GearCity 1.21 Progress Thread

[Eric.B]

Busted butt for the last couple of days. I'll be moving back to features this evening, starting with the redesign of the newspaper and the internal newspaper system. Hopefully I can finish it in 2-3 days. If so that will give me time to do the HR redesign as well before v1.20.4 is ready to ship.

So what did I do?
-Fixed bug in multiple reports showing zero inventory for a vehicle when it is not in production but units are being stored in reserve.
-Fixed bug which would not cancel a factory redesign
-Improved side panel Factory Update and Factory Redesign information
-Added Factory Update and Factory Redesign information to multiple reports that show construction times.
-Fixed bug in Marketing Efficiency reports that gave too low of a "named value" to numeric efficiency rating.
-Fixed refit modified components exploit that allowed for refitted models to be developed faster than base models if the base model was currently in research.
-Fixed bug that may cause unassigned production lines to be unavailable to the player.
-Fixed bug in AI/Auto production system that could possibly assign the player a vehicle that is not theirs.
-Fixed bug in Simple Monthly Report that displayed incorrect results of everything after racing revenues.
-Disabled Merchandising Revenues if your HQ nation is at war.
-Racing is now shutdown (no results, expenses, or income) if the majority of cities are at war in the world. (IE World War 1 and World War 2)
-Implemented a Marque selection for Licensed Vehicle Designs.
-Fixed bug with trim name selection when developing a New Generation vehicle.
-Removed Factory/Production expense costs from city reports. Leaving just Branch Expenses
-Fixed some bad text formatting on Company Directories table.

[Eric.B]

Sadly my ticketing system is down so I don't have a list of what I did since the last progress report. So I'm working off memory here and a few things may be missed.

-Translatable newspaper articles
-Random news article fillers (Will add more in the future.)
-Complete Newspaper redesign using new web browser system
-Simplified HR system and got rid one of the list boxes. Assigning employees for factories and research are now down as a whole for the city rather than individual projects.
-Added top total summary for individual vehicle reports.
-Created a vehicle sales, production, inventory, and missed demand report for districts.
-Created individual district reports showing all vehicles sold in the district.
-Possible fix to Windows 10 'Save As' reports folder copy bug. Seems like windows 10's SHFileOperations silent flag is broken... This has not been tested yet.
-Updated translation files.


I always feel like I'm missing something... In fact I know I'm missing something. Anyhoo, anything else missing on this list was minor bugs/features.

I've been play testing the game. Will do a little more in the morning. Looks like 1.20.4 is ready to go live soon.

[Eric.B]

Quick hotfix out for 1.20.4, an SP1 or Hotfix #2 to come Monday-ish

-Fixed accessory deletion crash when player clicks the car body
-Fixed accessory modification crash after player clicks the car body.
-Fixed possible contract denied crash
-Fixed clearing out "completion who opened a branch at location companies" list.
-Manually copying Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 reports to new folder when using "Save As", to get around a Windows 10 issue/bug.

[Eric.B]

v1.20.4 SP 1 is ready. This will be the final patch for v1.20.4. The next Testing build is coming up rather well. I'm hoping to finish it before the end of October, then I can clean everything up for v1.21 release.

In other news, I may be effected by Hurricane Matthew. Toward the end of the week/weekend email and forum replies may be slowed based on the availability of Internet. (Work should still be able to continue during this period, just at a slower, working on a laptop, pace...)



-Fixed decimal formatting bug on Total Expenses in Revenue Summary Report.
-Fixed Incorrect warning when using Assisted Engine Designer
-Fixed Monthly Report Construction Table bug when doing a Factory Update or Redesign.
-Fixed Incorrect Font usage in Help Buttons.
-Implemented Pension Funding and Information from Financial Banking Window (Safe Room)
-Implemented Networth Bar Chart (Wanted a stacking line chart, but this was undo-able with our libs.)
-Added Low Morale warning message for Factory Production Screens.
-Assign production will now reselect the previously selected vehicle when modifying production lines (Only works when not in district mode.)

[Eric.B]

Well I am alive and well, and after one week have some progress to report!

I've completely redesigned the Auto-Commands in the Mega Menu (Computer.)
With the redesign I removed quite a few redundant features that already exist in some way or another in the mega menu. Move around some to different areas, and improved the remaining while adding some new auto-commands.

Fill and Wage adjustment commands have been moved to the HR (Phone) window (Excluding "Fill All" and "Wages All". We have removed the popups for wage adjustments. We will remove the popups for "Fills" after we implement gui sound effects.

All popup windows have been removed from auto-commands. They're now in their own panel in the Mega Menu Window.

Auto-Margin adjustment now shows average wage.

Sell Everywhere, Sell in Region, Stop in Region, Change Car Price have been removed. These are redundant in the Mega Menu, as the Branch system is right there.

