Mall Craze News

Hello everyone!

September 19 is coming closer every day, and today, I would like to talk a bit more about the Early Access itself - why I've decided for this type of release a year ago, and how I plan to use it.

There are 2 main reasons - to give you the ability to play the game during it's development, and to provide additional funding for the game, which would mean that I can continue working on it full time to release frequent updates.

Without beating around the bush - the reason why I'm talking about Early Access, is that I've suggested (and I should probably use the word promised) that the game will contain the Management features by September 19. All throughout August, I was slowly coming to the realization of the fact that that probably won't be the case. I've underestimated the time needed to implement those features to the level of quality that I would find release-worthy.

With that, I'm now facing 3 possible scenarios:

1. Release the game with Management features that are half broken, half missing.
   
2. Continue working on the Management during Early Access and release the game with Building and Customization available.
   
3. Delay the Early Access launch (possibly into the Q1 2024).
   

Mall Craze will release on September 19, 2023 as a creative sandbox game, with the roadmap to implement Management features during early stages of Early Access.

I will provide a full roadmap later this month, as well as a detailed patch notes for the Early Access version. I will also update the Steam page in the following days to reflect this change.

Now, what are these things that I've been working on? Some of them will be available on launch, and some of the them will be added later.

[h2]Main Menu (available on launch day)[/h2]
The game now has a proper Main Menu that, apart from the usual options, will also include a 'News' section for the latest updates.



[h2]Level Selector (available on launch day)[/h2]
Gone will be the days of only starting on an empty map. You will now be able to start a new game with one of the pre-build malls as well. You can then expand and transform them to your liking.



[h2]Product Detail Panel (available on launch day)[/h2]
This one was quite a grind, but every single product or product table/rack/wall now has all of its products listed inside the Product Detail Panel. With the current implementation, you can see their names and discover some interesting facts about them :)



[h2]New Graphical Options (available on launch day)[/h2]
Depth of Field, Field of View, and more options to dynamically control the environment.



[h2]New Objects and Shop Designs (available on launch day)[/h2]
To give you more options to creatively decorate and stylize your mall. All designed with a modular philosophy in mind, allowing for some interesting combinations.



[h2]New Design Picker (available on launch day)[/h2]
Memorizing if 'Design 4' is a brick or wooden wall wasn't very convenient. Every shop object that can change it's visual design will now have the new Design Picker instead (floor, walls, windows, entrances, and cashier tables).



[h2]Product Detail Panel - Finances (to be added during Early Access)[/h2]
The Product Detail Panel will also have a second tab. This one will contain an overview and details of the sales for the particular product.



[h2]Mall Dashboard Window (to be added during Early Access)[/h2]
Similar to Shop Dashboard - your mall will also have it's dashboard with useful stats and options. Most mall-level management will take place here and inside it's tabs.



[h2]New Research Tree (to be added during Early Access)[/h2]
If you've played the old Demo based on UE4, you may remember that the Research was Product-based. For every single shop, you had roughly 40% of products available and the rest was behind research. That was the case for every single shop, even if you've already build the same shop type before. After some time, it felt more like a chore than anything else.

The new Research Tree is Shop-based, meaning that instead of Products, you'll be researching new Shops and other things from the game like new decorations or utilities.



I do realize that the Management postponement is a bit of a letdown, and I'm sorry for it, but I'm still fully committed to the game.

As I always say at the end of these updates - it is time for me to get back to work! Even with only a little more than two weeks to go, there's still a lot that needs to be done!

Thank you all for your support, and I'll see you later!
- Milan, developer

Hello everyone!

I don't know how about you, but for the past couple of weeks, I'm basically counting down every single day until September 19. Today we have 36 days to go, and it literally feels like yesterday when my mental counter was at 90.

The news that I'll be sharing today won't be reflected inside the demo, as these things are still very much in development.

(And all in-game characters in general)

What would be a mall without it's customers? Well, after a couple of weeks or months, there would probably be no mall, that's for sure. And the same goes for Mall Craze as well. Luckilly, Mall Craze is a game, so we were able to go without customers a little longer, but sooner or later they had to come.

That is what I've been working on over the last 30 days since the last update.



[h2]Creating customers[/h2]
Creating believable-looking characters was always a bit of a struggle, as you can see here:



[h3]Animations[/h3]
As the game's graphics evolved over the course of the development, so did the characters needed a new model and animations. Especially the rigging and animations were in need of better solution, as I've only used pre-existing animation database in the past, which produces results very fast, but can be limiting at times. If I wanted a full control over the character animations, I knew that I need to handcraft them. And that's what I did.



