Hi Tycoons,
I’m excited to share with you the first major update of Computer Tycoon. The game is available on Steam for 2 years now (It was first released into Early Access 2n 2017 October 12th). Since then a lot of things have happened.
I had a giveaway on IndieDB recently I you didn't have the luck to win a copy, feel free to join my discord and mail list where I will also make a giveaway when the game will leave Early Access!
Here are the needed links:
Discord: Discord.gg
Mailing List: Eepurl.com
*Personal notes are coming - skip if you are not interested until you see “HERE”*
Computer Tycoon was planned to be a small dream project from my childhood. I didn’t have the ambition or money to make it “BIG”. Then I’ve got a lot of feedback from you - and I embraced the wishes of the community. This is when I’ve created the game’s Roadmap.
Then I and my father faced serious health issues and Steam abandoned supporting small and medium indie games (last terrible change just happened a few weeks ago) and things started to go down into a death spiral - but I’ve never given up!
I’m happy to tell you that my health is fine now! And I had a lot of progress since then. My dad will just have a new surgery tomorrow, please wish him all the best!
*Game stuff again! HERE you can continue!*
This release is unfortunately still not the so-called “beta”. For the manager system and the “CEO stuff” I will still need more time, but in the meanwhile, there is no obstacle anymore to make frequent updates - because the game’s core is _already rewritten_!
So here is a brief list of what has been changed:
- The game has extra songs :)
- In general, Opponents are smarter and balanced - Customers are more reasonable. These two sections are completely rewritten. Now actually the different opponents are playing differently (Big’s Computers ftw! :)) )
- You can check the computers and hardware of your opponents.
- You have a visible research tree - on which by clicking on a node you can add multiple techs at once.
- The research queue is also updated to show more information, to have filters and ordering capability
- You have new technologies such as coolers and others
- You can sell PC hardware components separately
- You can set discounts on your products (per country economy level)
- You have to take care of the cooling of your products
- New Product properties such as Heat, Noise, and Capacity
- There are user-groups in the game, namely: workers, gamers, casuals, and cheapskates - which are all behaving differently. (Better explained in the game)
- The game’s speed options are faster than before - for a smoother experience.
- You can continue playing after victory - and also you can choose from the different victory conditions right from the start before starting the game. Basically you can play endlessly now - if you don’t go bankrupt (it was your request - still I’m not sure if it makes any sense).
- The game’s UI has been updated. Also, you have small extras such as the retro loading screen.
- You have a CTD (money) estimation about your products’ cost (not only a PP value)
- You can check the techs’ descriptions right on the hardware’s screen and you can see all the property values and extra information, too.
- You can freely change the name of your products - and there is no separated naming window for that.
- You have screens to compare your and your opponents’ hardware and computer
- You have a screen to check the user group scores of your and your opponents’ products per country - to find out why is it (not) selling.
- You don’t have a “recommended price” anymore, instead, you see the “average budget” of people per country economy for all the different kinds of hardware and computer designs that indicate the pricepoint where sales will start decreasing or increasing.
- CPU, GPU and Memory performance has more variables. Their performance also depends on the “multiplier” coming from production size and base frequency, core number, os support, etc. Overclocking generates heat!
- PC computers have more design rules, such as PC mobos always need interfaces, PC video cards are working only with mobos using the same interface, etc.
- OS multicore support increases the performance of computers with multicore CPUs.
- Extra tech features, such as Co-processors are adding to the base clock… etc.
- The game was optimized (Tho it is still far from perfect) to have a smaller system requirement.
- Forced obsolescence after 5 years is removed. But they have a natural lifecycle of first having a short amount of time in highlight and then losing interest on the market after a while.
- Option to have Integrated Graphics Cards on the motherboard.
- Countries have flags from now on :)
- The Wall Of TEXT crash course is replaced by a small step by step guide.
- Tooltips are rewritten - and hopefully, they have fewer typos!
- The choosable player bonuses are rebalanced (not all of them are simply 10%)
- LOTS of bugs have been fixed. Even some you’ve never known about :)
That’s all that I’ve found in my notes right now, but I’m sure that I’ve forgotten some. Best is to check it out yourself!
In the next update, I will add the country list and the site list - so you can expand and upgrade more easily - tho the system is already changed in a way that you will need less of that.
I hope you will like what you see! Of course, old saves are not working (you won’t even see them in the load list anyways).
If you like the update, please share it with your friends and leave me your feedback and review. It means a lot to me!
NEW Screenshots:
