Visual Entertainment and Technologies Forum

Since we'll be launching 1.18.4 as an update to everyone, I have started a new thread to continue 1.19 progress reports.

Between 1.18.4 and 1.19 should be lots of little features and fixes. Check out the roadmaps for details!

1.19 Change Log
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+Added Help Boxes to Light/Accessory Controls in RND and Resized GUI
+Reversed Manufacturing Requirement star in RnD View.
+Autosaves are now specific to save games. (Autosave_filename)
+Fixed bug in bore/stroke when switching engine layout.
+Fixed crash bugs when loading save games with different languages
+Expanded on unable to load game errors.
+Changed Automatic naming of Components.
+Changed Vehicle/Project naming system. No more cars named "Grandma Pants"
+Some accessories, parts, and tires can now be painted.
+Accessories and vehicle are automatically painted when created
+Accessory painting now works on mirrored accessories.
+5000 new vehicle names that have been vetted. (More may come in the future.)
+Added 218 new paints
+8 Shades of glass
+50 something leathers, plastics, and fabrics paints.
+3 different types of metal paints.
+Changed paint display layout system.
+Fixed bug that had $0 sales price displayed when viewing competition. (This was pushed as a hotfix in 1.18.4)
+Improved/adjusted demographics code and effect on vehicle sales.
+Selecting a demographic now adjust the importance sliders when designing a vehicle in advance mode.
+Selecting a demographic now boosts or decreases certain vehicle ratings as your designers cater more to the selected demo.
+Added a new development pace slider system to vehicle and components.
+Fixed Blank Vehicle Marque bug (Should fix other bugs as well)
+Fixed clone vehicle demographic's bug
+Adjusted engine ratings decline rates
+Fixed overlapping buttons when you click Tires & Accessories after placing an accessory.
+Adjusted lighting in RnD.
+Added in 3 more shadow types. If you wish to use the newer, better looking shadows, adjust them in the settings.
+Modify Engine now effects smoothness.
+Gearbox smoothness/useability is now displayed in Assisted and Advance.
+Modify Gearbox now effects smoothness and useability.
+Fixed tire and body parts selection bug that allowed for selection of parts not in view.
+Internally components have been broken up into their own tables. This should improve performance somewhat.
+Drivetrain layouts now effect max support engine size.
+Fixed incorrect vehicle type winning awards bug.
+Adjusted branch build costs
+Adjusted design pace's effects on RnD time, budget, and maximum number of employees (This still needs tweaking.)
+Reduced starting funds as things are now cheaper in early years. (This may still need tweaking.)
+Fixed bug with missing marque when switching to advance designer from assisted designer.
+Fixed new model year/new trim exploit bug.
+Removed Trim/Model year bonuses if design reqs of new vehicle exceed 15 rating points.
+Crash in paint tutorial
+Crash when mirroring some front and rear bumpers
+OpenGL missing paints.
+GUI Tweaks: Added Version News window title, fixed New Game year offset, Radiobox size increased, Bigger Checkboxes.
+Load game window size increased, removed horizontal scroll
+Save games are now sorted by last save date.
+Settings text offsets fixed, combo boxes now scroll
+Removed all empty spaces in GUI sheets, textboxes will no longer have 1 blank space in them on default.
+Fixed bug in scroll bars that caused weird behaviors when clicking the scroll buttons.
+Clicking anywhere on the scroll bar will automatically scroll to that percentage on the bar.
+Hitting Escape on any open window with a title bar will close that window and focus the next window with a title bar. If no windows are open, the Menu will open or the program will exit.
+New Game City Selection GUI Tweaks: Top bar moved to bottom, Help Button resized, City Name has bigger font, added $ and commas where needed, bigger star ratings, bigger select button, Player Logos now scrollable, Limit Player Name and Company Name to 32 characters.
+Added an End Turn State GUI.
+End Turn Progress.
+End Turn Did You Know System.
+Office GUI Tweaks, Removed Tips, Enlarged Buttons, Removed horizontal scroll from lists that don't need it. Added up and down buttons to End Turn amounts. Sales book and other "titlebar-less" windows are now moveable.
+Disabled Windows window resizing by dragging or hitting maximize button.
+Implemented tab support for textboxes.
+Standardized upper panel buttons for all "States"
+Implemented Racing Filters so you can easily find series.
+Vehicle and Engine selection in Racing now shows detailed information about selected item.
+GUI Tweaks for Racing "State" of the game.
+Borderless window option.
