In this update I’ll talk about end-game statistics, achievements, some new expensive items and other miscellaneous changes. The process of adding Steam achievements had the unexpected issue of not being able to test them unless they were officially published to the Steam page. As a result I’ve had to focus on releasing the achievements this time, and Amsterdam has been pushed back to the next update.

End-game Statistics and Steam Achievements

When you win or lose a game, you will be able to see some statistics about your current play-through like amount of taxes owed, time worked, collections completed, etc. There are a variety of statistics that can be displayed here, and they will only appear once you’ve triggered whatever is being counted at least once.

Steam achievements are something that Steam keeps telling me to implement, and so here they are. They aren’t overly difficult to complete, and I think the average player who enjoys the game should be able to get most of them without feeling like they are “achievement grinding” too much. Achievements also help me as the developer see what percentage of players are using the stock market, playing with real estate, or even completing the tutorial!

Expensive Items

There are a few additional high-end items to purchase at the Shopping Mall and Appliance Store. Don’t buy them if you live in cheaper housing though, as they are very expensive and it would be traumatic if stolen. The TreadRunner Max increases your health at a greater rate, while the Gigantic Television lets you Watch Huge TV at home.

There’s also a Mineral Detector, which adds the Search For Treasure action at the Park and Exchange. It lets you earn money while increasing Fun. Not exactly realistic, but I thought it was a cool demonstration of the possibilities of the game’s mechanics for what modders could eventually do.

Miscellaneous Changes

There are some other bits and pieces like an updated Payables/Receivables window, ability to rename employees and another mortgage exploit fix. The death spiral has also been updated to give some hints on how to bring happiness up and avoid unhappiness. It should help remind players how this mechanic works in case they haven’t played in a while.

Here is the full change list for Alpha 2.2:

• Added end of game statistics display and tracking
• Added Steam achievement triggers (in real life)
• Added TreadRunner Max to Shopping Mall
• Added Gigantic Television to Appliances Megastore
• Added Mineral Detector to Shopping Mall
• Extended Receivables/Payables item display to 52 weeks
• Fixed Receivables/Payables window not refreshing properly when open
• Added ability to rename your employees
• Tweaked lose game description to be more useful
• Reduced time to repay unsuccessful mortgage to one week
• Moved lots of hard-coded English to data files
• Moved WinState processing to the end of the end of week

This update features the new education loans, the factory location and engineer career path, and new transport options.

Education Loans

Instead of paying the full price of education up front, you can now take out an education loan when applying to study degrees and diplomas. You can take a full loan for zero up front cost, or a partial loan for 50% up front cost. Alternatively, you can still pay the full fee to get a 15% discount.

If you decide to take out an education loan, the repayments won’t start immediately. Instead, they begin slightly after the expected time to complete your education. For example, most diplomas are expected to take a year to complete so the loan repayments begin after 56 weeks. This adds a bit of urgency to complete your education before the repayments start.

Even though the repayments haven’t started, the interest on the loan principle starts to accumulate from the moment you take the loan. The loan provider is quite generous though, and the interest charged is based on the savings rate rather than the higher personal loan rate.

Factory and Engineer Career Path

There is a new factory location that contains the engineering career path. In this career path, you can get your diploma pretty early to advance, and then follow up with a degree later on to get even further up the engineering career ladder.

The factory will generally be positioned away from the city center, so it provides a lucrative career path on the outskirts of town.

Transport Options

You can now purchase an electric scooter or a small car from the shopping mall. These vehicles help to reduce travel times between locations, but you get charged a maintenance fee every time you use them. The shorter the distance, the less efficient it is to run your vehicle so you have to decide whether your lifestyle is suited to using them.

Also, I know some people love their vehicles so you can give it a nickname by using the ‘rename’ button. The nickname will show up on your profile when riding it.

Auction Fees

You now get charged a fee when selling anything at auction, and also get charged an additional 5% fee if your object was successfully sold. This was added to handle a certain house-flipping strategy that was overpoweringly lucrative if you knew how to do it.

What’s Next?

It’s time to start work on the next fully-featured map – New York City! This will involve upgrading the events system (again). Depending on how long it takes, I might be able to squeeze in one or two other things as well.

