Big Ambitions News

Alpha 7 post-release update

Hi friends,

More than two weeks after our release of the Big Ambitions alpha 7 version, it's now time for a first big update. We've fixed a lot of bugs in the meantime but also include some other changes.
All changes are entirely based on player feedback, hoping to enhance the first-time playing experience.

It's all about work 💼

You're now able to start working even before your shift starts. No more waiting for the clock because you're 5 minutes early!
Besides, the fast-forward toggle of earlier versions is back. Of course, you can still use the time machine to quickly move on to the end of your shift, but for those who like to see what's happening fast-forward will come in handy.
To make things even more convenient, you don't have to click on the small cash register anymore. Just clicking on the counter will open the work dialog already.

Bustling New York streetlife 🚕

When leaving a building, initially the roads were left empty. Vehicles and pedestrians only slowly started to spawn. Now, this is happening all the time even while you're inside a building, so the streets will always be bustling and there's no way out of traffic jams anymore.

...and even one more car on the streets! 🚘

Uncle Fred just expanded his own portfolio by buying a car dealership. Good news for you: One of the old cars wasn't good enough to be sold anymore, so you'll get it for free once you get your business running. It's old, it's in bad shape - but it's free.

Uhm... where was it once again? 🏁

We always had two types of arrows showing directions from your current position: for your objective's destination and for a self-set destination.
To navigate even easier, we've additionally introduced flags indicating the destination. Those flags show up at the buildings while walking on the street as well as in our Voogle Maps app.

Entering a building has never been so easy! 🚪

Until now, the information dialog opening when moving the mouse over a building could be a bit annoying. Depending on where you clicked you either entered the building or opened other functionality.
This has been simplified: A left-click on a building will always enter it, and a right-click on a building will always bring up a dialog containing buttons for other functionality like opening the BizMan or the Shop Sign Designer.

Objectives got simplified ✔️

The tutorial had some combined objectives like "Buy a metal shelf and stock it up with cheap gifts". Those caused some confusion and have now been split up into separate objectives, making it easier to see what's done and what's still missing.

Looking for a nice place for your next business? 📝

Commercial buildings will now indicate if they're available for rent. Stop asking the neighbors and just take a look at the large "for rent" sign!

Tell me my profits! 📈

Every new day you'll now see a little popup showing your daily profits and the number of businesses. In the end, that's what it is all about: Making money!

Pest control on duty 🪲

Besides all these changes, of course we also got rid of some bugs:

#597 - Clicking desk while holding handtruck displays 2 messages
#611 - Waiting forever in queue at El Gato after working
#624 - Green lines visible on boxes in metro wholesales
#628 - Wrong camera angle and camera rotation possible when loading a savegame while driving car
#633 - Can Run and leave building while buying car
#634 - Can't pick up king-sized bed at Ikea
#635 - Normal-sized bed missing at Ikea
#636 - Madame Ikea-Tussauds: People get stuck at Ikea when picking up any box
#637 - Time bug
#638 - Can't paint street facing corners of large business building
#639 - No customers when working myself on normal speed
#640 - Cloning myself when stopping to work before end of shift
#641 - Sudden shift from day to night lighting if saved between 20:30 and 21:00
#644 - Sign Appearance not closing when entering building
#645 - A2 building's supermarket is broken
#647 - Handtruck itemOverlay is not hiding when being "driven"
#654 - Misplaced speed toggle in working dialog
#658 - Work doesn't stop automatically in own shop after end of shift
#665 - Driving into Drive-In Wholesales breaks camera angle
#666 - Car duplicated when leaving drive-in wholesales

Coming soon to a Steam client near you!

Alpha 7 is available exclusively to our Gold supporters. You can order the Gold package of Big Ambitions at www.bigambitionsgame.com to get immediate access.

All the best,
Jonas#1 & Daniel#2

Release of Alpha 7

[h3]Big things are coming your way![/h3]

Finally, we've reached a (more or less) stable version of Alpha 7. It's the biggest update we've had in Big Ambitions yet with lots of new features but also fundamental changes to the game's code.

