Software Inc. News

It’s been exactly 3 months since I released the last patch. Since then, I’ve finished 50% of my planned tasks for Beta 1. However, since each task vary in complexity, I’m probably not 50% done yet. But let’s get on with what I have done so far.


I’ve added the ability to design how your hardware products will look and Lasse has been hard at work making it work and look great. This system will be fully moddable and hopefully it will add a bit of life to all the endless text-only lists of products and make them feel a bit more tangible.

Ignore the unintended Dexter reference.

Traits have moved from independent/social, fast learner/hard worker and lazy/stressed to individual traits that are determined by an employee’s personality, sprinkled with some RNG. Additionally, there is no longer an infinite pool of employees lined up to be hired or deallocated, but it’ll be much easier to filter through applicants as the hiring system is moving from pay-to-view to pay-to-filter.





Notifications have been somewhat unhelpful up until now, mainly because it was hard to tell important from trivial messages, causing people to ignore them altogether, but also because issues would stick around even if they had already been fixed. This has changed in Beta 1 and I’ve added more complex interactions, making them super extra helpful.



I’ve overhauled the final review system, combined the post-release marketing and printing prompts, and merged it all into a single flashy release dialog, to make releasing new products a bit less anticlimactic.



You’ll now be able to release DLC for your games, or joysticks for the most popular console on the block, to milk each product for all they’re worth. With subscription-based software, releasing content for your products will also help bring back old customers, to gain those sweet extra monthly payments.





Bugs are no longer magically transported to your customers devices as soon as you fix them, you’ll now have to develop and release patches, which will also present an opportunity to upgrade tech levels, for even more subscription-based income goodness.


I'm not sure I can guarantee save compatibility with Alpha 11 currently. I have not yet broken compatibility, but engine-related issues might force my hand later down the line. In any case, Alpha 11 should still be available, even after Beta 1 is out officially, so you can keep playing old saves, and a lot of the new mechanics in Beta 1 wouldn't be accessible from Alpha 11 saves anyway.

• You can now get a detailed breakdown of expenses for products you have developed
  
• HR can now auto-prioritize specializations based on active tasks
  
• Assembly lines can now cross over pallets connections
  
• Fixed a bug causing AI to buy OS licenses from player for porting, even if OS license was ridiculously expensive
  
• Fixed it being almost impossible to get level 3 service employees when hiring
  
• Tons of other fixes and improvements
  

I also have another super secret mechanic planned, which will involve a new class of employee. I will reveal more when I get there.

As for when you'll be able to play it: I'm still on track with my initial estimate of 3-9 months. With the progress I've made so far, that estimate is narrowed to 3-6 months from today, as long as there aren't any major roadblocks.

Thanks for sticking around! Hope you’re as excited as I am :D

This should be the last patch before work on Beta 1 starts.

Changes

• Added ability to see what competitors are researching
  
• AI will now prioritize researching tech that hasn't been researched in a while and isn't currently being researched by a lot of other companies
  
• Added more errors when employees are assigned to furniture in rooms they are not allowed in
  
• Feature tooltips are simplified in simple design document mode to avoid confusing new players
  

Fixes

• Fixed AI having higher chance of doing research with more days per month, making patents more difficult to obtain
  
• Fixed rotation of corner carpets when flipping rooms
  
• Game will now remove submarket values below 0 from mods, to avoid breaking game
  

Changes

• Added car model LOD to improve performance with many cars on screen at once
  
• Updated main font, to make period and comma clearer, and monospace current time and money, to avoid jittering
  
• Ability to refill refillable furniture from the bottom left info panel
  
• Assembly line window now lists the effectiveness of printers and assemblers in each group
  

Fixes

• Fixed last column in finances window cutting off data if looking at a previous date in yearly or quaterly mode
  
• Fixed outdoor navigation mesh not refreshing after undoing curving wall on ground floor, potentially causing issues navigating until something else changes
  
• Fixed cases of furniture not being reachable even though it should be
  
• Fixed bug that could cause burglars to break if they entered a room with an elevator and a security guard in close proximity
  

Changes

• Added nav mesh building as a step in game loading to avoid starting up with blocked areas for big saves on very slow PCs
  
• Added ability to see how long current vacation is going to last for selected employee
  
• Added window to analyze competition in product detail window
  
• Modded furniture can now snap to multiple different types of snap points at a time
  
• Ability for furniture mods to group snap points together, so only one can be used at a time, by assigning an ID to the Group record of a snap point
  
• Added EXPORT_FURNITURE_POINTS command to export snap and interaction points into modded furniture file
  

Fixes

• Fixed issues with snapping furniture in basement
  
• Fixed OS showing up in port window while already being ported to, if it was fully released in the meantime
  
• Fixed pallet points not connecting up reliably at angles due floating point precision
  
• Fixed game breaking on rented maps with player owned pillars, because game tried to generate grids inside them as if they were rooms
  
• Internal rotations for snapped furniture are now reset on load to avoid incorrect rotations when duplicating rooms and furniture
  

[h2]Alpha 11.7.60[/h2]
Fixes

• Fixed furniture rotated the wrong way when cloning after last update (also rotates chairs back to face table in borked saves)
  
• Fixed competition analysis window having wrong max number on y-axis label
  

Changes

• Research now provides a 10% development speed boost to applicable features
  
• Added custom tooltip to features in design document detailing market targeting and speed modifiers
  
• Added submarket analysis window to visualize saturation of markets over time
  
• Licenses are now paid per employee per project instead of per company
  
• Added overview of tool licensing to product detail window
  
• If map seed starts with "NOLAKES", no lakes will be generated
  
• Rebalanced employee weighting of waiting to use furniture vs walking longer for it
  
• Added diagonal interior highlights to selected rooms
  
• Better handling of errors in level 3 feature scripts from mods
  
• Increased starting capital of hardware based companies to reduce chances of bankrupting early
  

Fixes

• Fixed instances of assembly lines not being updated correctly after undo or putting in inventory
  
• Fixed bug causing all rooms to become inaccessible to a team after renaming it, if no room on the map was assigned to any teams
  
• Fixed converting room to pillar deleting valid items on the other side of walls
  
• Meeting rooms no longer need to be assigned to a team
  
• Fixed not being able to manage parking spots above pre-built roads in city and town maps
  
• Employees will now discard reservation of computers as soon as they go to leave, to avoid making them unavailable for employees just arriving
  
• Furniture will now discard employee reservations immediately if they are unable to approach them
  
• Fixed snow on top of pillars in basement
  
• Added shadows to road elements when "More shadows" is enabled
  
• Garage ports can no longer be placed facing fenced areas, as it would break pathfinding
  

Changes

• Added option to disable diagonal room highlights
  
• Halved license costs for player on easy difficulty
  

Fixes

• Fixed saves breaking if they already had garageports facing fenced areas before 11.7.55
  
• Fixed burglars sometimes being able to skip past guards at full game speed
  
• Fixed assemblers not correctly assesing recycler access in particularly snakey assembly lines
  
• Fixed cleaning staff refusing to clean the room they are currently idling in, if it gets dirty after they finished cleaning it
  

Fixes

• Fixed case of burglars getting stuck
  
• Various other fixes
  

Fixed bug causing performance to degrade slowly every time an object had been highlighted