Change Log

• Added education loans to University and Trade School
• Implemented delayed and fixed term repayments for education loans
• Allow only one education loan at a time
• Added discount for paying full education cost upfront
• Adjusted Sue scenario for education loans
• Added Factory location
• Added Engineer career path and related education
• Added Small Car and Electric Scooter to Mall
• Added Ride option to Possessions panel for transport objects
• Added Tooltip for travel time when hovering over locations
• Implemented maintenance costs and variable speed for transport options
• Implemented selling/removing transport possession kicks you off
• Implemented renaming possessions functionality
• Added renaming vehicles, business suits and collectible containers
• Optimised some data structures
• Auctions now charge sellers fees to start auction and when item sold
• Tweaked bid probability of AI auction participants
• Reduced fun decrease from bartender job
• Reduced fun from bar fights and increased hygiene decay
• Added more logging for main menu display issues
• Changed default screensize to non-fullscreen for new players
• Fixed too many movie marathons

What’s new?

Alpha 1.8 is out with the new Stock Market feature.

It’s not in its proper real-life location on the Sydney map, but things are getting pretty crowded in the city center so I had to “relocate” it.

When you enter the stock market, you are presented with a list of 12 corporations ranging from the billion-dollar “MONEY Group” to the fresh new start-up “Orange Inc.”. The larger companies are generally more stable and less likely to go bankrupt, but the smaller companies have higher future earning potential.

Once you have purchased some shares, a new section will appear on your Possessions panel summarizing your investments in the market.

This is the first version of this feature, so there will probably be further tweaks required. One of my main concerns is whether it’s too easy to predict the market direction and make money, so feedback on that is welcome.

One thing I didn’t mention in my last post, now the Penthouse and Mansion has luxurious versions of the base actions. E.g instead of Staring at the Wall, you will be Staring at the View which gives a boost to your happiness. You also have access to the Personal Butler home service, who recovers most of your needs each week. You have to pay him/her an actual salary though, so it’s very expensive.

What’s next?

Next is improving the Freelance/Contractor Business part of the game, since a lot of players are excited to start that up. I will be experimenting with auto-assigning workers and some post-career businesses over the coming weeks.

Alpha 1.8 Changelog:

• Implemented data history culling for stocks
• Added Market section in Possessions panel
• Added disabling stock market for Scenarios
• Added Exchange transaction statement
• Implemented Stock capital gains and losses in tax return
• Added 12 starting listed corporations
• Added corporation management change alerts to Financial Dimes subscription
• Added Exchange location
• Disabled stock transactions on bankrupt stocks
• Added Stock wealth to wealth goal calculation
• Added stock trading tips to Businezz Biweekly subscription

I wasn’t planning on releasing an update, but I’ve discovered a potential issue and it’s better to fix it now rather than later when the game is live on Steam. The problem was multiple currency/language support. NOTE this means saved games from version 1.68 won’t be compatible with this new version. If you have preview access on Steam and wish to continue with your current saved game, I’ve created a separate branch alpha_1_68 that you can switch to.

The Stock Market is partially implemented in 1.7 but hasn’t been test enough so is currently disabled. Having said that, 1.7 has two notable features.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is late game repetitiveness. You’re making 6 figures, run your own business and have reached your Wealth goal – why are you feeding yourself like a peasant? My solution to this conundrum – Home Services. These are services offered in the higher tier homes, such as a Personal Trainer or a Personal Chef. They help automate fulfilling your needs at the start of each week, but they’re expensive. The question you have to ask yourself – is my time worth the cost? Could I make enough money at my high-paying job that would offset the cost of these services?

The second change is an overhaul of the events spawning system. Previously, events were completely random and you could end up with back-to-back Steam Sales and the like. With this new system, I can now set different parameters for event spawning. For example, I can say the minimum number of weeks between Celebrity Concerts is 6 weeks, and they only start from week 26 onwards. It also allows regular events like New Year Celebrations to happen at the same time each year. In the future I’ll be able to add location-specific events based on holidays in that city (Thanksgiving in New York, Ocktoberfest in Munich, etc).

My apologies for the lack of video this update, but I thought it was important to fix the language support issue now rather than later.

