Go-Go Town! News

Hello Mayors!

We are officially opening up our Preview Branch for testing, and wanted to let you all know in case you wanted to join in. Here's some FAQs for you, as well as instructions on how to get in:

[h2]What is the Preview Branch?[/h2]
The Preview Branch is a place for us to test out larger or more complicated changes early in order to get feedback before we push it live to the rest of the players.

Using the Preview Branch does get you access to the latest and greatest patches, however it does come with an increased risk of game breaking bugs or instability.

Rest assured we automatically back up your saves, so should you wish to return to the Main branch you are able to do so!

Once we are happy with the changes in the Preview Branch, we will bring them back to Main for all our players to enjoy.

[h2]How to switch to the Preview Branch?[/h2]

• Right click on the game in your steam library and select Properties, then
  
• Select ‘Betas’ from the menu
  
• Under ‘Beta Participation’ select ‘preview’.
  

[h2]What happens to my saved games?[/h2]
You can load your saves as normal in the preview branch. However, whenever you save over an old save that was created from the main/default branch the game will archive this file so you can recover it later if there was an issue on preview.

These archives of main branch saves are stored in

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Prideful Sloth\Go-Go Town!\SaveArchive

Each save will be in its own sub directory so you can open this folder and copy saves back to the main save directory if you would like to load them in the main branch.

[h2]How do I submit feedback or bug reports?[/h2]
To submit feedback or bug reports while in the preview branch, please use the F8 Feedback form as normal. Feel free to add your Steam username or Discord (if you're in the Prideful Sloth Discord) handle to the description on the report so we can contact you if we need extra information. We also have a dedicated set of channels on our Discord server specifically reserved for Preview Branch conversation that you're welcome to join.

[h2]Can I switch back?[/h2]
Of course! Keep in mind, that any saves that were made while in the Beta Branch will likely not work when returning to the main branch. So you may need to transfer previous saves back out of your Save Archive to continue from where you left off.

[h2]How do I know which Branch I am in ?[/h2]
If you have the game running, you can look to the version number watermark:

If you are in the Preview Branch, the version number will be red, and have a ‘PREVIEW’ suffix. Main will be white, with an ‘EA’ suffix.

From the Steam Library, the game name will be displayed as if you are in the preview branch :


Happy experimenting and bug squashing - it really is invaluable to us!

Cheers,
the Go-Go Town team

The visitors to my town in Go-Go Town have a lot of suggestions. One wants water, so I build a water fountain on the street. One thinks I should sell 20 pet rocks. Oddly specific, but I can do that—once I build a craft shop, hit the mine, and gather more stone. In between satisfying the demands of tourists, who then move in as I build houses for them, I explore the limits of my little town. On the northern fringe, on the far side of a lake, there's a crashed drone that keeps beeping. It seems messy. I ride around on my bike and clear it up, at which point I'm surprised to find a text log...
Read more.

Hi all!

OMG! How is it Friday already?! This week has flow by, and there was a moment where I almost forgot to do this weeks update. Forgive me, please?!

This week will be a shorter update, as most of the magic is happening behind the scenes this week. So lets dive right in.

[h3]Progress Update - Major Update 1 – Player Feedback Pack:[/h3]
The teams focus this week has been on:

• subways, and getting tourists to move around town
  
• dynamic spawning of resources, which is part of the zone customisation
  
• design work around how you'll unlock the new buildable areas

[h3]Minor Update 4:[/h3]
This was released this week and you can see the notes here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2195120/view/4355628027403553579?l=english

[h3]Minor Update 5:[/h3] ETA: 12th August
As well as working on the Player Feedback Pack, the team has been working through bug fixes and another minor content drop.

Here's a sneak peak at some new terraforming tiles that will be released in the update.


[h3]Outstanding Bugs[/h3]
We are still working to squash the bugs that you have reported. However, we know there are some issues that have been outstanding.

Do please let us know below, in the Discussion forum, in our Discord, or via the Feedback form if there's some issues you have hit that are still waiting for fixes! We do our best to prioritise issues based off the notes provided, but we might also miss out on important info sometimes. So keep poking us!

[h3]Preview Branch Update[/h3]

Our preview branch had a nice update that focused on Steam Deck:

• Fixed issues where on-screen keyboard was not able to be used in certain situations.
  
• Fixed various font size issues, including:
  
• Removed instances of small text in speech bubbles.
  
• Increased font size of Challenge Text in Calendar App.
  
• Increased font size of Map Filters in Map App.
  
• And more!

On my personal backlog (yes, as sad as it is, I have my own backlog), I have a note about making sure I get a post up on the Discussion page about how to access the Preview Branch. This will be up for you next week!

Depending on how the team is getting on with things, I might not have an update for you next week. We are working on a lot of core systems for the Player Feedback Pack, and I'm not sure if they'll be 'work in progress' show-able.

If I don't do an update next week for y'all, I'll make it up to you on the 16th August update! Pinky promise and everything.

-Cheryl

A New build is up (0.4.52.16081EA)

3x new vehicles!

• Penn-E-Farthing and Gyroscooter are hidden discoverables.
  
• Swift-Rolla (Manual) can be acquired through the Import app.
  

Optimisation

• Increased performance when lots of items are visible on the screen
  
• Increased performance in courier idle calculations
  
• Improved performance of actor visibility calculations
  
• Improved memory management
  

Fish Zone Improvements

• There are now specific fishing spots for Fish, Ribeye, and Cutlets. No more floors littered with unwanted Fish! (Currently all three spots are still called 'Fishing Spot', and you will need to wait until the new ones have spawned in).
  
