MMORPG Tycoon 2 News

Hi, folks! Today's update wasn't a big one; it's just some miscellaneous fixes for bugs which have been reported over the past few days. The new stuff is all happening over on the 'test' branch, and will be migrated into the main default branch just as soon as I'm sure there aren't any major new bugs caused by the updates (but feel free to take a look if you're curious!)

Thanks so much for your patience as I add the new functionality! :)

Hi, everyone!

This is a small update that's coming in now just to address a bug I've finally tracked down. Some changes made recently had resulted in combat abilities having their level changed unexpectedly. And.. this was causing a bunch of problems; subscribers who couldn't attack and so were becoming frustrated in combat, things of that sort.

Worse, if a frustrated player was trying to grief other players by kiting a dangerous monster into a low-level area, the game wasn't checking whether that player actually had any combat abilities, and the whole game crashed when they tried to attack the monster with a non-existing ability. Oops!

So here are the things that I've changed to fix that whole AI bug:

1. I found a bug which could result in abilities changing their set level without the user being aware (it involved closing the design window or the whole game quickly, immediately after switching between abilities in the ability editor); that bug is now fixed.
   
2. The game now checks for that situation during load; if a player class has no attacks available at level 1, then it does its best to fix that situation before the load completes.
   
3. The game now checks once per minute that every class has at least one combat ability available from level 1, and will show an alert pointing you to the problem. So even if the game wasn't able to fix the issue on its own, it'll show you exactly where the issue is and let you fix it manually.
   
4. ...and finally, if somebody attempts to kite a monster into other players but doesn't actually have any attacks available, the griefing attempt just fails, and the subscriber becomes a little more annoyed that they weren't able to annoy the noobs.
   

Also in this update:

• Tutorial completion state is now synchronized between computers via Steam Cloud Sync.
  
• The costs of using various tools is now shown in localised units.
  
• Fixed selecting subscribers from the Overview's subscriber list window.
  
• Fixes time formatting in the clock UI panel (it was displaying the time '12:05:02' as '12:5:2')
  
• Fixes pause indicator to match the size of the screen, if the screen is resized during gameplay.
  

..and a few other bug fixes/improvements.

So like I said, just a small bugfix update that I wanted to get out to folks ASAP, because of the crash fix and AI fix. New game features are in the *next* update. :)

Hi, everyone!

This update is really big to me and possibly small to you, unless you're excited for one of the (spoiler) newly supported languages!

• [h2]A brand new text drawing method![/h2] I'm
• super* excited about this; It's an exciting new approach which makes our text drawing require less data and less memory and also makes the text draw far more sharply, especially when I need to squeeze the text to fit somewhere or when UI Scale is set to a non-default value. Text just looks
• better* now, pretty much everywhere and all the time.
  
• [h2]New languages![/h2]This new text drawing system makes it possible for us to support languages with different alphabets or with additional accent marks, so we've added support for playing the game with text in simplified Chinese, Czech, Russian, and Polish! These can each now be selected from the language menu in the options screen.
  
• [h2]Why isn't this building activating?!?[/h2]Added a big new on-screen "Paused" indicator, to make it a lot more visible when you've forgotten to un-pause your game! (This can be disabled in the game options, if you dislike it)
  

And of course, some miscellaneous bug fixes!

• Fixed display of error messages when placing NPCs.
  
• Fixed NPCs being too low-level to properly defend their area. (NPCs are supposed to be ten levels above the level of the region they're placed into; in the last build they were being set to be of equal level, which meant that they could sometimes be killed by an errant monster that wandered too close!)
  
• Fixed the "Object deleted itself" error message that some folks were encountering while editing monster zones.
  
• ...and a bunch of other little tweaks and fixes!
  

Next big new feature is *super* exciting and not announced yet, but I'll be talking about it more within the next couple of days, and hopefully showing it off by the end of the week! :D

Hi, everyone! It's been a long time coming, but we're finally rolling out proper support for game localisation, with our first drop of language support covering German, French, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Also in the build are work-in-progress translations for Italian and Spanish, but we're not yet confident enough in the translations for me to feel comfortable ticking the boxes on Steam saying that they're officially supported, yet. If you're fluent in Italian or Spanish (or other languages!), you can contribute to the translation effort by visiting our site on Localizor!. Those languages can be selected from the 'Language' tab in the Options window.

I'm also working on integrating some new font rendering tech which will allow us to localise into languages which aren't using Latin scripts; Chinese, Russian, etc. (Additionally, it'll make our text sharper even for English text!) Expect to see those new translations being added really soon!


But for the moment, let's talk about what's new in this build that went up maybe twelve hours ago (as of the time I'm writing this)!

• [h2]Translations![/h2]Okay, I already talked about translations above. But it really is the headline feature of this update, and more languages are coming; most notably I'm expecting to see Czech, Russian, and Chinese in the very near future! For French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese you can now select a language in the Settings for the game within Steam. For other not-yet-officially-supported languages, you can select them within the options screen inside the game.
  
