Software Inc. News

Software Inc. is now available to translate on Localizor.com. So if you want to help me localize the game, join up over there and start earning points.


This update adds a task system, that rewards you with new furniture, when you complete certain tasks. The reward system is meant to guide you through the game's features, so they are not hard to get and the new furniture isn't gating any important mechanics.

I've also fixed the incessant complaint spam that would happen when your employees were being annoying and demanding the most basic of office facilities.


[h2]Alpha 11.6.11 (2020-07-29)[/h2]
Changes

• Adjusted lower payout from work deals a tiny bit
  
• Added specialization requirements to design and development deal detail panel
  
• Added tooltip hints for complaints where solution isn't obvious
  
• AC Unit can now be built towards outdoor areas
  
• You can now input salary directly for a single employee in wage negotiation window
  

Fixes

• Severance pay and team debuff is no longer applied if employee quit by themselves
  
• Failing a hosting deal no longer affects market recognition for player in product category
  
• Fixed longstanding bug causing extreme fan loss when server fails to handle load
  
• Fixed employees creating paths in grass and snow when walking on elevated roads
  

Alpha 11.6.10 fixes a small bug in the specialization system (2020-07-17)

[h2]Alpha 11.6.9 (2020-07-17)[/h2]
Changes

• 2m and 3m round tables have been deprecated in favor of corner tables, they will still load but can't be placed
  
• Computers now auto snap towards chairs when placing them and will allow non angle aligned rotation if it aligns with a chair
  
• Improved colorblindness support for toggles, task system, button counters and education dots
  

Fixes

• Fixed cleaners sometimes staying past their shift
  
• Fixed camera dragging sometimes sticking
  
• Fixed tasks with monetary goals not having correct currency
  
• Fixed not getting error message when trying to place roof objects in rooms with slanted roofs
  
• Fixed not being able to add new specializations in mods if they weren't supported by an OS
  
• Fixed INSTA_DEVELOP_DESIGN command not working for modded software
  

Graphics

• Table
  
• Corner Table
  
• Glass Table
  

Alpha 11.6.8 Fixes product printers not working after loading game (2020-07-09)

[h2]Alpha 11.6.7 (2020-07-09)[/h2]
Changes

• Made medium difficulty easier, renamed old Medium to Hard and Hard to Realistic
  

Fixes

• Fixed server and distribution tutorials being active while game is loading
  
• Fixed being able to place solar panels on roads
  
• Fixed not being able to start marketing product after publisher goes bankrupt
  

Graphics

• Fire alarm
  
• Sprinkler
  
• Inbox
  
• Tower Server
  
• Server Rack
  
• Big Server Rack
  
• Bench
  
• Reception Desk
  
• Bookshelf
  
• Cheap Chair
  
• Executive Chair
  
• Office Chair
  
• Waiting Chairs
  
• Couch
  
• Industrial Ventilation
  
• Vending machine
  
• Pallet
  

[h2]Alpha 11.6.6 (2020-06-24)[/h2]
Changes

• The education button counter will no longer count education in roles employees aren't assigned to
  
• Button counters now go to 99 and made complaint button flash
  

Fixes

• Fixed employee salaries not being scaled by days per month when calculating development costs
  
• Fixed button counters not being hidden in build mode
  
• Fixed headphones being too small to fit heads
  

[h2]Alpha 11.6.5 (2020-06-20)[/h2]
Changes

• Improved education dot position
  
• Added actual shipping capacity in distribution window as it is now affected by warehouse logistics
  
• Added a bunch of new EventHandlers for code modding, check the modding wiki for more information
  

Fixes

• Made it so bugs in data mod scripts don't break the game completely
  
• Various other fixes
  

[h2]Alpha 11.6.4 Fixes (2020-06-16)[/h2]

• Fixed various issues with new furniture
  
• Various other fixes
  

[h2]Alpha 11.6.3 Fixes (2020-06-15)[/h2]

• Fixed out of order programmer and design education dots in employee window
  
• Various other fixes
  

[h2]Alpha 11.6.2 Fixes (2020-06-14)[/h2]

