GearCity 1.18.4 Progress Thread

[Eric.B]

-Removed 16-bit color options
-Removed 800 x 640 and smaller resolutions
-Fixed broken video settings crash when switching from OpenGL to DirectX
-Factory Production Lines list now automatically sorts by Lines used, Local Reserves, then Global Reserves.
-Added vehicle quality information and rate change to the production lines window (This will allow you to see the effects settings a production line to quality has.)
-Added a warning message for worn, war, and low moral effect on production output. This message will show your effected output due to these factors.
-Adjusted production output to allow 1 vehicle per month.
-You can now directly type in how many vehicles you want to produce, the game will adjust the sliders for you.
-Fixed Dublin WW2 bug.



I still have, *counts* 3 things left to do to factories before I move shipping distances to branches. Port this stuff over to MegaMenu, then implement it all in the Districting system.

[Eric.B]

Notable changes since my last update on here, I have moved the shipping sliders from factory production to branch distribution. I've also added a lock system. The GUI is not created for this yet. However the plan is to add a slider in the Branch window that will adjust ALL vehicles being distributed at the branch unless you have a vehicle locked and set with the individual sliders. With the coming district system you'll be able to set the sliders for all branches in an area or even override both settings by limiting shipping to a given country or district.

Anyhoo, I have finished my overhaul of the base factory system
(still need to tweak some numbers.) I have moved to implementing factory features into the district system. I'm roughly a third of the way done and should have everything but production finished for District Factories by tomorrow evening!

-Fixed bug in base vehicle type filters in factory production window.
-Moved Factory Shipping Distance to Branch Distribution.
-Ported Changes to Mega Menu.
-District Factory View (Allows you to view all factories info in a selected district)
-District Factory Build (Builds a Factory in every selected city in the district that does not have a factory)
-District Factory Recondition (retool) (Retools every factory in the selected district.)

[Frankschtaldt]

While you're doing all of this, is it possible to add in an option to lock the quality slider when turning on auto production?
One of the things that's always troubled me about it was that it'd constantly set my luxury cars to produce at the lowest quality setting.

[Eric.B]

While you're doing all of this, is it possible to add in an option to lock the quality slider when turning on auto production?
One of the things that's always troubled me about it was that it'd constantly set my luxury cars to produce at the lowest quality setting.

Probably not, as the point of Auto production is to manage everything for you. That being said, I do have more tweaks to auto production on my todo list for 1.19.

The purpose of the districting system however is to allow you to manage your factories much easier. Imagine just having to adjust 1 slider for your entire factory output for the vehicle throughout the world. In fact you don't even need that one slider, you can type in the amount you want to produce manually.

[Eric.B]

So I have pretty much finished the Factory District system. You can now do every factory action to multiple factories as you can with a single factory. Including managing production.

Currently the production system evenly splits lines between factories. So if you have Factory A- with 4 lines, Factory B with 2 lines, and Factory C with 2 lines and you want to produce 3 lines of a vehicle, each factory will get 1 production line. If you want to produce 5 lines, A will have 2, B will have 2, and C will have 1.

Last night I tried it with a percentage split. (If you set 25% line use, it would use 1 from A, 0 from B and 0 from C. This was a little easier to code, but unpredictable, thus was changed to the existing system.)

I'm going to test it out a little more tonight and clean some things up. Then switch to fixing up the branch features. Finish adding GUI for the new shipping stuff in the Branch system. Then port that to the District system. Finally finish it all up by making a way for you to create your own custom districts. Then 1.18.1 will be ready. We're about 40% of the way there.


-District Factory Upgrading (Upgrade all factories in selected District)
-District Factory Resizing (Resize all factories in selected District)
-District Factory Closing (Close all factories in selected District)
-District Production (Manage production lines, quality sliders, for all factories selected in the district.)

[Eric.B]

Currently working on the redesign of the Branch GUI. Mostly minor changes removing excess information and simplifying it a bit. Notable changes to the "View" branch, it now gives better fiscal data for the branch.

Dealerships have been given a boost. I increased the maximum number of dealerships and cleaned up the code for getting new dealerships. Dealerships now have a greater effect on the population pools (number of customers) available to your vehicles. This additional pool is not shared with competition. Thus making a branch's Dealership Focus much more important. For the next few versions this will probably increase sales. This is only temporary however, as I plan on implementing a "Used Car" effect to the game!