Both Marketing Auto-Commands have been removed as they're redundant with the Marketing system already in Mega Menu.

Renew Contracts was removed, as it doesn't do anything yet. It may be added back in v1.23, when it does do something.

Recondition Factories/Branches were merged together.

Added Racing Budget Adjustment and Idle Racing.

Drop down boxes with vehicle names have been replaced with lists boxes of vehicles.

End Production now has a Checkbox to "Stop Sales" as well...

Change All Prices now has an "All Vehicles", Individual Vehicles, and a way to set a flat amount of change (say add $100 to every vehicle, or remove $50 from every vehicle...) rather than percentages.

A couple of bugs were fixed as well. The end result is a much more tidier, less buttons, more efficient system.

I still have some little clean ups to do on it. Need to add the results to the recent actions system. Then I will move on to a couple of bugs submitted to me the last week or so. Hopefully getting to the magazine redesign before the 15th. (Thus putting us on track for an October 1.20.5 release.)

-Removed "Fill" and "Wage" commands from Mega Menu and into HR
-Reduced Number of Popups in Mega Menu
-Show Average Wage in Auto Wage Margin
-Removed Vehicle Dropdown Boxes in favor of List boxes
-Added Stop Selling Check box to Auto-Commands "End Production"
-Combined Recondition Auto-commands and removed the slider.
-Removed Sell Everywhere, Sell in Region, Stop in Region, Change Car Price. Modify Marketing, and Regional Marketing as redundant. Removed Renew Contract as useless.
-Created Racing Budget Adjustment which allows you to increase or decrease all racing budgets.
-Created Idle Racing which will end all racing programs
-Change All Prices can now work on individual vehicles, has been renamed to Change Prices.
-Change Prices can now work with flat changes rather than percentages.
-Fixed possible duplication bug when using replace model.

[Eric.B]

Been a long while since I posted, but for good reason. I've been focused on the redesign of the magazine system. And I would rather post it being completed rather than bits and pieces.

The magazine system has been moved to the in-game web browser. You now have to flip the pages of the magazine. Which is a fairly neat feature if you ask me. The magazine has been trimmed down some. As I was unable to implement some features in the old one, and canned features that were never made in the old magazine.

While new content in the magazine is sparse, the new system allows much more room to work with, thus it's not as cramped as the old system. The backend to reviews has had some adjustments to take into account specs rather than ratings in some instances. This should fix some of the odd review results. Also we adjusted the class challenge results and the awards. And improved formatting in each.

Marque Catalog and Model Comparison was moved to Showroom due to these limitations. Which in my opinion is fine, because eventually we'll get pre-made vehicle designs and you'll be able to see AI vehicle designs.

It now takes a while to get the full effect of your lobbying budget, this prevents an exploit of only funding lobbying for a few turns. Storage Fees for excess vehicles has also been implemented. It's just a minor maintenance fee for excess inventory of vehicles.

A number of database bugs were fixed, which should improve long term game play.


I still have a few magazine covers, minor bugs, and a couple other tweaks and adjustments to get to. v1.20.5 should be out on the 26th. With v1.21 coming out shortly there after if no major issues are found in v1.20.5. We're also going to have a server move at the end of the month which may effect my email.

-Moved Magazine to Webbrowser
-Implemented Turn.js
-Moved some reviews from ratings based to spec based
-Fixed review formatting
-Fixed class challenge formatting
-Tweaked overall best results for class challenge
-Moved some class challenge results from ratings to specs.
-Added wealth index effect to costs effects on yearly awards. (So cheap car types it's more important, expensive vehicle types, not at all.)
-Improved random factor in yearly awards
-Cleaned up yearly awards formatting
-Lobbying effects increase/decrease slowly based on budget
-Storage fee per vehicle for extra vehicles in inventory.
-Fixed bug in End Production code accessed from Mega Menu.
-Fixed possible crash issue in stand alone vehicle designer.
-Fixed possible incorrect variable when AI designs a racing car.
-Fixed a number of possible null results when adding data together in the save game tables.
-Fixed a couple of formatting issues when pulling data from the save game files.

[Eric.B]

v1.20.5 has been released.

This should be the final release to Testing (short of a hotfix or two) before v1.21 comes out.
Since the last update, I mainly focused on fixing a few bugs in the new magazine system and else where. (Since these are not wild bugs, I haven't documented them.) I also finished a number of magazine covers, updated the translations, and did a number of other things which were not documented.


In a few days we will be moving to a new server. I'll make a more noticeable announcement when we get closer to the date. The forums may be down during this time. I will redirect you to Steam until they're back up.

[Eric.B]

Since most people follow this thread and Mybb's default announcements are sort of hidden, I'll link you guys to the latest announcement:

http://www.ventdev.com/forums/announcements.php?aid=2

[Eric.B]

I've been out of office for the last few days for family related matters, but work continues none the less. One of the major things to happen in the last week was a change of our official servers. This may effect email support, if you have any issues emailing me, please let me know.

