City Game Studio News

Hey everyone!

We're kicking off a new week with some seriously intense content updates for City Game Studio!
I've completely overhauled a major part of the game's interface, and you'll likely feel like you're playing City Game Studio 2 ahead of schedule given how much has changed!

[h3]Weekly Recap[/h3]
A brand new button has just appeared in the personnel management panel! Human Resources will now help you balance your studio!
Have you been hiring like crazy and assigning employees without a second thought? Is your studio now completely unbalanced? No problem - just hire HR and tell them to balance the studio. And boom, with just two clicks, it's done! That's a pretty sweet promise I'm making here. City Game Studio is even easier to play than before, and personally, I love this new feature. In very difficult mode, it will help you achieve higher scores more easily!

And that's just the appetizer. Let's move on to the main course. A new panel has made its appearance. This panel summarizes your company at a glance. It shows you the number of game engines you've created, the number of games you've published, and how many employees you've hired. Added to this is a list of milestones your company has achieved - the date when you reached over 1,000 fans, or when you created your own digital store. Useful and always interesting information. But that's not all - it also includes two new top charts: the top 5 games that have earned you the most money, and the top 5 remakes that have made you the richest. This panel is available when you click on your money, and I'm sure you're going to love it!

And now for dessert. And this one is a real treat. I've wanted to redesign the panels for creating games, porting games, making remakes, engines, and contracts for years, and I've finally done it. Originally, this modification was planned for September, for v1.24, but I worked hard to include it in the June version, v1.23. And honestly, the result is fantastic. You can see much more clearly what's happening on screen. The elements are colorful, and personally, I love how the consoles are highlighted. Everything is much more visible now. In short, I love this change and I'd like to know if you love it too, so please share your feedback!

[h3]What's Next[/h3]
It's already the end of May, and v1.23.0 is almost ready. Normally, I would have continued working on this update for another 3 weeks. However, we're doing some renovations, and the studio will need to be "closed" during June. It won't be completely closed - I think I'll be able to work a few hours a day, but not enough to continue adding content to v1.23. That's why v1.23.0 is now in feature-freeze, meaning I'll only be making fixes based on your feedback.

I'll resume normal activities in July, beginning work on v1.24. And v1.24 already promises to have some great content, as I plan to revamp quite a few things in terms of interface and user experience!

That's all for now, thank you for reading
Wishing you a great day
Xavier aka Binogure

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible.

Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from.

Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam.

As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers.

Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Staff[/h3]

• Add an auto-assignement button to the HR panel allowing the HR to balance your studio by assigning your staff to specific tasks.

[h3]Feature[/h3]

• Add a company overview panel showing:
  
  
  • Company creation date
    
  • Company rating
    
  • Company logo & name
    
  • Number of game engines made
    
  • Number of conventions attended
    
  • Number of game ports
    
  • Number of games released
    
  • Number of remakes released
    
  • Number of Digital store's users
    
  • Number of employees
    
  • Number of studios
    
  • Number of consoles made
    
  • Best 5 top selling games of all-time
    
  • Best 5 top selling remakes of all-time
    
  • Custom achievements (first engine, first studio, 1 K fans reached...)

[h3]Interface[/h3]

• Rework the game creation panel
  
• Rework the gameport creation panel
  
• Rework the contract creation panel
  
• Rework the engine creation panel
  
• Rework the remake creation panel
  
• Rework the game edition/publishing panels

Hey everyone!

What an incredibly productive week just wrapped up! I managed to get everything done that I wanted to—and then some! Let me tell you all about it!

[h3]Week Recap[/h3]
I had planned to overhaul the Human Resources panel this week, and honestly, I wasn't quite sure how to tackle it. HR has to manage so many things that revamping the interface turned into a real brain-teaser.

I actually had to create a brand new button style that doesn't exist anywhere in the game—or even in the game engine, for that matter. I spent several hours on it, but the result is pleasing. It's super readable and easy to handle.