Here’s a full list of changes from 1.68 to 1.7:

• Added support for unicode characters
• Put coins in correct order in coin display
• Slightly reduced random weekend event frequency
• Overhauled location- and possession-based events manager
• Added New Year Celebrations at Town Hall
• Added Celebrity Book Signing at Library
• Added Travelling Circus at Large Park
• Income Statements now have same theme as their parent
• Added new Exchange colour theme
• Added Services functionality to home
• Added 4 different home services
• Implement cancelling home services if moving house
• Replaced Mansion and Penthouse default actions with luxurious versions
• Adjusted Mansion and Penthouse rental rates
• Reduced impact of low fun when net worth very high
• Slightly increased threshold for low needs events
• Reduced maximum work performance gain doing part time work
• Changed lose game progression to nervous breakdown
• Added number of hours deficient when placed on work probation

I’ve been focusing on retesting every existing feature and fixing issues over the past week. With the Steam Early Access 3 weeks away, I’ll be sending out press builds soon and want the game to be as stable as possible. This means the Stock Market feature won’t be ready until after the Steam version is live. Having said that, Alpha 1.6 is now live and there’s a few new things in addition to those mentioned in the last post.

You can now buy Lottery Tickets from the Mall. This probably sounds strange in a game about smart financial decision-making. The lottery is drawn at the end of each week. If you lose, nothing happens except you wasted your money, but if you win your happiness increases. On average you will lose money just like in real life, so playing the lottery is only useful as a way to increase happiness.

Next, I found some flaws with the way I was calculating repayment rates for home mortgages. I was using the same formula that was used for personal loans, but this made the monthly mortgage repayments very unaffordable. I’ve changed it so now when you take out a mortgage, it will always be paid back in 30 years (unless you pay off the principle early). This makes the loans much more affordable and realistic.

Improvements have been made to the personal loan and mortgage screens as well. They will indicate the current monthly repayments so you can work out whether you can afford the loan. You can compare the repayments with current rent prices to see if it’s cheaper to rent or buy a house.

One thing to remember is that all loans are variable rates. This means if interest rates increase, then your repayments will increase as well. This is yet another reason to keep an eye on the Economic Charts I introduced in the last blog post. If you see interest rates are on the rise and economic growth is falling, be careful you don’t borrow more than you can afford to repay.

Finally, you can now paint your Collectible containers! Just buy Cans Of Paint at the Mall like you would for your house, and then a Paint Container button will appear under the collection display.

Here’s a list of all the changes 1.6:

New Features

• Added super cool loading screen at start
• Added image for losing game
• Added economic indicator charts
• Added life goal history tracking and charts
• Added shortcut key configuration to Options
• Added details view for real estate in Possessions
• Added Financial Dimes subscription
• Added lottery ticket possessions
• Added painting Collectible containers

Gameplay Changes

• Reduced impact of some needs-based events
• Modified economic growth update rates
• Added capital gains tax for sold real estate
• Added separate Real Estate index and history tracking
• Decoupled house price index from economic growth index
• Changed mortgage repayments to 30-year terms

Bugfixes/Improvements

• Edge scrolling only happens when window in focus
• Made banking popups and alerts more consistent
• Fixed able to apply for home without home selected
• Removed Real Estate label from Possessions panel unless we have real estate
• Overhauled Statements display
• Lots of minor UI tweaks
• Fixed missing Coin Collecting Album from Collector’s Store
• Split tax return into more specific income/expense categories
• Added estimated monthly repayments on mortgage and personal loan
• Fixed missing Bachelor Of Arts and Philosophy from university
• Fixed withholding tax not taking into account inflation
• Fixed yearly tax calculation not taking into account inflation
• Fixed medical bills not taking into account inflation
• Fixed missing sound effect for ‘free’ actions
• Fixed possessions not appearing in Possessions panel when hidden objects purchased
• Fixed repayments too high on mortgages
• Fixed loan principle increasing faster than repayments
• Fixed real estate investment interest being treated as tax offset instead of tax deduction
• Fixed Interest income going into tax payable instead of income column on tax return
• Fixed deadlock when processing transaction history causing game to hang