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So far Parsley has created 125 blog entries.

This Grand Life Release 1.2 – Survival Mode and the Hospital

This update features a new Survival Mode, Hospital location and doctor career path.

Survival Mode

In Survival Mode you have been diagnosed with Zombitus, a terminal disease with no cure. Doctors have given you a few months to a few years to live. The disease will progress faster as time goes on and treatments will become more expensive. Eventually, they will be unable to slow the disease’s advance.

When in Survival Mode, your current score is displayed prominently on the weekly summary. What do you want to achieve in your remaining time? You can aim for maximum happiness, wealth or knowledge, or just try to get as high a score as possible. You could also try to stay alive as long as you can.

To go with this new game mode, we also have a new Hospital location where you will go for Zombitus Treatments.

Hospital Location and Doctor Career Path

At the Hospital you can donate blood to trade health for happiness, or attend your yearly checkup for a big health boost. You can also embark on one of the longest career paths in the game – becoming a doctor.

In real life, it takes between 12-16 years to become a specialized doctor (surgeon, physician, etc). In the game I’ve shortened it slightly, but it’s still a long and grueling process of studying and working to reach the top. To compensate, the wage rates are also the highest in the game. As with the other career paths, the wage rates on the doctor career path are based on real life statistics.

Here’s the full list of changes in Release 1.2:

  • Added Survival Mode and related items
  • Added Transportation Services business
  • Added Real Estate business and related education
  • Added Gym Trainer and Gym Manager to Stadium
  • Added Volunteer As Coordinator to Town Hall
  • Added Hospital location to all maps
  • Added Doctor career path and education
  • Added Donate Blood and Yearly Checkup special events to Hospital
  • Added education and experience speed advanced options
  • Changed grocery subscription delivery description to be generic
  • Implemented home restrictions for actions from data files
  • Implemented healthcare cost modifier for actions from data files
  • Added mode played to scoreboard
  • Removed Bachelor Of Engineering from trait selection
  • Implemented proper score calculation even without achieving goals
  • Added new ‘Read’ action for items on Possessions screen
  • Realigned suppress and close buttons on Weekly Summary

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |May 17th, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments

This Grand Life is fully launched!

This Grand Life has now been fully released onto the main branch on Steam and Itch.io.

A big thank you to all the players who have been on this journey with me. We’ve grown our careers, bought our first homes, become landlords, started our own businesses and invested in stocks. We’ve been homeless, alcoholics, avid collectors and lottery winners.

If you’re looking for even more content, remember there’s Steam workshop support. Here you can find some mods like Vlade’s megamod, which has a large number of additional career paths like sports star and criminal.

Thanks for playing This Grand Life, I hope the game helps you in your real life in some little way!

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |April 17th, 2018|GameDev|0 Comments

This Grand Life test branch updated to release

With This Grand Life’s full launch coming up on April 17th, I have updated the TEST branch to Release 1.00. On launch day, this version will be put on the main branch and everywhere else. The main additions are a local scoreboard and the new Berlin map (as voted for by the community).

The local scoreboard will keep track of all the lives you’ve lived. Every time you win a game, a final score is calculated and added to the board. Below is what it looks like with some scores I made up.

Next is the Berlin map. Berlin’s map traits are Engineering Powerhouse, Diverse Architecture and Automotive Pioneer.

You can purchase a Large Garage at Brandenburg Gate to begin collecting the city’s unique collectibles, luxury cars. All the collectible car names are based on German brands and range from the Folkswaggin Gulf to the Porch Sports Car. This is by far the most expensive collection in the game.

The special thing about these collectibles is that you can ride them just like you would a normal car! They travel faster but are also more expensive to run, especially the higher-end cars. They also never break down and don’t require repairs.

Another small change is all collectible containers getting their own default theme colour now, which you can still paint over if desired.

Finally, a little fun fact that I discovered about This Grand Life’s players – the same number of people have played the stock market as have played the lottery. Coincidence?

Here are the full list of changes in Release 1.00:

  • Added Berlin as playable city
  • Added Berlin collectible and drivable cars
  • Fixed Infonet not showing more than 10 items when viewing all jobs at location
  • Fixed employee and materials window not following freelance business window colour scheme
  • Changed ‘debt due next week’ to show negative amounts
  • Tweaked and enabled scoreboard
  • Added functionality for collectibles to be used as normal possessions
  • Realigned some stuff
  • Added default theme colours for collectibles
  • Updated tutorial images

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |April 4th, 2018|GameDev|0 Comments

This Grand Life Alpha 2.6 – Balancing and Other Improvements

Alpha 2.6 has been released. This is mostly a re-balancing and minor improvements update.

Now your business supervisors can auto-buy materials to the amount you set at the start of each week, as long as you have the money to afford it.

