GearCity 1.17 Progress

[Eric.B]

Both

[Eric.B]

Last couple of days I worked on the new vehicle review system!
The new system uses our new formating string system which allows for much verbose and grammatically correct reviews. These reviews are also now translatable and moddable. So you get an itch for writing, go ahead and add some!

The new system is also relative to your competition. In the previous system, even the best vehicles would be listed as crap. This is no longer the case.

With that I've finished 2 out of 11 tasks for the magazine. Although this was the hardest, the rest should be generally easy to take care of.

-New vehicle translation system
-Integrated reviews into localization file
-New vehicle review magazine gui.

I now start work on the Class Challenge editorial in the magazine. We take a random vehicle type in a random country, and see how they do against each other.

[Rad]

Last couple of days I worked on the new vehicle review system!
The new system uses our new formating string system which allows for much verbose and grammatically correct reviews. These reviews are also now translatable and moddable. So you get an itch for writing, go ahead and add some!

The new system is also relative to your competition. In the previous system, even the best vehicles would be listed as crap. This is no longer the case.

With that I've finished 2 out of 11 tasks for the magazine. Although this was the hardest, the rest should be generally easy to take care of.

-New vehicle translation system
-Integrated reviews into localization file
-New vehicle review magazine gui.

I now start work on the Class Challenge editorial in the magazine. We take a random vehicle type in a random country, and see how they do against each other.

One idea is a top car list, showing the best cars by rating per class on page.

[Eric.B]

One idea is a top car list, showing the best cars by rating per class on page.

Things like this already exist in the reports, that being said we've added some similar stuff to the magazine as well!

[Eric.B]

Yesterday I finished the "Class Challenge" article in the magazine. The class challenge pits all the vehicle of a type in a random country against each other. Reviews the vehicles and then renders a verdict for the best in class in that country.

Last night and this morning I started working on the Model Comparison in the magazine. We've added much more information and it's much better formatted now.

Also fixed the WW2 Germany bug again. I must of overwrote the turn files with an older copy...

Things are taking a little longer than I would like. But it looks much much better. Currently I'm about 4.5/11 finished with the magazine.

[Frankschtaldt]

Yesterday I finished the "Class Challenge" article in the magazine. The class challenge pits all the vehicle of a type in a random country against each other. Reviews the vehicles and then renders a verdict for the best in class in that country.

Last night and this morning I started working on the Model Comparison in the magazine. We've added much more information and it's much better formatted now.

Also fixed the WW2 Germany bug again. I must of overwrote the turn files with an older copy...

Things are taking a little longer than I would like. But it looks much much better. Currently I'm about 4.5/11 finished with the magazine.

Sounds cool. Will wining the comparo's give you prestige boosts?

[shadow]

Same kind of question as above ,
will having best car in class give you prestige bonus ?

[Eric.B]

Currently no. It's mostly just informational fluff.

That being said, their is something that will increase prestige, but you'll have to wait until I get to it before I tell you ^,~ (that's called a teaser!)

[Eric.B]

Finished the new model comparison article. I'll start working on a marque catalog next. Should be able to get it done sometime tonight.

It'll mostly list all the cars made by all current manufacturers and give you their stats. like the show room. But without the models or the sales data.

[Eric.B]

-Finished Marque Catalog Tool

Will start on the redesign of the AI news after I'm finished running memtest a few billion times :\

We're 6/11 finished with the new magazine system!

[Eric.B]

The PSU on my main dev machine is about to die. (Can only run the machine with 1 stick of ram ~,~; ) As such I'm on my Linux box for the next few days. Which means a little less work on the magazines, a little more work on fixing some stuff...

This morning I mostly tackled issues with our translated files. The Russian translation of 1.16.1 is near complete, as such this provides us with opportunities to make sure functions of the game work when translated, and to fix it where it doesn't.

Here is what I did today that will translate into the English version of the game:

-Fixed Manual hiring of researching projects when Research teams are not activated.
-Fixed Language loading in LINUX
-Fixed Load Game Timestamps in LINUX

I've got 2 more Linux specific issues to deal with, some more car reviews to write, and some tweaking to do to the tutorial system. So that's what I'll probably do tomorrow.

If my main dev box holds up and isn't too sluggish I'll try to hop on it tomorrow evening and knock out another few pages of the magazine! But if not, I have a whole host of other things I could work on. Or I may even try to do some of the magazine without all the tools I'm used to. We'll see.