After the v1.20.5 release I have primarily focused on minor bugs and features that do not effect save games. I will continue working on these sorts of things even after the v1.21 release. The hope is to make sure the Major builds are super stable. As this effects new sales and returns greatly.

-Limited 'Save As' reports file copy to 6months, thus speeding up the 'Save As' feature.
-Increased Webbrowser frame rate on Windows and Linux. (Can not do this on OSX due to keyboard race conditions in OSX's input libs.)
-Disabled page flip animation in magazine
-Decreased the amount of javascript in magazine to speed up the "site"
-Added table of content links to upper bar.
-Mirrored Vehicle Sales for the Last 12 month's x-axis. Fixed month 12 showing up as 0.
-Refixed bug in sorting reports with numbers in them. They should now sort properly.
-Flipped Incorrect Idle Factory and Idle Branch text in autocommands
-Fixed Contract Winning Newspaper Crash.
-Fixed Racing Expense Chart Crash when you have too many racing teams.
-Setup new server for new wiki/translation systems. Migrated websites, forums, and email.
-Removed old code and GUI for all things replaced by the browser system. Thus speeding up "state" loads.
-Fixed possible Negative OEM parts revenues bug.
-Fixed page not created link bug which links to other page not created pages...
-Fixed vehicle name and link bugs in Total Cost of Delivery report.
-Fixed bug in Mega Menu which did not show vehicles for sale at selected branch after production was ended but the vehicle is still for sale.
-Fixed duplicate cars listed in "Stop Sales" auto command.

[Eric.B]

v1.21 is ready to go, we have a couple new features, bug fixes, and content on its way as well since the last post. The major new feature is a Historical Timeline of your company in the Showroom. This will show you the entire history of your company, all important dates in a vertical timeline list.. This is currently just a barebones and will be expanded in the near future with images, slightly more detailed content, etc. We've also got a huge update to the logos, we're now up to 250-something professionally done AI logos in the game (replacing my horrible programmer art.) Finally there was a bunch of little bug fixes while I played through the game some to make sure things are stabilized.

I have a couple cool new things planned for v1.21 SP1 as well. In fact it's pretty much done, but too early to launch in v1.21 as I have no tested it on other platforms yet.

-Merged History and Spec data into vehicle list selection in showroom
-Added Showroom sales charts for yearly and monthly sales.
-Added direct link to All Time Sales report in showroom.
-Implemented Player Historical Timeline
-Fixed number of database bugs that can cause unclean save games if you return to main menu.
-More new logos
-Updated Translations

[Eric.B]

Just about to release SP1 patch. (Just waiting on my super old computer to finish building the release binaries...)


-Fixed possible crash when consolidated company names are larger than 20 characters
-Fixed possible malformed name when consolidated company name is larger than 20 characters and one of the company's name is larger than 15 characters.
-Fixed a number of bugs in the Employee Breakdown Report and Charts.
-Fixed incorrect values in the Pensions Funding Information part of Finacial Banking.
-Implemented GUI sound effects!
-Implemented Sound Effects volume sliders in Settings and in the Office Radio
-Implemented Sound Effects for clickable items in office, safe, and world maps.
-Implemented Ambient Sound Effects for RnD and Race Track (May not work on Linux and Mac. Need to do a little bit of testing with timers...)
-Implemented Successful Action sound effects and failed action sound effects. Thus removing a number of popups. (Some additional Work may need to be done to this.)

For SP2, I have a number of minor report bug fixes, two new reports, and maybe the office help buttons (this could possibly come as SP3.) Then I'll update the demo on the site.

[Eric.B]

SP2 has been finished and released. With that, this thread is over. I will make a new thread for v1.22 progress as soon as I have some stuff to report!

I will start working on the Demo stuff in the next couple of minutes. Hopefully get it released by tomorrow and can start working on v1.21.1 asap!


-Fixed Incorrect information in Branch Expense Employees report
-Fixed Incorrect months being used in Annual Report data.
-Fixed Incorrect data in Vehicle Class Marketshare report.
-Fixed Bug in Vehicle Sales Chart that causes new models to be released on the 0 x axis.
-Fixed late game rounding error in Research Team Lock values. (May also fix Lobbying Lock for high amounts in late game.)
-Stop Sales Auto-command (Directly and From End Production) will automatically scrap vehicles if the vehicle is no longer in production.
-Adjusted Bond Rating Calculations to give less weight to current expenses.
-Added a Pension Payment Schedule Report.
-Enabled the Gun.
-Fixed bug in Magazine Class Comparison Introduction.
-Office Help Buttons.
-Minor GUI corrections throughout the Office.
-Adjusted Red Text slightly to help those playing on TVs.

[Eric.B]

This progress thread has been replaced by the v1.22 thread: http://www.ventdev.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=3191