GearCity 1.12 Progress

[Eric.B]

With the positive feedback from the 1.11 progress thread, I went ahead and made this one.

1.12 Is going to have a quicker release cycle than 1.11. It should focus on two of the biggest complaints of the game from people who haven't played this sort of game before. 1) Not knowing what to do, 2) Lack of "feedback" on what design sliders do.

So to fix this I plan on integrating a manual in the game.
Interactive/Audio Tutorial System. (Voice acted by me, ugh! Until Fruluna can grace us with her voice.)

A new advice/feedback window when designing components.
And a new quick design feature, in case you don't want to mess around with the sliders.

This stuff and of course some bug fixes and suggestions will be worked in when I can.

Fill free to post in here, I will probably start working on it Monday (1/13).


1.12 Change Log
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Changes to Stock Price Evaluations
  
• Rewrote AI price increase and decrease code.
  
• Reduced AI branch expansion
  
• Reduced AI marque builds
  
• Fixed Null Car Distribution from AI
  
• Adjusted IPO offering income.
  
• IPO's Failed Check
  
• Stand Alone Designer crashes load game.
  
• Negative chassis weight bug
  
• Painting Saved Car crashes game.
  
• Clone Distro improper branchIDs bug
  
• AI branch wear Bug
  
• Player Sales drop due to AI branch wear bug
  
• Adjusted AI branch expansion rate.
  
• Negative top speed when loading a vehicle
  
• Fixed floor clipping when loaded vehicle
  
• Fixed crash in car designer with unselected models
  
• Fixed wrong text in stop sales quick menu
  
• Fixed bug in world map showing sales from 2 months rather than last month.
  
• Peru growth rate bug
  
• Save game overwrite bug
  
• Fixed another issue with unbranded AI vehicles
  
• Adjusted stock takeover vote results making it a little harder to takeover.
  
• Fixed scientific notation bug for marketing again... Shoot me with Sarchez's tennis ball cannon if it comes back.
  
• Assisted Design System
  
• Overall Ratings Bug
  
• Adjusted AI component selection
  
• Fixed AI component selection bug causing it to pick the worst option in some cases.
  
• Bore And Stroke adjustments
  
• Engine Length and Width adjustments
  
• Minor Torque adjustments
  
• RPM code rewritten to allow for faster RPM growth until a certain date then it slows down.
  
• Fuel Mileage code for engines rewritten
  
• Fixed Top Speed Bug
  
• Fixed Fuel Mileage calculation bug
  
• Tweaked Various Vehicle Specification numbers
  
• Fixed incorrect showroom specifications
  
• Fixed Mega Menu display bug
  
• Changed Broad Base marketing to Brand Marketing
  
• Fixed Chassis Design bug on Hard Mode
  
• Fixed bug in contracts income
  
• Fixed bug with contracting sales numbers
  
• Fixed bug in the contracting reports and charts
  
• Fixed City Name bug during random event
  
• Fixed newspaper crash when merging occurs. Will replace with art eventually...
  
• Fixed Switzerland Wage bug
  
• Fixed Engine Skill Bug allowing any engine design
  
• Fixed Electric engine description
  
• Help GUI
  
• Video Tutorial System
  
• Added 20 Beta-Basic Tutorials
  
• Fixed Shipping Priority Check Bugs.
  
• Minor Adjustment to Sales Priority Values
  
• Fixed retool all branches bug,
  
• Fixed retool all factories bug,
  
• Fixed retool branches/factories incorrect values.
  
• Fixed bug in random events that charge you for AI expenses.
  
• Fixed $0 Component Bug
  
• Adjusted Degrade values
  
• Degrade only effects components younger than a certain year.
  
• Included Minimum Component value.
  
• Fixed Bankruptcy Flags reset.
  
• Removal of vehicles from sale will remove marketing
  
• Fixed scroll bar clipping in megamenu
  
• Fixed component contracting price display
  
• Fixed marketing staff auto tools bugs
  
• Fixed loan assists and updated all companies assists
  
• Fixed Loan Interest Rates and monthly payments
  
• Possibly fixed broken marque component contracting bug.
  
• Fixed Discontinued components window issues
  
• Marketing Skills Report now is relative instead of absolute.
  
• Fixed regional combobox bug
  
• Fixed Latvia crash bug.
  
• Adjusted radio and tv marketing amounts.
  
• Fixed various GUI number issues.
  
• New Gameover music.
  
