Welcome to the Factory Default: Build, Trade, Repeat Alpha 0.0.4.0 update! This major patch introduces exciting new gameplay mechanics including World Auctions and a complex new Bulldozer production chain.

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RELEASE NOTES:

NEW:

AUCTIONS:

    A new auction tab allows you to bid against your rivels for mystery shipping containers. These containers were misplaced by their company of origin due to logistical errors. In increments of 100K, 500K, 1M, 5M, or 10M your goal is to spend as little as possible.

    The only clue you have about the contents of the shipping container is what type and category the item is. It can contain any item in the game inside and be anywhere from 3 to 120,000 tons (or equivalent). The auction closes in a "going once, going twice, sold" countdown if there are no additional higher bids. Each count takes 2 days.

    A new auction starts immediately.
   

    If you win your auction, it will appear on the right hand side of the auctions menu allowing you to open it.  

    Once you do, you will see what resource was inside as well as the quantity.

    Select which country you wish to have it delivered to. (You must have enough storage in a country for it to appear in the menu.)

    Once you select a country, it will show you the value of your items in that country. It may be beneficial to check through all your available delivery locations if your intention is to just sell for money. Otherwise there is no issue storing it somewhere for immediate or later use in manufacturing. Or just holding on to it to sell when the markets are up.

    The purpose of this auction feature is to begin to introduce rivals in the game, I intend for them to have a more meaningful threat later, but for now you can just see there names here and on the contracts tab.

    It's basically gambling, most containers are going to have less than $1M worth of goods in it, but there is potential for much more. In my tests, $120M seems to be the main "Jackpot" to keep an eye out for, but there is a possibility to get over $2B from a single auction win.

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5 New Countries:   

Angola - 48 tiles - Advanced production of Diamonds

Chad  - 50 tiles - Expert production of Gum Arabic

Mongolia - 61 tiles - Advanced production of Coal, Fluorite, Molybdenum Ore, and Goats

Niger - 49 tiles-  Advanced production of Uranium Ore, and Onions

Peru - 50 tiles-  Expert production of Cassiterite Ore, Copper Ore, Gold Ore, Silver Ore, Asparagus, Avocados, Blueberries, Quinoa and Alpacas. Advanced production of Molybdenum Ore, Zinc Ore, and Grapes

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New Fertilities:

    Alpacas - Added Advanced production to Argentina (Removed Sheep)

    Goats (Cashmere) - Added Expert production to China (Removed Sheep)

    Horses -

    Asparagus - Added Expert production to China and Mexico. Added Advanced production to Germany and Spain

    Blueberries - Added Expert production to USA, and Advanced production to Canada

    Quinoa - Added Advanced production to Colombia

New Animal Products:

    Alpaca Wool

    Cashmere Wool

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New Production Chain:

IE Bulldozers

The fist of hopefully a few different types of Industrial Equipment. The humble bulldozer seemed like the perfect chain to get started with.

The IE Bulldozer requires 10 sub-assemblies:

- IE Chassis Frame

- IE Diesel Engine

- IE Hydraulic System

- IE Transmission System

- IE Track Assembly

- IE Blade Unit

- IE Cabin Assembly

- IE Control Electronics

- IE Fuel Tank

- IE Cooling System

I will let you see what each of those assemblies require by yourself, but each of them on their own are worth quite a bit if you sell them before getting to the bulldozer bit.

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Recipe Tree Visualizer - Work in progress

Much of my time was spent working on a recipe tree visualizer. I have gotten it to the point that it works, and need to take a break from it. I want it to be better, but right now it just is.
It works great for small recipes, but if you put something large in there it is going to be unreadable.

Check it out.

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CHANGES:

-Rebalanced the outputs of all livestock. None of them really seemed worth perusing, and now you can expect roughly $10k/day worth of output.

-Rebalanced nearly all refined and manufactured items in the game. Now, nearly all items will produce at a loss if you are buying all your materials. It pays off more to have production for the full chain, or even just part of it.
-Remade the skybox using Spacescape (https://sourceforge.net/projects/spacescape/) the stars look much better now, and even includes a sun.

-Added an atmosphere to the earth using a fog volume

-Added more variations of "green" for the various countries to turn. This way you can better see borders without having to hover over the country.

-In the Main Menu, removed the rainbow of colors that the countries could be and changed it to the variations of green. I think it makes it look less place-holdery.

-In the Main Menu, I added some planes, trains, and ships moving around the map. Just to give a new player an idea of what the game is all about.

-Adjusted large number abbreviations. Previously this would only happen after 10,000,000, but since most numbers in this game are large I decided to extend it down to 1,000 to make it easier to read. I also made it so that the appreviation happens at 1,XXX vs 10,XXX. So before we could see numbers like:
    9,483,000 or 5,382M,
    those numbers now will look like:

    9.48M and 5.38B

-Pressing "ESC" key while in build mode within a country menu will now cancel out of build mode first before exiting the country. I know for me, I was instinctually pressing the "ESC" key to cancel, and getting frustrated that I would get booted out of the country.

-Pressing "ESC" when in the main menu (When you first open the game) no longer closes the game. This was a straggler from when I was first testing the game and needed to exit quickly and often.

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PERFORMANCE CHANGES:

-I overhauled the zooming and panning in the country tilemap. Should feel much more natural and less floaty.

-I reconfigured the Market/Management screens. (These two share 95% of their data and functions, so they have to be worked on together.)

If you played previous versions of the game, you will notice that when you bring up either of these screens it takes about a second, and if you watch the stars in the background, you can see that there is a significant performance hitch. This was because I was rebuilding all of the buttons on the screen every time you would open it up. (Around 350 buttons, all with initialization functions to do.) Then when you would close, it would delete them. You can imagine why this would be slow.

So simply, I just create all the buttons on startup of the game, and then when you open or close the screens, the buttons just show or hide depending on what the player is expecting. It can still take a moment to show buttons, but without the hitch, I think it will be less jarring.
-I split the market simulation into smaller groups. So right now, each item's price will flux every 4 days instead of every day. This is due to the climbing number of items in the game, while not a problem right now, could be a problem cycling through every item in every country in 1 single physics frame.

-Lag spike removed when starting a new game. Instead of everything being set up on a single frame, i spread it out. It also happens after the new-game screen pops up now, so it is imperceptible.

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BUG FIXES:

-Fixed issue with the Manager screen. If you had the "?" button selected in the Market, and then switched to the Manager screen, you wouldn't be able to hire or fire managers. It would only bring up the Library for the item you clicked.

-Fixed issue with ITO coating recursively needing ITO coating to produce. It should simply be "ITO".

-Fixed issue with Search Bar being able to be activated anywhere at any time. Should now only work when it makes sense.

-Fixed issue with build mode buttons not blocking you from building buildings under them. This was building buildings when the player was just trying to press a button.

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v0.0.5.0 GOALS:

-UI Changes - Need to have a theme other then "Gray and other gray"

-Separate Objectives from News Feed - Likely combining with Contracts and Uncle Objectives

-Uncle Objectives Part 1

-5 New Countries

-New Production Chain

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If you happen to play this update, please let me know what you think!