Office Management 101 News

Ahoy, office mates! As spring arrives, so does a breath of fresh air for your bustling workspace. As the days grow longer and flowers bloom, we bring you an invigorating update to help your office flourish!

This update brings improvements to the Teams feature, adds the option to merge connected building into a single bigger building and also includes various bug fixes.

Most notable is the fact that you can now set and customize uniforms for teams, that then gets applied to all team members. It's limited to hats for now, but we're planning to add customizable shirts and possibly pants as well. We're also planning to add a bigger variety of hats.
This change affects the previous savegames as hats are now a team uniform only items and any hats previously worn by your employees will be removed upon loading a savegame.

The rooms that are assigned now also have an icon in the top-left corner of them to indicate the fact.

And another feature that we're hoping will bring value to you is the option to merge buildings. When you have buildings that are right next to each other then you just need to click on a tile where a separating wall is on and then click on the "Merge connected buildings" menu option. It will not cost your company any additional funds.

We also want to thank everyone who's been sending their bug reports and feedback! Thanks to that we've managed to fix a number of problem areas this time around. We appreciate your assistance in this very much!


Version 0.6.4:
* Added an option to merge connected buildings
* Added a room icon that indicates when the room has been assigned to a team
* Implemented team uniform customization, specifically hats
* Introduced color picker for team hats
* Removed the Teams popup tab from the tutorial
* Improved several character biography sentences
* Fixed bear head sprite rendering issue in the CV list
* Fixed game crash when setting Twitch settings with empty number field values
* Fixed game crash related to furniture category checking
* Fixed game crashing when submitting projects with Level 10 employees
* Fixed game crashing when loading savegame info fails
* Fixed mouse scroll issue for team list after adding people to a team in the team popup
* Added support for mods to add new printers to the game more easily

Ho ho ho! It's been a while, but the jolly old work continues.

Santa has generously provided a gift of update for everyone, bringing a sense of teamwork and productivity this holiday season!

This update adds a new feature/concept to the game - Teams! You can now create Teams, assign your employees to them as you see fit, and then assign those teams to certain rooms in your office, thus giving you more control over how your employees make their decisions at work.

The current implementation of teams also specifically affects work related tasks of the employees. For example:

• Managers with the Self-managing perk only assign their teammates to projects
  
• Secretaries only assist their teammates and only manage paperwork in the rooms their teams have been assigned to
  
• Janitors and Handyworkers only work in the rooms where their teams have been assigned to
  

You're not obligated to use the teams to run your office, and if you choose not to, the employees will just behave like they've been in previous versions of the game. However, it is a useful tool in your box of making things run more efficiently once your company grows past a certain size.



[h3]What's next?[/h3]

There are still some ways I can see I could improve the feature and I hope to do just that in the next few smaller updates.

For one, I'd like to add a visual indicator to let players know which rooms have been assigned to teams. At the moment you can manually sort of color-code your rooms with wallpaper and flooring, but that's probably not ideal. I'm also thinking it would be great if you'd be able to select uniforms for teams, so you can recognize who's who more easily.

I can imagine some players would also like to have control over which kitchen or toilet certain employees use, so that's another feature that I'm considering adding. And perhaps a way to make certain rooms totally off limits to employees who are not assigned to those rooms.

A bit further ahead I'm also looking to add a new campaign level and finally start properly tackling the beast of a feature that is making it possible to create and sell your own products.

Happy Holidays everyone!

[h2]Patch notes[/h2]

Version 0.6.3:

• Added support for creating and managing teams of employees
  
• Added Teams tab to the Staff popup
  
• Added assigning teams to rooms
  

• Added the option to upgrade chairs and tables in the furniture context menu
  
• Lowered the price of buildings and rooms
  
• Added the option to sort employees by loyalty
  
• Added the option to sort projects by their current stage
  
• Added search and sorting to employee assignment popup
  
• Added darker edges for snowy roofs
  
• Added the snowy gravel tile
  
• Improved wallpaper and flooring sprites
  
• Improved rendering order of tiles
  
• Improved stairs related pathfinding
  

[h3]Version 0.6.1:[/h3]

• Updated demo
  
• Fixed game crashing when sandbox mode money field is empty
  
• Fixed game crashing during lighting calculations
  
• Fixed game crashing when an employee reaches level 10
  
• Added support for furniture higher than one floor
  
• Added stairs furniture item
  

We're happy to announce that Office Management 101 has been selected to be part of the Dreamhack Beyond Steam event kicking off on May 31st. The game will be 33% off during the event and we also have an up to date demo available.

We've scheduled livestreams for Dreamhack Beyond, so you're very welcome to come hang out with the developer and see the newest gameplay. The first stream goes live on June 1st at 12pm EST. See you there!

In the biggest update since the Early Access launch of Office Management 101 we bring you a whole new job type - The Secretary! They can submit your finished contract work for you, reduce paperwork and with a Tidy perk they will even organize the paperwork lying around everywhere.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Version 0.6 also includes new background music, new wallpaper choices, new flooring, new furniture and a new character head.

I would also like to express our appreciation for everyone who has put their faith in us and opted into the Early Access of Office Management 101! All your feedback and comments have been of immeasurable value to us! Thank you so much!

[h2]Patch notes[/h2]

Version 0.6:

• Added the Secretary job
  
• Added Secretary specific perk Tidy
  
• Added new background music - Piecharts
  
• Added a Momma Bear head for employees
  
• Added new flooring - Wood planks and Beige panels
  
• Added new wallpapers - Sandstone brick, Temple brick and Wood plank texture
  
• Added new furniture - Green glass divider and Black counter table
  
• Fixed Workshop mods crashing the game when they weren't downloaded after subscribing to them