Post by Hulgarth in Game Dev Masters comments

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some excellent feedback thank you kindly..

Firstly the salary cost for additional workers does continue to grow as you level those workers. I can look into raising it less or tightening the growth curve, I don't want the monthly costs to overwhelm you. I will def take a look at this and see how I can tighten it up.

In regards to the long term investment bug, It is suppose to notify you and then move the cash into your bank not petty which is possibly why you didn't notice the cash or its possible it didn't add. I will perform some tests to ensure it is adding the cash as intended.

I agree with you on the petty / bank feeling odd. The main reason for this was so the player had to choose to put money in the bank to get interest, but I agree it does feel some what off. I might just shift it back to one cash flow and let you open an account for some sort of fee or unlock to start gaining interest or just let it all auto bank. I def agree though the idea is cool but in reality the 2 diff cash streams plays odd.

The Contract work does need some tweaking on it's procedural generation, some of the results can be a little wild. The one issue here is if you use the RUSH worker skill contract work is pretty easy but without it's pretty difficult. I will work to balance this more for sure.

The help section was deadly accurate when I first wrote it back in Ver 1.0 but in the current version things have shifted a bit balance wise it now does require an engine with 6 tech in year 2. I haven't updated the help section I honestly wasn't sure anyone had read it, you are the first to mention it and I will rectify that shortly.

Everything is still on the table and balance will shift like water based on feedback from great people like you. I truly appreciate you taking the time to try the game and provide feedback I hope you enjoyed your time, and I hope you try some more with future updates. Still a long way to go but I have a lot of big ideas for the game and I hope you enjoy them, as well as If you have any ideas I am more than open to hearing all of them.

seb116144 years ago (2 edits)

Hey, thanks for the answer. I managed to make it to year 4 on my last try, i was around level 10. The game looks promising, but at the moment i don t think i'll play any more until more updates trickle in.

A few more comments/advices :

- The game feels like a rogue like, or like i m trapped in a room with rising water because of the fixed cost (a little under 20000 before game over in year 4), doomed to fail sooner or later. I didn't hire another worker, the rising costs were all with only the founder. So i would guess that my avatar going through the level was the source of the rising cost. What feels weird or unbalanced in that case is that if i'm founding my company, i wouldn't pay myself 20000 a month at the risk of bankrupting the company.

- Another issue is that i didn't feel like my sales were "progressing" at the same pace, a decent/good game would always sell in the ballpark of 100 000 / 150 000, game ratings around 7/8. I also don't see a difference in sales between the 1st game and the last one despite having around 1500 fans.

- An other issue with the level system is that at the moment you don't want to level because you only feel the cost and not the benefit. I know there's some perks to be had, but those are very expensive, so i don't know what they bring. I feel like you really progress by training and that also cost a lot of money.

- I tried to use the Crunch ability at one point but i didn't feel a real boost, maybe i didn't manage to activate it properly. Where do i click to activate it ??

- The long term investment bug : the money definitely wasn't in either account. I admit i didn'tt try any more after that as my run was pretty much busted by it.

- Regarding the petty vs bank stuff, maybe you can try some things like you go shopping for groceries/leisure and stuff from the petty account, resulting in some productivity buff if you eat in classy restaurant instead of cheap noodles, but i wouldn't see if it could justify setting up that much micro.

- Not really important at that point, but i didn't see how buying better hardware would impact me nor by how much.

- Regarding the engine i managed to figure things out by myself, i had a level 12 engine in year 2 and rode it till the game over. I tried to look into it but i don t think you can upgrade an exisiting engine with new feature and you have to pay for all the old feature on a new engine... and money is tight... Didn't manage to make it this far though so maybe i m wrong. Maybe allow the player to upgrade the engine 2/3 time before it's obsolete and must be redone, idk.

- So all in all, i think there's a balance problem between the amounts of cash going in versus going out, but the game looks interesting enough and i definitely enjoyed my time. I wish you the best of luck and maybe i ll drop back in a few months to see where it's going.

Edit : and i remember another bug, i was creating a new game when i saved/exited and when i reloaded, the progress was lost, no game were being created.

Hulgarth4 years ago

first off great post man appreciate the feedback.

Ok so there is a big problem here... you didn't hire new workers and your monthly cost in the first office was increasing as your guy leveled?? That is a new bug that must of came up in the latest Update 7 changes with workers. That is a total mistake. Your first guy (you) doesn't receive any pay why would he, the 2500 is your monthly rent and should never increase in the small office. I want the small first office to feel like a safe place where you can take your time and it used to be that way, this bug must of slipped in as a result of recent changes and will be addressed tonight with minor patch to follow. It's not my intention for the game to ramp up pressure until you move to medium office / 3 workers and medium games. The new workers get paid more as they level but medium games make substantially more so the trade off is worth it imo.

