole Early Access.

After this initial period, I will then start adding new things and features into the game.
For the Stage 1 it's a new shop type, fountains, escalators, and first management features.

January 2024 - May 2024



This is a continuation of the previous stage - more management features and new shop types.
Besides those, I will also start working on a completely new class of vendors - stalls.
At this point, the default map environment should see a nice progress over it's current state, and completely new maps will also be in the making.

June 2024 - December 2024



Once again, more of everything, but the main focus for this stage will be to yet again expand the array of shop classes - not to be confused with "shop types", which are different shops within a single class (e.g. Class - normal shops, stalls, restaurants, services; Types of normal shops - clothes, music, sports).

Restaurants (food court) and Services - those are the things that will be coming into the game at this stage.

2025 - ???



Starting with 2025, Stage 4 will be a time of 2 big additions - Movie Theater and Fitness Center. Personally, I'm really looking forward to working on these two!
Besides that, more services will be added into the game, and the maps should receive a new traffic update.



As you can see, the timeline currently doesn't have an end point for 1.0 Release.
At this point, I don't want to give a definitive date when Mall Craze will leave Early Access, because it's almost impossible to estimate exactly.

My main goal is to use the potential of Early Access to it's fullest, and together with you, create the best version of Mall Craze that I can!

Let's get into it! We're starting tomorrow!🎮

Until then - Thank you for your support, and take care!
- Milan, developer

Hello everyone!
September 19 is now so close, that instead of using the date, I can start using the day of the week 🙂.

[h2]🚀 Mall Craze is launching on Tuesday! 🚀[/h2]

Now, the question is: When exactly, and for how much?
That's what I will answer today!


On the map below, you can see the exact release times for various time zones:




The initial Early Access Launch Price for Mall Craze is as follows:

• $14.99
  
• €14.79
  
• £12.79
  

All other currencies will be automatically calculated by Steam's regional pricing.

During the first week after launch, the game will also have a launch discount of 10%!



That's it for today's quick announcement! Tuesday is just around the corner - only 3 sleeps left!


[h2]Wishlist the game to get notified on Tuesday[/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1223530/Mall_Craze/


Thank you everyone, and take care!
- Milan, developer