GearCity 1.18.4 Progress Thread

[Tridon]

I don't have a good overview over the bugs that are registered or what you plan to fix, so I'm wondering if anyone reported a bug that crashes the game when comparing one of your own models in the magazine on the testing branch, and if so, if that is one of the bugs you're fixing

I can create a proper post in the bug forum if this is unknown for you, or just edit this post with relevant information if you wish.

[Eric.B]

I don't have a good overview over the bugs that are registered or what you plan to fix, so I'm wondering if anyone reported a bug that crashes the game when comparing one of your own models in the magazine on the testing branch, and if so, if that is one of the bugs you're fixing

I can create a proper post in the bug forum if this is unknown for you, or just edit this post with relevant information if you wish.

First time someone's mentioned it. A little more details would probably help me finding it.

[Eric.B]

-Fixed Broken RnD Team Locks
-RnD Team Manual Budget Input (textbox) now adjusts budget sliders.

Built and released hotpatch #3. About 25 more tickets to go!

[Eric.B]

This morning I:
-Fixed division by zero crash in magazine.
-Fixed Instant vehicle design bug
-Fixed Research Team Moral Decrease when not funded bug
-Fixed Gearbox addons not appearing until year after Memo is sent bug.
-Put a limit on component modification (10 Major Mods max)
-Decreased component modification costs.
-Removed HR Admin Employee Count slider/textbox. (Admin Employees are unchangeable now)
-Fixed Racing Report Headline bug
-View Components 'Used In' table now scrollable.
-Research Team Moral now increases when over paying employees.

[Eric.B]

Compiling the next hotpatch right now. Should be ready to go in the next 5 hours!
Here's what I've done since the last post on here:
-Fixed Unicode File Delete in windows (Currently working on issues in the Linux Build)
-Reduced Skill Requirements for a number of technologies. Also increase a few others.
-Increased the rate of Skill Requirement decay significantly. You should be able to get common tech much more reasonably.
-I head renamed to OHV, since it's a much more common name. Starting date lowered, however skill requirement increase should have it coming out around historical time frame (1930s)
-Show how many production lines you are/have allocated above production line slider.
-End Production from Mega Menu (This overrides contracting checks, so be careful!)
-Memo now fires when design skills requirements and year requirements are met for new technologies.
-Contracts now show up in "Used In" table for Engines and Vehicles in the View Window.
-Fixed Contract Penalty Bug.
-Fixed Duplicate Contracts listed in sales book
-Fixed Incorrect Months Remaining dates in Contract Sales book.
-Fixed bug in amount of needed contract units when less than the normal monthly amount is needed.
-Added Memo for when contracts are finished.
-Fixed bug in New Trim Marque Dropdown list. Show now show all your marques.
-Added some cautionary division by zero checks and initialization of variables. (May cause some bugs, may fix some bugs. We'll see!)
-Fixed Licensed out memo bug that did not show the licensed out price.
-Awards are now given for all vehicles companies who have branches in a region. In the future I will limit it to only vehicles sold in said region.


I believe that covers it. It takes a few hours to compile. In the mean time I will work on some Unicode file issues on Linux. Hopefully I can get that cleared up before the update tonight.

After that I'll take care of a few more minor bugs, then switch over to some optimization stuff over the weekend. With the hopes of another hotfix Tuesday!

[Tridon]

Sitting here with my morning coffee and having a good laugh after the last patch My ridiculous cars won 44 GCM awards in 1909! The early years are decidedly the best. And the magazine comparison works with my cars as well. No wonder I keep winning with a weight to power ratio of 517000 kg/hp

Also, the number showing how many production lines are currently chosen for a model at a factory makes it much more comfortable to tweak stuff Nice work.

[Eric.B]

I've fixed two minor bugs, both having to do with rapid image values declines. Other than that I've spent the last two day attempting to optimize the game's performance. I have made some progress, although I've redone my work in various ways 3 different times. The first attempt got us around an 8% decrease in turn times (between 1900-1910, full AI) however the data it was producing was not within my acceptable margins and would of required a few days to get the formulas producing close to previous results. If it was even possible.

Second attempt got us around 0.3% performance gains. It was pretty easy to do however.

The third attempt, what' i'm on now, is about 1-2% performance increase without many errors in the data. I might be able to squeeze out a 1-2% more by the time I'm done tomorrow. (May also have RnD sliders slightly less laggy, but we'll see.)

I also built a better internal profiler. So the next time I get around to optimizations I'll be able to get results of my changes much better.

So it looks like a Tuesday hotfix won't happen. I'm going to spend probably a half day finishing up optimizations tomorrow then get back to fixing bugs. Toward the end of the week I will be limited to a Mac Mini, so I will work on the Mac port, then return back to the main work computer to hopefully knock out the last remaining bugs for 1.18.2 before next weekend!

[Eric.B]

As mentioned previously I spent the 22-25th mostly on a Mac-Mini attached to a really blurry 720p TV.(It was that or no work on GC at all...) While not extremely productive I did manage to get the Mac Port to a playable state with some functions disabled! Sadly one of the functions is the mouse over glow stuff, which is a bit important. So I still have to fix that, but we're making progress.

I've stopped both the port and performance optimizations for now. I'll probably poke my head into both sometime over next month when I'm not on my main work machine.

In the meantime I have ticketed all the new issues submitted over the last week or so. I've started working on the last ~15 bug tickets for 1.18.2 release. Expect it sometime in the next 7-10 days! (Hopefully!)

-Fixed bug losing reserves in some conditions by ending vehicle.

[Eric.B]

Implemented some huge nurfs this morning.
-Vehicle Quality is now twice as important when calculating buyer's rating.
-Vehicle Quality decreases the margin penalty when you try to charge extremely high margins on a vehicle.
-Vehicle Quality now directly effects super high end vehicle sales numbers.
-Tweaked vehicle's sales price effect and increased buyer's rating importance over sale price for higher "wealth" type vehicles such as luxury or supercars. (Before it was BuyerRating^2 / price, now it is BuyerRating * WealthIndex + BuyerRating/price so on high end vehicles price is 1/8th as important as ratings, where as low end vehicles price is as important as Buyer Rating.)
-Top Speed now directly effects buying population. If you're selling 0mph/0kph vehicles you will get 0 sales!
-Lowered the expected Top Speed for buying population.
-Lowered sales price/unit costs effect on year end awards to a maximum of 20%.

[Eric.B]

Since last status report:
-Fixed "Fire" effect on union strikes
-Made firing during strikes lower all department moral by 20%
-Lost contracts now notify you who won and how much better their bid was quantified by a percentage.
-Top speed added to view vehicle in RnD, Vehicle Image given stars, rearranged a few listings.
-Merged memos that often repeat into one memo. Removed Profits/Loss/Interest memos.
-Fixed death year bug in engine cylinders, fuel types, induction systems, and value types.
-Fixed bug in Fiscal-Stock Report that broke the reports system if you did not own any stocks.