+Disabled close button in windows
+Updated Ogre3d, Freetype, Freeimage, zzip, zlib
+IPO confirmation message.
+RnD loading times reduced.
+Fixed material ID's on bumpers so they're paintable.
+Fixed failure to load saved cars when using a different language.
+Fixed new model default leather and metal material.
+Fixed showroom paint loading
+Fixed repeat new technology memo
+Fixed saved cars materials, made it work with multiple materials.
+Vehicle Type lists in RnD are in alphabetical order.
+Can stop multiple sim turns by holding down space bar.
+Hotkeys
+Standalone Car Designer updated GUI.
+Resizeable Windows
+Save Resized GUI
+Load Resized GUI
+Expanded DYK
+New salesbook backend.
+Fixed Sales Book incorrect figures bug.
+Fixed Auto-production bug which uses unfinished factories.
+Tweaked Scroll Bar buttons movement values.
+Fixed a number of direct input factory production bugs in World Map and Mega Menu.
+Made direct input much more accurate. It should set sliders to exactly what you type in!
+Accessories are now assigned an Auto-mirror and Auto-paint values in the components.xml file. (This means you'll have to manually enable/disable auto-mirror for select components types.)
+OSX Hardware mouse finished.
+Player company is on top of list in magazines
+Fixed old car save loading crash
+Production/Distribution lists should now reselect previous item after applying changes.
+Fixed bug in mega menu which allowed you to assign vehicle sales in districts which you have no branches.
+All brands comparison added to magazine
+Fixed bug in production/distribution filters which did not reset entering back into game state.
+Merge Trims for Distribution screens. (Will not be implementing this for production screens)
+Implemented Filters for Districting Production and Distribution.
+Implemented Sort by for RnD view
+Fixed Possible crash returning to office from world map.
+Fixed bug in chassis modification that didn't update old stats when selecting a different chassis
+Adjusted some default sorting of lists.
+Enter key will "click" OK, or Select or any single button on a window. (May eventually add an image to buttons which can be selected with "Enter" key.)
+Sound implemented in OSX
+Successful defect coverups will result in a memo
+District Factory Production window now warns if any cities are at war.
+Did You Know messages can be brought up when you enter the office (enable the check box at the end turn window in the office.)
+Same did you know will stay open if you simulate multiple turns.
+Adjusted Branch Distribution 'Unit Manufacturing Costs' and 'Corporate and Unit Cost per Unit' prices. They no longer include break even on reserved vehicles.
+Fixed crash when setting district locks when the drop down boxes are empty.
+Fixed some crash issues in Linux build. (Some libs were not properly updated)
-Fullscreen OSX
-World Map Help Buttons
-Fixed Component Name Duplication Bugs
-Fixed engine contracting panel overlaps on world map
-500-1000% speed improvement on RnD sliders (no more lag when moving the sliders around)
-New Contract Assignment window in World Map and Mega Menu.
-Modified Component Refit System
-Fixed Game Over text offset bug
-Remember last paint in Stand Alone Car Designer
-Hovering over stars when designing a component or vehicle in RnD will now show the rating in a popup.
-Fixed "Advanced" image in RnD (Grammarians rejoice! )
-Fixed Textbox height clipping in some places.
-Added a return to Main Menu button in the side panel of Stand Alone Car Designer.
-Added Message about canceling in title bar of "OK" windows.
-Targeted Demographics added to view vehicle panels.
-Added Help buttons to the Refit and new contracting windows in RnD and World Map respectively.
-Fixed offset table alignments
-Fixed Large font over laps throughout the game.
-Adjusted prestige reports text results. (Duplicate scores will now have the same text rating.)
-Quick Save Pops up a confirmation that the file was saved (will switch to feedback system in 1.21)
-Quick Save As now tells you what file you were saving to. GUI redesigned slightly.
-Name lengths have been shortened. Company names now have a maximum of 20 characters, Model names 20 Characters, and Trims 6 characters.
-Fixed bug in factory wear production indication system.
-Fixed bug in "unoptimized" factory lines after you recondition factories.
-Factory Production side panel now shows "Last Month's Estimated Lost Sales" this is the number of vehicles you could have sold if you produced enough.
-Total Project Profits added to distribution side panel. This is the amount of profits or loss the selected vehicle has generated for your company.
-Fixed bug in Factory View Panel which would reset if you emptied production lines.
-End Production added to Mega Menu Auto Commands.

