Software Inc. News

Alpha 10.10 adds the long requested feature: Paths. You can now build paths from the road construction menu and since employees walk slower on grass in this update, paths won't just be for looks.



Changes

• Added ability to favorite furniture to put it first, and filter furniture by favorites
  
• Added ability to fine tune sliders in options window using arrow keys while hovering with mouse
  

Fixes

• Employees will now attempt to get at a section of path in different ways if it is blocked, instead of just idling
  
• More work towards fixing save state corruption
  
• Benefits requiring money upfront (e.g. company car) would be free when activating them for new employees
  
• Fixed number keys getting translated as being 1 number higher in UI
  

Fixes

• Possible fix for rare save state corruption
  
• Fixed error sound still playing after successfully splitting a room
  
• Fixed being able to put furniture in invalid rooms by rotating near a wall while placing
  
• Improved feedback window content sizing at bigger UI zoom levels
  

Changes

• Added path system
  
• Added secondary role and task system, so certain tasks and roles can be prioritized over others
  
• Ability to drag selection to rectangle to select employees, furniture and parking spaces (using multi select will filter by current selection)
  
• Improved selection responsiveness
  
• Employee walk paths are now drawn when selected
  
• Snow is now dynamically added to exterior walls, roofs and paths (modding guide here: https://softwareinc.coredumping.com/wiki/index.php/Material_Modding )
  
• Added grass (you can increase the amount or disable completely in graphics options)
  
• Employees now walk 25% slower on grass
  
• Added performance column to active deals
  
• Road crossings are now added dynamically to improve look of roads and parking
  
• Added warning to product detail window when product has no more people to sell to
  
• Elevated roads no longer appear blocky in miniatures
  
• Added footprints and direction to dirt, and improved dirt spread
  
• Employees now actively look at what they're interacting with and randomly around when idling and walking
  
• Replaced newsfeed with offline patch notes in main menu
  
• Duplicate shortcut now works for rooms (in build mode) and room clone button works for furniture
  
• Anchor grid is now mapped to G by default and mapping is shown on grid gizmo
  
• Ability to use arrow, esc and enter key in save game window
  
• Price overlay when building will now default to being colored according to current bank balance
  
• Select building now includes roof in selection
  
• Improved how game generates nav and build mesh boundaries for modded furniture when using AutoBounds. Specifically sets minimum width and height for nav mesh and converts build mesh to a line if very thin. This should fix bugs with cubicles, if updated by author (If you are re-using the vanilla cubicle, leaving out nav and build boundary from the XML would be the best solution)
  

Fixes

• Fixed bug causing AI companies to sometimes heavily underestimate physical sales and not order enough copies
  
• Fixed room textures getting purged on Linux when changing resolution (would cause rooms to be black)
  
• Fixed options window spawning new controls every time it was opened
  
• Fixed snow and rain sticking to screen
  
• Fixed undo placing houses and skyscrapers in custom map mode not working
  
• Fixed employees walking through houses in town maps after load
  
• Fixed camera zoom being overridden by default value on load
  
• Coffee liquid held by employees on other floors would stay visible
  
• Fixed wall top edge sometimes having holes or poking out over outdoor areas
  
• Clone/blueprint tool will now correctly handle (recursively) surrounded open spaces in a building when checking for collisions
  
• Fixed FURNITURE_DEBUG lines not being drawn on top of everything else
  
• Fixed path to log file on Linux sometimes being incorrect
  

Optimizations

• Improved dirt mesh data handling
  
• Optimized all particle systems and disabled particle pausing to try and fix crashes caused by particle systems
  

Alpha 10.10 adds the long requested feature: Paths. You can now build paths from the road construction menu and since employees walk slower on grass in this update, paths won't just be for looks.




As you may or may not have noticed, Alpha 11 development has been delayed quite a few times now. The planned features for Alpha 11 have been quite clear in my mind, but I've been unable to figure how to add those features, without breaking other parts of the game. I've finally figured out how to make it happen, but this is turning out to be quite a big overhaul. Since Alpha 11 might be one of, if not the last Alpha release, I think having it be a major overhaul of the main game mechanics makes sense, as this might be my last chance to rectify the issues I have with the game.

I'll be looking out for bug reports on the new path system, while I plan out how to implement Alpha 11. I'll start implementing Alpha 11 once I'm confident the new path system is stable.

