July 2015 Update

Steamlined Movie Making Process

I have been working on streamlining the process of film creation this month and also working on the new Storyboard feature. When creating a new movie you will now be prompted to enter a genre and sub-genre along with the title and plot summary. For those interested in capitalising on the market, a quick reference graph is also available which display's the market share of each genre. Market's themselves will be dynamic; changing and adapting to not only "whats hot" but also adapting to the films you and your AI players flood the market with. In other words, if you and your competitors capitalise on Action films then over time this market may shrink as the audience becomes fatigued with action flicks. Hopefully this will make it a little more interesting and challenging for people wanting a more dynamic simulation experience.

Interface Update

In the screenshot above you can also get an idea of how the new HD interface will look. This interface is native to 1920x1080 so things will look sharp and very cool up-close :) A lot of the icons I have also redesigned over the past month to be a little more easier to read. I will no doubt continue to improve icons as ultimately they should be easy to identify their purpose without hovering over them. Still, if you are unsure of what something does then each icon has a tooltip. Help icons also make a return to explain things a little more in detail for those players wanting to know everything they can about a feature.

Box Office and AI

I've also been at work tweaking the box office screens to be a little easier on the eyes. Since the game progresses week-by-week this time updates will occur each turn. Its still something I'm working on getting right... with so many additional factors at play in Showtime 2 it's been quite the ordeal balancing the game and AI to not be soul-crushingly hard. As I have been progressing I have been ensuring that most new features can be turned on/off when starting a new game. Much like the original game after adjusting the options you will be given a difficulty rating which should fairly represent your experience. I want players who love a challenge to be able to find one in Showtime 2 but also for newcomers to find their footing and pick things up with ease. Hopefully I get the balancing act right! Not all game settings will be able to be adjusted in-game though but I'll do my best to make as many of them available so you dont have to constantly start new games to tweak the difficulty slightly.

Final Thoughts...

As always thanks to everyone who have been giving their feedback in the comment section below. It's really great to hear cool new ideas and I've been adding/removing things based on what you guys have been saying -- so keep it up :) I do read everything but dont have a lot of time to reply sometimes but I'm just soooo happy you guys have been posting... it truly excites me to know people are passionate about this project. Next month I aim to show off the talent selection process, the production selection screens as well as the storyboard feature which should be a little more developed. Thanks for reading. Cheers!