Started working on 1.18.5 a couple of days ago. 1.18.5 will focus mainly on RnD Changes that were pushed out of 1.18 build due to time issues.

The main thing I did the last few days is changing the naming system. Chassis, engines, and gearboxes now use a different naming system (Typically a model number, couple specs, etc) The car and project naming system is in the process of being redesigned. I have removed many of the words in our model name list. I'll be adding quite a few more over the coming days. This should improve the naming of things inside the game.... Little less humor, bit more seriousness.

-Added Help Boxes to Light/Accessory Controls in RND and Resized GUI
-Reversed Manufacturing Requirement star in RnD View.
-Autosaves are now specific to save games. (Autosave_filename)
-Fixed bug in bore/stroke when switching engine layout.
-Fixed crash bugs when loading save games with different languages
-Expanded on unable to load game errors.
-Changed Automatic naming of Components.
-Changed Vehicle/Project naming system. No more cars named "Grandma Pants"
-5000 new vehicle names that have been vetted. (More may come in the future.)
-Added 218 new paints
-8 Shades of glass
-50 something leathers, plastics, and fabrics paints.
-3 different types of metal paints.
-Changed paint display layout system.
-Fixed bug that had $0 sales price displayed when viewing competition. (This was pushed as a hotfix in 1.18.4)
-Improved/adjusted demographics code and effect on vehicle sales.
-Selecting a demographic now adjust the importance sliders when designing a vehicle in advance mode.
-Selecting a demographic now boosts or decreases certain vehicle ratings as your designers cater more to the selected demo.
-Added a new development pace slider system to vehicle and components.

-Some accessories, parts, and tires can now be painted.
-Accessories and vehicle are automatically painted when created
-Accessory painting now works on mirrored accessories.

Currently I'm in the process of creating more paints and changing the system in which they're displayed and used. Word count for new model names is now up to 3000.

Been a while since I updated, I was out of the office for a few days as it is/was a holiday weekend here in the states. I actually did some work during this time as well, just had unstable internet which resulted in my not updating progress (Or logging into my ticketing system due to insecurity.)

Anyhoo:

-Finished changing the vehicle naming system, 5000 new names that have been vetted. (More may come in the future.)
-Added 218 new paints
-8 Shades of glass
-50 something leathers, plastics, and fabrics paints.
-3 different types of metal paints.
-Changed paint display layout system.
-Fixed bug that had $0 sales price displayed when viewing competition. (This was pushed as a hotfix in 1.18.4)
-Improved/adjusted demographics code and effect on vehicle sales.
-Selecting a demographic now adjust the importance sliders when designing a vehicle in advance mode. This allows you to better tell what you need to do to please the demographic.
-Selecting a demographic now boosts or decreases certain vehicle ratings as your designers cater more to the selected demo.
-Added a new development pace slider system to vehicle and components. This new system allows you to speed up designs for extra costs, or slow down design process (thus taking more time) for reduced costs.


I've been looking at balancing the new development pace system. The goal is to increase costs over all in later years (to bring it more inline with modern development costs.) As well increase development time in later years. At the same time allowing for niche market bouquet cars to be made at lower costs. This is specially important for supercar, luxury cars, and early game years. (This will allow me to lower starting game funds down to a more realistic amount!)