I'm in the process of redesigning the Distribution window. I have merged the two lists into one. And will continue to do some tweaks to simplify the window, add more information, and include the shipping system. (Probably also a new graph showing distribution of income!!! )

Once I'm done with this, I'll make the new shipping distance panel for entire branch shipping, then I have to port the new code to the MegaMenu. After that I can move on to Branch Districting. Finally finish up with custom district making system. And with that 1.18.1 will be ready!

Changes
--------------------------------------------------------------
-Branch View Redesigned
-Minor changes to Branch Build/Redesigned
-Removed retool slider from Branch Retool.
-Minor changes to Branch Close
-Branch view automatically comes up when selecting a branch
-Branch build automatically comes up when selecting a city without a branch
-Maximum Dealerships increased.
-Dealership franchises rates increased.
-Optimized dealership calculations
-Dealerships now effect buying population pool for individual vehicles.

[Dolehof]

I agree with the decision to merge screens. Currently I have to switch screens a lot, trying to remember the number. A candidate for screen merging would also be the racing screen, I would appreciate it a lot if the competition and team setup windows could be just shown in the main screen, there seems to be plenty of unused space in the. Maybe even have the current season results shown there as well.

Perhaps the view and modify screens in RnD screens could be combined as well? I'm switching between those a lot, reviewing my designs, checking which ones to upgrade, redesign or might as well end production. Switching between those can get a bit tiresome. At least a button to the modifying- and licensing screens from the view screen would be very handy. And the ability to switch between component types in the modifying and licensing screens just like in the viewing screen.

I would also appreciate if the component viewing screen would contracts and licenses in the 'used in' panel.

I'm having a blast with the game, but having to switch less between screens would make the game play so much better. I like the mechanics, but all the screen switch, trying to remember the data from the other screen can become a bit tiresome. Thanks for a great game though!

[Eric.B]

I agree with the decision to merge screens. Currently I have to switch screens a lot, trying to remember the number.

Well Screens are not merging. I've merged the two lists into one list where you set prices for vehicles at branches.

A candidate for screen merging would also be the racing screen, I would appreciate it a lot if the competition and team setup windows could be just shown in the main screen, there seems to be plenty of unused space in the. Maybe even have the current season results shown there as well.

When I get to redoing some of the racing stuff, I will look into it. However keep in mind one of the requirements of the GUI is for it to work on 1024x768 resolutions. Which limits the amount of screen space I can use. Even if you have a 4k monitor.

At least a button to the modifying- and licensing screens from the view screen would be very handy. And the ability to switch between component types in the modifying and licensing screens just like in the viewing screen.

This already exists. Click the "View Vehicle/Component" button while in the modify window and it'll automatically open the View Window with the component or vehicle selected.


These all belong in a suggestion thread. Not progress thread. This is just a place for me to tell you guys what i'm working on. Anything posted here will be lost and I will not be reminded to work on it.

[Eric.B]

Been a while since I updated this thread. I've been having some housing issues, thus I have spent the last few days doing more packing than programming. This is not to say I haven't been working on the game, just the hours have been cut in half. This also would explain why my response time has been a little slow for my normal standards. Things should return to normal after 4th of July weekend.

So what have I done since the last update? I've merged the two lists for branch distribution into one. Removed the shipping and sales priority system from the game, redesigned the GUI for the branch distribution system, added a few more side panels information. Finished porting shipping distance to individual branch vehicles. Added a shipping distance lock system. Added a way to set all shipping distances of a branch from the branch menu (unless a vehicle's distance is locked.) Ported all these changes to the Mega Menu.

I spent most of the day working on the District Branch system. You can now View, Build, Redesign, Retool, and Close all branches in a selected district at the same time.

I've started working on the Distribution system for the districts. Once this is complete I'll need to work on the shipping system for districts as well as the district shipping lock and a way for the user to create their own Districts. So 1.18.1 is getting pretty close to being ready. My goal is to have it ready by 7-10, but don't quote me on that. 1.18.2 will probably be nothing but bug fixes since I've got a pretty sizeable backlog growing now.