Game sales progress by year as well as by number of fans within some clamped limits as to enforce you moving from small - medium - large - AAA games. in simplest terms my sales algorithm goes something like this. based on year I get a potential num of possible sales, then your game quality maps a range from 0 to that max of potential sales, then your fan sales are added (clamped at 12,500 for small i believe) then its modified by trends / hype to get total sales then its chopped into weekly % chunks. A 9.0 in year 1 with no fans will sell less copies than a 9.0 in year 3 especially if you have 25k or > fans. Hopefully with more data I can refine these amounts, as I do want some fluctuation similar to real life where gaming has grown in popularity every year, but at the same time I need you to want to move from small (cash cap of about 250~400k for a 10 in year 3) into medium (cash cap of about 2~4 million for a 10 in year 7) etc etc however I need more testing and more tuning as well as player feedback to ensure these numbers all feel right. I have had version where it was to easy as well maybe this current is to hard but we will find the Goldy lox zone one day :)

I dig your idea about the groceries, I had a similar kind of idea as well. It's definitely being considered I just want to be careful not to add something people find tedious but I like the idea of buffs that could make it optional but worth it for the office to have a "feast" on the company etc all worker speed goes up etc very interesting idea..

Hardware is actually an amazing buff to your worker training / researching speed. The difference between maxed hardware and basic hardware for all 3 slots equates to massive time saved on training / researching, but its just time on those activities so maybe its not financially worth it to you? That however is kind of the point, I want as many viable player options as possible to create a real sense of strategy and replay ability. I have added a lot of features at this point I don't even know whats the best route to make the most money which is what I want for the game overall. Meaningful player options and varied game-play.

I will of course debug the long term investment options to ensure that works, I been thinking about it since I read your post earlier and I kind of want to ditch the petty cash and just move to all bank or tweak that system in some way It feels weird having the 2 and I always have petty in the negative and just keep bank rolling. This could be a good example of an unnecessary system for systems sake and will tighten that up.

Closing the game mid game development, and then finding the game canceled wasn't a bug as much as that's the way it was coded. I was on the fence if I wanted to let you exit mid development as there so many timers running during game dev that it will be a nightmare to save / resume but possible. Currently it doesn't save mid project just everything else. I should either change that or at least put a warning in the menu.

I really appreciate the feedback and I will 100% make use of it and I truly hope you play more and give more feedback if the mood hits. I am a solo dev but I am super passionate and dedicated. It is hard though to catch every issue a lone as well as code main systems while also trying to keep some degree of polish on menus / systems. So your feedback helps me a lot and I will 100% get to everything eventually. The last few days I have been doing some mesh work for more finalized visuals. All these aspects do take time but I work hard and I hope you will keep an eye and check back for updates and what not. Regardless thank you so much for the post and have a great day.

Hulgarth4 years ago

Also I neglected to mention regarding skills..

To gain a skill you first research it in the character upgrades (which it sounds like you did) then click the worker and view stats, from here you select change skills and then drag and drop the skills into the slots you want (each guy gets 2 @ lvl 10). Once equipped it will be available for you when you click on the worker with the skill based on what your guy is doing and when the skill can be used. For crunch that is available for use during stage 1 / 2 / 3 and game delays you wont see it any other time but when used you will definitely feel the difference 100% bubble chance makes.

I really need to do a proper tutorial in game but its difficult when a lot of the HUD is still work in progress but I will have a very detailed in game guide at some point before steam early access.

seb116144 years ago

Well, if the rising costs are a bug, maybe take everything else i said about incoming cash with a pinch of salt, because the balance will be wildly different. Hit me up when the update is done and i ll give it another try, this will sure look like i will play a different game ;)

I take no issue about the tutorial, i know the game is in early stage of production and it would be unwise of you to spend too much time documenting every little thing when you re likely changing a lot between each version.

Hulgarth4 years ago

I fixed that manager income bug right after talking to you. I didn't want anyone else to experience the issue you had. I want you to be able to take your time or go fast to the medium office, and I def don't want your manager leveling to feel bad that should be a pure positive :)

Here is a link to the minor update notes which include a mention to you for your bug detection https://hulgarth.itch.io/gdm/devlog/195750/gdm-minor-update-7b-fixes .

Really appreciate the help and understanding of the early stage issues and I hope you grab the new ver and check it out some more when you have the time. I am currently working on some advanced visuals for the offices, after that I plan to re-work cash into just the bank like we discussed and I got a really good idea based off your idea..

Every year based on your company valuation (calculated at year end based on gross and currently used to set loan sizes) I am going to give you a portion of money as a company fund type thing. This is separate from your main money and comes in addition no cost to the player. I am going to give you several office buff options that can be bought with that company funds, and you can decide how and when to buy these buffs, and because we are going to use your valuation I can have expensive buffs you wont be able to get until you are a larger company etc etc.. Still got lots to work out as to what the buffs will be but I am pretty excited about the idea it's yet another player option, and not found in any other tycoon style games like this. Plus with the current stat system I have it should be np to create several diff buffs and then higher rank version of those and what not.. I think its a good idea and you def helped get me there.