Progress reports may be slow for the next few days. But should pick back up in the middle of the month.

-Fixed Blank Vehicle Marque bug (Should fix other bugs as well)
-Fixed clone vehicle demographic's bug
-Adjusted engine ratings decline rates
-Fixed overlapping buttons when you click Tires & Accessories after placing an accessory.
-Adjusted lighting in RnD.
-Added in 3 more shadow types. If you wish to use the newer, better looking shadows, adjust them in the settings.

-Modify Engine now effects smoothness.
-Gearbox smoothness/useability is now displayed in Assisted and Advance.
-Modify Gearbox now effects smoothness and useability.
-Fixed tire and body parts selection bug that allowed for selection of parts not in view.
-Internally components have been broken up into their own tables. This should improve performance somewhat.
-Drivetrain layouts now effect max support engine size.

Been a while since I updated this post, sorry about that. However don't fret! I've continued working on the game nearly every day last month (except for the days I was driving.) I've finally returned to the office from visiting distant (in both terms of relation and physical distance) relatives. This did slow down progress slightly in September, but mostly because I could not do "final" builds of 1.18.5 until I returned. Thus I prolonged my efforts in balancing 1.18.5's new features and did prepping for 1.18.6! There is probably still more work needed to be done with the new design pace system. But I think it'll come in handy!

In anycase optimized compiles of 1.18.5 are being built now.


Since my last update:
-Fixed incorrect vehicle type winning awards bug.
-Adjusted branch build costs
-Adjusted design pace's effects on RnD time, budget, and maximum number of employees (This still needs tweaking.)
-Reduced starting funds as things are now cheaper in early years. (This may still need tweaking.)
-Fixed bug with missing marque when switching to advance designer from assisted designer.
-Fixed new model year/new trim exploit bug.
-Removed Trim/Model year bonuses if design reqs of new vehicle exceed 15 rating points.

(There are a few more minor bug fixes that I didn't document fixing. Being on a laptop with no internet for a few days makes unorganized people like myself even more unorganized...)

Issues resolved in the hotfixes:
-Crash in paint tutorial
-Crash when mirroring some front and rear bumpers
-OpenGL missing paints.

1.18.6 stuff:
-GUI Tweaks: Added Version News window title, fixed New Game year offset, Radiobox size increased, Bigger Checkboxes.
-Load game window size increased, removed horizontal scroll
-Save games are now sorted by last save date.
-Settings text offsets fixed, combo boxes now scroll
-Removed all empty spaces in GUI sheets, textboxes will no longer have 1 blank space in them on default.



Currently working on the GUI bug that causes a mouse down and a click to be fired thus causing the scrolls to move too much when you use the scroll buttons.

-Fixed bug in scroll bars that caused weird behaviors when clicking the scroll buttons.
-Clicking anywhere on the scroll bar will automatically scroll to that percentage on the bar.
-Hitting Escape on any open window with a title bar will close that window and focus the next window with a title bar. If no windows are open, the Menu will open or the program will exit.
-New Game City Selection GUI Tweaks: Top bar moved to bottom, Help Button resized, City Name has bigger font, added $ and commas where needed, bigger star ratings, bigger select button, Player Logos now scrollable, Limit Player Name and Company Name to 32 characters.


Tomorrow (well technically right now) is Monday. I have started a new thing called "Mac Monday" in which I will only work on the Mac port of the game on Mondays until it is ready to be shipped as Early Access. For everyone not using a Mac, don't worry, Mondays (and Sundays) are typically very slow days for me and I sadly don't get to do much programming. So it shouldn't harm progress on the core game.

MacMonday-
Updated the Mac port to 1.18.5
Changed @rpaths to @executable_path in the hopes this fixes loading issues on older versions of OSX. I'm in the process of getting access to an OSX 1.7 machine to test it out on.


