GearCity News

Hello everyone,

A small bug-fix patch this week. I wanted to get it to you all yesterday, but my week was very heavy with greater than expected release traffic and some offline headaches. Then I was going to release the update Saturday morning, but at the last minute caught some vandalism in our translation system. So an evening update, which I hate doing.

With that said, the translation system is locked down. You need to email me to register an account and tell me what language you want to work on. I will also be locking translators to a single language. This is for damage limitation in case anyone goes rouge again. In advance, I'd like to apologize for the inconvenience. I think it's better to inconvenience a handful of people than to break the game for a few hundred to a couple of thousand people.

I will be working on another bug-fix patch. I'm aiming for next weekend, but it might be a little longer if I deem nothing large enough to build a patch. I'll also start work on the manual again starting tomorrow.


-Bugfix: Fixed issue causing orphaned save games from not being deleted when exiting the game on the Select HQ Location screen.
-Bugfix: Fixed Research Teams RnD window not showing gain amount when skills are over 99.
-Engine: Initial support for the Korean language. If you're interested in translating to Korean, please let us know.
-Bugfix: Fixed several off screening and off window issues when users are running low resolutions (1080p and less) with high GUI scaling.
-Engine: Updated software OpenAL implementation for improved support of newer sound cards. Knock on wood, it doesn't cause issues for anyone running the game fine before.
-Bugfix: Fixed side panel disappearing when another window overlaps the panel and the player hits escape.
-Engine: Reports should work when characters that require URI encoding are in the file path.
-Bugfix: Fixed chassis size requirements for contracts having badly rounded data with SAE when referring to minimum requirements.
-Media: Added some Italian tutorial audio, added all missing Portuguese tutorial audio, and added all German and Japanese tutorial audio.
-Bugfix: Fixed issue causing memos not to pop up when priorities are hit.
-Gameplay: Reduced negotiation times for critical strike events from 3-6 months to 1-2 months.
-Bugfix: Possible fix to a crash issue on Linux that involved decal placement, body resize, decal placement again, and a dangling pointer.

[h2]It is my pleasure to announce the completion of GearCity.[/h2]

I welcome everyone stepping into the game for the first time. I hope you have an enjoyable and profitable experience. Be sure to do the tutorials, and feel free to ask if you have any questions.

For everyone that has been with me for some time, I would like to say thank you.

When I started making this game twelve years ago, I had limited expectations that anyone would play it. I thought it was bound to be an unfinished open source game rotting in a repo somewhere, but the game did find a small but dedicated audience. Through your feedback and suggestions, GearCity's development continued well past its anticipated expiration date.

During 12 years of evolution together, we handwrote 431,941 lines of code, 416,733 lines of GUI script, and 225,771 words of content (a 650-page paperback book). Many of you helped translate that into several languages. We also recorded 2.5 hours of interactive audio tutorials and 4.5 hours of video tutorials that have been watched and listened to by countless people over the years. The user manual is about 100,000 words and still growing.

The community has posted 1,689 threads and made 7,193 posts on the official forums. On Steam, you all made 3680 threads. Sadly, Steam's forum system is very limited, so I can't pull up the post numbers. However, I can say that I have replied to you all 13,587 times via both forums. You all sent me 13,874 emails, but by keeping my email account public and clickable, I got 57,533 spam emails. Even with all that typing, I continue to look forward to communications with you all.

The game has seen 186 updates: 6 in Alpha, 15 in Open Beta, and 165 in Early Access. While I can't guarantee future updates, I imagine that number will grow, although more slowly, post-release.

[h2]That brings me to our future plans.[/h2] While GearCity has reached an important milestone that markets the end of continuous development, computer software is rarely ever truly completed. I will continue to provide customer support and bug fixes for as long as I am humanly (or contractually) able. I also plan on launching a Development as a Service system to raise funds for additional features in the game. It is called the "Feature Bounty" program. There will be no Steam Announcement when I launch this system, so please follow us on other platforms.

I will reopen the official forums with the launch of the Feature Bounty system. I hope that many of you will join us there.

[h2]So, what am I doing next? [/h2]After I get the user manual completed, I'm taking a few days off. I haven't had a good vacation in a few decades. After that, as you may have seen in GearCity's magazine, the next game is called AeroMogul. It is an airline business simulator, that should have as much depth, if not more, than GearCity. If everything works out as planned, it could revolutionize the spreadsheet tycoon genre.

I anticipate development to speed up substantially by retiring Beardgine (our engine) as a front-end engine. However, it will still power the backend of the new game.

Please join the community for this game on our official forums when it reopens in the coming months. I'll be sure to make an announcement here when the Steam store page is ready in a few years.

[h2]Finally[/h2] There are so many people I want to thank for helping me make this game. The list is way too numerous to publish. Thank you to the people who worked on the game, whose names are in the About window. Thank you to the folks who worked endlessly to translate the game. I did not give you as much love and appreciation as you deserve for your hard work. (If I didn't have to change the translation system so many times, I would enter your names into the game.) Thank you to everyone who showed friends and peers the game. And thank you to those who bought the game as gifts for other people. Thank you to those that posted the game in various forums and communities for discussion. And thank you to everyone who chatted about our game on our forums. My heart-filled thanks to everyone who offered suggestions and gave bug reports. Without you, the game wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it is today. A tiny thanks to everyone who has pirated the game. And a pat on the back to those that bought it after pirating it. I thank everyone who has bought the game and enjoyed it. And my apologies to those who hated the game after they purchased it.

And last but not least, thank you to everyone that has had to put up with me non-professionally in the real world and the virtual one.

In short, thank you.
Good luck and enjoy the game!
ːEricBː

Hello Everyone,

The full release of the game is about one week away. I've spent quite a bit of time playtesting the game and knocking out issues that you all have reported over the last few weeks. I also did some static and dynamic code analysis and made changes based on those results.

In short, I'm running out of obvious things to fix. So I thought it would be a good time to release version 2.0.0.0, the full release build, to Early Access.

Unless a major issue pops up in the next few days, this will be the build the "Full Release" goes live with on the 14th. (I will probably update translation files and other text files at that time as well.) Any minor issues I'll work into the next minor update or hotfix. In the meantime, I've got a few more loose odds and ends to clean up, particularly with the manual. So that's what I will be doing this week.

I'd like to thank everyone who has played the game, reported issues, debugged the game, offered suggestions, and created content over these last 12 years. I'll have a more fitting thank you with the full release announcement. But I can never say thank you enough. So thanks.


Change log:

-Bugfix: District Factory production panel blank during wars in mega menu.
-GUI: Fixed English font sizing in several locations. (Purple text.)
-Bugfix: Fixed Nations trying to buy factories while they're under construction.
-Bugfix: Fixed 'All Companies' selection not working in Platform Sharing window.

Upon looking into some user-reported bugs, I noticed that I left some map testing debug code in the game. This error resulted in the Autosave function not working properly. Since this is a big enough issue, I decided to release this RC5 update. This update fixes that issue and a couple of other bugs.

Work on the manual continues, and I hope to reach the formula/mechanics sections by the end of the month.

-Bugfix Fixed company acquisition cooldown times not being saved to the save game file in certain situtations.
-Bugfix AutoSave saving every decade to a new file instead of indicated time.
-Bugfix Fixed Autosell not selling licensed or outsourced designs automatically.
-Gameplay Tweaked AI and Autosell initial pricing system.
-Media Increase max values for top reviews clips because of chance of falling outside that range.
-Media Added additional predesigned cars submissions.
-Bugfix Fixed Gearbox weight in contracts window displaying incorrect values.
-Media Increased racing series end dates for any series that reached end game for current maps.