I also noticed that not many people bother to change their default business theme with Cans Of Paint, so each business will get its own colour theme now. You can still repaint it yourself if you don’t like the new defaults.

A useful addition for education is a new Teaching Tutors home service, available from the Small House and above. When this service is active, a part of your degree or diploma will be completed automatically at the end of each week. This costs quite a bit of money, but it helps automate the studying process for those who can afford it. I would suggest unsubscribing when the academic term is not running, otherwise you are just wasting money!

Alpha 2.6 Change log:

  • Added freelance business supervisor auto-buying materials option
  • Added Teaching Tutors home service to Small House and above
  • Reduced auction fee from 5% to 3%
  • Reduced effectiveness of electric scooter and small car
  • Changed spouse income from Misc Income to Family Income
  • Tweaked travel time modifier calculation
  • Added travel time modifier display
  • Workers no longer quit when you can’t afford wages, debt added instead
  • Need to pay two week’s wages when firing employees
  • Finished moving 99% of English into data files
  • Added default freelance business themes
  • Fixed education tooltip not displaying whether semester-only studying
  • Slightly reduced average date time

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |March 9th, 2018|GameDev|0 Comments

This Grand Life – Release Launch Date Announcement

The release launch date is set for This Grand Life on 17th April, 2018!

What does this mean?

This means there won’t be any more major features added. The next two months will involve polishing up the game, tweaking some mechanics and adding other minor features.

Also from the poll we ran a few weeks ago, Berlin was the most voted for city to appear in the game. I’ll be working on that and it should be available for launch day.

I’ll be spending more time working on promotion and getting the word out, so game updates won’t be as fast and furious as they were during the early days of development.

It’s great to see so many people have enjoyed the game so far, and I’m looking forward to see what the future holds!

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |February 23rd, 2018|GameDev|0 Comments

This Grand Life Alpha 2.5 – Relationships Part 2: Family And Children

Alpha 2.53 has been released, just in time for Valentine’s Day (almost). I started talking about the dating portion of the game in the last update. After some tweaking over the past week, here is how the family portion works.

Family

You can start a family even if you’re not married by activating the ‘Yahoo’ action with someone. All you need is a high enough relation.

Every time you Yahoo, your fun increases and there is a chance of a baby appearing. Once a Yahoo is successful, a new Family section will appear on the Social window.

Your newborn child’s relation with you is an overall measure of how well they are doing. If you don’t play with them or can’t afford their expenses, they will suffer. If they suffer too much, Child Services will take them away and you will be very sad. On the other hand, if you have high relations with your child on their birthday, you will get a happiness boost from seeing them grow up well.

Speaking of which, if you relationship with your spouse (husband/wife) falls low enough, you will get a few warnings. If you ignore the warning signs, you will be divorced. Divorce has severe consequences, just like in real life. I won’t spoil the surprise and let you discover it for yourself.

As your children grow older, they will become more expensive to raise. As you become wealthier, the cost will also increase. This is to simulate things like sending them to private school, polo lessons and whatever else rich children do (I have no idea).

When they finally reach 16 years old, you can kick them out of the house. At this point, the game calculates how many good and bad birthdays your child experienced. If they had a few good birthdays, you will get a permanent boost to happiness. This can be very useful in generating a steady trickle of lifetime happiness, especially if you manage to raise multiple children well. On the other hand, too many bad birthdays for your child and you get a permanent happiness decrease.

If your child has experienced too many bad birthdays by the time they reach 16, all is not lost. You can keep them at home to try offset the negative impact by giving them some good birthdays before they leave. However, note that the cost to raise them will continue to increase the longer they stay at home.

Modding Changes

There are also some changes that allow multiple overlapping mods at same time. The old system should still work so your current mods won’t break, but creators will have to update their mods to take advantage of the new system.

Changelog Alpha 2.50 – 2.53

  • Expanded default names list
  • Added Social section to profile window
  • Added seeking date actions
  • Added gift giving mechanics
  • Added relationship score for each person
  • Added relations change from dating
  • Added call mechanics
  • Added end of week social warnings
  • Added child expenses calculation
  • Added child actions
  • Added location travel to date
  • Added propose, marry and yahoo actions
  • Added failure to pay child expenses consequence
  • Implemented child being taken away for neglect
  • Implemented child birthday happiness effect
  • Implemented divorce mechanics
  • Implemented forced childcare if no spouse
  • Added Relationship Roundup subscription
  • Added spouse expenses
  • Added family statistics
  • Added more portraits
  • Removed log file being overwritten when game updated
  • Spouse earnings now increase along with your wealth
  • Spouse earnings are more random each week
  • Added permanent happiness change event depending on child development
  • Added combine tag for modding
  • Modified all city location data to be compatible with new location modding
  • Fixed broken possession unriding vehicle
  • Removed Steam check for loading mods from mod folder

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |February 14th, 2018|GameDev|0 Comments

This Grand Life Alpha 2.5 – Relationships Part 1: Dating And Marriage

The Steam test server has been updated to Alpha 2.5 with the new relationships and family feature. If all goes well, it will be released to everyone next week. This will likely be the final major feature before Release in a few months.

