City Game Studio News

Hi everyone!

Another productive week in the books! First off, thanks for all your feedback – it's been incredibly helpful. Especially regarding that studio director crash!

Let me dive right into it!

[h3]Week Recap[/h3]
As I mentioned in the intro, you guys reported a studio director bug to me. It occurred when you hired a studio director without having unlocked a single game genre. At that point, the studio director had no genre to select from and would crash the game. I fixed this behavior by forcing the studio director to use the company's default genre. And it worked like a charm – no more crashes!

Last week I was talking about the game engine panel... Well, it's done! I completely overhauled the old game engine selection panel and reworked it from the ground up. The old panel used a shader, whereas the new one uses a different technique – well, not that new actually. I've been using it for about 2 years now. It eliminates the need for shaders, bringing better compatibility with your computers. Plus it consumes fewer resources. Win-win!

Anyway, this new game engine selection panel lets you view up to 9 game engines simultaneously. Where previously you could only see 3, I think this will make your life easier! Not to mention that more useful information is displayed. Each engine now shows its total capabilities, but you can still check out the engine feature list by hovering your mouse over them.

[h3]What's Next[/h3]
So that's what I accomplished this past week... And for what's coming up, I have no choice but to prepare and finalize the major update that's dropping next week.

On the agenda: writing announcements, preparing the Steam page, and sending out a massive wave of emails to influencers. I've actually put together a list of YouTubers and streamers who might be interested in City Game Studio. And I plan to reach out to them to ask for coverage. The last time I did this was back in 2021 if I remember correctly.

So yeah, I've got a list of 68 people to contact, and I'm tackling that starting Monday! But if you have suggestions or know people who've never covered City Game Studio and you think they're cool, feel free to drop their YouTube or Twitch handles in the comments and I'll likely add them to the list!

Thanks for your time,
Take care everyone!

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]

[h3]Bugfix[/h3]

• Fix a crash when assigning a studio to a Studio Director

[h3]Interface[/h3]

• Rework the game engine selection panel:
  
  
  • You can see 9 engines at once
    
  • There are now icons to define their types (open source, in-house or proprietary)
    
  • Displays each engines capabilities intead of features list.
    
  • Features list is now visible from tooltips.

[p]Hello everyone!

We're in the home stretch! In less than two weeks, v1.23.0 will be released on Steam's stable branch and you'll all be able to enjoy this new version!
Let me tell you about the latest changes in v1.23.0

[/p][h3]This Week's Recap[/h3][p]I fixed a bug for smaller screens. When playing on a screen with a resolution lower than 1920x1080, some text wasn't visible. So I ran some tests, and now everything looks good. Bug squashed, let's move on to this week's additions!

Last week I reworked the employee panel to better manage them. You've welcomed these changes quite positively. So naturally, I'm happy to add a new little button that brings a feature you've been waiting for. You can now select multiple employees at once and assign them to the studio of your choice. With just a few clicks, you can move all your employees from one studio to another. It's both practical and intuitive!

[/p][h3]What's Next[/h3][p]Adding this feature took time and extensive testing. Everything runs asynchronously to avoid blocking the main thread and thus the player's view. When you move employees, it processes them in batches of 64. Beyond that, it would start blocking the main thread, which is what I want to avoid. Anyway, you get it - this change was welcome, but I'm hoping to squeeze in another small change that's not super important but close to my heart.

It concerns game engines. The game engine selection system is outdated and doesn't mean much. What matters most is an engine's ability to best exploit a console's capabilities. So I'm going to make that visible directly in the game engine panel when selecting them.

That's the plan if I have time to implement it, otherwise it'll be for v1.24!
In the meantime, you can already enjoy the upcoming update by switching to Steam's unstable branch.
Thanks for reading,
Take care
Xavier aka Binogure[/p]

[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]

[p]
[/p][h2]Changelog[/h2][h3]Bugfix[/h3]

• Some labels were not translated
  
• Some labels were not shown correctly (history panel...)

[h3]Staff[/h3]

• Add the ability to move employees to other studio via the staff panel

Hello everyone!

Well, I cracked. Last week I told you I was done adding new features to this update, but I've broken my word.
This new update brings its share of improvements that you're going to love!

[h3]Week Recap[/h3]
I've obviously fixed bugs. Including one that dated back several years. Actually, when you create a game console and make a game for that console while it's still in development, the genre/console association doesn't work correctly. And this will impact your game's rating. It's a specific case, rather rare, because once the console is ready to be published, this bug resolves itself.

Another bug, a bit annoying but not too much. It's about game names. I've increased their limit, going from 32 characters to 96. But I've made other changes too, so a game with a very long name will be automatically truncated on display to avoid graphical bugs.

Otherwise I've been working on the interface. Actually, there was a bug that had been bothering me for years. When you publish a game, when counting points, stars fill up and if you've scored enough points, there's a little animation that surrounds the stars. The problem was that this animation was resource-heavy and didn't always display correctly. So instead, I've redesigned the stars, first to make them prettier to the eye and consistent with the other stars in the game. But I've also redesigned the animation - simpler, more refined but just as effective!

Last week I told you I was going to add a button to transfer employees from the employee management panel. Well, I'm still working on it, but I've gone a bit further. Actually, I've redesigned how you can manipulate your employees, so you can select multiple employees and fire them or detach them from their studio. This is the first step before adding the button that will allow transferring them, which should arrive within the week!

[h3]What's Next[/h3]
The next big update is just a few weeks away... So this time I really need to stop pushing new things into City Game Studio for the coming days. So the only thing that will be added will be employee transfer from the employee panel. I'll only do bug fixes. And to save time, I'm going to start working on v1.24, which will be dedicated to competitors. To make them more competitive, they're going to become more powerful.

That's all from me, thank you for reading!
See you next week, take care in the meantime.

Xavier aka Binogure