EA 0.19 is live! news

Hello!

Time for another devlog and another update!

Version EA.0.19

Controls
- Fix for camera balancing to horizon. Before, when rotating the camera around itself, sometimes the camera would start tilting or glitch out. Now it stays stable at all times. NOTE: This needs additional work to function well when the camera has been tilted manually.
- Fix for planar movement mode camera movement slowing down when camera facing down or up. Speed is now also more consistent than before.
- Options menu updated to clarify rotation and movement options.

Minor feature additions and tweaks
- High currency value now affects local economy.
- Citizen reps now give some advice on what they feel could be improved.
- You can now click home and work icons in the citizen reps panel to view the rep's home or place of work.
- Local area effects now affect residential, commercial and industrial buildings differently. High fire safety is more important for industry than for residences for example.
- Local effect distance fall off adjusted. Basically, the further away (for example) a police department is, the less of an effect on crime it has.

Major bugs fixed
- Global economy was inconsistent between saving and loading a city. This has now been improved and cities should load with economy and demands developing in the same way every time. There are some additional tweaks necessary in order to fix it further.
- Fix for master economist achievement. It would sometimes trigger based on a resource group demand curve instead of the global economic status.

Minor bugs fixed
- Tooltip sometimes "getting stuck" fixed.

Other
- Global time step lowered a bit (economic status changes a bit faster).
- Atmofleet now emits a particle when leaving the atmosphere.
- Traffic and props hidden when enabling a view mode.
- SFX volumed adjusted.
- Adjusted music trigger conditions.
- Super absorbent now plays proper sound when clicked on.
- List of owners in owner view pushed together a bit more so that it doesn't overlap with menu if opened at the same time.

As mentioned last week, I will be updating the game more frequently, but with smaller updates for a few weeks. The reason for this is to get some much needed QoL improvements into the game without too much delay.

Focus this week has been to start adding in some control improvements. This time around, there are no new additions, but rather fixes to existing control schemes. There has been an issue where rotating the camera upside down would sometimes cause the camera to tilt even when the control mode is set to not allow tilting. This has now been fixed and enabling "balance against horizon" will keep the camera stable at all times.
When enabling planar movement, previously when the camera was rotated down, the speed of movement would drop. This has now been fixed and movement speed is now constant. This mode has also changed name from "planar movement" to "Relative to camera rotation/Relative to horizin".



I've also fixed the global economy not being consistent between saving a city and loading it up again. Before, a city could be enjoying an economic boom, then suddenyl a recession next time the city is loaded up. There are still some related issues left to be fixed, primarily related to how labour is distributed across industry, this requires additional work to fix, so a fix will come later.



Citizen representatives are now given a home and a work place (unless they are unemployed), that can be viewed. They now also give you advice about things that they feel need to be addressed in the area they live in or policy that affects them. There will be more advice items added over time.



The local area effects are now handled differently. Instead of them being added upp similarly for all types of buildings, they are now given weights that depend on whether the affected building is a residential, commercial or industrial building (or other). Fire safety is more important to industry than residence for example. The effect distance falloff is now a bit steeper.



I've also started adjusting the system for placing buildings to allow for click and drag multiple building placement. I'm hoping to get this fully done for the update next weekend.



For next week's update I also hope to get more advisor and citizen rep advice added, an intermediate tutorial and another set of control options/tweaks.