  

[Eric.B]

Since 1.12 is mainly focused on a tutorial system, I'll be spending more time writing than programming the next few days. As such I've started out on things that require some simulations. Which means AI stuff. While the game plays it self I write the manual.

So the first thing I hit was the stock price evaluations. I started with this because it seems like an easy way to "game" the game...

The old evaluation formula only took into account the construction cost of factories and branches. This has been changed to include number of production lines and a base line cost per branch and dealership!
That means you shouldn't be able to buy a company for a million bucks and get 3 factories.

Also profit margins used to play heavily in the old formula. It's been greatly reduced in this build.

Now for some realism. By 1924 Ford was the first company to hit $1 billion in market cap. As of right now, with the current eval formula we have 2 companies over $1 billion, 1 of which is over $2billion... Of course there is still a lot less competition in the game.

On the other end, I don't see a single company with a market cap under $10million.

I'm now going to play with the AI pricing somewhat. And work on page 4 of the manual

[Eric.B]

Rewrote the AI price increase and decrease code. The AI will raise all prices of a vehicle by 2% across the board if it can not meet demands. It'll also attempt to build more if there is open factory lines. On the flip side reduction code has been worked on as well. With different options to reduce prices. In any case the AI is limited to a specific margin amount based on the actual company. So there are a few $10,000 cars, but it's mainly because the unit costs are $2500... Prices are more realistic now, I'll go back over them soon to double check.

I'm on page 5 of the manual. Writing about Office stuff now...

I've notice the AI making some NULL cars, so I'm going to take care of this issue, then fix the IPO amounts, following up by hitting bugs in the bug list... While working on the manual when I simulate.

[Eric.B]

IPO prices have been adjusted making it harder to cash in on the insane amounts of money you could get from an IPO in 1.10...

Sorry Laurent, no more 300million dollar IPOs for you!

[Arakash]

IPO prices have been adjusted making it harder to cash in on the insane amounts of money you could get from an IPO in 1.10...

Sorry Laurent, no more 300million dollar IPOs for you!

How much should we expect from IPO's in the next version then?
In the old version, from memory, it was 50-70% of the value listed. (i would often get 1.5-2.5mil from an IPO listed as 3mil)

Should we now expect something like 20%?

[Eric.B]

IPO prices have been adjusted making it harder to cash in on the insane amounts of money you could get from an IPO in 1.10...

Sorry Laurent, no more 300million dollar IPOs for you!

How much should we expect from IPO's in the next version then?
In the old version, from memory, it was 50-70% of the value listed. (i would often get 1.5-2.5mil from an IPO listed as 3mil)

Should we now expect something like 20%?

25% cash on hand + factory value + (factoryLines * 10000^(1.005*year-1899) + few other minor things like inventory, research etc.

I probably should work image in there, but I can do that latter.

[Sarchez]

Does the valuation of an AI company, take into account any stocks they own in other companies ? (figured I'd put it here, as you're rewriting the code for 1.12)

[Eric.B]

Fixed a number of issues today, here is the list:

Bad Passenger Data when loading a saved car
Broke Car Stats in Magazine
Company Absorbs it self bug
Load Game Crash when full game has not been started.
Admin Cost Bug when having Lots of distro lines.


Also released a hotpatch, so update to 1.11.1: http://www.gearcity.info/download.php?f=...HotFix.exe

[Eric.B]

Does the valuation of an AI company, take into account any stocks they own in other companies ? (figured I'd put it here, as you're rewriting the code for 1.12)

No it does not, but I'll make a note of it, so that I can add it when I work in the image ratings.

[Eric.B]

Today I took out a few more bugs. I'm going to keep working through the bug list until Sunday. Sunday and Monday I will focus completely on the manual. Hopefully I can get it done and integrated into the game by next week.

Here is a list of todays bugs:
IPO's don't trigger resulting in the player being able to IPO over and over again.
Stand Alone Designer crashes load game.
Negative chassis weight when global weights are low and sliders are on full.
Painting Saved Car crashes game.
Clone Distro does not copy proper branchIDs

[Laurent Tommy Flanagann]

IPO prices have been adjusted making it harder to cash in on the insane amounts of money you could get from an IPO in 1.10...

Sorry Laurent, no more 300million dollar IPOs for you!

Hahahaha, too bad for me

Sound great anyway, bringing obviously more realism into the game!

On an other hand, a little question/suggestion though: Don't you think AI builds too many branches and factories, let's say unrelevant ones?

For example, I seriously doubt that 1910s brands would ever been producing nor selling cars in weird places, like Peru or exotic ones in real life...