[Eric.B]

Here's what I took care of today:
-Fixed loading premade vehicles in LINUX
-Added more vehicle reviews
-Finished redesign of AI News (Currently just components and Cars, in the future factories, branches, and racing news will be added.)

Two sections of the magazine I am going to push back, one being the "Public Perception Polling" which I'll implement sometime after I added the components popularity indexes (Which I plan to do in 1.18)

The other is "Letters to the Editor" and you'll see why in the game!

Not including those 2, we're at 6/9, although some minor tweaking to things will be added so it's more like 6/9.5

Hopefully I can finish by the weekend. It'll be close assuming my PSU don't completely blow out!

[Eric.B]

Today I finished the Automotive Superlatives, also put up some stuff in the "Letters to the Editor" page, however it's not finished.

We're 8/9.5 of the way finished. Only the "Year End Awards" are left. If I make good progress on that tomorrow, you can expect an announcement for save game changes and an ETA on steam.

-Automotive Superlatives article in magazine.

[Eric.B]

Finally got a new PSU today. So I'm back to using 8gb of ram without crashing which should speed up compile times... Hopefully... This is what happens when you dev on a 7 year old box.
I also got a hold of a QHD monitor and have been able to duplicate and fix the mouse lag bug. It seems the glow composites were the cause. So we no longer have glowy stuff. I have to find a solution for that before 1.16.3 is released.

Yearly Awards are about half way done. I will probably get them to a functional state and then release 1.16.3. I'll then come back to them at a later date to make the formatting prettier. (As of now it's a wall of text...)


-Fixed Mouse Lag Bug
-Fixed Soviet Minsk bug.

[Eric.B]

Getting close to release!

I finished the Year End Car awards. You'll get a memo if you win and some image boosts depending on what/where you win. Winners can be viewed in the magazine. Be warned though it's not very pretty at this time.

I also made a toggle to turn on/off the mouse glow over stuff. This was the cause of people's issues with mouse lag and clicking. The current solution is not pretty at all. We will replace the hit boxes with the actual models as soon as the artist sends them to me.

-Year End Car Awards.
-Mouse Glow Compositor toggle in settings.
-Non-Compositor mouse over objects, (For when compositors are turned off)


Tomorrow I have a bunch of little GUI fixes to make so that the Russian language file is more playable. Then I'll double check the magazine stuff. And a few other minor fix ups and changes before we're ready for 1.16.3!

[Eric.B]

Did a bunch of little stuff today to get 1.16.3 ready. In fact I do believe it's good to go. I will start my Debug playtest as soon as I finish typing this. All goes well, we'll have optimized compiles in the morning, upload, Steam test, and everything will be ready by my lunch time!

-Fixed San Marino war bug
-Fixed Passenger reduction bug
-Adjusted retooling cost to fit the new lengthen time periods between retooling.
-Added page turning/table of contents buttons to Magazine
-Adjusted some gui widths for russian text
-1.16.3 Russian language file added. (83% translated, some text too long.)


I might of done more stuff, but I can't quite frankly remember right this second. :\ Should get in the habit of making lists again...

[Eric.B]

1.16.3 released, check the Steam Announcements for details.

I'll probably relax a little today, pick development back up either tonight or tomorrow morning.

[Eric.B]

Didn't get to write up what I did yesterday, I fell asleep...

-Fixed Reflective Shaders in LINUX
-Fixed Vehicle Type Duplication bug in Assisted Designers
-Put a maximum bid amount the AI is willing to pay for contracts. (Should fix a number of bugs that allow you to game the game by billions! )



I'll be mostly playing around with the tutorials today. And start knocking off contracting requests tonight or tomorrow.

[Eric.B]

Electric went out for a good 3-4 hours today. So I didn't get all that I wanted done...

-Split the main tutorial into multiple parts in the Main Menu and Select HQ map.
-City infrastructure effects civilian contract likelihood.
-Lobbying effects chances of winning military contract bid.
-Increased Bid length by a minimum of 6 months up to a maximum increase of 9 months.

I will continue working on contracting improvements tomorrow morning, dabble a little more with getting the main tutorial condensed as much as possible in the afternoon, and continue working on the contracting stuff in the evening.

So stay tuning!

[Eric.B]

Continued work on the contracting system.

-New contracting memo now specifically shows contracts you can bid on. And contracts you can not bid on.
-Fixed memo scrolling cut off.
-Added per month values to number of units needed in contracts
-Fixed AI/Player cargo volume measurements for Liters
-Fixed cargo volume requirements for contract requests
-Added Metric and SAE units for cargo volume in the contract request.

Bed time now, I'll pick things back up in the morning.