• [h2]Number formatting![/h2]Also on the 'Language' tab of the options screen, you can now choose how you want numbers to be shown; either US-style "1,000.50" or European-style "1.000,50". Similarly, you can choose what currency symbol you'd like to see for money amounts!
  
• [h2]Charging for flight paths[/h2]Flight path prices are now being enforced, and their usage is being tracked! Note: Players currently will not ever pay real-money to take a flight path; I just couldn't figure out a way to convince the AI that a flight path could ever provide enough value to be worth actual dollars. I'm definitely going to be returning to this in future updates! But at least the flight points correctly graph how many people have used them, now!
  
• [h2]UI Descaling[/h2]It's now possible to lower UI scaling below 100%. I'm not sure why someone would want to do this, but.. it's there now, since a few folks asked for it? :D
  
• [h2]More complaining about bugs![/h2]Buildings which are suffering from more than one bug now contribute extra toward an MMORPG's "bugginess" rating.
  
• [h2]No more losing changes![/h2]Changes to anything in the 'Design' interface now automatically 'Apply' when you close the window, instead of being cancelled! This means you'll no longer lose that perfect character model design because you forgot to click 'Apply'!
  
• [h2]Empty Intros![/h2]If you very methodically removed every single scenery item in your first region and then opened it up to the public, it was possible to make the game lock up as it was trying to find something for the introductory cutscene to look at. This is now fixed!
  
• [h2]No more playing forever[/h2]Previously, if a player wanted to log out but couldn't afford to set their home at an inn, they would keep playing forever. Now they just log out wherever they are, instead.
  
• [h2]No more long ad campaigns[/h2]Previously, due to calendar changes in an earlier build, it was possible for an ad campaign to be lengthened dramatically when loaded in a newer build of MT2 than it was saved from. Now we fix that problem during load!
  
• [h2]Auto-adjust quests[/h2]If you change the level of a region which has already been set up, the quest-givers within the region now automatically adjust their quests to match the level's new region. Similarly, monsters now correctly adjust their levels to match the region!
  
• [h2]YOLO LOL[/h2]Fixes a game crash if you ban the VIP streamer during a streamer event. You monster.
  
• [h2]Looks Buggy![/h2]Replaces the infamous old "red cube" indicator that a player was being affected by a bug with an actual, comprehensible bug icon.
  
• [h2]...and a Screensaver?[/h2]The in-game desktop interface now has a screensaver, if you leave it alone for ten minutes or so. Folks who are keen can launch the game straight into the Screensaver by starting MT2 with the command line parameter `Screensaver`. (Press escape to exit, in that mode)
  

...and of course heaps of other smaller bug fixes and minor improvements!


Apologies for posting this announcement a little later than the build went up; I've been having serious internet troubles for the last few days and it was a struggle to even get this build up to Steam, much less post an update with an image! I'm now tethered to a phone which is mostly working; hopefully I'll be back properly online soon!

Thanks everyone for your support and patience through this huge update!

Hi everybody! It's been a little longer than usual between updates to the main Steam build; I've been working on localisation support and it's taken longer than expected! the base systems are now *mostly* in place (I'm aware of a couple things which still won't get translated, but the vast majority of the game is now ready for translations).

Ordinarily I'd wait for the feature to be fully complete, but there were a couple important new features and bug fixes I wanted to push to the default branch, so.. as a bonus, you're also getting a preview taste of translations!

[h2]New stuff in this build:[/h2]

• Fixed an important bug about destroying a network fiber which extends across a region boundary.
  
  
• Fixes an important bug which caused things keyed to the current date to read the wrong date. This fixes the daily finance report, the finance graph, and advertisements ending earlier than they ought.
  
  
• Fixes a few important bugs around orphaned roads/flight points.
  
  
• Fixes a few navigation mesh generation issues.
  
  
• Re-enables save file deletion within the game, from the 'load' or 'save' dialogs.
  
  
• Monsters will no longer attack players who are traveling on flight paths (oops)
  
  
• Adds an in-game "Submit file to devs" button, which automates the process of sending me a save file to investigate. (If I've ever asked you to provide me with a save file, this will make that process a
• lot* easier!)
  

And a bunch of other little features!

Oh.. and of course the preview of localisation support that I mentioned at the top! It's not yet *technically* supported; I'm sure I've missed some text which isn't going through the translation system, and the translations themselves are in a very early state and aren't yet verified as being correct.. but if you'd like to take a look at them, you can switch languages from the Options window's "Debug" tab. Note that you can't yet set your language through Steam settings (as I'm not ready to declare that these other languages are 'supported'), and we don't save your language selection yet, but.. that's all coming pretty soon!

Right now we have an initial set of translations for French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese-BR, all generously supplied by the game's community and wrangled through Localizor. If you're fluent in English and another language, and have an interest in helping out with translations, please visit that link and take a look!

Thanks for your patience everyone! Setting the whole game up for localisation was a *lot* more work than I'd expected, and has taken a lot longer than I'd planned! But we're very nearly there, now, and the full proper Localisation Update will be here soon!