GearCity 1.20 Progress Thread!

[Eric.B]

It's been a while since I have updated this thread. Many apologizes. As previously mentioned I have been without internet for several days. While this made feedback and keeping you all informed more difficult it did not hamper my progress in programming.

Earlier today I released the v1.19.2 Hotpatch #1 which included a number of bug fixes. Unfortunately I was unable to keep proper list of what I had fixed. Those of you who submitted bugs to me should have received a reply if I fixed them. Sometime after v1.19.3 and before v1.20 I will be going back over every post made in the last month or so to be sure I have everything ticketed/closed.

Now what about 1.19.3?

1.19.3 is focusing on redesigning Finance system in game. This means a redesign of the banking system, the stock system, and the GUI in the "Financial Room" (Clicking the safe in the office.)

I started with the banking system first, as data from there will be needed in the stock system.
I have removed the "Banked" money system. You will now generate interest from your cash on hand rather than having to "bank" money into short term CDs. This should remove the two redundant systems without any feature loss.

I replaced the "Banked" money system with a Revolving Line of Credit. For those of you who don't know what this is, think Big Business Credit Card. You apply for a credit limit. Then you can withdraw money from it at anytime. Any amount you pay off, you're able to withdraw from again in the future.

I've also (just about, currently testing it with AI) finished a revised loan system. You can now have multiple loans in the game with different payment lengths and interest. Also the amount of loan you are applying for is not fixed anymore. Meaning that you can adjust it for the amount you want and for how long you want the loan to be.

The Credit Score system has been reworked, and is now more visible to the player. It changes depending on how much debt you have, how much debt you issue, and your payment and fiscal history.

The GUI for Banking (Money in safe) has been completely redone. It's a little bit more of the same style as the rest of the game.

Finally the AI is being made to work better with these new systems. Thus giving the AI a little more flexibility in staying alive long enough to cause you trouble.


I've got one or two more things to tidy up in the Loans system. After that I will move to corporate bonds, since it is the most common form of debt for large businesses. Then it's onward to the stock system!


-Removed "Banked Funds" and attached features
-Implemented interest income on "Cash Funds"
-Implemented Revolving Line of Credit
-Revised Loan Offer System
-Allowing Multiple Loans
-Adjustable Loan Request System
-Revised Banking GUI
-Revised Credit Rating system
-AI debt financing improvements
-Fixed bug in world map showing incorrect "Market Status" when flagged with '-2' at war with destroyable factories.

[Eric.B]

The Bond system has been completed. As well as all the GUI for the debt systems (Until the new charting system in v1.21.)

The AI will now create bonds when it needs to finance a factory and can't afford it, as well to avoid bankruptcy and help with day to day operations.

The credit rating system was also slightly adjusted, calculations now favor Debt/Equity ratio and Debt Service ratios.

What does this all mean? Well Auto Manufacturing is a high debt industry. When a company like Ford needs to raise money but does not want to go to banks, it will issue what is called a Bond.

To put it as simply as possible a Bond is an "I Owe You." You would give Ford $1000 to buy a single bond. In return they will pay you a coupon (interest) every year on that $1000. Say the coupon was 10%, this would mean you would get $100 for every year you own the bond! After a certain amount of time (maturity) Ford would pay you back the $1000 (par value) it owes you.


Since these bonds can be staggered, companies tend to find themselves in a lot of debt before they go bankrupt. Using Ford as an example again, they have 4.64 times the debt to equity. And Ford isn't even anywhere near bankruptcy.

What does this have to do with the game? By leveraging the bond markets, both AI and players can generate funds needed to grow their companies and stay in business longer. Of course, there are risks. Once you have to start paying back those bonds you better hope you have the funds or can issue enough bonds to cover your par values. Otherwise it can be a fatal blow quickly to your company!


Currently I'm doing some play testing with the bonds, I hope to be done with balancing and making sure everything is good by tomorrow afternoon. Then it's off to working on the revised stock system.


-Bond System.
-AI uses Bonds System.

[Eric.B]

The stock system GUI has been redone. It now looks prettier (by our standards anyway.)

IPO valuations have been adjusted. There will be more work done to this in the near future.

You can now issue more shares of a company after an IPO. This is known as stock dilution,[en.wikipedia.org] However you must have close to control over the company and it can be very risky if you do it too frequently.

Stockholders will now sue you if you dilute your share price too often. You can either fight it or settle out of court.

You can now manually 2:1 split and 1:2 reverse split. Automatic split price has been raised to $300.

I will start working on the new features/gui for Marque management.