Let's take a look at what we got for this update:

Placement System

All items now take way less space when placing them in a shop or apartment. The interior will hence look more natural and you can make much better use of the available space.
In default mode, items are still snapping to the grid. You can however place them more precisely while holding the left ALT key.
Pizza oven and industrial fryer can now be placed in one line without a large gap to the wall. Just keep a little distance in between for fire safety...

Besides the updated grid placement, you can now buy an empty modular counter to place items like the hotdog grill on top. Those restaurant items don't have to be placed on the floor anymore. It was pretty disgusting to get your hotdogs from the floor, wasn't it?
The large serving desk is gone and instead replaced by a single cash register which has to be placed on top of a counter as well. This allows you to use available space much better and even fit all fast food restaurant items into a small-sized shop. Because space is money!
Both the new single counter element and the cash register are available at the Appliance Store across from El Gato (the supermarket where you take a job early in the game).

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Interior Designer

You now got an interior designer for your shops and apartments. Use it to change the appearance of walls and floors. They don't have any effect on actual gameplay but are just for you to give it a personal touch. Like black walls? Pretty smart idea to hide the mold inside your fast food restaurant!
The Interior Designer is available whenever you are inside one of your own buildings.

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Shop Sign Designer

The Shop Sign Designer allows you to design your shop's signboard with different styles, fonts, light colors. Currently, it's just a simple mockup, so you don't get a preview when going through all the options but only see the result after saving. Of course, later it will be updated.
The Shop Sign Designer is only available while standing in front of your business.

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Citymap Camera Controller

Voogle Maps got an update as well. It allows zooming in and out using the mouse wheel as well as rotating the map through either right mouse click or Q and E keys.
Often requested, you can now even open the map while being inside a building. Hooray!

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Draggable Windows

Some players using ultrawide screens got problems with the new map filters in Alpha 6. That's why we invented the world's first-ever draggable windows! Okay, that's not true but at least we're good at copying. The first windows allowing to be dragged all across the screen are the map filters and the new shop sign designer. More to come!

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Medium-Sized Trucks

Delivery trucks are now cruising through the city to cause traffic jams and make sure roads don't feel too empty. Isn't it fun driving through a city? Luckily you still got the subway.

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New Businesses

We know it's hard to wake up in the morning without your favorite coffee at hand. That's why you'll be able to open your own coffee shop, serving fresh hot coffee as well as crispy croissants.
While this will make getting up easier, we also take care of those looking for a comfortable way into the night. The liquor store will sell alcoholic beverages and cigars to the stressed tycoons.

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Business Dynamics

Our new Market Insider app will be preinstalled on your smartphone right after updating to Alpha 7. The Corporations tab shows all the big players in the game and you all the way to the bottom. Go and change this!
The News tab will be filled whenever some corporation opens or closes a business. Regularly have a look at this to find new chances for expansion!
At the start, shops are spread randomly making every game unique. You might not always get your favorite building right away but that's just one more reason to crush those annoying competitors.

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Employee Exhaustion

Gone are the good times when you could just make your single employee work all day! Health officials have stepped in telling you that people might get exhausted when working for too long. Seems you got to give them at least some rest in between their shifts...

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Scene Merging

Just a tiny change it seems but this might be the most important change of Alpha 7: We've merged indoor and outdoor scenes. No more waiting times when leaving a building, you can walk on right away! This feels soo smooth...
Initial loading time for starting a game was massively reduced as well although you might still have to wait for a short moment before being able to make your way into the big business.

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Mac Support

Many of you asked for Mac support - here we are! With Alpha 7 we'll ship a build for your favorite Apple device. Let your ambitions grow!

Coming soon to a Steam client near you!

Alpha 7 is available exclusively to our Gold supporters. You can order the Gold package of Big Ambitions at www.bigambitionsgame.com to get immediate access.

All the best,
Jonas#1 & Daniel#2

Devlog #27

Hi friends,

We're just in the final stages of finishing Alpha 7 after massive changes have been carried out during the last two weeks. Before we get into details, let's take a look at the updated Steam wishlist: 22,710!

Performance boost 🚀

The last updates have seen many complaints about multi-second delays when entering or leaving buildings. This happened due to the next scene being loaded.

Jonas#2 has taken care of this and just finished a massive code refactoring. The benefit is enormous, minimizing the loading time for the game and leaving no noticeable delay anymore when changing between outdoor and indoor scenes.

We're now in the final stages and hopefully can release Alpha 7 early next week.

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Did anybody say Mac? 🖥️

Great news for some of our gold supporters using a Mac: You can finally start playing Big Ambitions without the need for Windows emulation! Alpha 7 will be shipped for Mac as well.

For now, it will be only this single build and further minor updates will be Windows-only again but Jonas#1 is already working on full Mac support throughout all future versions.

Optimize your shop fittings 📐

Item placement has been another issue we got lots of feedback about. The placement rectangles often didn't match the actual item dimensions. For example, fridges could only be placed with some gap to the walls and didn't look very nice this way.

Jonas#2 fixed this by reducing the placement rectangles to fit the dimensions of all items. Additionally, he also added the alternative option of gridless placement. Pressing left ALT allows placing items pixel-perfect wherever you like them to be.

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Compete with big players 📊

With Alpha 7, corporations are introduced to Big Ambitions. Every generated shop is now owned by one of the corporations. The new market insider app will show a list of all existing corporations and give you an insight into your company value compared to the other big players.

Additionally, generated businesses will regularly open or close and bring some dynamics into the game. The news section of the market insider app will inform you about updates. Don't forget to check it out from time to time and grab lucrative buildings once they become available.

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Second appliance store for double the shopping fun 🏬

We just realized we never told you about the addition of a second appliance store with the release of Alpha 6. Sorry for that!

It was added with the need for more appliances when adding expensive gifts and the fast-food restaurant with all its modular items. Players thus need to check out both shops when equipping their business.

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Sky's the limit at Hell's Kitchen! 🏗️

Our 3D geniuses Daniel#1 and Paul#1 have finished more of the impressive iconic buildings compiling Hell's Kitchen, the upcoming new neighborhood. We all love them!

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That's all for today. We'll be back in 2 weeks with further updates.

All the best,
Jonas#1 & Daniel#2

Devlog #26

Hi friends,

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. We had a lot on our hands, but also made some decisions about rewriting and improving parts of the game, which ultimately pushes the release date of Alpha 7. We expect about 1 week of delay. We'll keep you updated on Discord and the community platform.

Also, as always, let's look at the Steam wishlist: 22,116!

Modular buildings and the Interior Designer 🖌️

Previously, the indoor buildings were one big 3D model, allowing very little customization. As we wanted to give you guys the option to paint and modify the walls and floors of your businesses and apartments, we decided to completely redo the scene, and instead create the buildings out of modular pieces. This has the advantage of walls and floors being split into smaller 1 meter wide pieces each having its own color and material.

In a team effort, Victor and Paul #1 quickly created a pack of building pieces. Afterward both of the Jonases put together a brand new UI and new game mechanics, allowing you to freely change the look of every building you rent or own.

We still need to add a lot of materials and color options, but now we got the skeleton done. The rest is easy peasy!

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A new placement tool and stackable items (!) 🎯

"The placement tool" describes the tool you use for placing furniture and items in your business or apartment. The current version was done by Jonas #1. It worked, but wasn't very flexible and also written
at a time where our demands for the tool were a lot smaller.

We wanted to give you the option to stack items. For example, put a cash register on top of a table and so on. For the last week, Jonas #2 has been super busy putting together an incredible system that gives us all the flexibility we need, both now, but also for the future.

Over are the days of having the hotdog grill directly on the floor 🥳

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Building Sign Customization 🚧

For a long time, all the exterior signs on your businesses were controlled entirely by randomization. This changes in alpha 7, as you'll now have access to the "Sign Appearance Settings". You can change the font, color, sign type, and lighting colors.

Your competitor businesses will also start to have different-looking signs making the city, once again, feel more alive.

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Draggable Windows 🖱️

After releasing our first game "Startup Company", one of the most requested features was "Draggable Windows". Basically, players wanted to be able to move windows around freely and only see the data they needed.

I'm happy to say that this will be added to Big Ambitions. Right now it works for the map filters and the sign appearance settings, but we plan to add support to every window in the game.

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The classic sports car 🏎️

While Big Ambitions is mainly about entrepreneurship, we also want to give you the option to reach for goals, achievements, and flat-out showing off.

Daniel #1 has been making a huge effort creating this Porsche 911-inspired car from the 70s. It's a rare masterpiece that comes with a very large price tag. Buying the vehicle will instantly unlock one of the many Steam achievements and your character's own personal goals (more on than in a later devlog).

The vehicle will be sold from a new exclusive car dealer in Hell's Kitchen, only welcoming customers with a certain net worth.

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New business types: Coffee Shop & Liquor Store ☕

We're continuing to add new business types to the city and for you to open. Recently Paul #1 has been adding the furniture needed to open a Coffee Shop and a Liquor Store.

In alpha 7 you'll start seeing your competitors running these businesses around the city (yes, Central Perk will be there 😂).

With these two added, we're now moving away from the regular retail stores and into office-based businesses. More about that in a later devlog.

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That's all for today. We'll be back in 2 weeks with further updates.

All the best,
Jonas#1 & Daniel#2

Devlog #25

Hi friends,

today we'll talk about the first feedback for Alpha 6 and the already started development of Alpha 7. But at first, let's start with the Steam wishlist: 21,131!

This number just brought us to rank #493 on the Steam Wishlist charts, finally making it into the top 500! 🎉

One Jonas isn't enough for this world 👋

While Jonas went on a short vacation trip right after releasing Alpha 6 for our gold supporters, development luckily didn't come to a halt. This was due to our newest team member Jonas#2, also known as jokoho482 who's an absolute Unity expert. With his expertise, he is a great help for the development of Big Ambitions! Besides, he keeps fixing bugs faster than they get reported. Please give him a warm welcome! 🙋‍♂️

The addition to the team also means the guy formerly known as Jonas will from now on be called Jonas#1 and reduced to just another number in the system.

Alpha 6 update 📨

Alpha 6 was released last minute just before the start of Jonas#1's vacation trip, with lots of last-minute issues still being fixed.

Luckily, the version has proved to be very stable. We had quite some minor issues coming up but no game-breaking bugs. Most feedback we got about added functionality, especially questions about the new fast food restaurant items and the furniture store were pretty common.

Talking about the furniture store, the next update will bring potted plants and finally the king-sized bed will also get fixed to allow placing it in the apartment.

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You borrow it, you have to pay it back

Gone are the times of free loans: The bank got a new computer system and discovered all the money they lent you without requiring any payback. They'll now expect daily payments and even charge interest. Those greedy bankers!

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Rotate in Voogle Maps 🗺️

Jonas#2 got his hands on Voogle Maps and added the possibility to rotate it - now you can turn the map in any direction you want while navigating your way through New York!

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Keep your things close

A well-known issue finally gets worked on: Carrying items like boxes, paper bags or a mop didn't look very nice because the player animation was pretty limited and the items even showed a gap to the player's hands.

We're happy to see Jonas#2 taking care of this problem, already showing great results.

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Treat your employees well, or else... 🙋

Jonas#1 is currently busy implementing the employee satisfaction functionality planned for Alpha 7.

Instead of "Satisfaction", the employee details will show "Exhaustion". This comes with a new "Wants & Demands" section in the employee info where your cost factors valued staff might ask for free weekends, a coffee machine at work, retirement funds and more.

All these will slow down exhaustion while working, positively affect employee skills and ultimately raise customer satisfaction.

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Let the fuel flow ⛽

In the future, your vehicles will consume gas and need to be refilled at a gas station. Don't let your car run out of gas or else you might have to endure the shame of being towed to the nearest gas station and even pay for it!

The first gas station will be located in the upcoming new neighborhood "Hell's Kitchen".

Take a look at the 3D model Paul#1 just finished:

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Ship it big time 🚚

The medium-sized truck will become a very important vehicle for your business logistics. Once it's finished, you will be able to buy items in bulk from wholesale stores and store them in your own warehouses for distribution. Let's thank Daniel#1 for this beautiful truck!

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3D guys doing 3D stuff 🎨

Our 3D artists are already working on some coffee shop appliances as well as pastries - and this does not refer to their morning break. Stay tuned for more updates in the next devlog!

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Development is continuing full speed now and we'll be back in 2 weeks with further updates.

All the best,
Jonas#1 & Daniel#2