For more accuracy or realism, I would suggest that they expand a little more slowly, as I think it originally was, again in real life. I admit they could have the opportunity to sell there one or two cars to rich "colons" (no offense here) in exotic places but still, not having branches...

On the same level, I do not know any brand (well, let's say french ones as I know them better then the rest) that would expand in the US market so quickly (or any other one, also considering that they still have not nowadays). Without the telecommunication systems that we all know now, well, running a company on both continents would be such a mess in those days...

[Eric.B]

Yes, they are expanding branches a little too quickly, it's a lot better than it was however. Factories, probably not so much. AI is having a hard time keeping up with demand. I may need to change the clustering formula a little.

The AI is going to Peru due to the Peru bug mentioned in the Bugs forums

[Eric.B]

Alright another day and another morning. Here is what I got done for you guys:

AI branch wear bug
Player Sales drop due to AI branch wear bug
Adjusted AI branch expansion rate.
Negative top speed when loading a vehicle
Fixed floor clipping when loaded vehicle
Fixed crash in car designer with unselected models
Fixed wrong text in stop sales quick menu
Fixed bug in world map showing sales from 2 months rather than last month.

[Eric.B]

Been a while since I've updated this thread, sorry about that.
Progress has slowed slightly due to minor health issues, but I'm still working on the game, so don't worry! This is a vaporware free zone.

I still continue working on just the text portion of the manual. Which will be integrated into the game. Office is almost covered, already up to 12 pages of pure text... The final game manual will probably be a few hundreds pages with pictures and quotes and everything!

I've also been working on the "Assisted" design system, which I'll show pretty pictures of when it's completed. This work will eventually translate into me fixing the spec numbers and tweaking the AI building habits some.

Here is a list of bugs I've knocked out since the last post:

• Peru growth rate bug
  
• Save game overwrite bug
  
• Fixed another issue with unbranded AI vehicles
  
• Adjusted stock takeover vote results making it a little harder to takeover.
  
• Fixed scientific notation bug for marketing again... shoot me with Sarchez's tennis ball cannon if it comes back.
  

[Frankschtaldt]

Will the speed limit bug be fixed in 1.12?
There's another thread about cars being unable to go over 30 km/h somewhere it I've list it since registering so I figured I'd as here instead =)

[Eric.B]

Will the speed limit bug be fixed in 1.12?
There's another thread about cars being unable to go over 30 km/h somewhere it I've list it since registering so I figured I'd as here instead =)

My current plans are this:

Working on Manual - Always

Assisted Design System - 75% done (Quickly design cars/components)
Fix AI component's component selection (used in assisted design system)
Fix Specs (Includes the speed limit bug)
More detailed advice in Advance Design mode. (Tells you what kind of car your components would be good for)
Integrate Manual so you can read it in game.
Voice Tutorial System. (Voice acted by me, temporary. (WARNING! MUTE THE VOLUME!))
Easy bugs in bug forums
1.12 Release.


Been going a little slower than I hoped, but it'll get done.

[Frankschtaldt]

Awesome! Thanks for the update! =)

[Eric.B]

The assisted design system has been completed. This system should reduce slider tediousness for those who do not enjoy designing their own components. In the assisted system the AI will set the sliders to levels it believes works best for your selected vehicle type. The user does have options to adjust a few sliders which effect multiple sliders. This allows the player to fine tune costs and complexity of the design.

Also ratings bug has been fixed which caused overall ratings of components and vehicles to be maxed out.

I will now start working on the AI component design system as it sometimes chooses inappropriate components for vehicles.

[Arakash]

The assisted design system has been completed. This system should reduce slider tediousness for those who do not enjoy designing their own components. In the assisted system the AI will set the sliders to levels it believes works best for your selected vehicle type. The user does have options to adjust a few sliders which effect multiple sliders. This allows the player to fine tune costs and complexity of the design.

Also ratings bug has been fixed which caused overall ratings of components and vehicles to be maxed out.

I will now start working on the AI component design system as it sometimes chooses inappropriate components for vehicles.

Thanks for the update. Im looking forward to seeing the assisted design system, by the sound of it it might make it much easier for new players to familiarize themselves with the game.

[Eric.B]

Alright we've adjusted and fixed some bugs in the AI chassis/engine/gearbox component selection code.
More realistic components are now being made, however there are a few too many electrics for my liking. But this is something I'll take care of when I get around to adding component popularity. (To both designs and population taste's)


Now I get to work on the lovely task of fixing all the specs. Rejoice!