-Merged Avaliable and Selected Vehicle Branch Lists
-Removed Priority system from game
-Expanded Competition list in distro GUI
-Redesigned buttons and layout in distro GUI
-Added shipping slider to branch distro
-Added shipping lock system to prevent changes to locked shipping distances
-Added a "Unit Manufacturing Costs" to side panel, showing the cost of a unit without including corporate expenses.
-Reworded the corporate expense side panel amount in distro, since it was confusing some people.
-Added estimated units in shipping range
-Factories now highlight orange when setting shipping distance.
-Shipping Distance panel now shows how many vehicles are being produced and reserved inside shipping radius
-Added shipping distance, shipping lock, and district lock to distro side panel
-Ported all distro changes to Mega Menu
-Added a branch shipping distance system. This changes the shipping distance for ALL vehicles at a branch unless they are shipping distance locked.
-District Branch View
-District Branch Build
-District Branch Redesign
-District Branch Retool
-District Branch Close

[Seaswolf]

I can't wait longer to get the new District system to play around and conquer the world!
I grown up playing Civ I and Detroit... haha

[Savoyard]

Just want to pop in and say that you improved the UI a lot since last time I played. Keep it up.

[Eric.B]

I've added in District Vehicle Distribution which will allow you to manage selling/prices etc of your vehicles in the district. As well as a system that can limit shipping to a selected district. This is useable for instance if you have for example factories in Italy and want to supply your branches in UK but not to supply branches in Poland. You simply set your UK branches to ship from Italy. This can be done on an individual vehicle level or district wide.

I've also added the Shipping Distance/District Shipping at the District level to effect all Branches and All Vehicles in the selected district.

I'll be play testing these changes and cleaning up bugs for the next day or two. Then move on to custom made districts. Then back to bug fixing. Looks like we're on track for July 10th 1.18.1 release, although I still can't 100% confirm (Personal life might interfere a couple of days till then.)

-District Branch Distribution.
-District Branch Shipping.
-Ship from District system.

[Hoodinski]

You're a trooper. Much appreciated!

[Eric.B]

The weekend was a holiday here in the US. Thus I didn't do very much programming. I was however stuck only with a Mac Mini for a few days and as such the Mac port is almost finished! (Didn't get far enough to allow me to work on the districting system over the weekend.) The mac port can almost be guaranteed for 1.19 release.


So what has been finished since the last update?
-Create your own custom districts
-Multicity selection tool for creating districts. (click and drag)
-Deleting custom districts
-Editing custom districts.

I need to allow the use of the custom districts, check for duplicate names, and update district locked shipping when editing a district. After that bug test the new system and 1.18.1 will be ready. I'm going to announce a date tomorrow, currently it's looking like a July 12th or 13th release.

[Eric.B]

Testing build has been updated. You can find the announcement for it here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/285110/announcements/

VENT Forums feedback for district system: http://www.ventdev.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=2714

[Eric.B]

Another hotfix tonight, fixing branch level shipping distance crash.

[wmayes04]

Wanted to say that I love gear city!!

[Eric.B]

Wanted to say that I love gear city!!

Glad you enjoy it! I love making it!

[Eric.B]

1.18.2 will probably be released as a series of hotfixes to 1.18.1 until I hit save game changes.

Today was mostly paperwork. And I finished most of it
As far as code, here's what I knocked out:
-Fixed crash in vehicle licensing
-Fixed Vehicle Image Decline while being researched
-Nurfed Specific vehicle rating effect on vehicle image over time.
-Fixed 1900-1930 wage growth for Magadan and Norilsk, Russia
-Fixed Estimated Shipping Demand in District and City specific factory production view. (Not sure about speediness of this calculation however.)


Next hotfix is schedueled for Tuesday evening my time. Till' then, enjoy!

[Eric.B]

-Optimized a number of End Turn Formulas
-Updated SQLite, roughly 10-25% performance boost depending on hardware.
-End production now disregards all licensed components.
-Fixed manual production amount input on district map.

The plan is to knock out 2 or 3 more bugs tomorrow then release a hotfix. I also plan to work in some optimizations slowly into the game to speed up RnD sliders, RnD/Office loading, and the turn times. It'll be an on going task when I'm not on my main programming box.