Mall Craze News

Hello everyone!

In the last update, I mentioned that the Next Steam Update will be about the future of Mall Craze. You already read the title and saw the thumbnail, so now you might guess that the capital letters in “Next Steam Update” were not a typo. And you’re right - it was a small hint :)



New shop type and character models form the last update are all fine, but what good of a use do they have if you can't actually play the game, right? A couple of weeks ago, Mall Craze had it's 3rd anniversary of being in the development. I'm not really sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing :). Believe it or not, at the very beginning, this was supposed to be a small personal project. 6 months maybe. In and out, quick adventure. That changed fairly quickly, as I expanded the game more and more.

Ok, what am I still blabbering about … you want to know the release date! Here it is!



Mall Craze will release on September 19th, 2023 as an Early Access title.

I've decided to mark this release as an Early Access because I had to be honest. Developing the game into the complete state as I envision it, will take a long time. A time that you could actually play the game in Early Access.

I've picked the September 2023 mainly because I believe that at that time, the game will be "Early Access ready", and will contain a good amount of content that you can enjoy. The game was supposed to launch Q4 this year, but that was before I had to make some big decisions earlier this year (more on this later in this update). A decision that was mandatory in order continue the development.



I've mentioned numerous times (mainly on Discord) that I would like to participate in some of the upcoming Steam Next Fest. An event where, for a small period of time, you can play games that have not been released yet.

I now have a concrete goal, and that is that Mall Craze will appear in the 2nd Next Fest of 2023. The second Next Fest might be held sometime around June, as it was this year. Please don't confuse this with the upcoming Next Fest that might be held sometime around February 2023.



The reason that there were few (read "no") updates since January is simple. Well, the reason is simple. The solution, a bit less, but definitely not impossible. You may know from other sources that I was developing Mall Craze using Unreal Engine's visual scripting language called Blueprints. This system is amazing, and I absolutely love it! So far, it was perfect for 99% of things that I've tried to do with it.

But here goes the remaining 1%. No need to add, that this 1% is very crucial to the overal game. I would even say critical. What is it then? Those of you who tried the Alpha version (Kickstarter backers) may already know what was missing in that version - the ability to Save Game.

Mall Craze is and will be a fairly large game in terms of the amount of information that is reguired to be stored in your saves. The default Blueprint's solution is not really ideal for this amount and complexity of data, as it does not provide the ability to save games any other way than binary file format. This could potentially lead to problems in the future, where I plan to expand the game even after release. Or even in rare cases, where save games might go corrupt. Resurrecting these kinds of saves would be very difficult.
It also makes it a bit more difficult to potentially mod the game.

So what's the solution?

[h2]Blueprints vs C++[/h2]

There are 2 main ways you can develop games in Unreal Engine: Blueprints and C++ (or a combination of both). Because I couldn’t see a good solution to this problem using Blueprints, I was looking for the solution using C++, and the solutions it provided were ideal to continue the development.

[h2]Unreal Engine 5[/h2]

With the decision mentioned above, there was really no major reason to stick to Unreal Engine 4 at that point.

Going forward, Mall Craze will be developed in Unreal Engine 5. This also means that Mall Craze, at least on paper for now, will be able to support new major features introduced in UE5, and also features that are not yet known at this point. One of these features could be, for example, Unreal's new global illumination and reflection system called Lumen. As simplistic as Mall Craze's graphics may be, I believe it can still greatly profit from this feature.

[h2]Going forward[/h2]

The switch from Blueprints to C++ is a huge undertaking. Mostly because I decided not to only port the game, but basically rewrite it from the ground up. That alone takes a huge amount of time, but all of that is balanced with improvements to the game. In a way, I'm sort of making Mall Craze 2 without ever releasing the original game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just to give you a small glimpse of some improvements to the core gameplay. In the original Blueprints version of Mall Craze, one placable object = one product you can sell. That was easy to implement, but later on proved to be a difficult obstacle to overcome without rewriting half of the entire game. What will be possible now, is that one product table/wall will be able to hold multiple products, and you will be able to set prices and see statistics independently.

I'm really looking forward to start sharing screenshots and videos from this new version with you!

Thank you everyone for your support, and take care! :)
- Milan, Developer

Hello everyone!

I've got a new batch of news for you! In this update, it is mainly a summary of what's happened in the last couple of months. But the more exciting part is in my opinion about the future, which I'll cover in the Next Steam Update!



Currently, there are only 3 types of shops in the game – Electronics, Clothing and Music. Of course, that's enough for development purposes, but I wanted to expand this small set of 3.

[h2]Why Sports shop?[/h2]

2 main reasons. The first one being - sport shops are fairly numerous and there are always a couple of different brands out there in the mall. And the second one – bikes, skis, rackets, and many others, those products just look so good, and it was a real joy to model them :)

What kind of products will be available in this shop? Take a look:



Currently, there are 17 placable product display tables, and at least 3x as many different unique products.

When I look at all these new products, I notice a slight progress in the artstyle.



The difference is not so much in the artstyle itself, but mainly in the complexity of the model. This is not as huge of a problem, as the old computer product table can be easily updated later on.

But something from the game was getting outdated, and I wanted to do something about it.



Virtual people in Mall Craze are an integral part of the game, and with that came an important decision. The old character models were getting a bit too blocky in comparison with the rest of the game. Luckily, I was not 100% commited to the old character models yet, so there wasn't any substantial time lost in the process of creating new one. This is actually a 4th version of the character model and here in this picture you can see a nice comparison between all of them.



