GearCity 1.17 Progress

[Eric.B]

Finished up the Action memo code and the Recall/Class Action lawsuit action memos tonight. Now it's bedtime!

-Action Memo System
-Recall Action
-Defective Vehicles Class Action Lawsuit

[Eric.B]

So Sunday and Monday I finished the Roadmap will all user suggestions and bugs submitted to us via the forums, you can check it out here: http://www.ventdev.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=2449

This last night and this morning I made an action memo for when your company is about to go bankrupt. This serves two purposes, 1) It slaps you in the face telling you you're about to go bankrupt, and 2) Give you a quick way to cut non-core funding and stop all production lines... So hopefully no more complaints from people who didn't know they were about to go bankrupt!

I should hopefully have an action memo for wars done by tonight, or worst case tomorrow morning.

1.17 is almost done. Will probably finish it around the 26th, but I'm going to do some heavy play testing so it probably won't go public till the 30th or so.

-Going Bankrupt Action Memo

[Eric.B]

Tonight I made an At War Notification Action Memo. Since we do get a lot of "why did my sales disappear" comments between 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, this notification will hopefully jump out in front of new players and warn them. Since they don't seem to read the newspaper or their own memos!

Anyhoo it gives you a few automatic options to help save you time and money.

I also disabled the old recall event, which rarely fired. It has been replaced by the Recall Action Memo...

I also made the Action Memos cycling. Which means you can have more than 1 memo per turn.

-At War Action Memo.
-Disabled old recall system
-Multiple Actions per turn.


I've got only 3 tickets left for this build. Which hopefully means I'll be done around the 25th or 26th. We're looking at a 30th or 31st release, as I want to play test the game a bit before sending it off to you guys. We'll be moving back to my Open Beta style releases where each patch is a major version instead of minor versions. Thus you'll be using 1.17 (and any hot-patches) for the next 6 or so weeks. I'll make an announcement later today or the 26th.

[Eric.B]

It's been a few days since I last updated. This doesn't mean I haven't been working, but progress did slow a little bit the last few days.

Currently I'm working on a system where you have to assign a contracted engine to a factory. By doing this it will take away one production line from said factory.

This ended up being a bit more complicated than it sounds. As the system for manufacturing was designed for vehicles and not components. Some changes to how the game handles manufacturing had to be done to accommodate this mechanic.

As of right now, the system is pretty much complete, you can add contracted engines to a factory that have not been added. A pop up displays in the office when a contracted engine is not assigned to a factory, and you can view/remove the engines from the production line listing in both the world map and the mega menu.

The next step in this system is a way to add engines to factories in the world map and the mega menu without having to use the office popup. The core code for this is written but the GUI is not.



So with the over complication that this ticket turned out to be, along with a few distractions this holiday week, i'm going to miss the 30th or 31st deadline for a 1.17 release. My new target is the 3rd or 4th of January. Sorry.

[Eric.B]

Finished the Engine Contract Factory assignment code. I will update/change the UI for it at a later date. I've push inherited marketing back to 1.19. Tonight I'll finish a special treat, and tomorrow I should be able to knock out all the new vehicles. That'll give me 3 days of testing before release.

-Engine Contract Factory Assignment.

[Eric.B]

Happy New Years to you all,

I just finished adding 22 new vehicle models to the game.

Last night I also finished the surprise feature of 1.17:
Hardware Accelerated Mouse (Sometime referred to as OS mouse)
I didn't want to announce it before I was sure it would work. It is considered experimental, you have to enable it in the settings menu.

I'm not sure if it will cure some of your ills with mouse lag and what have you, since I don't have the issue on any of my machines, there is no way for me to test it. But at least people can stop complaining about it. (It's also why 1.17 was delayed! I got sick of people complaining so I said screw it around Christmas and made it work!)


Anyhoo, I'll spend the next 2-3 days play testing and working out minor bugs. Normally I would just dump this to you all, but I don't think we're going to have any minor versions between 1.17 and 1.18. (Maybe a hotfix or two if there are any major bugs.) So that means I actually have to do some serious testing before 1.17 is released.


-22 New car models
-Hardware Accelerated Mouse

[Eric.B]

Fixed a bug in the Linux game loading (I have no idea why it stopped working...)

-Game Loading Bug (LINUX)

[Eric.B]

-Fixed Incorrect units (inches instead of mm) in the Magazine.
-Reduced Cargo Requirements for contracts more.

[Eric.B]

I've played about 15 hours worth of GC 1.17 the last two days. Cleaned up around 20 or so nit-pit bugs. Didn't even bother keeping a list, but they're mostly Mega Menu or new features related.

Also made note of about 4 or 5 things I would like to look into, and have added them to the road map.

Anyhoo I have one more nit-pit bug to do, then I start optimized compiles, upload to steam, play test in Linux and Windows to make sure everything is fine, and then we'll be ready for release.

[Eric.B]

Some noticeable changes I did today:
-Mega Menu arrows now cycle through factory or branches depending on which you have open.
-Fixed Linux mouse bug when running in window mode at the same resolution as your desktop.


I've tested everything out, we're all good to go. I'll set the build live as soon as I wake up tomorrow.