[h3]Hand gestures and facial expressions[/h3]
Crating new characters from scratch gave me an opportunity to take a fresh look at their design. Design features that I've been always thinking about are hand and facial animations. These things really do bring customers to life. The characters now have more bones, and I had way too much fun with the new rig:



[h3]Giving our customers a new home[/h3]
Time to move the customers from Blender to Unreal Engine. Here's a couple of screenshots from the process:


First steps.

Absolute chaos!

Lighting test.




[h3]Mannequins[/h3]
Because of the new character models, I had to update some products as well. Most importantly - the mannequins inside the clothing store, as they were base off of the old models. The new character rig also gave me more control over their poses:



[h3]Other products[/h3]
While I was at it, I also updated a couple of other products. The biggest viasual change was probably for the fridge and various accessories:



This visual update of products that were not very detailed before had a reason that I will most likely talk about in the next update.

[h3]Materials and their order[/h3]
For some products (actually a lot of them), materials and their order didn't always made sense. One such example could be the piano, where it was previously impossible to change the piano and piano stool colors separately. In other cases, the order was mixed up. What would change the rack color on one product would change the color of something else on a different product.
I've remade the materials of majority of products to mitigate these exact problems.

The general order of product materials from now on should be something like this:

1. 1 - 2 materials for the rack/stand/table
   
2. 1 - 2 main product colors,
   
3. everything else
   

With this countdown, it may seem like September 19 is the end of something, but quite the opposite is true actually. I can't wait to reach this milestone, and seeing how the game has transformed in the last few months, I'm really looking forward to the months to come!



See you in the next update!

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

Hello everyone!

Time for another dose of Mall Craze updates! Before we start, thanks to everyone who tried the new Demo or wishlisted the game! We have a lot of new folks around here, either from the OTK Games Expo or the Next Fest. Welcome onboard!

Important message about 0.2.7 update (released today - July 13, 2023) This update is no longer compatible with old saves. During Early Access, this might happen as well as some new features may require a substantial restructuralization of save data. Although I'll try my best to minimize the frequency of it as much as possible.




The number of people that tried the new Demo was huge during the Next Fest and I've received a lot of feedback from you!

[h2]Tutorial[/h2]



I've received a lot of feedback from you about the current state of the tutorial. At this moment, It is more of a documentation, rather than an interactive guide. It will stay that way even during the initial phase of Early Access. The reason being that the game changes constantly, and I'm adding or changing things daily. That would make keeping a well polished interactive tutorial up to date costly in terms of time. Time that I would much rather spend on adding content and features at the moment.

[h2]Empty map[/h2]
When you launch the game, you are greeted with a beautiful landscape full of .. nothing? This will change before Early Access and there will be some starting malls that you will be able to tinker with :)


Even though last month was pretty hectic (OTK, Next Fest), it wasn't lacking in terms of development. Quite the opposite actually, as I was trying to fix and add stuff as much as possible. You may have already noticed some changes on your own or you've read them in the Patch Notes.
Let's now go through them in more detail!

[h2]Changing designs during Build mode[/h2]
By far the biggest limitation of the Building and Customization process was the fact that you couldn't change the design of an object while building it. The only way to change it was in the Material Designer after you've build it. This would not be that big of an issue for objects that are build in relatively small quantities. The main issue however was building, customizing, and deleting floor.
You only had 2 options - Paint floor tiles one-by-one, or use Bucket Paint to paint the whole mall or shop floor. And even worse part was deleting the floor, where the only option was to delete it one-by-one (not a particularly funny experience when you accidentally build a 100x100 sized floor).

The solution was rather simple - allow Material Designer for ghost objects (objects that show you where a particular object will be placed). With that also came a new set of buttons that allow for an easy way of saving and loading these designs.





[h2]Bulldozer Tool[/h2]
We have a Customization part solved, but what about the delete issue? Remember, we still have to delete every single object manually one-by-one. Many games offer an area-delete tool for this purpose. Let's add one into Mall Craze as well!



Currently found in the bottom-right corner is the bulldozer tool that allows you to easily delete normal objects, floor, and products. All these 3 options can be separately toggled on/off, so if you only want to delete floor, or you only want to delete decoration objects, you can!



Not everything can be Bulldozed like this however - Mall and Shop area are still deleted inside the Construction and Shop Construction menus. This was a deliberate decision, as it would be easy to accidentally delete a shop.