-Revised Stock System GUI
-IPO Valuation adjustment.
-Stock Dilution system
-Stock Dilution Lawsuit Action Memo
-Manual 2:1 and Reserve 1:2 split.
-Increased Automatic 2:1 split price to $300.

[Eric.B]

I've finished working on the Marque management side of the stock system.
One big new changes to the game is every factory, branch, car, and component are now assigned a creator/owner ID. This means when you spin off a marque, sell it, or discontinue it, you can get rid of everything that goes with it.

With that in mind.
I've cleaned up the Create New Marque system.

Spinoffs are now more realistic. When you spin off a company you retain a percentage of ownership of the new company (Equal to the percentage of shares you own of your parent company.) And shareholders of your company gain that percentage in the new spinoff.

Costs values have been adjusted for spinoffs.

You can Sell off a Marque to another company or investment firm.

Sale Prices have been adjusted for selling a marque off.

The discontinue system has been reworked to get rid of all vehicles/components assigned to that marque.

All three of these have the option to include branches and factories of the selected Marque.



You can now assign ownership of Factories/Branches to a marque through the world map (Factory View, Branch View, etc.) This also works on the district level.

We now display the number of factories/branches/vehicles/and components "owned" by your marque as well as their image ratings and founding date.


Finally I have started working on a "Create Wholly Owned Subsidiary" system to switch your marque to an independent company that is ran by the AI but your company 100% owns. This system needs dividends to work properly. So I will be switching to working on the dividend system, then I'll jump back to both subsidiary system I plan on implementing.


-Marque Management System
-Creator/Marque Ownership of properties and designs
-Assign marque ownership of property.
-Display marque's assets
-Display marque's image.
-Improved, more realistic spinoff system.
-Sell marque to competition.
-Adjusted costs and sales prices to spinoff/sell marques.
-Revised discontinue marque system that removes all designs and properties (if you choose to.)

[Eric.B]

Framework for the dividend system has been created and the AI now uses it (sometimes.) Some more work needs to be done in this area, and I'll expand upon it in the coming days when I add the GUI in for you to set dividend rates of your subsidiaries.

You can now turn a marque into a "Wholly Owned Subsidiary." This will turn the marque into an independently ran company that pays 80% of its profits to you. Currently this isn't adjustable, but it will be when I make the dividend GUI.

Revised stock buying and stock selling system. Fixed a number of bugs in these systems.

Stock price now increases the more you buy, and decreases the more you sale. So now if you're trying to buy millions of shares at once, you'll end up paying a premium.


I've got 10 more sections on my add to stock system list. Plus I need to go over stock valuations again, and adjust AI's stock habits.

I may push some of this back to 1.19.4 since its been a while since we had a release to Testing. If that's the case, I expect 1.19.3 to be ready by the first week of May. 1.19.4 is going to be a quick clean up. So by the end of May, start of June hopefully1.20 will be ready. 1.20.1 will be a bug-fix, forum post, missing stuff,pushed back patch. Then 1.20.2 I'll start on the revised reports system.

Back to the code.


-Dividend Payment System.
-AI dividends
-Wholly Owned Subsidiary System
-Revised Stock Buying
-Revised Stock Selling
-Share price moves based on how many shares you are buying/selling

[Eric.B]

I've rewritten the stock valuation/pricing code. I've implemented a P/E calculation to replace our broken EV system. Which should result in better and more realistic stock price movement. On top of this, the new code should be much more quicker than the old one.

I've added the ability to see what shares AI companies are holding and who holds them. Likewise I have implemented a way for you to see who holds shares of your company.

The stock details main view has also been rewritten. Detailed reports will be added with the new report system in v1.21.

The player stock holdings has also been redesigned. You can now adjust dividend rates of subsidiary companies which you own controlling interest in from this screen.

I've also fixed a bug with AI bankruptcy which resulted in them losing all their factories and branches and not having the funds to rebuild them.


And so to answer the 50% of questions I had over the last week. The next version of Testing (1.19.3) will be out the first week of May.

Since the natives are getting restless, I have decided to split the remaining features for the stock system to 1.19.4. Leaving 1.19.3 as the bare minimum stuff I have planned for the stock system. Tickets planned for 1.19.4/1.20 (including all submitted bugs tickets) will be pushed back to 1.20.05 and 1.20.1. This means that v1.20 should be out in Default build by the end of May. However it won't have all the features/bug fixes I wanted to release. I will try to work as many non-save game breaking fixes, such as the AI racing issues, into 1.20 as hot patches (which I have dubbed 1.20.05.) Likewise, save game breaking fixes/features will be pushed into 1.20.1 thus pushing the 1.21 series back an entire minor version.

