City Game Studio News

Hi everyone!

Well, are you waiting for something? Just kidding, I've been working hard this week too with adding details to the game like wearing glasses. So yeah, that's pretty useless, but it's done. Maybe later I'll add the option to wear a mustache or to customize your character more. I'm not sure that's super important for a management game like City Game Studio, so you tell me.

Otherwise, this week, I fixed a major bug that made City Game Studio crash. Also, it's the stabilization of the unstable version, I corrected about ten minor bugs this week. In other words, I'm giving you an update with little details if you know what I mean.

Preparations for the anniversary update of City Game Studio, which is going to celebrate its 4 years already, are going very well, we're in time. Come on Tuesday, there will be a lot of cake!

See you on Tuesday,
Have a good weekend to all
Xavier aka Binogure

Hello all, I hope you are all well,

I hope you are in good shape because this week I have been busy.

On menu:

• - Game optimization
  
• Improvement of the popup
  
• Redesign of the achievements

[h2]Where do I start?[/h2]
Game optimization is mainly about the competitors. When loading mods in City Game Studio, very often they add many competitors.
City Game Studio had a hard time to manage several hundreds of competitors. So I worked on it, I had to simplify a small part of the interface, however the game remains fluid even with many competitors.

As for the pop-ups, it's the continuation of last week's work. I've redesigned the icons so that they look better on big screens and also on smaller screens. The background of the pop-up is darker, to better read the text. Also, the pop-ups themselves are more attractive, with nice curved shapes!

So let's talk about the biggest part of the job. I struggled to find the right idea of how to manage the achievements in the game. I was worried about adding too many pop-ups, and drowning you in a lot of useless information. And in fact, the way I set up things works pretty well, it's actually really nice as it makes you feel like completing all the achievements. And I have plans to add even more achievements.
Let me give you a sneak peek. You get an achievement if you can make a AAA game in the 90s or if you can make a console before the 90s.

Well, that's for next week.
Oh boy, it's already the 10th, the next update is coming soon!

I'm going back to my keyboard, coding stuff!
Have a great weekend everyone!
Xavier aka Binogure

Hello folks,

As usual on saturday, I'm going to tell you about the latest developments of City Game Studio!
Like last week I made a lot of work on optimization but also on the interface.

[h2]Adjustment of the price of the game in some currencies[/h2]
No worries, the price of City Game Studio remains the same, 15,99€, or 15,99$. The only thing that will change is the price in some other currencies, such as the Turkish Lira, or the Argentine Peso. Steam has implemented a new tool that automatically adjusts game prices for different currencies. Previously I was doing this poorly, now Steam will take care of it.

[h2]Optimization[/h2]
Shaders management in City Game Studio has been harmonized. It helps me to better manage the shaders and their options, but also to manage how they are loaded.
On top of that there are new optimizations when it comes to load the game resources. In short, City Game Studio should start faster and feel smoother in general.

[h2]Interface details[/h2]
Much work has been done this week on the interfaces of City Game Studio. For example, all the panels of the games in development have been overhauled. It's more pleasant to the eye and better optimized. I figured out a trick to avoid using shaders while having the same result, kudos!

As you may know City Game Studio is using Godot Engine v2.1, a rather old version, but it's open source. Thus I can add features and fix bugs that may be present in the engine. Why I'm talking about this, well it concerns directly the interface of City Game Studio. All popup icons are slightly blurred on high resolution screens. I added a scaling system for the popup icons to be able to use high resolution images. As a result, the image is much sharper.

I'm not showing you anything, I'm just talking, it's all voluntary. When the update arrives, on February 21, 2023, I want the announcement to blow your mind. And for that, I need some new images of the game. Obviously if you have already tried City Game Studio on the unstable branch of Steam, you know already how the update should look like, but for the 90% of you who stay on the stable branch, you should like it a lot!

Well, we are already at the end of this post, I hope you liked it!
While waiting for the next update, don't hesitate to play again!

On that note, have a good weekend!
Xavier aka Binogure

Hello folks,

I do hope you like these posts! I intend to write one post a week to update you on the progress of City Game Studio!

Last week I worked hard to optimize City Game Studio, fix bugs and enhance the interface!

[h2]Optimization[/h2]
Buying, selling or even changing studios used to take up to a few seconds, and sometimes even crash the game. I took a look at the studio loading algorithm, and it should take one or two seconds to load the biggest studios, and almost instantaneously to load medium and small studios. When switching between two studios, no studio is displayed, which makes it go faster.

Additional optimizations include the use of ResourcePreloader. A node that I didn't know existed until recently and that is incredibly useful because it allows you to keep previously loaded game scenes rather than loading them into memory each time you use them. Very practical, mainly because it improves the stability of the game on OSX.

[h2]Interface[/h2]
Again there are some changes. New tooltips have appeared. With much more meaningful statements. In fact the interface has been revised to help new players to better understand City Game Studio.

In addition to that, there is a slight redesign of the themes, well, how they are displayed. Instead of showing the first and the last theme, the panel will show the 3 most popular themes.

In fact there are many other changes, and you can already taste them if you switch to the unstable branch of Steam. In the meantime I haven't implemented everything yet, I still have to make a panel for the annual results of your company.

What is sure, is that I am still going to add a lot of features, and still rework a lot of things!

For those who are wondering, the 1.11.0 update should be released on the anniversary of City Game Studio, that is February 21, 2023. It will be 4 years since the game is available on Steam.

On that note, have a good weekend
Xavier aka Binogure

Hello everyone!

Once in a while, I like doing a post to share the content of the upcoming version.
Well, I've been working on it for about 6 months already, let's imagine how big the update will be! Think even bigger!

[h2]What's already available on Steam's unstable branch[/h2]
[h3]In-game events[/h3]
At first, the update was supposed to contain only in-game events. Which is a rather large chunk. The first event is about theme trends. Suppose you publish a game, no matter how good it is, you get a chance to impact theme trends. Of course it impacts the sales, it doubles them for the first month, and afterwards, it's degressive.

Clearly, you might want to tap into this and release another game with the same theme. Nevertheless, you will have to use a new genre to avoid the malus that prevents you from publishing the same genre/theme combination too often or you will get a poor rating. This means working on several different genres.

Now tell me if some fans fall in love with your game. Well, they will immediately ask you to update it. You are going to get a notification that your game is popular. Depending on the difficulty you will have a certain amount of time to publish any update. For easy, it's 12 months, while for very hard, it's 5 months.

I considered adding events saying a game has a bug and you have to fix it as soon as possible. However, it's an event which can negatively impact the game experience, therefore I chose to do something else instead. For example, let's say you make a great game, we're talking about a game that has a score above 90, and you don't make a sequel, well, you're going to get a letter from your fans telling you how much they love your game and how they're desperate for a sequel! If you decide to make a sequel, and you publish it, the reaction of the fans will be based on the quality of the sequel. I won't tell you more.

[h3]Interface[/h3]
A gamer called Gonzi, a City Game Studio enthusiast, is helping me to revamp some of the game's interface. He is doing a wonderful job, I believe you are going to love it. The main interface has been revamped, and enhanced.

On top of that, notifications management has been reworked. When hovering the mouse over a notification you can view its content, it is no longer necessary to open all notifications to understand what it is about. Also, consoles' news are grouped together whenever possible.

[h2]What is not yet implemented[/h2]
I intend to add a success mechanism to the game. I'm doing this for folks who play offline or who play on platforms other than Steam.

In addition to all that, I want to rework the interface a bit to add an annual report to give a short summary of what happened in the past year.

There are other additions that I won't list here, as I'm keeping several surprises for you!
Anyway, I think it's time for me to go back to the City Game Studio and do some coding!

Have a nice weekend
Xavier aka Binogure

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)