After quite a few different attempts, I arrived at this result that I find rather satisfying. You can clearly see each assignment. You understand when an employee is working, when they're going on vacation, or when you're letting them do their own thing. But from a user experience standpoint, it's still missing a few small touches. For now, I've simply added buttons to reset assignments—I'll talk about the rest in the next section.

That's the story with the HR panel. Quite a few of you asked me to add a button that lets you compare your console with those on the market. So I did it—you can now see the consoles available on the market when you're designing your own. I also took the opportunity to completely revamp the console panel.

The old interface was getting a bit dated, and this new one is fresh and matches the rest of the game better. You'll find the same information but more condensed, allowing you to see more consoles at a glance.

On top of that, I've also redesigned the buttons that let you assign specialists. The old ones were pretty ugly, let's be honest, and now they're definitely more glamorous! This is the first part of the game creation interface overhaul that will arrive in v1.24.

[h3]What's Next[/h3]
What's coming next relates directly to managing assignments through HR. I'd like the reset buttons to affect all employees, not just the ones that are visible.

I'd also love to add a button that automatically assigns high-performing employees in a category to that category. This would let you make AAA games without breaking a sweat. This feature won't automatically balance your studios—it will make your studios more efficient.

As for automatic studio balancing, that's another pretty challenging task, and I'm not sure I'll be able to implement it so easily in this version.

On top of all that, I also want to add a panel that will give you a recap of your company. The information it will include isn't set in stone yet, so drop your best ideas in the comments and they'll probably make it into the game!

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for reading!
Wishing you a great day
Xavier aka Binogure

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible.

Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from.

Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam.

As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers.

Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Staff[/h3]

• Rework the human resource panel (complete rework)
  
• Rework the specialist assignment button (looks better now)

[h3]Interface[/h3]

• Add a button to show the other platforms directly when making a custom platform
  
• Rework the platform list panel (looks better now)
  
• First part of the rework of the game creation (a bit better but it needs more work)

Hello everyone!

This week I've been sidetracked by quite a few small bugs, but I still managed to make good progress on the roadmap!
Plus, with the nice weather coming, I'm feeling super motivated!!

[h3]Weekly Recap[/h3]
I've been working a lot on the interface and the user experience! First off, it's now possible to poach network administrators from competitors. This wasn't necessarily easy to add - competitors don't naturally generate network administrators, so I had to work on that aspect too. But the result is here, and now competitors can have network administrators!

On top of that, you can now transfer employees from one studio to another! To implement this, I had to rethink how employees are assigned to studios. Otherwise, it would crash City Game Studio because there are so many signals to manage. So, I optimized the employee assignment system, and I think those of you with large companies (with more than 400 employees) will definitely notice the difference.

I also worked a bit on the particles in City Game Studio. When an employee generates design, development, or polishing points, it creates a small particle that moves across the screen. Well, I've optimized the rendering of this particle, which makes the game even smoother!

It's been a productive week, and next week should be even more so.

[h3]What's Next[/h3]
Last week I mentioned redesigning the HR panel, and that's still on the agenda. I haven't had time to dive into this topic, but I plan to do it this week. It should work out fine. I've also taken a day to establish a solid roadmap, allowing me to reveal what's coming in v1.24, which will be dedicated to making City Game Studio's competitors more competitive. In addition, I plan to revise the game's interface a bit, to let you list Games of the Year or rename games created by studio directors. I won't reveal everything - I prefer to keep some surprises that I'll unveil when v1.23 is published!

I had mentioned giving competitors the ability to make consoles, and that got you all excited - proof that this idea is popular. So it will likely be part of v1.24, but again, I won't say more.

To summarize, this week I'll be working on the HR panel, but I'd also like to work on the interface to allow you to list available consoles when creating your own console. I won't have time to work on both features in a single week, but I'll do my best!

Thank you for reading, see you very soon,
In the meantime, take care

Xavier aka Binogure