Power to the People News

After many weeks of hard work, the first major update for Power to the People has arrived! Here is the changelog, in all of its glory:

[h2]NEW FEATURES[/h2]

• A brand new level: "Río Grande, Argentina"! Level description: "At the world's end lies one of the most unlikely factory towns. Thanks to some tax exemption shenanigans, 25% of all laptops and smartphones used in Argentina are being produced here."
  
• New "Micro Substation", which only takes 1x1 tiles. It has low power output and only moderate efficiency, though.
  
• New "Screenshot Mode", that allows players to hide the UI in order to take screenshots. By default this is bound to the F11 key.
  
• Substations can now be upgraded to increase their power output and efficiency. Some of them have 1 and some of them have 2 upgrade levels.
  
• Lots of new random world events, that will affect power generation costs for different types of power plants (e.g. "a new coal deposit has been found in the area, so your coal-fired plants will have lower operating costs for a few days")
  
• New "historic city power usage charts", that show how much power each city has tried to draw from the grid during the past 7 days. These can be found inside the company information window or by clicking the little icon next to the city name.
  
• 3 new buildings for cities in all levels: Library, Theater and Industrial Complex.
  
• Players can now see where the next city is going to be built 48 hours in advance. It's shown in-game as a big construction site.
  
• Substations now have a setting that allows players to configure for how long they have to be overloaded before the automatic shutdown takes place.
  

[h2]IMPROVEMENTS[/h2]

• Diesel generators no longer need to be placed close to water, as they are direct drive and they do not require a water source to generate steam or for cooling.
  
• High voltage power lines now cause unhappiness to city buildings if placed directly adjacent to them.
  
• Sandbox games can now be configured with any number of special modifiers, from 0 to 3. Before it was mandatory to always select 3.
  
• Leaderboards now also show "money left in the bank" category.
  
• Switching stations now have a higher capacity (300 MW) to make them more useful.
  
• Power plants and substations now remember the last time that was set in the automatic turn on/off setting if they are turned off. Before, the times would always get reset to 5:00 and 22:00 if they were disabled.
  
• Fixed bug that caused land leasing costs to be calculated incorrectly when placing high voltage power lines within city limits.
  
• Fixed bug regarding the "composite turbine blades" technology in the research tree. It was supposed to let wind turbines operate at lower wind speeds but it wasn't working. It was only providing a 10% power generation boost.
  

[h2]PERFORMANCE[/h2]

• Small changes to the shader used for rendering cables, in order to reduce draw calls and therefore GPU load.
  
• Rewrote the code for NIMBY calculations from scratch, in order to make it multithreaded for improved performance.
  
• Moved some small housekeeping functions to a separate thread for improved performance.
  

Hey everyone! We just thought we would post here and let you all know how things are going when it comes to the next update. If you have been following our Discord or our Twitter, you probably already know all of this. But for those of you who don't, here's a quick overview.

We are currently making good progress on the v1.1 update. We plan to release it in a few weeks from now, if all goes well. We don't have a specific release date just yet, but it will probably happen by the end of this month. Here's a quick overview of the new bells and whistles you can expect:

• A new level, with some pretty unique challenges.
  
• Almost 20 new random world events, that will alter the cost per MWh of different types of power plants.
  
• Upgradeable substations.
  
• Players will be able to preview where the next city is going to be built 48 hours in advance so they can plan accordingly.
  
• A new type of substation, designed specifically for those tiny spaces left in cities after you have unlocked "land leasing".
  
• Customizable timer for substations' auto shut down feature.
  
• Ability to start sandbox games with fewer than 3 level modifiers (or none at all if you wish).
  
• Lots of small usability improvements and bug fixes.
  

Please have some patience and you'll be playing this new version in no time! For now, remember to participate in the discussions in our Discord server, so you can also help shape the future of Power to the People. See you later, and stay energized!

Good news, everyone! The brand new Power to the People trading cards have arrived! There is a grand total of 8 cards you'll need to collect. Once you have them all, you can craft a cool badge for your profile and unlock profile backgrounds and emojis. Enjoy!

Remember to join our Discord server!

A new update has arrived! This is going to be the last small-ish update for now, as we want to focus on a major content update during the next few weeks. More news on that front later, but for now, here are the patch notes:

• Customizable perks and challenges in sandbox mode, allowing players to choose them from the pool of all available ones in all levels. This new mechanic should allow for some very interesting combinations!
  
  
  
  
• New scoring system including satisfaction bonus (10,000 extra points for every % point over 90% of historic average satisfaction).
  
  
  
  
• Allow players to see last end of day report in the company information window whenever they want.
  
• New setting to disable "game is paused" warning.
  
• New games in strategic mode start paused (as if it were the end of a day) to allow players more time to set up their infrastructure.
  
• Fix UI bug that caused the weather report to show up under the "game is paused" warning instead of on top.
  
• Fix a potential infinite money exploit that was reported by one of our players.
  

As you can see, we are still working on making the game better and we are listening to all of your feedback. Don't forget to join our Discord if you want to let us know your thoughts and ideas by clicking here. Enjoy!

[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

• Now every level and every power building are unlocked in the Sandbox.
  
• Add Free Play as a game mode in the Sandbox, which allows players to pause whenever they want.
  
• Players can now get 100% refund on power lines and buildings that were just built if the game is paused (either at the end of the day or in Free Play mode).
  
• Add options to see a longer period of time in power building charts (1, 2 or 7 days).
  
• Loans now show information on how much the player has to pay if they want to cancel them before they are due.
  
• Add information about power generation predictions to chart on the left (based on weather and power plants' schedules).
  
• New shortcut to automatically go to unpowered blocks.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Major overhaul for the French localisation.
  
• Small fixes for the Chinese localisation.
  
• Fix bug with bulldozer tool that caused tiles to be demolished anyway if pressing right mouse button or escape to cancel an ongoing bulldoze action.
  
• Fix bug that caused the "new city has just been built" notification to show up when it shouldn't after loading a saved game.
  
• Fix race condition that, under specific circumstances, could cause a strategic game mode to become unpaused at midnight after saving and loading again.
  
• Add tooltip to the magnifying glass button on the leaderboard.
  
• Allow enabling / disabling High-Tech substation in Sandbox Mode if it has been unlocked via the Crytivo Club.
  
• Players must now place power lines in order to power all houses in the basic tutorial.
  

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• Major performance improvements in the way that the load factor for power lines is being calculated.
  
• Performance improvement for city growth algorithm.
  
• Performance improvements in the methods that draw the charts on the company information bar.
  
• Add LOD (level of detail) meshes to power lines, so the GPU has to draw fewer triangles when zoomed out.
  

Overall, players should expect an increase in FPS between 5% and 15% depending on the number of cities, power lines and buildings. There will be very little difference on levels with very few elements in them, but it will be significant on levels that have many cities and tons of power lines.