• Added an extra worker slot for Fishing Zone
  

AI Improvements

• Updates to AI Pathing to resolve issues where workers could not reach their intended destinations.
  
• Workers should now be less inclined to dump backpack contents onto the ground
  
• Workers will now work harder to check if the item they want to pick up can be stored in the current zone.
  
• Workers now have a special 'Clean floor' action which they will run if they have no high priority tasks remaining. In this mode, they will pick up anything on the floor that can be stored in the zone.
  
• Workers will no longer collect items from Auto Harvesters (ie, the Mana Extractor) if they can't store, or use the item itself
  
• Fixed bug where workers would produce extra items from makers.
  
• Fixed bug where if a player or NPC interacted with a maker as a worker was moving to interact with it, the worker would drop all the items in their backpack.
  
• Fixed issue where makers would overproduce items and them drop them on the floor next to the storage bin.
  
• When collecting new items, AI Workers will now consider items on the floor first, because considering collecting new items from harvesting.
  

Bugfixes

• Updated various localized strings
  
• Fixed issue where removing couriers from homes would act as if you removed them from their job
  
• Fixed issue where users can assign an npc to multiple jobs in co-op
  
• Fixes for character getting stuck on load
  

Known Issues

• New fishing spots are all be called 'Fishing Spot'.
  
• When loading a save from, all current fishing spots will only produce Fish. You will need to wait a full spawn cycle before the Cutlets/Ribeye will spawn.
  

Hi all!

I’m back from holidays and ready to dive into another weekly update with you!

[h3] Preview Branch: [/h3]This has been out for just over a week now, and we’ve received a lot of feedback from our Discord community.

We are happy with the progress we have made with AI and with the preview system as a whole, including backing up of saves.

There’s more work we want to do around data backups – mainly around making it more automated as it’s not as simple to revert on Steam Deck.

However! As the feedback on AI and the overall flow is working, we’re ready to ‘open’ up the Preview Branch to more users. Keep an eye out in the Steam Discussion forums next week for details how to access the Preview Branch.

I would also like to note, moving forward we are expecting that updates will get released to Preview Branch first, and then moved into the ‘game’ branch after we’ve had a bit of time for the community to feedback on these.

[h3] Minor Update Release: [/h3]As some of you might have noticed, we didn’t put out an update this week. There are a few reasons for this.

One being the team did two pieces of work last week; Minor Update 3, and Preview Branch. We needed to give the team a break from doing updates so quickly.

Secondly, we have been focusing on the AI updates in the Preview Branch. We did get an update out in this branch - you just won’t see it in the ‘main game’ branch!

Lastly, we want to start moving to Minor Updates every two weeks. Moving minor updates to every two weeks will allow us more development time to get not just minor code updates out, but minor content drops as well! Currently, weekly updates mean the team only gets 3 days of work time before we need to stop work and start testing.

[h3]Minor Update 4:[/h3]ETA: 29th July

• Additional Modes of Transportation (these were originally part of the Wheels in Motion pack)
  
• Worker AI Updates (this will be the updates we tested in the Preview Branch)
  
• General Bug Fixes & Performance Improvements

[h3]Major Update 1 – Player Feedback Pack:[/h3] ETA: Late August

Work has started on this update, and I’ll get you solid delivery dates in the next week or two.🥳

We’ve had some healthy discussions about how we’ll be moving tourists around the town. Subway/Metro stations are the winner here. In time we’ll add more ways for tourists to move around with vehicles, promise.

We also have a prototype of zone customisation working. It was listed as a stretch goal, I know, but we know a lot of you were asking for this (I’m looking at you Fishing zone) so we’ve decided to make it an ‘official’ feature. The prototype for this has already raised some really good discussions internally, and we’ll be looking forward to getting this into players hands next month for more feedback!

Now I know I can write a lot, and props to all of you who read what I write, however I want to make sure we start showing you THINGS and STUFF.

So, this week is a bit of a teaser for the 'Plants and Parks' and 'Freeway' sets



[h3] Gamescom [/h3]We (well, me!) will be attending Gamescom this year. Go-Go Town! is being showcased as part of Indie Arena Booth Hall 10.2, Booth F010g - E019 and it would be amazing to say hello if you are attending!

And who knows… we might have some cool stuff to show off (and giveaway) while we are there :eyes:

[h3] Roadmap [/h3]It’s updated! Sorry this took a bit of time but here’s the latest and greatest (we are getting this localised, but for now it’s English only, I’m sorry!) Props to Joel for spending today helping me get this updated!


It amazes me to consider where we are at, given Go-Go Town! is ‘only’ 5 weeks old.

We’ve been squashing bugs, have done 3 minor updates, have completed a big rework of the AI systems, and we have the Preview Branch running.

The team has been working hard, and after Major Update 1 the team will also be getting a bit of a rest. We’ll be making sure everyone gets some time off and gets batteries recharged. These holidays are included in the revised Roadmap, so don’t worry too much there :blush:

We cannot begin to say how much we appreciate everyone’s faith and trust in us, as well as in Go-Go Town! itself. While our Playtests helped set us up with the mindset of Early Access, we are still amazed at how much support we have received!

We are looking forward to sharing more about the Player Feedback Pack (and beyond) in the coming weeks!

-Cheryl