Core Game:
I've added an End Turn Calculation Progress GUI system. Now when you end the turn you will not have to wait around staring at the office wondering if it's doing anything. Instead you'll be staring at a progress bar (Currently just a percentage counter) that tells you how far it is in the turn calculations. In addition to this, since I know the turn times can get quite long (I still have some optimizations to do!) I've added a "Did You Know" system. This will replace the current Tips system in the office. The DYK stuff can handle a paragraph or two of text and currently I'm filling it up with historical information on real companies. In the future I may open it up for anyone to submit DYKs.


-Added an End Turn State GUI.
-End Turn Progress.
-End Turn Did You Know System.

Did some minor tweaks to the office GUI. I didn't want to do too much to it, since I plan on rewriting major chunks of the sales book, memos, and newspaper system in 1.21...

-Office GUI Tweaks, Removed Tips, Enlarged Buttons, Removed horizontal scroll from lists that don't need it. Added up and down buttons to End Turn amounts. Sales book and other "titlebar-less" windows are now moveable.
-Disabled Windows window resizing by dragging or hitting maximize button.
-Implemented tab support for textboxes.

-Standardized upper panel buttons for all "States"
-Implemented Racing Filters so you can easily find series.
-Vehicle and Engine selection in Racing now shows detailed information about selected item.
-GUI Tweaks for Racing "State" of the game.

Current goal is to have 1.18.6 out by Next Friday (10/16) Although some tickets may be pushed back to 1.18.7 for this to occur.

I've recently took up the task of updating all our third party libs in the windows build. This was a huge undertaking which took up nearly 3 days of work. This should improve stability, especially in Windows 10, although we're still in the "Testing" phase for this. I will do the same to the Linux build in 1.18.7.

Mac Monday went off rather well, I fixed a few lib linking issues on older OS X's. I believe the game might work on OS X 10.7 now. I will be building another Open Beta next Monday to make sure.

I had hoped to get the bumpers working tonight, however I am unable to do it due to lack of files and inability to do it in the text editor. So I have sent the task back to our artist. Hopefully he'll get the files done in time for Friday's patch.

So instead I continue on with 1.18.6 tasks, right now I'm working on improving RnD's load time.

-Borderless window option.
-Disabled close button in windows
-Updated Ogre3d, Freetype, Freeimage, zzip, zlib
-IPO confirmation message.

-RnD loading times reduced (40% in debug mode on my dev box, your mileage may vary.)
-Fixed material ID's on bumpers so they're paintable.

Will work on a few other paint related issues tomorrow (1.18.7 will also have some paint fixes.) Then I have to get everything packaged up for release.

Finished the remaining tickets for 1.18.6, currently compiling the Linux build (which is still using older libs, but will updated in 1.18.7) I will play test 1.18.6 tonight with the hopes of doing an optimized compile while I sleep and a Friday (tomorrow) release. I do have to write some more DYK as I accidentally overwrote about 1-2 hours worth a few days ago. :'( I'll take care of those this afternoon however.

No save game changes for this build.


-Fixed failure to load saved cars when using a different language.
-Fixed new model default leather and metal material.
-Fixed showroom paint loading
-Fixed repeat new technology memo
-Fixed saved cars materials, made it work with multiple materials.

Testing build has been updated to 1.18.6! These little features have snuck in at the last minute:
-Vehicle Type lists in RnD are in alphabetical order.
-Can stop multiple sim turns by holding down space bar.

Mac Monday became Mac Saturday this week as I waited for input on 1.18.6. I was able to build a newer demo for OSX. If you have a Mac running OS X 10.11, 10.9, 10.8, 10.7, or 10.6 I would greatly appreciate it if you tried the demo and let me know if it works (or doesn't.) You can find the OS X demo here: http://www.gearcity.info/download.php?f=...1.18.6.dmg

Between now and yesterday I implemented approximately half of the Hotkeys, including all Global Hotkeys and Local Hotkeys for the Office. Currently all Hotkeys are static. Meaning they can not be changed. I may leave them this way as there is a lot of them.

