Firstly I'd just like to say thank you to all those who have been
commenting in the board below. I read them all and although I dont
always have time to reply I take all suggestions and comments seriously.
So thank you to everyone who has taken the time.
Secondly, this month has been pretty big for the game albeit
rather slow in terms of development. I have decided to shift platforms
and see what else was on the market to program the game in. Everything
from C# to .NET to Xojo to even Unity Engine. I spent about 4-5 days
"porting" the code over to these platforms (each!) to see how fast I
could recreate the game and how everything was shaping up, so work on
adding new features has been slow. But i'll touch down on what has
happened...
Skins
Themes/skins will now be present in the game. It was something I wanted
to do with S1 but wasnt able to in the end with how the design worked,
but starting from the 20s all the way up until the 90s there will be
seperate skins. These change when you move into a new decade and are
(hopefully) reflective of what was 'popular' or the common themes. For
instance the 20s is a black and white TV style theme where as the 50s
theme is more shiny, daphne blue. You will be able to disable these from
the start of the game and through the options menu, or just choose a
theme you most prefer from the get-go (these will need to be unlocked
though!).
Music
A lot of players from the first game wanted to see some sort of
soundtrack accompany the game. Those people will be happy to know I have
a wicked soundtrack lined up. It is comprised of a number of licensed,
creative common and custom-made tracks, including some amazing tunes
from Viktor Ståhl (check out his Spotify page here).
The game will feature a growing soundtrack and adapt as you make your
way through the 20s-30s-40s, etc. Its something I'm quite pleased to
introduce. You will of course be able to switch to your own player at
any time and can even separately adjust the volume of the music player,
but with the incredible soundtrack I have lined up I highly doubt that
:P
Movie Roles
I got a lot of requests from people wanting to create their ultimate
super-hero movies and now that's entirely possible... Roles have been
given a makeover to allow players to fully customise the characters in
their movies. You can now assign up to 12 characters (6 leading and 6
supporting roles), as well as 2 cameo appearances and of course the
usual speaking and background extras (which have had their maximum value
bumped up to 100). When you add a new role to your film, it will be
randomly assigned a character role, which you can change if you wish.
From here you can also assign the role a gender before proceeding onto
the casting stage. For sequels, your roles will be automatically
generated, and you can remove/switch them around as you please.
I for one can't wait to make an epic Batman franchise! I even
started building one in the pre-alpha (check out the screenshot! :P)
Platforms
Lastly I would like to discuss platforms for the game. The game is
currently in development for Windows 7+ and will support Windows 10. The
engine I am rebuilding my source code in is designed to allow
multi-platform support, so I wont rule out porting to Mac or Linux
systems when the game is closer to release. Porting isnt an easy thing
and my resources are limited, so my focus is on Windows at this stage.
Thanks for reading!
Hey hey! This is the first of (hopefully) a stream of monthly updates
for... Showtime 2! I've been working on this game for a while now. I
received a ton of great feedback and feature requests from Steam players
and unfortunately I wasn’t able to add them to the first game. So as a
side project to updates, Showtime 2 [S2] began. So, without further ado I
present to you...
UI Design
I spent a great deal of time on the interface. I wanted it to feel
familiar but also fresh and vibrant. Showtime was quite a dark game, so I
opted for lighter colours this time. The resolution has been bumped up
to 1366x768, a 16:9 aspect ratio. Showtime in comparison was 877x683, so
significantly smaller -- however it was never designed as a full screen
game. I took on the feedback I received from everyone on Steam and so
I'm sure this is something a lot of you will be happy to see.
You may be asking, why not 1920x1080? And the answer is that
although this is an ideal resolution for someone like me, and many
others, the standard for a lot of players is still 1366x768. The
game is able to be upscaled, but it can’t be downscaled. So the trade
off in this case was finding a resolution that is able to be played on
laptops as well as large monitors. This resolution will hopefully keep
people happy.
Upon launching the game, a screen will appear which allows the
user to select between a traditional Windowed mode or Full screen. The
game handles scaling the same way games like Prison Architect does; by
changing the resolution of the OS when the game starts and restoring the
resolution when the game closes.
Tutorial
Another feature I am quite proud of in early development is the tutorial
system. I learnt a lot moving from Bestseller to Showtime in terms of
improving the tutorial system, but a lot of players still found it a
little confusing and lacking in explanation. So this time, I've gone all
out! In Showtime, 33 tutorial popups helped to guide you through the
game. With this new dynamic tutorial system, I aim at 120+, as well as
the "help" icons making a return from the previous game.
It has been difficult however in finding a balance... as a designer
its hard to overcome tutorial-fatigue ("oh mannn annnootthherr popup! GO
AWAY!") while still explaining all of the features available in the
game. So i'm doing my best in that regard and I think the final system
will be quite good. The option to turn off the tutorial will of course
be available in-game as well as when you first start a new game.
Box Office
The box office design will probably look very familiar to players. I
really wanted to keep things similar to how they worked in Showtime with
some minor improvements. You can now click on any of your movies to
move directly to their respective filmography page. This was a big
feature request in the first game but something I just wasnt able to do
without (believe it or not) major tweaking to save data files. I had
considered bumping it up to a Top 20 list and played around with it but
ultimately it felt unnecessary. Once a film drops out of the Top 10,
it's no longer relevent anyway and you can see how well its doing from
the filmography page anyway. Still, this is something I've been umming
and ahhing over so if you have any input on this please feel free to let
me know.
Levelling up, Facilities and Staff
Apart from what I’ve just discussed, I've got a list of about 50
feature requests from people from Steam. Not all made sense, but the
majority certainly did and I've made it my mission to cram this game
with as much content as I possibly can while still maintaining that
Showtime-flavour. Among the biggest upgrades is certainly how
Facilities, Staff and Research is handled. The player will now LEVEL UP
their facilities, and research items in order to make bigger and better
movies. You can still purchase upgrades. Likewise, staff can be hired to
research better industry items faster and these will generate points
you can "spend" around your studio.
Talent handling has been completely overhauled :) I'm really
happy with the way its all shaping up. You will now be able to view a
talent's profile at any time. Characters are no longer limited to "works
best in..." genres. Instead, they will level up in every genre
depending on how often they work in that field. So you can cast and
develop very diverse actors/directors/producers. You will also be able
to view their full filmography (including seperate acting, directing and
producing credits), and finally any awards the talent has won. Actor's
will also have busier schedules... AI studios will hire actor's for
projects before you can have a chance to get to them, so talent
contracting will be more important than ever in securing premium talent
for your movies.
Thanks for reading and this time next month I should have another update ready for you all :) Cheers