• Fixed couriers getting stuck with more days per month than 1
  
• Various other fixes
  

[h2]Alpha 11.6.1 (2020-06-14)[/h2]
Changes

• Added new task system with furniture rewards
  
• Added a bunch of new furniture and new minor mechanics to go along with them
  
• Couriers now carry actual rendered boxes to the van, 9 boxes at a time (represented as 3), instead of all at once
  
• All complaints are now listed in a single window, no longer requiring immediate action and the mechanic has been rebalanced
  
• Room boost calculation have been overhauled and added to room info panel
  
• RoleBuffs have been renamed to UseEffects for furniture modding, however it is automatically converted for existing mods
  
• Chairs now have an ergonomic score (Chair.MiscPotential) that affects sick leave, effectiveness and mood
  
• DLL mods now have to be placed in their own folder, rather than straight in the DLLMods folder
  
• Employees ready for education now have a green dot in the employee overview
  
• Company financial overview no longer counts hidden transactions in the final sum, e.g. intercompany transactions
  
• Updated UI for transferring IP, to allow for transferring multiple IPs to a subsidiary at once
  

Fixes

• Fixed cases of HR not picking specializations correctly when educating and hiring
  
• Fixed bug causing modded furniture not loading in normal and extra maps correctly
  
• Moving into buildings created after Alpha 11.6 that are from an earlier year than the current game, will no longer break furniture as if they've been sitting around for all those years
  
• Fixed all employee complaints being counted towards chance of lawsuit, despite not being listed in the final reasons
  
• Burglars now instantly despawn if they get stuck somehow, to avoid locking the player out
  
• Added safeguard if AI gets stuck in a "Dummy" node loop
  
• Employees will no longer go for empty vending machines
  
• Courier van color was never initialized
  

Graphics

• Phone
  
• Drawing Tablet
  
• Calculator
  
• CCTV
  

Click here to see how to join the testing branch
I actually sat down and read about how the stock market works and overhauled the stock system, based on what I learned. In hindsight, just making stuff up and patching exploits with weird hacks probably wasn't the best approach.

You now trade in actual shares instead of having 5 "stock slots". Furthermore, other companies can now start a hostile takeover of your company, if they own more than 50% of your shares.

Don't be afraid to report the numerous exploits this new system probably adds to the game.


The "savings account" mechanic has been split into stocks and bonds, where the previous system has been aptly named "bonds investments", as that was what I had inadvertently made, apparently. Stocks allow you to be more risky with your money, hopefully earning a couple extra percent off your savings every year.

This update has been rushed out to fix the fire on load bug, so it does not include all changes made since the last update.

Changes

• Added dynamic path generation on grass
  
• Added ability to disable clouds
  
• Overhauled snow aggregation on grass and roofs and added optional snow toggle for furniture shader
  

Fixes

• Fixed furniture breaking on load potentially causing fires
  
• Fixed game breaking after saving new workshop content after having had Mod window open
  
• Fixed bug where HR wouldn't educate employees in roles they had no previous education for
  

[h2]Alpha 11.5.9 (2020-04-08)[/h2]
Changes

• Added mod window to main menu
  
• Made fire starting predictable, to avoid different outcomes when saving and loading
  
• Added extra fire warning message to tell player which furniture started it
  
• Added support for horizontal scroll wheel in lists
  
• Localizations can now add custom employee names
  

Fixes

• Fixed not being able to translate points left and hire window
  
• Fixed infinite loop crash when all servers in an internal server fallback loop are broken
  

[h2]Alpha 11.5.8 (2020-03-24)[/h2]
Changes

• Added "Glitchy" to contract quality assesment, to clarify when reputation goes down for seemingly no reason
  

Fixes

• Fixed grass not refreshing properly after moving company to an empty plot
  
• Fixed being able to keep shares in subsidiary company
  
• Fixed bug in SIPL causing it to fail when calling two overloaded versions of the same method
  

Alpha 11.5.7: Fixed bug corrupting saves and added code to fix saves corrupted by this issue (2020-03-22)

Alpha 11.5.6: Migrated to .Net 4.6 (2020-03-22)