Global Hotkeys occupy F1-F10, ESC, and END. These keys are the same for every "state" of the game. So for instance hitting F1 anywhere in the game will take you to the Office. Hitting F2 anywhere will take you to the RnD. And so forth. We also include commonly used functions, such as Save (F7), Save As (F8), a List of Hotkeys (F9), and a way to open the Quick Game Menu (F10)

Escape was already implemented in 1.18.6. This key will allow you to close opened windows and bring up the Game Menu if no windows are open.

Finally the END key can be used to simulate 1 game turn anywhere in the game without the need to return to the Office.

Local Hotkeys allow you to open specific objects or menus inside a "state." These keys are used by holding down CTRL or ALT and using the numbers 0-9 (not including keypad numbers.) Currently the Office is the only state of the game that has these. I will implement more sometime in the next few days.

Some example of these are CTRL-1 = Mega Menu, CTRL-2 = Auto Commands, ALT-1 Sales book, ALT-5 = Sales Book Charts, etc. In all there are 19 Local Hotkeys for the Office.

Local hotkeys are now finished for everything but the fiscal state (because it's getting a rewrite in 1.20) and the showroom state (because there isn't really much in the showroom state...)

I did some more clean up of little GUI bugs and issues.

And then I started working on window resizing code.

You are now able to resize some windows in the game, save the sizes, and anytime you go back into that area it will remember your saved window size!

If you reduce the resolution or when there is a version update, these settings will be reset. Which is a little annoying but I believe after early access there won't be as frequent of updates.

Currently window resizing works in the Main Menu. It'll take me the next two or three days to finish all the work needed for this. Once resizing is complete, the two main features for 1.18.7 will be finished, the rest should go easily, and hopefully we'll be back to more gameplay features (parts revenues, warranties, recall adjustments!!! ) by next week!


-Hotkeys
-Standalone Car Designer updated GUI.

There has been continued work on the resizing of windows. Currently you can resize most of the windows in the Office. (Sales book, HR, Newspaper, and Magazine are currently excluded due to the backgrounds. These will change in 1.21.) I've also progressed about 1/3rd of the way through the World Map resizes.

I've added an additional 6 "Did you know?"s

Fixed a number of bugs that popped up while working on the resize, included a crash fix when hitting escape on contracting window. As well a number of "GUI" improvements (which typically means bigger buttons, more visible stars, etc.)

Progress on the resize code is going slightly slower than expected. But not enough to cause any major set backs. (I typically keep some buffer days just incase of a little slow down such as this.) Hopefully I can finish them all up by the middle of the week so I can clear out this bug list for 1.18.7!!!

On Mac-Monday I did a play through to see if I can duplicate some bugs that have been reported to me, but was unable to catch any of them. I also updated the Mac Port to the latest internal build, streamlined my library generation process and began to rewrite OIS's hardware mouse implementation. Hopefully I can knock that out next Monday so I can get sound working soon!

On the Core game side of things, I have finished setting up all the GUI that needs resizing to be resizable. You can now resize pretty much all leather windows with large amounts of text or lists. (So slider windows are not resizeable, as there is no point) or resize windows with sheets of paper. In software mouse mode, the mouse will change when you pass an edge that is resizeable. In hardware mouse mode this is currently not an option, but I will look into some Windows/X11 API calls to do this. Hopefully it'll be possible without MAJOR chainsawing or hackish bugs to the code.

I've also cleaned up a couple of bugs in the GUI. Fixed some issues in our GUI lib. Hid the End Turn mouse, made the Did You Know panel scale up to your resolution, and wrote a few more Did You Knows...

Lastly I took care of some paperwork this evening and unticketed items. I still have more of this to do, but it can wait.

Starting tomorrow I'll get back to bug hunting. We've got 24 tickets remaining for 1.18.7 and 23 tickets remaining for 1.19... I should be able to knock a good number of them out quickly!


-Resizeable Windows
-Save Resized GUI
-Load Resized GUI
-Expanded DYK Panel