Once my plans for Alpha 11 are finished, I'll have a good idea of how long it'll take to finish the initial release, but for now I'll guestimate it at somewhere between 3 and 9 months. I'll keep you posted at https://twitter.com/SoftwareIncGame

Changes

• Duplicate shortcut now works for rooms (in build mode) and room clone button works for furniture
  

Fixes

• Fixed bug that would sometimes occur when splitting rooms
  

Changes

• Elevated roads no longer appear blocky in miniatures
  
• Added footprints and direction to dirt, and improved dirt spread
  
• Path materials can now be picked for outdoor areas
  
• Color window now changes based on whether selected rooms are outdoor areas
  
• Employees now actively look at what they're interacting with and randomly around when idling and walking
  

Fixes

• Pressing enter to confirm deleting save file no longer causes game to try and load said file afterwards
  
• Right clicking with path and any other object selected didn't group actions properly
  
• Coffee liquid held by employees on other floors would stay visible
  
• More fixes to room clone collision calculation
  

Optimizations

• Improved dirt mesh data handling
  

Fixes

• Fixed furniture wall offset algorithm in cases where furniture would get squished
  
• Fixed wall top edge sometimes having holes or poking out over outdoor areas
  

Fixes

• Fixed game breaking when modded furniture breaks
  
• Fixed game breaking when assigning project management leader to no team
  

Changes

• Improved path related pathfinding
  
• You can no longer place path ends on blocked areas and paths will snap to room boundaries, so they don't get blocked
  
• Added line to show if path is going to connect to a door
  
• Added performance column to active deals
  
• Clone/blueprint tool will now correctly handle (recursively) surrounded open spaces in a building when checking for collisions
  
• Ability to use arrow, esc and enter key in save game window
  
• Price overlay when building will now default to being colored according to current bank balance
  

Fixes

• Blocked path endings no longer break pathfinding and a warning has been added
  
• Adding door near path could make path corrupted and unselectable
  
• Undoing extending path in a straight line didn't work
  
• Optimized broken furniture smoke particles and disabled particle pausing to try and fix crashes caused by particle systems
  

Reported bugs fixed for path system, particle systems (should reduce crashes in Windows) and secondary task system

• Game would fail to save if a path system had been corrupted
  
• Fixes to path undo procedures
  

• Added path system
  
• Added grass
  
• Employees now walk 25% slower on grass
  
• Added secondary role and task system, so certain tasks and roles can be prioritized over others
  
• Improved selection responsiveness
  
• Snow is now dynamically added to exterior walls, roofs and paths
  
• Road crossings are now added dynamically to improve look of roads and parking
  
• Added warning to product detail window when product has no more poeple to sell to
  
• Anchor grid is now mapped to G by default and mapping is shown on grid gizmo
  
• Replaced newsfeed with offline patch notes in main menu
  

Fixes

• Fixed undo placing houses and skyscrapers in custom map mode not working
  
• Fixed employees walking through houses in town maps after load
  
• Fixed camera zoom being overridden by default value on load
  

• Ability to drag selection to rectangle to select employees, furniture and parking spaces (using multi select will filter by current selection)
  
• Employee walk paths are now drawn when selected
  
• Select building now includes roof in selection
  
• Improved how game generates nav and build mesh boundaries for modded furniture when using AutoBounds. Specifically sets minimum width and height for nav mesh and converts build mesh to a line if very thin. This should fix bugs with cubicles, if updated by author (If you are re-using the vanilla cubicle settings, leaving out nav and build boundary from the XML would be the best solution)
  

Fixes

• Fixed bug causing AI companies to sometimes heavily underestimate physical sales and not order enough copies
  
• Fixed room textures getting purged on Linux when changing resolution (would cause rooms to be black)
  
• Fixed snow and rain sticking to screen
  
• Fixed options window spawning new controls every time it was opened
  
• Fixed FURNITURE_DEBUG lines not being see-through
  
• Fixed path to log on Linux sometimes not working
  

Alpha 10.9.8 is officially out with reported bugs fixed.

(You can toggle the old grid manipulation panel in the options menu, if you prefer)

• Objects are now highlighted when cursor is hovering over them, to make selection more intuitive
  
• Ability to bind duplicate furniture key
  
• Reduced complexity of windows and doors during mini map generation when necessary to avoid hitting mesh vertex limit, because some of you managed to add at least 2730 exterior windows and doors in one save!
  

Alpha 10.9.5 fixes bugs in the Market recognition drop-down and column filtering.

• Furniture builder will now try to keep furniture inside room boundary instead of just giving up placement
  
• Ability to transfer IP to relevant subsidiary using trade button
  
• Specializations picked for HR now affects education choice
  
• Roof points can snap to grid
  
• Fixed some localization pluralizations
  
• Added inline functions to localization system, currently only includes Vowel, Plural, FirstOrCount function
  
• Market simulation now ignores in-house products when determining current highest tech level on market
  
• Shift click a work filter toggle to isolate it
  
• Better handling of error when generated mesh has too many vertices
  
• Improved feedback window message box
  
• Added salary NaN check to avoid game corruption and hopefully locate source of bug
  
• Fixed software type and category dropdown localization
  
• Overhauled options window
  
• Ability to set multi-placement as default mode
  
• Ability to disable rain, snow, thunder and lightning
  
• Added dynamic colorization to popup messages and message boxes
  
• Fixed window dragging and max size when UI is scaled
  

Slanted roofs and code modding is officially out. You can read more about code mods in my last announcement.