[h2]Alpha 11.5.5 (2020-03-21)[/h2]
Changes

• Cross holding has been disallowed to avoid stock trading exploit
  
• Grass system will now prioritize refreshing grass where the player is looking
  
• Added more detail to save game loading screen
  
• Put Interest in finance window in paranthesis to emphasise that interest is not deposited in bank account
  

[h2]Alpha 11.5.4 (2020-03-17)[/h2]
Fixes

• Attempt at fixing cases of UI jittering. If it is happening to you, please report screen resolution, UI scale and which UI element is jittering
  
• Fixed position of some UI elements when UI scale is above 100%
  
• Fixed some save game load bugs
  

Alpha 11.5.3 (2020-03-15) Salvages saves that were corrupted from investments, but investments will be set to wrong stock.

Alpha 11.5.2 (2020-03-15) fixes saves being corrupted if any savings were invested in stocks (This is why we use the testing branch)

[h2]Alpha 11.5.1 (2020-03-15)[/h2]
Changes

• Overhauled software company stock system
  
• Split savings account into stocks and bonds investments
  
• Added range slider to chart window to improve timeline scrubbing when viewing company balance
  
• Added ability to make popups from feature scripts and added popup when sued for spying
  

Fixes

• Fixed hired stat counting potential hires in the hire window instead of actual hires
  
• Fixed employee animation not being applied on load
  
• Fixed bug in SIPL causing it to fail finding methods when calling a function in a function parameter
  
• Fixed bug in SIPL making it unable to parse variable names that begin with a keyword
  
• Corrupted saves failing on team deserialization will now be able to load again
  

Click here to see how to join the testing branch
I finally updated the documentation needed to make mods for alpha 11. The wiki has been rewritten, meaning you can no longer find modding info on it for Alpha 10 and earlier versions of the game. You can find the wiki here.


[h2]Reward system[/h2]
I'm adding a task/reward system for the next update. It's no secret that Software Inc. does not hold your hand at any point. You are expected to figure out what you want to do yourself, using the various systems the game has to offer. A lot of players, myself included, need some guidance, to help figure out what is possible. I hope to address this with a task system, that rewards you with furniture unlocks. I will not be gating any of the current furniture behind this feature, and most of the unlocks will be cosmetic or gimmicky, without throwing the game's balancing off, of course.

[h2]Official release[/h2]
When the reward system is done, I will focus on polishing Alpha 11, so I can release it officially.

[h2]Conventions and updates[/h2]
I will then start working on convention and update mechanics, which will probably go in separate releases. However, I expect to avoid breaking save compatibility, so these features will still be part of Alpha 11.

[h2]On to beta[/h2]
When the convention and update mechanics are ready and released, I will move out of alpha and into beta. This does not mean I won't add any more features or that early access will be ending any time soon. Beta just means I won't be overhauling any of the main features, in a way that would completely break save compatibility, as I've done with each major update during the alpha phase. I'm still planning on working more on the deal system, project management and stocks, but the focus will be on bugs, polish and content. How the game plays at this point will be pretty close to the final version, though.


Lasse updated 14 furniture models for this patch.

Alpha 11.4.12 fixes bug in SIPL causing game to break randomly when generating review article

Alpha 11.4.11 fixes save not loading properly if a furniture mod was missing

[h2]Alpha 11.4.10 (2020-03-09)[/h2]
Changes

• Furniture now has a LocalizedName variable to seperate their identification name from their UI name (Check the mod wiki)
  
• Added save file loading screen
  
• Added splash screen while the game loads to avoid looking like a failed launch
  
• Fixed stat window sick day localization
  
• Extended SIPL with xor, break statement, Min and Max enumerable functions and ability to use Enums when assigning or comparing
  

Fixes

• Fixed game mistakenly warning player that a project was missing qualified workers, because a feature no longer required work
  
• Fixed TyD export not escaping backslashes in strings
  

Optimizations

• Improved batching of transparent materials like glass
  
• Improved wall furniture culling
  
• Optimized LOD of all computer add-ons
  
• Furniture visibility calculation has been time sliced
  
• Optimized SIPL memory management and enumerable functions
  

Alpha 11.4.9 (2020-03-04) fixed benefit window being broken

[h2]Alpha 11.4.8 (2020-03-04)[/h2]
Changes

• Added company statistics to company sheet window
  
• Overhauled skyscraper generation (Still using placeholder art)
  
