City Game Studio News

[p][/p]

[p]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.[/p]

[h2]Changelog - rc4[/h2]
[h3]Balancing[/h3]

• The number of generated contracts now depends on the difficulty
  
• Contract generation is capped per month relative to the total number of contracts to generate. It may take up to 3 months to generate the full batch

[h3]Mod[/h3]

• Added a new attribute to the difficulty mod to balance the number of contracts to generate

[h3]Studio Director[/h3]

• When porting a game, the platform with the highest market share is now selected by default (minimum threshold)

[h3]Bugfix[/h3]

• Fixed firing a studio director not canceling their active project (game, update, or game port)
  
• Fixed missing tooltip on the Start button when no studio was available for a contract
  
• Fixed the Start button not refreshing correctly after unlocking a platform for a contract

[h2]Previous changes[/h2]
[h3]Feature[/h3]

• Added a new server item to furnish your studio

[h3]Interface[/h3]

• Added the hype value of announced games directly to the in-dev game panel
  
• Improved the server panel readability

[h3]Publishing Offers[/h3]

• Reworked publishing offers to make them more interesting: theme/genre and genre/platform matches now give a proper boost
  
• Capped simultaneous publishing offers at 24, as generating more is resource intensive
  
• Fixed the platform panel not updating when viewing a publishing offer
  
• Fixed currency formatting in publishing offers

[h3]Localization[/h3]

• Months are now translated
  
• Scientific units are now translated

[h3]Cheat Codes[/h3]

• Added the ability to set the custom platform score
  
• Added a 'man' command that lists all existing cheat codes
  
• Added a cheat code to instantly complete a DLC or an update

[h3]Balancing[/h3]

• Set the maximum number of units sold for custom platforms to 1.25 billion
  
• Servers from 2007 are no longer available after 2020

[h3]Bugfix[/h3]

• Fixed a bug in the studio view preventing the computer upgrade panel from showing on the desk itself
  
• Fixed a bug when manually upgrading a server
  
• Fixed a save game corruption caused by a 6th difficulty slot becoming selectable after starting and canceling a new game. Selecting it worked once, but the dynamic difficulty data was never loaded, corrupting the save on subsequent loads

[h3]Hack Mini-game[/h3]

• Added a button to pay $1,000,000 to skip the hacking mini-game permanently

[h3]Misc[/h3]

• Reworked the number formatting algorithm to be more efficient and to support localization

Hey everyone!

Has it really been a week already?! Time flies at an incredible pace! This update is a tiny bit meatier than the last one, so let me get into it.

[h3]This Week's Recap[/h3]
I focused more on your feedback than on what was lined up on the roadmap. So I went off-script and crammed in more than planned, but that's pretty normal at this point.

First up: an improvement to the in-game DDoS attack. You now have the option to pay $1,000,000 to never have to do that mini-game again. I figured that's the right price, not too cheap, not too steep. On lower difficulties, $1,000,000 comes fairly easily, but it's more of a real challenge on harder ones. I can always adjust it down the line if needed.

You also gave me feedback about publishing offers. Basically, when you want to work with a publisher, the deals they propose just aren't appealing. So I reworked the algorithm that generates those offers to make sure they now come at you with genuinely attractive combos that actually make you want to work with them. And since I was already in there, I threw in a few optimizations to stop the game from generating 100 publishing offers for no reason, because producing that many is actually expensive in terms of computation. From now on, there's a maximum of 24 active offers at any given time. That's a maximum, so there can be fewer. However, if you have 30 competitors, you'll get 30 publishing offers, at least one per competitor, with a cap of 24. The first condition wins out over the second.

On top of that, I made an adjustment to translations. Month names were always displayed in English, and I took the time to fix that so they properly adapt to each language. Same goes for number formatting. It's now translated and even adjusted for Chinese players. All of this also let me squeeze out a bit more performance from the way numbers are displayed in-game.

[h3]What's Coming Next[/h3]
I'd like to revisit two small things with studio directors. I want them to produce quality games even in CEO mode. That's going to take a fair amount of work, but I think it's worth it so you can switch into macro-management mode more quickly.

I'd also like the game to generate an annual report, delivered to you by email. Those are the next two things I want to spend time on. But as always, I read everything you write and I can always change course based on your suggestions. So go ahead and post your comments!

Alright, that's it for me. Quick shoutout for anyone looking to follow me on social media: I'm on Bluesky ( https://bsky.app/profile/binogure-studio.com ) and I post quite a bit of stuff directly related to game dev.

