GDM Major Update 5 - Dynamic trends / manager perks / breaking news

The newest build is available for GDM

Please note you need to delete all previously unzipped files and download the new gdm_v5.7z file then extract to play.  This will work with older saves but you wont be able to choose a perk unless you create a new game.  It may also have issues with new structures, I would highly recommend you start a new save but you do you.

Minor Notes

There has been a few balance tweaks and changes in several areas of my algorithms.  Also a few hud changes to reflect recent updates.  There has also been a few small bug fixes for previously discovered issues in other versions.  I pride myself on creating smooth clean code, but bugs may exist please report any issues and I will get to them ASAP.

Major Updates

Dynamic Trends system

The trends systems has received its first major overhaul.  No longer will you begin a game with a trending topic / genre being listed in your hud top right, and then shift to new trends every 6 months.  I found this system to be ok but honestly I felt like it was telling me what games I should make more than just making games I wanted to make.

So to address this now all topics and genres have an independent trending value between 0-100% trend value (this value is used to increase sales).  As you and the Ai companies release games depending on the quality this will affect the trends of the chosen genre's and topics.  When a trend max's out it becomes over saturated and begins to decrease in trend until it reach's 0, cools off, then it again can trend with good games.  The ai companies are all making AAA games each year and they can have an affect of 0-40% increase / decrease on a trend.  You also affect the trends up to 40% on a AAA games but for small a perfect game could only give a 10% increase at most.  20% for med and 30% for large, then 40% for AAA.

I am using the breaking news system to notify you of trending / over saturated information.  If you choose the See trends perks then all % percents are visible to you when creating new games.  This is a powerful perk but if you just pay attention to the news perhaps there are other better options?  Refer to the breaking news / manager perk sections for further information regarding these new systems.

Note the values of the trends may change in the future based on feedback / testing but these are the current values.

Manager Perks

I have decided to offer on game creation the choice of a manager perk.  These are very powerful game impacting perks and you can NOT change this once chosen at the start of the game.  Unlike worker skills I want you to commit to this choice.  This not only makes it a big choice but also should give you more ideas on how to try to improve your scores on replays.  Which ideally is what I want for the game, strong reasons to and choices to use for a replay, and a fun enough game experience that you want to do another play through.

Current Skills on Offer

Trend Visualizer

This perk allows you to see trend %'s for topics and genres during game construction.

Well Connected

This perk gives you a 10% discount on all development costs for every game you create.

Coding Veteran

This perk gives you a permanent 5% sales boost

People Person

This perk gives you -10% to all staff wages.

A more detailed and wordy description can be found in game when creating a new game there are ? icons beside favorite genre and manager perks that will give you detailed information about these choices.  This however is the affect they give.

Breaking News System

I have added a breaking news system to your HUD found in the top left.  This is only visible when you have incoming news.  After you create each game you will receive a breaking news regarding any development mistakes you made.  This should serve as a good metric to allow players to see why they scored so poor or so well.

When it comes to your games I have limited it to give you up to 3 errors worth of information.  Of course if you make no errors you will get a message as well telling you so, but if you really mess it up you wont get 15 messages just a message with 3 things.  It's my hope that you will be making perfect games so I think 3 mistakes should be enough to show for this.

I am also using this system to list trends going up and down at milestone points of there %'s  These messages will come up every so often as trends change.

The system is setup to receive an infinite number of news events and continue to hold these events to give them to you and I may use this system more later for other types of notifications such as new consoles coming soon or conventions coming up etc etc.

Currently each type of news message is shuffling and building messages based on several arrays of messages.  Each section currently has only 3 different options to pick from.  This does at least vary the messages to make it more interesting than the same message over and over, but at some point this will be flushed out with several more messages to really ensure than randomness gives the breaking news a good variety of lines.  Much like most systems I have added it is made modular and expandable with minimal lines (cur 3 per each array.. about 12 arrays), eventually when enough systems are in play all of these will receive expansions to there amount of content.

Next update has not been decided what I will begin to work on but I am leaning towards a convention's system.  If anyone has an area they would like to see worked on sooner by all means hit me up I am not married to the order of which I add features just the end result.  Please if you have any feedback / suggestions / comments DO NOT be shy all opinions are valid and welcome.