• A lot of detail windows can now be closed by clicking the same button that opened them
  
• Added ability to change default company car color
  
• Subsidiary project queue now shows unscheduled releases
  
• Specialization panel now shows how many specialization points are left for each role
  

Fixes

• Renaming a team would reset its color
  
• TyD parser did not ignore semicolons between tables and lists
  
• LOD meshes weren't cleared by default for furniture mods
  
• Game will now try to force placement of wall furniture when loading fails, to avoid "First wallEdge was null" error
  
• Various other fixes
  

Optimizations

• Improved furniture search performance
  

[h2]Alpha 11.4.7 (2020-02-14)[/h2]
Changes

• Teams are now sorted in selection window based on when they were last chosen for a type of task
  
• Added ability to assign a color to teams
  

Fixes

• Fixed being able to make products that had no OS support for fundamental features
  
• Fixed research button not notifying player of new research unless it had been clicked once
  
• Tons of other fixes
  

Optimizations

• Improved performance of pathfinding system
  
• Added LODs for vertex heavy furniture
  

Graphics

• Lamp
  
• Floor lamp
  
• Florescent lamp
  
• Outdoor lamp
  
• Desk lamp
  
• Coffee machine
  
• Espresso machine
  
• Toilet
  
• Sink
  
• Water cooler
  
• Big plant
  
• Floor plant
  
• Table plant
  
• Table cactus
  
• Briefcase
  
• Broom
  
• Coffee cup
  
• Food plate
  
• Hammer
  
• Pot
  
• Water cup
  

Click here to see how to join the testing branch
The Software Inc. team has grown by one, as we now welcome Lasse, whose work you’ve already seen on the character models and cars, in the game. Lasse will be working part-time on making the game look a lot better, while he studies. For this update, he’s improved a bunch of furniture, that sorely needed it, and updated the trees.



You can no longer plop down single units to cool down an entire building, instead you’ll need outputs for their cool air or hot water to disperse throughout your rooms. You’ll be able to automatically place them, and you won’t need to worry about temperature at all if you are just renting rooms. This change comes with a cool overlay visualizing how pipes and vents snake through your building. It also adds roof mounted ACs, which is the first item in Software Inc. to poke through the roof of a building.



Digital distribution no longer works on a per company level and is no longer exclusive. Companies will automatically sign up for your platform if the price is right, but you won’t get to sell 100% of their digital products. This also means I’ve been able to heavily reduce ISP costs.
The amount of deals you receive is no longer based on your business reputation, instead your business reputation controls how much money you will be offered. This means you should be seeing a lot more deals.


The funding + lawsuit exploit has been fixed.


[h2]Alpha 11.4.5 (2020-01-27)[/h2]
Changes

• Added "Pass through" toggle when assigning teams to rooms, to completely avoid employees passing through other teams' rooms
  
• Added compatibility list in employee detail window
  
• Added lines from selected employee showing social effect of nearby employees
  
• Various UX improvements
  

Fixes

• Fixed bug stopping company types from being loaded from mods
  
• Various other fixes
  

[h2]Alpha 11.4.4 (2020-01-16)[/h2]
Changes

• Added "Office dangers" tutorial, which prevents one burglary or fire in a single savegame, if tutorials are enabled
  
• Increased publisher mandated release date window
  
• Increased lower bound for printing deal payouts a tiny bit
  
• Increased dev speed a tiny bit in easy mode
  
• Made room light level less severe for guest satisfaction
  

Fixes

• Fixed bug which deleted guests if time was skipped between deal being generated and their arrival, causing player to lose deals
  
• Fixed group of burglars sometimes spawning on separate days, especially with more days per month
  
• Fixed keyboard inputs getting disabled when force closing out of a window with an active input field, e.g. pressing ESC with save game window open
  
• Fixed bug making it possible to clone a room and place it on top of itself in some cases
  
• Fixed long standing bug causing player to never receive deals regarding IP takeover
  
• Auto-placing radiators and vents now takes in-room collisions into account
  

[h2]Alpha 11.4.3 (2020-01-13)[/h2]
Fixes

• Fixed game grinding to a halt during a fire if there were a lot of outdoor areas with furniture present
  