Not only does the new model (in my humble opinion) look better, but they also allow things that wouldn't be possible before. Thanks to the higher polygon count, I can much more easily create various hairstyles, beards, hand gestures (fingers, yaaay), and animations.

Here's another example of the new characters:





As I said at the beginning of this update, I have another update ready to share with you. One that is more focused towards the future. I'm well aware that a lot of time has passed from the last update in January. I will explain why this happened in more detail in this next update.

Thank you everyone for your support, and take care! :)
- Milan, developer

Before I get to the main story of this update, let me retrospectively wish you a Happy New Year, and I hope that you will all be able to accomplish all you goals!
[h2]Thursday, January 20[/h2]
The main message of this update is clear - I will be launching the promised Pre-Alpha version of Mall Craze in roughly 2 weeks for Kickstarter backers. Everything is ready and I only have to set up a couple of things before I give you the access.


On January 19 and 20, I will be sending out Steam Keys that will give you the access to the game. This access will not be limited in time. You will receive all updates as the game will slowly progress through it's development cycle, and on official release day, your game will automatically update to the release version.

With that might come a few hiccups. The fact that you will play the game as it is developed, there might come a time when there will be such a big update to the game's internal structure, that your saved games might get broken. This will not be a problem with this very first version, as the save system is not fully working right now, but it will be one of the very first things that will be added after the pre-alpha release.

I've changed my innitial plan to send out Steam Keys via e-mail, and instead, I will be sending an individual private messages on Kickstarter. To see if you are eligible for this pre-alpha version, your reward tier on Kickstarter should state "Beta Access to Mall Craze".

Even if this is just a small closed launch in comparison to the official Steam Launch, I'm still very excited to see you play the game for the first time!

Take care!
- Milan, developer

Hello everyone!

Grab a snack and find yourself a cosy place, because there is quite a lot to cover today!



Let's see what today's update is all about:

• Graphical Settings
  
• Shop Customization
  
• Fountains!
  

Since the day I created the Unreal Engine project file for Mall Craze, the game has been running on one graphical setting only, and that was the setting that I set in the engine itself. If I want other people to play the game, I should have a graphical settings in the game at that point. And that's exactly what I've done here. This was a fairly straightforward process, as UE offers the possibility to change the settings in the engine itself. What took the most amount of time was creating the necessary User Interface.



This also gives me the ability to increase the graphics even more for the Epic option for people with more powerful hardware.

This is where the fun part begins! Being able to change the graphical settings is a cool thing (and fairly standard these days), but you know what is even better? Making the game actually look way better! How do we do that? Well, one thing would be to actually change the color and design of our shops. Sounds good? Let's do this then!

You see, up until now, every shop that I ever build in Mall Craze looked almost the same. Sure, I could make the shop different shape, size, place the entrance and windows slightly different, and place the products differently as well. But that was basically it. There wasn't anything in the game that would really distinguish one shop from another.



From the very beginning of the development, I knew that this was not supposed to be the final look of the game. Here's the list of what I wanted to have customizable in the shops:

• Shop Entrance
  
• Cashier Table
  
• Walls & Floor
  
• Shop Windows
  
• Products
  
• Logo
  

In terms of Logo, I wanted to give players the ability to design them pretty extensively, as it is one of the main distinguishing factors of the shop.

I'm happy to tell you that I was able to achieve what I wanted, and here are the results:



User interface for Shop Customization and Logo



For the purpose of Product Customization, I've decided to create a new dedicated UI window for the Products. In this window, you'll be able to access every information and stats about a specific product. You can also change the color of the product - that was the main reason why I had to make the UI now.




After I implemented shop customization, I continued with a similar topic - one that is also closely related to the game's looks - water fountains!

In the past, when I showed you what I build in the game, there weren't that many decoration pieces to choose from. I only had a simple tree, bush, some flowers, bench, fence, and that was basically it. You can still create some interesting decoration with it, but it can't get you really that far.



As you can see, it was not that bad for a start, but I knew the game could do better! The final push to add fountains to the game came from the community, so let's see how it ended up!



As you can see, with the addition of fountains, I had an amazing opportunity to add additional decoration pieces as well - a palm tree, 2 new grass patches, a pillar, and a new bench.

The cool part of all this, is that the original fountain designs are very simple, and that gives the player the abbitily to create their own advanced design.




Are you still here? :)

Right now, it is time for me to jump back into the development, and make the game even better. I'm not sure when I will release another update, but I'm pretty sure, that it will be as soon as I have something worth a while to share.

As always, thank you for everything! And I will see you soon. Take care :)
- Milan, Developer

Hello everyone!
After a year and a half of development, I decided to show you some unedited gameplay of the game.
So far, I've been only showing short clips in my usual devlogs. I feel like now is a good time to show you exactly how the game is played at this moment. I also show some funny bugs and glitches at the end of the video - those are always fun :)

Keep in mind that everything I show is still early in development and some things might be subject to change.

[h2]Kickstarter[/h2]
Before I go to the video itself, I would like to thank everyone who supported Mall Craze on Kickstarter so far! The campaign has been going very well, and we're roughly $50 away from reaching 70% funded!
You can find the Kickstarter campaign here!

Enjoy the video!