Devlog

Multiplayer Beta: Found it together, or race each other

New Features

  • Multiplayer (Beta) – Weekly Challenge: every week everyone plays the same start. Results go onto a Steam leaderboard – with friends, worldwide and by team size.
  • Multiplayer (Beta) – Shared World: you play your own company at your own pace; your Steam friends' companies show up in it as competitors, with their real figures, updated every in-game month. How far it reaches is up to you in the settings.
  • Multiplayer (Beta) – Co-Op: run one company together. Every player is a co-founder with their own languages and skills; the host can hand out areas, and large expenses need the partners' consent.
  • Multiplayer (Beta) – Competitive: several companies share one market – whoever accepts a contract first gets it. Other players can be bought out; whoever is bought out decides whether to carry on with a new company or leave the round. A company rests while its player is away.
  • Getting together: the host invites through the Steam overlay, or friends use "Join Game" in their friends list. Everything runs over Steam – no servers of ours and no port forwarding.
  • Mods in a session: a session names the mods it runs on, installs missing ones or says why it cannot start.
  • New: your own operating systems and app stores – two new kinds of product with an ecosystem of their own. From 1984 you can develop an operating system, from 1993 an app store for it; the store needs an operating system of yours on the market.
  • Every copy of your system sold is a user on it. Where the users are, the rivals publish their apps – by name, a few at a time. Your store earns a commission you set on every app purchase: more per sale, but fewer developers.
  • More apps sell more systems, and your own products reach more buyers on your platform. Strong rivals answer with an operating system of their own and take buyers and developers from you – buy one out and its users come over.
  • New: media and production – software now reaches the shops on a medium. The client decides whether a contract goes on a shelf; then you pick the medium when you accept it, and the run has to be pressed before delivery while the deadline keeps running.
  • It is pressed by a contract presser that charges per copy, or in your own production hall: rent, machines and a crew that pay off when it is kept busy. An idle hall can be given up again.
  • No medium is better at everything: older processes are cheaper but spoil more, new ones press slowly at first. Downloads arrive in 1995 – they reach all buyers only as fast lines spread. Your own products also come out on a medium that sets their reach.
  • Technical debt: every delivery leaves legacy in the codebase of its language – the more, the older the studio. New work in that language gets slower and buggier; employees on refactoring pay it down. On Casual and Normal it grows more slowly than on Realistic and Hardcore.
  • Product support: sales raise support tickets. Employees can be put on support, external support can be switched on per product, and tickets left open cost quality and reputation.
  • Founder salary: you set what the founder pays himself, and his language courses cost what an employee's cost.
  • Finished jobs can deliver themselves – off by default, and only when everything is tested and no bug is open.
  • Crash rescue: after a crash your game is saved, and the next start opens the bug report pre-filled.
  • The DevLog is one click away in the main menu.

Improvements

  • An employee belongs to exactly one team. The roster shows the team and can be filtered by it.
  • "Auto-Assign All" no longer hides under the notifications.
  • Free employees pick up the next card from the backlog by themselves.
  • Products of the same kind share their market; one that stops selling is retired after a warning.
  • Branches can be upgraded, and the office view offers every location type.
  • Mails and notifications clean up after themselves after 30 game days – or as soon as they no longer hold.
  • Any language can be trending, and the bonus only pays for contracts in that language.
  • Buttons fit their labels in every language.
  • Mods can change events, balancing values, the research tree and the contract economy.

Bug Fixes

  • Random events never happened – now they do.
  • Rework can be handed in as soon as every bug is fixed.
  • Migration contracts: the mail quotes the same amount accepting pays, and offers arrive a few at a time.
  • Teams: the screen scrolls over the members too, and long language lists wrap.
  • Investors get their share of the profit the month actually made, and the monthly statement shows what was really booked.
  • A project manager who is let go no longer stays attached to his project.
  • QA testers climb their own career ladder.
  • Employees keep their language skills across a load, and a single language course no longer leaves a training plan behind.
  • The job title follows the chosen language, and every person has exactly one.
  • A new company sees its specializations right away, not only after the first load.
  • After a modded run, the next new run is ranked again.
  • The scenario goals panel shows the days left correctly.

A look ahead: open source with licenses

You can already release your own products as open source: the community gathers stars, contributors join in, and a successful project becomes a framework you can build on yourself. Next, you'll pick a license when you do – and the choice has consequences:

  • Permissive (e.g. MIT): anyone may do anything with it. The most users and contributors – but no money.
  • Copyleft (e.g. GPL): whoever builds on it has to open their code as well. That ties the community closer to you, but puts companies off.
  • Dual license: open for the community, paid for companies that want to use the code in their own products – turning an open project into a source of income.

Your rivals will use or avoid your projects too, depending on what the license allows. There's no date yet.