• Fixed bug when merging wall with an active radiator or ventilation unit
  
• Fixed scaling issues when placing furniture along walls, e.g. cubicle walls getting chunky
  
• Reverted change from point to spot lights as it seemed to spike GPU usage and cause heating issues, without affecting FPS much
  
• License price is now fixed to stop license fee exploit
  
• Ability to set release date for legacy publishing deals
  

[h2]Alpha 11.4.2 (2020-01-12)[/h2]
Fixed bug when cloning or deleting rooms adjacent to walls that are smoothed

[h2]Alpha 11.4.1 (2020-01-12)[/h2]
Changes

• Completely overhauled temperature system and furniture
  
• Digital disitribution is no longer exclusive or requires the player to make individual deals
  
• Heavily reduced ISP costs
  
• Player now receives all deals, but the payout depends on their business reputation
  
• Guests with deals will now lose their patience if the reception waiting room is too cold, dark, dirty and ugly
  
• Added smooth shading to curved walls
  
• Publisher now handles pre-release marketing automatically
  
• Companies will no longer offer publishing deals if they've sued the player
  
• Publisher funding is now based on company reputation
  
• Release schedule control for publishing deals is no longer optional
  
• Market recognition will no longer decline, if player hasn't released anything for a while
  
• Reduced how much employee skill impacts quality
  
• Rebalanced business reputation gain from support and marketing deals
  
• Employee requirements now scale with the amount of work left on a task, to avoid the last features in design or alpha taking a too long
  
• Satisfaction and effectiveness data overlays now work for employees + added germs, social and stress overlay
  
• Sidewalks are now generated dynamically on roads + added lip to suspended roads
  
• Improved furniture snapping (Especially helpful for Emonadeo's modular shelves mod)
  
• Burglars now prioritize the cost of furniture higher when deciding which room to steal from first
  
• The team selection window now shows minimum team compatibility instead of average
  
• Police now show up quicker
  
• Software reviews no longer conclude by only considering whether the price is good
  
• Added online poll to main menu
  
• Removed leading zero when using AM/PM time
  

Fixes

• Fixed big lag spike when deleting furniture
  
• Fixed employees sometimes getting stuck forever after a fire, if a path leads up to the entrance of the building
  
• Fixed wrong license price calculation after changing price on a product
  
• Fixed AI using tools and supporting operating systems that the player had put ridiculously high prices on
  
• Fixed AI porting to both released and unreleased version of an OS, if player ever supported it in unreleased form
  
• Fixed employees pretending to work in design phase even though their specialization levels were too low
  
• Fixed getting "transfer to subsidiary" message when trading IP nobody is interested in
  
• Fixed locked furniture not getting removed when buying an office building "from the future" and refunding the cost
  
• Fixed contents insurance price not taking days per month into account
  
• Out of range errors caused by the Start Options mod no longer make the game unplayable
  
• Fixed not being able to build anywhere due to malformed paths
  
• Various other fixes
  

Graphics

• Tree models
  
• Instant coffee
  
• Wall lamp
  
• Stove
  
• Medium + Small Server
  
• All Product printers
  
• AC unit
  
• Roof AC
  
• Electric radiator
  
• Ventilation
  
• Radiator
  
• Small heater
  
• Ceiling fan
  
• Central heating
  

Perishables like coffee, snacks and food must now be refilled every day at a monthly cost (Done automatically). This also means there's a limit to how many employees one fridge, vending machine or coffee machine can satisfy. A small mini-fridge has been added as a free alternative to the vending machine.

Tech levels are no longer limited by which operating systems you choose to support. This change might seem somewhat unrealistic, but removing it will speed up tech adoption rate in the market, improve the benefits of researching and patents and finally, it will enable the ability to create updates for your software (this mechanic won't be out for quite a while, though).

The first page of the design document has been completely overhauled to resemble the old design document more. This allows players who don't won't dive into the complexity of the new software system to still play the game as normal. The design document tutorial has been split up into 3 different tutorials to account for this change.

Stocks are now valuated based on a running average of the income from a company's primary services and products. This should eliminate any exploits using loans, funding, etc. However, I'm not convinced this is the best solution.