[h2]3D TEXT[/h2]
A feature that was present in the old demo but was not ready for the Next Fest is now back in the game in it's improved form!



Currently, only Entrances hold a 3D text component, but in the future, I would like to add it into multiple objects, and also as it's own separate object.

So what can you customize for the text?

• Text itself
  
• Font
  
• Size
  
• Position
  
• Extrude depth
  
• Bevel size and type
  
• 4 materials: front, back, bevel, extrude
  

[h2]Visual Improvements[/h2]
[h3]Object Animations[/h3]
Some actions like build, paint, move, or delete now also have a nice little animations with them.



[h3]New Object Outlines[/h3]
I've also added some new object highlights for various actions and situations.

You can't build here! Possible build locations for Entrance and Windows Bucket Paint area

[h2]Load Times Optimizations[/h2]
I don't know if any of you encountered this issue, but for the very large malls, the loading times could approach one minute mark. For example, my largest save file took roughly 39 seconds to load.
Luckily, I was able to reduce the loading times quite a bit. My largest save file now loads in 7.1 seconds. A reduction of almost 82%! This also helped with smaller saves, where the reduction was smaller, but still roughly 50%!


It is time to finally transform Mall Craze from a mall designer game into a proper management game. Apart from bug fixes and more content, this update is the last update before Early Access where I've made a bigger changes and additions to the Building and Customization systems.
My focus is now shifting mainly towards adding management gameplay, and I already know what needs to be done first - adding cashiers and customers!

Here's a reminder of how the new models (ver. 4) will look like in comparison to the older versions:



It is time for me to get back to work! Once again, thank you everyone for your support,
and I will see you next time!


Take care!
- Milan, developer

This Patch Notes summarizes changes made between versions 0.2.1 and 0.2.6
0.2.1 release date: June 10, 2023
0.2.6 release date: July 3, 2023

• Object's design can be modified during building process (instead of only after).
  
• Object designs can be saved and loaded.
  
• While building Entrances and Windows, walls are now highlighted, indicating possible build locations for these objects.
  
• Bulldozer tool added with these filters - normal objects (decorations), floor, products.
  
• Animations added for objects - build, delete, move, rotate, paint.
  
• Animations added while adding/deleting walls.
  
• Small notifications added, warning you or informing you about various things,
  
• New object outlines added for Paint mode.
  
• New object outlines added for construction (e.g. when cashier table is outside of shop).
  
• New object outlines added while adding/deleting shop/mall area.
  
• Save/Load window can now be drag moved as well.
  
• Tooltip for build mode added - showing price (currently always 0) and grid size.
  
• Tooltip for construction buttons added - showing object names,
  
• Floor Up/Down binded to Page Up/Page Down keys.
  
• UI buffer added, making it possible to easily close windows with Escape.
  

• Products and Cashier Tables must be build inside a shop,
  
• Shop Size condition has to be met before building other construction objects (entrances, windows, cashier tables).
  
• Construction buttons now show object prices (currently always 0).
  
• Floor Up/Down and camera toggle buttons are now part of the main UI.
  
• Tutorial text slightly reduced.
  
• Only 1st (ground) floor is now visible after game Load.
  
• Hover button style changed for "Shops" and "Construction" button inside main UI.
  

• Fixed - objects can be build and selected behind UI.
  
• Fixed - new shops can be constructed while different shop is under construction, making the innitial shop impossible to edit/delete.
  
• Fixed - Right Mouse Button deselect while grid-building doesn't clear the building array.
  
• Fixed - clicking on Bulldozer icon selects objects for deletion underneath it.
  
• Fixed - cashier tables can be deleted outside of shop construction mode.
  
• Fixed - cashier tables and products can be build inside walls.
  
• Fixed - Paint mode causing game crash when clicking without any object selected.
  
• Fixed - all walls besides 1st floor are not innitially visible after Load game.
  
• Fixed - object construction buttons are active during Paint mode, possibly making the game be stuck inside Paint mode.
  
• Fixed - material designer can be closed during Paint mode, possibly making the game be stuck inside Paint mode.
  
• Fixed - shop construction objects are still visible after finishing shop construction if they weren't deselected with RMB.
  

Hi everyone!

Mall Craze is participating in June's Next Fest and I would like to invite you to the official Mall Craze livestream, where I'll be streaming gameplay of the latest Demo!

This will be the second livestream during this Next Fest!
See you on Saturday!