City Game Studio News

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]Interface[/h3]

• Rework the custom platforms' planel interface to send devkits and sign exclusivity deals:
  
  
  • You can use a single button to max out the number of devkits you want to send.
    
  • You can use a single button to max out the exclusive contract duration.
    
  • Better user experience

[h3]Release panel[/h3]

• When a player sets a price that's too high for their custom platform (console), the game forcibly opens the release console panel - No more.
  
• When a player sets a price that's too low for their custom platform (console), the game forcibly opens the release console panel - No more.

[h3]Mod support[/h3]

• When creating a new mod, if the mod might make City Game Studio imba, add a warning to the output log. You can still upload your mod tho.
  
• When creating a new mod, if the mod is going to make City Game Studio imba, add a red warning to the output log. You can still upload your mod tho.

Hello everyone!

What a huge week that's ending too quickly, perhaps too quickly? I would have liked to make more progress, but I had to take a day off to handle some personal matters, so I still have plenty on my plate!

[h3]Weekly Recap[/h3]
The mod management system has been overhauled, at last! Now when you load a mod and start a new game, the game will automatically rate the mod. This way, you'll know if a mod is excellent and enhances your gaming experience. Or if a mod is good but might affect your gameplay experience. And the third rating, the lowest one, will warn you that this mod will likely harm your gaming experience.

On top of that, there are tooltips that will tell you what the mod changes. For instance, if it simply renames things - in which case, your gaming experience will only be better. Or if it adds new features, which may or may not improve your gameplay.

Basically, the algorithm is based on standard values. The more a mod deviates from these values, the lower its rating will be. So a mod that hands out tons of fans, for example, will get a poor rating, while a mod that adds elements to game engines will receive a good rating.

And for mod creators, it's really great because once you've created your mod and the game has validated it, it automatically gives you the mod's score. Super convenient, but there are still a few things missing on this front.

[h3]What's Next[/h3]
So I've made great progress on mod management, but as I was saying, for mod creators there's still something important missing. When you create a mod, it would be nice to know why it got a poor rating. At the moment, the game doesn't tell you this, but I plan to add it in the next RC. This way, you'll immediately know how to improve your mod to make it flawless. And in the long run, everyone will be happy.

Well... I didn't have time to finish this part about mods, so I couldn't work on human resources or anything else for that matter. But I'm planning to tackle this part during the coming week. And if I can give you more details, I also plan to revamp the automatic devkit sending feature, so you won't need to send them manually anymore, but with just one button click. Another minor but important change is the right panel that stays on the panel you've opened by default unless there's important information to show you.

Alright, I've still got work to do. I wish you all a fantastic, sunny weekend.
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.

[h3]Steam handler[/h3]

• Rework the game to work even if Steam is not detected. But mods won't get loaded

[h3]Mod support[/h3]

• Add a mod analyzer that adds meta data to the mod data to know what a mods change:
  
  
  • Platforms, custom platforms, digital store, competitor, competitor's games...
    
  • Add a seal of quality to all existing mods

Hello everyone!

Things are progressing well, and I'm happy to tell you that I've fixed the save file issue. Or at least isolated the problem.
This means I couldn't make progress on mods, but I'll tell you all about it right away!

[h3]Weekly Recap[/h3]
As I mentioned at the beginning, I've improved the save file management. First, I optimized the save file size. Small save files have gone from 3 MB to less than 1 MB. Meanwhile, the larger ones, I'm talking about those over 15 MB, now take up less than 5 MB. And that's really great. By optimizing the save file size, I've also optimized the loading speed, but all of this comes at a cost. Creating a new save file takes more time. But since save creation is handled in threads, this is completely transparent to you.

Loading a game isn't much faster, but listing your save files is. In fact, I rewrote the save loading algorithm to make it more stable and faster. The old save management algorithm dated back to early access. With this new algorithm, you'll no longer be stuck in-game when you save. All of this has been fixed. And as a bonus, an error report is sent if a save cannot be completed. This will allow me to find the error and fix it. This error report includes the error code, file size, and the name of the file that caused the problem.

I've also reworked some of the game's icons to make it more modern. I hope you'll like these small changes.

[h3]What's Next[/h3]
Last week I told you that I needed to work on the mod rating system. Since I spent the week on save file management, I couldn't make progress on that topic. So, this week I'll spend my time improving mod support to give them ratings.

But unlike last week, I'll focus on this task, and only this task. If I manage to finish early, I'll work on the next item, which is reworking the human resources interface. But that's only if I have time to do it.

That's all from me, thank you for reading.
Have 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.

[h3]Interface[/h3]

• Rework some icons from the game

[h3]Savegame[/h3]

• Rework the savegame algorithm:
  
  
  • Always save the game when asked no matter what happen
    
  • When trying to close the game while saving, it's going to close the game anyway once it's been saved
    
  • Add double check when writing a new savegame
    
  • Add compression for some models (laargest ones)
• Rework the load algorithm, it's faster than it used to
  
• Rework the game load, the first part wasn't using threads, it does now