Hopefully that clarifies thing. And hopefully you guys will enjoy why this release is taking so long!

-Revised Stock Valuation system.
-Implemented P/E stock price valuation system.
-AI holdings
-AI Holders
-Player Holders
-Player Holdings.
-Adjust dividend rates of subsidiaries you control.
-Improved Stock Overview gui
-Fixed AI emerging from bankruptcy bug.

[Eric.B]

I've been cleaning up things getting it ready for the v1.19.3 release.

The stock takeover system has been removed. It will be replaced with up to 4 different takeover possibilities (I may not implement them all.) For 1.19.3 there will be only one option, Acquisition. The Acquisition system works nearly the same as the older takeover system. However you will no adjusting your offer amount, instead a flat offer is shown on the screen and you can approve it. This offer amount will work 100% of the time.

I've also been adjusting valuations, fixing bugs in the Buying and Selling system and have improved the AI when it comes to buying shares, selling shares, and taking over companies.

There is still a little work to be done in the stock valuation system when it comes to later game years. If I get a little time between play testing I'll see what can be done about it. Outside of that, I've just been running simulations and playing the game, fixing a few things here and there that I have broke or are broken with the new finance and stock systems.

We've also added in some new logo artwork and a complete set of grills.

-Stock Acquisition System
-Improves AI Buying/Selling of shares
-Improved AI takeover system
-Grill Artwork

[Eric.B]

Hello again everyone,

1.19.3 is successfully launch!

As always, with 1.19.3 release I did not touch GC's core code as I waited for any reports of major bugs. Luckily 31 hours later, there hasn't been any! So I have moved back to GC core.

In that period of time I started working on the backend to a new, in-house, translation system. Since both Google Translator toolkit and Pootle has failed us, I believe I can write a system that works and doesn't crash (as frequently.) Already the new backend will allow me to keep translations up to date easily. I plan on writing an interface for this system in v1.22 as well replacing the existing pootle system. In the meantime you can find/download the translations here: http://185.52.1.98/assets/translations/

And please contribute to the translations here: http://185.52.1.98/projects/

So what about 1.20? Today I fixed a bug in the stock buying system which didn't charge you money if certain conditions were met.

I also implemented a "Shareholder moral" system. If you're a publicly traded company, you'll want to produce results and keep your shareholders happy. Otherwise bad things can happen.

-Fixed bug in buying purchasing if you already own the stock
-Wrote a new xml/po converter for translation system.
-Shareholder morale.

[Eric.B]

Board of Directors can now demand an increase to your dividend payout rate if shareholder morale becomes low and you do not own 50%+1 of your company. You have the option to reject the demands, but this will make them more unhappy.

If shareholder morale drops below a certain level, the Board of Directors can now fire you from the company. Thus prematurely ending your game. This is an 'Advanced' game option that is only enabled in 'Hard' mode.

-Shareholders demand dividend action memo.
-You can be fired from CEO position.

[Eric.B]

Fixed a number of bugs and added a few new features. Of note, if the Board of Directors is upset with you, they can request you spin off a marque. Not agreeing to will make them more upset with you.

You can now purchase some marques from creditors that are going bankrupt. You have to enable this option in the auto-command window (under the auto-production check boxes.)

Finally you can revive discontinued marques!

I've got roughly 6 more tickets of features to go for 1.20. It's looking like May 20th will be Testing build update and roughly May 27th for default branch update! Announcements and hard dates over the next few days.



-Fixed bug in employee Morale system causing endless wage demands.
-Board of Directors can now requite you spin off a marque.
-Fixed Wholly Owned Subsidiary percentage display.
-AI will now disable dividend lock if no ones owns over 50% of the company.
-Purchase bankrupt Marque from creditors action memo. (Default disabled.)
-Enable/Disable purchase bankrupt marque setting in Auto-Commands.
-Fixed bug not showing Dividend Adjustment button if you own less than 50% of your company.
-Fixed Company Holdings/Holders bugs.
-Fixed bugs causing the company lists to change when you should be on the view showing the companies which you hold.
-Fixed bug not removing a company from holding list after you sell all your shares.
-You can now view and reactivate discontinued marques.

[Eric.B]

One thing that has always annoyed me about 'Grand Strategy' games was when you build up your tiny country into a HUGE empire, you could never change your empire's name. In GearCity that's all changed.

I've added a Restructuring system which allows you to Rename the company, Change the logo, and Move your HQ to an HQ city of a Marque you own. Renaming and relogo'ing a company costs a flat fee. Moving your HQ costs a bit of money depending on the difference in tax rates.

