Update on Pre-Alpha Status news - Corporatocracy

Hey everyone,

It hasn't been long since the last news post, less than 2 weeks actually.

But as we're nearing a Pre-Alpha release, I thought I'd step up news posts to keep you in the loop.

The past 2 weeks have focused almost entirely on network coding, as I felt it would be a cool thing to have in the Pre-Alpha. Even though the game doesn't have a great deal of content at the moment, driving around with some friends might add more replayability to it.

The chat bug is now fixed, so spaces aren't replaced with underscores. Cars are now synced, although there is an occasional bug that appears after you enter and exit a few cars which causes the game to desync. Aside from that I also need to add sending the players current area over the network, as the network mode will currently only work if players stay in the same area as each other.

Aside from working on the network, I also took a bit of time out to add something that I've wanted in the game for a while. A paint shop.

As you can see, the game currently has a detailed system for painting cars, this may not be to everyone's taste, so I'm going to add a few pre-set colours that you can choose from if you don't want to handle all the sliders.

And here's what the car looks like in the morning in the actual game environment:

I wanted progress to be further along at this point in time, unfortunately circumstances meant that I couldn't work on the game as much as I'd have liked to, and I'm also on vacation at the end of June, so I won't be able to work then either.

If I release the pre-alpha in June, it won't have as many items as I had promised it would have and may contain some bugs.

Currently the games state is this:

- 5 (Or is it 6?) Drivable Cars, 1 more than previously stated would be in the Pre-Alpha.

- 35 items, which includes different types of wooden flooring and carpet colours, 15 less than previously stated would be in the Pre-Alpha.

- 1 Business, as previously stated.

- 3 Houses to buy and furnish.

- Player's needs don't affect gameplay, although they will deteriorate over-time and can be restored by using certain furniture, such as using a bed to reduce Fatigue. Because of this there are no food items in the game either.

- You would start off with a large lump sum of cash to buy a business, this will change later on as I introduce smaller businesses.

- NPC's cannot be interacted with, they will just go to work in the morning, come home in the evening. In the future, you will be able to have conversations and build up friendships.

- No weather, although this could be added quickly, as the weather systems for rain and snow are already in-place, it would just need to be implemented.

- No seasons, in the future, the environment and weather would change depending on the time of year.

- Limited Network Play, network play currently only allows a few players to drive around the first area of the game, and still contains some bugs, releasing in June may mean the Network mode isn't functioning correctly at the time of release. You would probably want to keep network sessions as small sessions between friends.

- Only small events affecting businesses. Businesses are currently pretty plain sailing, once you set a price for supplies and a price to sell your product at, you won't really need to adjust it much in order to keep making a profit. There are random events which will affect the popularity of your product, but not by much. In the future, larger events will force you to keep an eye on how your businesses are faring, and adjust accordingly.

- No complete minigames. In future releases, different furniture items such as computers and arcade machines will let you play minigames as a diversion. There is one currently in the game, but it's incomplete, and I probably won't be able to dedicate the time to get it finished during June.

So that's the run-down of everything about the Pre-Alpha, it's important to note that what I describe here is pretty much the entirety of the game at the present time. I've been very open during the development of this game, and I've shown you the majority of the features present at this time.

So I can either release a buggy Pre-Alpha with a couple of features missing and unpolished in June, or I could wait until July and release a slightly less buggy Pre-Alpha, with hopefully a working Network mode and more items. The goal posts seem ever-moving at this point.

What do you guys think? Do I release an early dev-build this month and try to fix any major bugs as they are reported, or should I wait another month and release a more stable build? Let me know in the forum (Link at the top of this page), or post a comment on this article.

Remember to follow me on Twitter and Track This Game to be kept up to date with the latest news.

Before I go, here's a quick video I took this afternoon of the network mode. I only have 1 computer so I have to run 3 copies of the game on my PC in order to test network features. In keeping with my policy of letting you guys see exactly how the game is, this video comes complete with bugs!