Plus a ton of bug fixes and optimizations.

• Fixed grass being placed on top of basement stairs
  
• Fixed wall z-fighting visible in the garage by insetting door frame a tiny bit
  
• Fixed bug when sorting tools by tech level and then going to pick operating systems
  
• Various other fixes
  

Changes

• Made medium and easy mode a bit easier by increasing base sales rate
  
• Tech levels of a new AI company's first release have been limited
  
• Changed networking unlock date from 1990 to 1985 to allow for quicker adoption rate and more hosting deals
  

Fixes

• Fixed AI being able to pick features not supported by operating systems
  
• Various other fixes
  

Alpha 11.3.6 (2019-11-25): Moved console away from OnGUI to try and fix crash bug

Alpha 11.3.5 Fixes(2019-11-24)

• Fixed issues with design document sometimes not enforcing tech level limits
  
• Fixed bug where tools dependencies would get disabled if the software had network features
  
• Fixed not being able to see buttons in design document properly with active subsidiary
  
• Fixed "Accept all and close" in wage negotation window showing hourly salary change
  
• Fixed UI antialiasing fix for Linux breaking tons of UI collision checks
  

Alpha 11.3.4 Fixes (2019-11-23)

• Disabled UI antialiasing by default in Linux to fix bug where the screen would glitch in-game
  
• Fixed game breaking when project management couldn't find a applicable tool
  

Alpha 11.3.3 fixes bug occurring when project management tried to launch alpha review.

Alpha 11.3.2 fixes bugs when splitting room and loading trees.

Changes

• Overhauled how stocks are valuated, mostly eliminating exploits
  
• Tech levels are no longer limited by operating system support
  
• Patent royalty and expiration have been reduced to account for income boost
  
• Perishables like coffee, snacks and food are now simulated, giving coffee machines, fridges, etc. a capacity and a monthly refill cost
  
• Added a small capacity mini fridge as a free alternative to the vending machine
  
• First page of design document has been simplified and tutorials split into simple, advanced and full
  
• Increased burglar cooldown further
  
• Doubled speed of fires and effectiveness of sprinklers, and heavily increased fire speed if nothing is present to burn
  
• Fires will no longer spread to a room that has already been put out
  
• Contents insurance is now paid out daily rather than monthly after a fire or burglary
  
• Added contents insurance payout notification
  
• Added repair and restore all button to build mode
  
• Added leader multitasking specialization and increased max leader specializations to 9
  
• Leaders now gain a little leader skill when doing any task
  
• The end quality of a product now affects how much it speeds up development of a sequel
  
• Added speed boost info to design document window
  
• Improved pathfinding when fleeing from fire
  
• Bug verification speed no longer depends on average team programming skill
  
• Made energy debuff kick in faster and improved coffee energy boost to combat it
  
• Company assets are now distributed equally among share owners when they bankrupt, otherwise it is sold off randomly
  
• Improved research UI feedback
  
• Changed tree shader to vary colors between trees
  

Fixes

• Framework and publishing royalties are now actually added to owner's account...
  
• Fixed employees taking 2 vacations in a row if their vacation started in January
  
• Fixed game getting stuck in fire mode because a basement spread its fire to the outside
  
• Fixed game getting stuck if burglar was caught on a road ramp, making police unable to get to them
  
• Security staff will now scare off burglars while walking between entrances as well
  
• Fixed art skill increasing in alpha phase with no art work left
  
• Fixed employees working at half speed in alpha phase if working as artist and programmer with only art or code work left
  
• Fixed design promotion warning having wrong info and appearing when promoting early in any iteration after the 1st
  
• Removed small chance of still selling copies with outrageous prices
  
• Fixed review count being wrong in the review start window in some cases
  
• Fixed undo not working for curve tool if colinear wall points were optimized out in the meantime
  
• Fixed issues loading software localizations in XML format. Please use the CONVERT_LOCALIZATION_TYD command to convert your localizations to the new format
  
• Various other fixes
  

Optimizations

• Heavily optimized saving and loading times
  
• Optimized employee pathfinding by pooling path lists
  
• Optimized grass system