There is a new subscription in the game, Relationship Roundup which gives relationship and family advice. It works similar to the Lively Livin’ and Businezz Biweekly subscriptions.

Seeking A Date

Relationships start by firstly finding a date. You can do this from the new ‘Social’ button on the profile window next to the existing ‘Business’ button.

Just like freelance businesses and the stock market, relationships are completely optional. You can ignore that whole part of the game by never turning it on.

Once you have activated dating, new actions will start appearing at random locations every week. These actions will be things like ‘Ask For Number’ that help you get a date. Being rejected for a date decreases your fun, so try not to get rejected too many times in one week.

Dating A Date

When you have successfully met someone, there are a few things you can do to increase your relationship like going on a date, calling or gifting a collectible.

The higher your existing relationship with the person, the harder it is to increase it even more. If you can get your relationship high enough, the option to propose and marry that person will become available.

Of course being a finance simulator, the engagement ring and wedding will cost money.

In general, the cost of everything to do with relationships increases as you become wealthier. If you are poor, your partner will be more willing to accept an onion ring instead of a gold ring. On the other hand if you are very wealthy, your partner will expect a very expensive wedding. This is unlike most other mechanics in This Grand Life, where things get much easier the richer you become.

There is more to talk about regarding the family portion of the game, which I will talk about next time.

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |February 6th, 2018|GameDev|0 Comments

This Grand Life Alpha 2.44 and City Poll

Some minor optimizations in this update. Also, to get an idea of what kind of city players want next I’ve created a poll. You can vote at the link below:

Which city would you like to see in This Grand Life?

Alpha 2.44 Changelog

  • Slight modifications to camera gliding
  • Optimized some UI things
  • Clicking on stock market asset with chart open auto-switches chart
  • Fixed price changer for non-dollar currencies not displaying correct amount
  • Fixed death spiral warnings not always appearing

Relationship Progress

Work continues on this feature. I have the first two stages (Seek and Date) prototyped and working.

For the dating portion, each week you can select to “date” them which opens up a separate window with date details like location, time taken, cost and relationship effect. These parameters vary randomly each week, and some dates are better than others. You can choose to accept the date or wait until next week to see if you can get better date parameters. If you accept, the date will be automatically processed to minimize micromanagement.

Also you will be able to gift collectibles or spend time calling to raise the relationship, but not as frequently as dating.

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |February 2nd, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments

This Grand Life Alpha 2.4 – Workshop Support and more Advanced City Options

Steam Workshop

Hooray! It’s arrived. Steam Workshop support is now available for This Grand Life, which means modders can create their own Cities, Career paths, Education courses, Collectibles and so on. If you want to subscribe/play a mod, it will need to be done from the Steam interface. If you want to upload a mod, you can do it from the new in-game workshop button.

Throughout development I’ve tried to keep moddability in mind, so there really are a lot of things that can be changed. Think a degree takes too long? Or maybe the Janitor earns too much? You can modify those values. Using education as an example, you can create a map trait that changes study speeds and then add it to the map to change all education speeds. Or you can overwrite the data for one degree only and leave everything else the same.

Some players have been asking to be a criminal. It seems to be a popular thing for some reason. I don’t think it fits in the base game, so I’ve added a Professional Thief freelance business to the Workshop. It’s a good mod example that uses the business, education and possession systems. Killing two birds with one stone, as they say.

When you add a mod, the products it adds will even appear in the in-game Infonet as if they were part of the game. Players can easily find information about where the modded items are sold, where courses are located, etc.

You can even use event triggers to create your own scenarios, similar to the tutorials and Sue Doku scenario.

I still haven’t moved all the translatable text to data files, so there is still quite a lot of hard-coded English. I am gradually progressing towards this goal.

More Advanced City Options

There are also two new advanced city options in this update, Infrastructure Funding and Worker Organisation. Changing Infrastructure Funding will modify the tax rate and travel times to simulate how well the roads and public transport are maintained. Changing Worker Organisation affects overall wages and job competition. Be careful with this one, moving it to the extremes could make it impossible to afford rent or impossible to find any job openings.

What’s Next?