I tested Software Inc. on the latest version of Ubuntu and had some issues launching it, which was fixed by forcing fullscreen mode and re-launching and restarting until it just started working, which I guess is par for the course. The launch parameter to force fullscreen is: "-screen-fullscreen 1 -screen-width 1920 -screen-height 1080 -disableresolution", but switch out 1920 and 1080 with your screen resolution. When the game launches successfully you can set the game to fullscreen in the graphics options and remove the launch parameters, if you so desire.

• Fixed duplicating outdoor areas
  
• Fixed having to re-validate mods when using RELOAD_DLL_MOD
  

• Added slanted roofs
  
• New Autumn track by Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Added 2 new startup maps, a garage and a skyscraper
  
• Basements are now separated for blueprints and cloning
  
• Doubled starting cash on easy mode
  
• Changing team arrival and leave times will now take immediate effect
  
• Whether project management makes a product in-house will now depend on base product
  

UX changes

• Build menu category list now uses thumbnails instead of checkboxes and text
  
• Added calendar window when date is clicked to see employee and staff working hours
  
• Ability to manage staff room assignment from staff window
  
• Pressing the focus button (space by default) now cycles between all selected objects
  
• Ability to highlight unsupported rooms if cloning or blueprint creation fails
  

Fixes

• Fixed room grouping bugging out when re-grouping rooms
  
• Fixed bug regarding how door blockage is checked for doors to upper floor parking. Doors going nowhere or in basement will now show as blocked
  
• Various other fixes
  

Code modding

• Added system for compiling C# in-game and securing access to certain types
  
• More confirmation has been added before loading new or changed dll mods
  
• Added code mods to the Steam workshop
  
• ModMeta is now an Abstract Class rather than an Interface and the FloorMod has been updated to show examples
  
• DLL mods will now be queried to save and load data from save files
  
• Changed WindowManager interface to avoid misuse of active window lists that would cause crash (Use OnlyHide, StartHidden, Shown and OnClose to control lifecycle)
  
• Game assembly now includes xml documentation to help develop dll mods in Visual Studio (Only some of the codebase have been commented so far, mostly UI stuff)
  
• Improved logged message when an error occurs loading a dll mod
  

XML modding

• Deprecated mesh and snappoint Parent tag in furniture mods and added Parent ATTRIBUTE to all tags that searches everything in the furniture with a name(Use ComponentName tag to name Meshes and InteractionPoints, Name tag for Transforms)
  
• Multiple and custom lights for modded furniture using the LampScript's Lights variable(will automatically find all light components in a furniture if not manually set, at the expense of performance)
  
• Modded furniture can now optionally have the IsIconic variable set to an array of category names, if it should be used as a thumbnail for custom categories
  

Alpha 10.8.3 fixes further issues with mod loading.
Alpha 10.8.2 fixes some issues with mod loading.

You can now upload and download code mods in the Steam Workshop!

First off: Do not download code mods if you don't want to ruin your PC, but also don't want to verify the safety of the mod.

Here are some quick Q&As to explain what this change means:


As you most likely haven't noticed, because I literally just changed it, mods in the workshop are no longer called "Mods" but "Data mods". Everyone who has a "Mod" on the workshop should re-upload it to gain access to this new exclusive title.
A data mod is basically a mod that doesn't change how the game works, but gives the game more content to work with, which is what mods on the workshop have done so far.


Code mods are written using a programming language and actively change how the game works, add new mechanics on top of it or they pretend to be mods while they quietly mine bitcoin in the background.


The way code mods work in Software Inc. can pose a serious threat to your computer, since they have the same access to your files and internet that the game has, but have the advantage of not being developed by me.
Because of this, I had decided not to allow code mods on the workshop. Clever modders got around it by uploading their programs as text files, which is obviously not an ideal situation.


This latest update includes a way to load mods that are still in text format and actively tries to shut off parts of the mod that would access your internet or files.
Please note that the mods can still be very dangerous. I will try my best to moderate code mods on the workshop, but feel free to study the files, find and flag any malicious code yourself. The game will prompt you to read the code directly in the game before it loads any new or updated code mod.


You can just skip right along on here to the wiki, to read more about creating your own fancy cheats:
https://softwareinc.coredumping.com/wiki/index.php/Code_Modding



Changes

• Added system for compiling C# in-game and securing access to certain types
  
• More confirmation has been added before loading new or changed dll mods
  
• Added code mods to the Steam workshop
  

Fixes

• Game would break during loading when installing DLL mods for the first time
  
• Pre 10.7 blueprints that only contains basement rooms would break the game