GearCity 1.18 Progress

[shadow]

Yeah wss definatley tiredness !
just played 2 hours and must appologise for earlier comments.
if any thing the new release has made a great game even greater !

[Eric.B]

Hotfixed #2 has been released, Here is what we've included:

-Fixed Wording for "Select Engine" in gearbox prototyping.
-Fixed missing combo box data in advance designer when switching from assisted.
-Adjusted player and AI component selection code.
-Slightly decreased vehicle unit costs
-Lowered starting design skills
-Fixed Trim/NewModel year timing bug
-Adjusted fuel code to account for number of gears more.
-Added an optimization warning message if you can not improve your fuel consumption anymore with designed engine.
-Fixed Label resetting bug for prototyping.
-Fixed possible crash in prototyping.

[Eric.B]

Been a while since I last updated progress.

I took the 5-8th off due to various reasons. But have been back full throttle (pun intended) since the 9th. I'll probably have to take another weekend off sometime this month.

Anyhoo I have finished the the first major revision to the licensing system. The new design turns it more into an intellectual property system. You now pay an upfront signing fee. After that you are allowed to manufacture units using this design. Every unit you produce you have to pay a royalty on. Similar to the old system, but much more transparent.

I've also improved the GUI in this section. It is not as drastic of a change as the rest of the RnD.

I still have two more things to do. A filtering system to narrow results down and a view all companies selection so you can view all companies at once.

There will be a second revision to the Licensing system in the future. Allowing you to confirm or deny licenses to AI for example. This was planned for 1.18, however with all the recent delays I have decided to fast track 1.18 to make sure it comes out this month.

I also have a badge engineering feature coming up sometime in the 1.2x builds of the game. Using the contracting system you will have to build components for AI companies and vice versa.

As for this month, I still have the above mentioned filters to take care of then I'll look at adding: Bidding for contracts from RnD, Redesign View Components GUI, Redesign Research Team GUI, Add Research Tech Tree, Tweak Research skill ratings, and finally add text to the help boxes. In between these tasks I'll look at the recent crash issues people have reported with 1.17.8 and a few other issues I have noticed with the new system. I'm pretty sure we can expect a 1.17.9 release before 1.18 to make sure I knock out as many bugs as possible before 1.18 release.

[Eric.B]

Hello again,

Licensing system's first revision is now 100% complete. I've added in filters and the ability to search all components/vehicles at once. I've also fixed a few minor bugs in the displayed information. Finally I made the listing have dynamic information based on how you order the lists.

I noticed a few issues with the AI while working on the licensing system. Over the weekend I have improved the AI's vehicle design strength. They're now producing even better vehicles. I also made them more aware of consumer per-capita. As such their designs should be priced more competitively. I've also adjusted the consumer price index slightly. It still has more work to do to it, but the primary goal of this is to prevent drastically cheaper and crappy vehicles from eating up higher priced and higher quality vehicles in the same market space.

I've also increased the AI's expansion code. So hopefully they'll spread out even quicker now.


In any event, I'm going to switch to fixing bugs submitted to me from 1.17.8 and continue to do some optimizations on the AI while I'm not on my main programming machine.


-Finished New Licensing system GUI
-Licensing System List Filters
-Improved AI designs
-Increased AI expansion

[Eric.B]

Hello everyone,

We've knocked out quite a few bugs the last 48 hours. I'll be moving back to features (only 4 more remaining) in a couple of hours. Here is what we did:

-Fixed no Branch Crash In Mega Menu
-Fixed Mega Menu Sell Everywhere list refresh bug
-Fixed duplicate marque listing in assisted vehicle designer
-Fixed assisted vehicle designer marque selection not working
-Fixed Possible Crash conditions with cylinderless engines when skill level is too low.
-Tweaked starting skill levels again.
-Fixed Incorrect artwork for 7 cylinders
-Fixed exact chassis/engine size bug causing nag message to pop-up when trying to design a vehicle.
-Fixed incorrect label for selecting gearbox in prototyping.
-Tweaked generic engine size in prototyping
-Fixed buffer overflow by extremely expensive chassis designs
-Fixed Nm abbreviation.
-Tweaked some of the Assisted Engine designer code to improve lag (major changes will come with the Optimizations ticket in 1.19)

And that's what I written down anyway. Did some more stuff, but forgot to log it. :|

[Eric.B]

You can now bid on contracts from the RnD department.

Started working on the redesigned view/select components/vehicles GUI.

[Eric.B]

Hello again everyone.

I have completed the redesign of the View Parts/Vehicles window and have also added a tree of sorts to the research system. This will allow you to see the time frame as well as required skills for up to 4 future components. It also shows you the rate in which your design skills will change per quarter.


I do have a few minor things to clean up such as making the help buttons work. I will be unable to program over the weekend. A 1.18 RC will be released to Testing sometime next week. 1.18 will be released to everyone a few days after the RC release to reduce the need for hotfixes!


-View Parts/Vehicle GUI redesign
-Research Requirements Info.

[Tridon]

I have completed the redesign of the View Parts/Vehicles window and have also added a tree of sorts to the research system. This will allow you to see the time frame as well as required skills for up to 4 future components. It also shows you the rate in which your design skills will change per quarter.
(...)
A 1.18 RC will be released to Testing sometime next week.

I'll be testing those changes to research as soon as the branch is available Sounds good.

[Sagal]

Sounds very nice!

[Eric.B]

So the weekend I wasn't able to do much work, but I have been back in full action since Monday night.

I have rewritten the tutorial frameworks, and have made a framework for the help buttons.

I've revised the tutorial system, it now much shorter, but also has much less information. This was a major complaint of the old tutorial (It was too long and had too much information.) I've also changed how it works. It is no longer linear. Instead it pops up after you click the next object you need to.

I've also added 30 new vehicles bodies to the game. I still have 4 or 5 more to fix.

Testing build will get updated sometime in the next 6 hours. I'm going to spend the next few hours fixing up any bugs I can before I get it ready for testing release.

For 1.18 full release I still have front bumpers to add, some bugs to fix, and I have to finish the help buttons (only about 20% finished there.)