As I was planning out the relationships and family part of the game, I came to realise it can’t be done as a small feature. There are too many interconnected parts. So I’m going to be making relationships a major feature, similar to the freelance business and stock market mechanics. This means it will take a few more months instead of the usual couple of weeks to implement. Hopefully there will be plenty of mods to entertain you in the meantime!

Alpha 2.4 Changelog

  • Added Infrastructure Funding advanced option
  • Added Worker Organisation advanced option
  • Added display for wage adjustments from advanced options
  • Added education cost adjustment display when applying to study
  • Upgraded internal data files writing system
  • Implemented product editing, city map loading and portrait loading for modding support
  • Implemented Steam Workshop uploading support
  • Added check in options.xml for mod folder if couldn’t auto find it
  • Added Professional Thief mod
  • Added Scoreboard implementation (currently disabled)
  • Fixed goal display for education and happiness being currency converted
  • Added popup if could not find default mod folder

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |January 17th, 2018|GameDev|0 Comments

This Grand Life Alpha 2.3 – Amsterdam and Advanced City Options

This update adds Amsterdam as a playable map and advanced city options to make each playthrough even more unique. Also a reminder that the game’s price will be increasing next week and the demo has been updated to the latest version.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Let’s start with Amsterdam, a city famous for its coffee and canals! This map has three traits – Bicycle Paths, Coffee Shops and Relaxed. Its focus is on lots of fun but limited time.

Bicycle Paths make the new Motored Bicycle transport option 100% more effective. The Motored Bicycle is stealable unlike the Scooter and Car, so you have to consider that before purchasing one.

Coffee Shops adds the Consume Coffee action to certain eating establishments, which provides a large amount of fun for a relatively low cost.

The Relaxed map trait means you lose 10 hours each week from everyone taking longer to do things. It’s quite a big hit, which is designed to encourage the player to seek out time-efficient actions like Consume Coffee to recover needs faster.

The Canal is Amsterdam’s unique location and contains the Canal Cruise as another source of large amounts of fun. Here you can buy a Large Vase to start collecting Tulips. Considering the first ever economic bubble started in the Netherlands over Tulips, I thought this was a fitting collectible to add to the game.

Advanced City Options

Advanced city options are an addition I’m excited about. Once you think you’ve mastered the game, it’s time to dive into these settings to create a very different playthrough. They are meant for advanced players only, since they can severely unbalance your life if you’re not careful.

The simplest option is the currency setting, which is more of a cosmetic change to go with the new Amsterdam map. The other options make the game significantly easier or harder, depending on the life goals you have chosen.

You can set the Central Bank to be very incompetent or very vigilant. Above you can see the difference between the two extremes. In the top image with the incompetent Central Bank, the economy went from 15% to -5% inflation over a few years, which is absolutely insane. Remember your rent, wages, real estate, share portfolio etc are affected by this as well. The bottom image shows a much more competent Central Bank, and the economy is more stable (although not completely controllable).

You can also lower or raise your overall income tax rate by adjusting funding levels for different services. For example, setting the Police Service to be completely defunded will save you some taxes over your lifetime. However, this means criminals operate with impunity and your house has a 50% chance to be robbed pretty much all the time. They will even steal your casual clothes.

The Education and Healthcare funding levels can be similarly adjusted. The scales work exponentially, so the further you go from the default values in either direction the more extreme the experience. Defund everything and your taxes will be much lower, but be prepared to be constantly robbed while paying your massive education loan and avoiding getting sick at all costs. Overfund everything and your taxes will be much higher, can you afford rent from your remaining paycheck while studying your inexpensive degree?

Combined with the existing traits system, there are many possibilities for different playthroughs.

What’s Next?

There are more advanced city options I want to add for an even crazier life. I’ll also be experimenting with advanced character options. The work to move all translatable text into data files continues as well.

Alpha 2.3 Changelog

  • Added Amsterdam map, street names and associated products
  • Moved Celebrity Concerts to be city-specific
  • Added map traits Bicycle Paths, Coffee Shops and Relaxed
  • Added Motored Bicycle to Shopping Mall
  • Fixed Electric Scooter reducing travel time more than stated
  • Added Tulip collectibles
  • Implemented event Mega Sale in Amsterdam
  • Converted some popups into non-popups
  • Made Custom Game default to random avatar
  • More hard-coded English into data files
  • Added Advanced Options page
  • Added currency selection option
  • Relabel Privilege for Traits and Education to Privilege Cost
  • Added Central Bank Vigilance advanced option
  • Slightly increased default health tax rate
  • Added Police, Health and Education Funding advanced options
  • Changed low health medical bill to a debt payment
  • Added winning custom game internal check
  • Changed Sold Objects in Income Statement to use object’s financial type instead
  • Slightly increased chance of corporate bankruptcies

Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website

By |January 3rd, 2018|GameDev|0 Comments