Next I started working on merging systems. Originally I planned on implementing a Merger, a Consolidation, a Tender, and an LBO system. However most 'mergers' that happen are actually Acquisitions. This is where a company buys out another company. This already exists in the game. The other type of 'merger' , where a company is absorbed into another company at no costs rarely happens. I figured this would be a bit exploitable, so it was no implemented.

Tender mergers are where companies bypass the board of directors and buy 50%+1 shares of the company directly from the public. This already happens in the Acquisition system as well. So Tender mergers were nixed.

LBO mergers happen when a company goes into massive debt through bonds system to buy a company. Since the bonds system already exists, if you want to do an LBO, simply raise a lot of money with bonds, then Acquire the company. So LBO was not implemented as well.

That leaves Consolidation as the only type of merger left. A Consolidation is where two companies agree to merge into a brand new company. This actually happens quite frequently in the Auto industry. Off the top of my head, Chrysler merged with Daimler-Benz to create DaimlerChrysler AG, and Hudson Consolidation with Nash-Kelvinator to create AMC...

So what happens in the game? Companies that are not doing too well with agree to be consolidated with your company, and every once in a while, offer to be consolidated into your company. You will receive all the other company's assets, as well as their marque. However your company name will change to a new name. Everyone retains an equal number of shares in the new company. Which means your ownership of the company will be diluted. There is also a time limit for how often you can consolidate companies.

I've also did some micro-optimizations to the GUI loading speed, fixed a bug displaying in-development vehicles in the showroom.

Finally I have started rereading every forum post/email in 2016. The goal is to make sure I have everything ticketed into my track system so I can fix/implement your feedback. I've also started going through my notes and putting them into the ticketing system... Paperwork...

In any event, I'm about half way through this. Afterwards I'll do a play through for the 1.20 release, work on a few little bugs, launch the testing build. Fix a few more little bugs, then 1.20 will be ready for release!


-Rename Company
-Change Company Logo
-Move company HQ
-Consolidate company
-Some GUI loading optimizations
-Fixed showroom showing in-development vehicles bug.

[Eric.B]

For the last few days I have been working on little bugs and features that do not require save game changes. I will continue focusing on these things for the next few weeks. I will be releasing them as a series of Hotfixes (most likely weekly) to 1.20.

I've also finished reading through everything since the start of the year, and have made tickets. I still need to do some organization and ticketing some of my notes, but the roadmap is looking more and more ready for a finalized version of the game by v1.25.

Since 1.20 is not officially out (it's in testing build) I'll refrain from describing plans for 1.21. We'll save that for the 1.21 progress thread in a few days.

In any event, I currently have about 40 of these minor bug tickets tickets. I started with the bigger, harder ones. They should go by quickly after I knock a few out. Here is what I've done so far:
-Stack Overflow fixes for GCC (Linux) (Possible fixes for VC and Clang.)
-AI now develops engines specifically for racing.
-AI now develops cars specifically for racing.
-Fixed company consolidation exploit.

[Eric.B]

Finishing up the release for 1.20 to default build.
I've cleaned up a few bugs and minor features. I will continue doing this for the next couple of weeks. I've also included a few translation files. Not sure if these work or not, I tested each for a very basic game (start game, design 3 components, design a vehicle, build a branch, produce and sell vehicle.) If they didn't work and I couldn't do a basic thing to get them working they were not included in the 1.20 update. You can still download them from the website however.

This marks the end of 1.20. Please follow and subscribe to the 1.21 thread here: http://www.ventdev.com/forums/showthread...48#pid7648 for further updates to the game.

-Adjustments to stock pricing
-Adjustments to market cap
-Adjustments to acquisition pricing
-Tweaked historical effect on stock markets (may need a little more adjusting with the new system.)
-Fixed 2 bugs that can cause a stock to show up as $0 with only 1 share.
-Renamed "New Model Year" to "New Generation" to avoid confusion.
-Auto production will not longer build in factories that are at war.
-Auto production now randomly spreads out production to at most 3 factories per adjustment. (Thus reducing shipping costs for global companies.)
-Reworked design pace slider's effect and costs. Thus fixing a number of bugs. And nurfing slow pace.
-Brought design pace into line with more realistic engineering times.
-Fixed Racing Competition always showing 2 years bug.
-Fixed bug in Mega Menu that changes cities when jumping between marketing to branch.
-Fixed bug in Mega Menu that did not automatically set a branch's shipping distance when selecting unsold vehicle models.
-Fixed bug in GearCity XMLPO converter that causes translations po to lose their translations.
-Updated all translation to 1.20
-Basic testing of some translation and included them in the 1.20 update.