Okay, now it's really over, see you next week.
Take care of yourselves in the meantime,
Xavier aka Binogure

[p][/p]

[p]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.[/p]

[h2]Changelog - rc3[/h2]
[h3]Hack Mini-game[/h3]

• Added a button to pay $1,000,000 to skip the hacking mini-game permanently

[h3]Misc[/h3]

• Reworked the number formatting algorithm to be more efficient and to support localization

[h3]Publishing Offers[/h3]

• Reworked publishing offers to make them more interesting: theme/genre and genre/platform matches now give a proper boost
  
• Capped simultaneous publishing offers at 24, as generating more is resource intensive
  
• Fixed the platform panel not updating when viewing a publishing offer
  
• Fixed currency formatting in publishing offers

[h3]Localization[/h3]

• Months are now translated
  
• Scientific units are now translated

[h2]Previous changes[/h2]
[h3]Feature[/h3]

• Added a new server item to furnish your studio

[h3]Balancing[/h3]

• Set the maximum number of units sold for custom platforms to 1.25 billion
  
• Servers from 2007 are no longer available after 2020

[h3]Interface[/h3]

• Added the hype value of announced games directly to the in-dev game panel
  
• Improved the server panel readability

[h3]Cheat Codes[/h3]

• Added the ability to set the custom platform score
  
• Added a 'man' command that lists all existing cheat codes
  
• Added a cheat code to instantly complete a DLC or an update

[h3]Bugfix[/h3]

• Fixed a bug in the studio view preventing the computer upgrade panel from showing on the desk itself
  
• Fixed a save game corruption caused by a 6th difficulty slot becoming selectable after starting and canceling a new game. Selecting it worked once, but the dynamic difficulty data was never loaded, corrupting the save on subsequent loads

Hey everyone!

v1.26.2 has been out for a few weeks now, and I received quite a few reports about issues on the Steam Deck.
Since I own one myself, I ran some tests and sure enough, there was a small bug in how the game handles resolutions, one that affects the Steam Deck but also other small screens.

So if you have been seeing your mouse cursor offset vertically from where it should actually be on screen, this patch is for you. The bug was most visible on the Steam Deck since it runs at 1280x800, which is not a very large resolution, and part of the algorithm that handles resolution scaling only kicks in when the screen resolution is below 1600x900. Inside that code path, there was a bug causing the game to miscalculate your resolution. Instead of 1280x800, the game was treating the cursor as if it were running at 800x800, while the display was correctly set to 1280x720 (16:9 or 21:9 depending on your screen). That mismatch is what caused the cursor to drift.

And while I was in there, I also backported a fix from the upcoming update, which involved studios, or more specifically, the desks inside them. A button that was supposed to appear simply was not showing up. It came down to a naming mistake, pretty silly in hindsight, and easy to fix.

A small update for large screens, but an important one for smaller resolutions.
I am sorry it took this long to catch and fix.

I am already working on v1.27 and I cannot wait to show you more. As for City Game Studio 2, I am still in the design phase, and the further City Game Studio 1 goes, the more complete the sequel will be. So do not wait on the 2, because the 1 is going to keep moving forward until a Steam page exists for the sequel. And that is not happening in 2026, I can promise you that. I am not going to rush it or cut corners, I am taking the time to make it something exceptional.

Thank you for reading!
See you very soon for another blog post.
And if you want to stay in the loop on my games, you can sign up for my newsletter over at binogure-studio.com.

Take care of yourselves,
Xavier aka Binogure

Hello everyone!

v1.27.0 is back with some nice changes this time around, because this update is adding new content to extend the game's lifespan beyond 2020, and this patch is the first building block of that.

[h2]This Week's Recap[/h2]
I spent a good chunk of time on servers. There were a few lingering bugs, including one related to updating them. When you used the interface to update all servers at once, everything worked perfectly. But if you tried to update them one by one, the server wouldn't fully refresh visually. You had to switch to a different studio and come back to the previous one just to see the updated server. It was a purely visual issue, but still annoying.

While I was at it, I added a brand new server that becomes available from 2020 onwards, hosting nearly 2x more players than the previous one. And while I was in there, I also made the 2000-2010 era servers unavailable past 2020. Because yes, they're obsolete, you won't be able to install them once you've crossed that threshold.

That covers the server side of things, but there was also a small bug with the 6th difficulty level. It turned out you had to launch a new game and then return to the main menu for it to appear properly. And if you had the misfortune of jumping straight into a game on that difficulty without doing that first, you were in for some serious trouble once in-game. Anyway, that's all fixed now, to everyone's relief!

[h2]What's Next[/h2]
As I mentioned at the top, the goal is to extend the game's lifespan post-2020. So I'll be adding new in-game items, like new computers for your employees. Plus new events to liven up your experience.

But I've also got work to do on other parts of the game. Specifically the studio director, who doesn't perform well in the 1980s on CEO difficulty. I need to look into that, and also add a few more nice touches like annual revenue reports.

Anyway, that's a lot of work, so I'm heading back to it, and thank you as always for your ideas and suggestions!
See you next week, take care of yourselves in the meantime,
Xavier aka Binogure