First Major Update Of Computer Tycoon is OUT! 0.9.4.1

read this article on IndieDB!

Hi Tycoons,

I’m excited to share with you the first major update of Computer Tycoon. The game is available on Steam for 2 years now (It was first released into Early Access 2n 2017 October 12th). Since then a lot of things have happened.

I had a giveaway on IndieDB recently I you didn’t have the luck to win a copy, feel free to join my discord and mail list where I will also make a giveaway when the game will leave Early Access!
Here are the needed links:

Discord: Discord.gg

Mailing List: Eepurl.com

*Personal notes are coming – skip if you are not interested until you see “HERE”*

Computer Tycoon was planned to be a small dream project from my childhood. I didn’t have the ambition or money to make it “BIG”. Then I’ve got a lot of feedback from you – and I embraced the wishes of the community. This is when I’ve created the game’s Roadmap.

Then I and my father faced serious health issues and Steam abandoned supporting small and medium indie games (last terrible change just happened a few weeks ago) and things started to go down into a death spiral – but I’ve never given up!

I’m happy to tell you that my health is fine now! And I had a lot of progress since then. My dad will just have a new surgery tomorrow, please wish him all the best!

*Game stuff again! HERE you can continue!*

This release is unfortunately still not the so-called “beta”. For the manager system and the “CEO stuff” I will still need more time, but in the meanwhile, there is no obstacle anymore to make frequent updates – because the game’s core is _already rewritten_!

So here is a brief list of what has been changed:

  • The game has extra songs 🙂
  • In general, Opponents are smarter and balanced – Customers are more reasonable. These two sections are completely rewritten. Now actually the different opponents are playing differently (Big’s Computers ftw! :)) )
  • You can check the computers and hardware of your opponents.
  • You have a visible research tree – on which by clicking on a node you can add multiple techs at once.
  • The research queue is also updated to show more information, to have filters and ordering capability
  • You have new technologies such as coolers and others
  • You can sell PC hardware components separately
  • You can set discounts on your products (per country economy level)
  • You have to take care of the cooling of your products
  • New Product properties such as Heat, Noise, and Capacity
  • There are user-groups in the game, namely: workers, gamers, casuals, and cheapskates – which are all behaving differently. (Better explained in the game)
  • The game’s speed options are faster than before – for a smoother experience.
  • You can continue playing after victory – and also you can choose from the different victory conditions right from the start before starting the game. Basically you can play endlessly now – if you don’t go bankrupt (it was your request – still I’m not sure if it makes any sense).
  • The game’s UI has been updated. Also, you have small extras such as the retro loading screen.
  • You have a CTD (money) estimation about your products’ cost (not only a PP value)
  • You can check the techs’ descriptions right on the hardware’s screen and you can see all the property values and extra information, too.
  • You can freely change the name of your products – and there is no separated naming window for that.
  • You have screens to compare your and your opponents’ hardware and computer
  • You have a screen to check the user group scores of your and your opponents’ products per country – to find out why is it (not) selling.
  • You don’t have a “recommended price” anymore, instead, you see the “average budget” of people per country economy for all the different kinds of hardware and computer designs that indicate the pricepoint where sales will start decreasing or increasing.
  • CPU, GPU and Memory performance has more variables. Their performance also depends on the “multiplier” coming from production size and base frequency, core number, os support, etc. Overclocking generates heat!
  • PC computers have more design rules, such as PC mobos always need interfaces, PC video cards are working only with mobos using the same interface, etc.
  • OS multicore support increases the performance of computers with multicore CPUs.
  • Extra tech features, such as Co-processors are adding to the base clock… etc.
  • The game was optimized (Tho it is still far from perfect) to have a smaller system requirement.
  • Forced obsolescence after 5 years is removed. But they have a natural lifecycle of first having a short amount of time in highlight and then losing interest on the market after a while.
  • Option to have Integrated Graphics Cards on the motherboard.
  • Countries have flags from now on 🙂
  • The Wall Of TEXT crash course is replaced by a small step by step guide.
  • Tooltips are rewritten – and hopefully, they have fewer typos!
  • The choosable player bonuses are rebalanced (not all of them are simply 10%)
  • LOTS of bugs have been fixed. Even some you’ve never known about 🙂

That’s all that I’ve found in my notes right now, but I’m sure that I’ve forgotten some. Best is to check it out yourself!

In the next update, I will add the country list and the site list – so you can expand and upgrade more easily – tho the system is already changed in a way that you will need less of that.

I hope you will like what you see! Of course, old saves are not working (you won’t even see them in the load list anyways).

If you like the update, please share it with your friends and leave me your feedback and review. It means a lot to me!

NEW Screenshots:

 

ALPHA VERSION 0.9.3.09 – No Site Limit

Read this article on IndieDB!

Hi Tycoons,

I have a small update for you while you are waiting for the “big update”. Here is the update log:

  • No more site limit. So from now on, you can create unlimited sites which will provide you a nearly unlimited potential PP. After the 20th site every site costs 2% percent more than the previous one.
  • I have changed how many digits you see on the department window. (It was pointless to show “output 10.00 PP” as an example, it is “10 PP” now instead.
  • Since the last patch we had a bug. The autosave files landed in an incorrect directory (next to the game’s exe file). Because of that those saves didn’t appear in the loading screen. It is fixed now. If you need the autosaves, you will have to manually copy them to their correct place (you will find a thread in the discussions with that question).
  • There was a bug which added HC compatibility automatically to your hardware after creation even if you haven’t checked the HC box. Fixed.
  • And of course, I’ve updated the WOG.

I know that’s not much, but at least now you can really cannibalize the world and beat the AI during the late game as well.
I was thinking about adding more things, but I’d like to avoid the hassle with that legacy version here on Steam. Instead, I’d like to work as much as I can on the latest (development) version.

The development version’s base GUI is 90% replaced, but with only a single GUI, not with an altering/evolving GUI. I tried to prepare the GUI so I will be able to extend it with the other 2 versions as well, but I feel like I should just focus on the gameplay right now. I will attach a screenshot, so you can see how it looks at the moment.

As a side note, I’ve started to upload gaming content to my youtube channel, what was an old plan of mine. If you like that kind of entertainment, check out my channel, and comment, please. I’m absolutely a beginner creator there, so I need the feedback. Basically, I just record how I play a half hour per day.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLWinCZj-_tQvhu39zuc1q9XMwYPHbs1ai” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>

Thanks for your support guys, any reviews, bug reports or messages are highly appreciated!

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Below this line you will see things from the upcoming still unreleased dev version.
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So here are some pics from the latest dev version (right from my development environment, so don’t worry about bars being not filled up, or values being just placeholders):




Thanks,
Andris

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Pictures from the yet unrleased upcoming development version (0.9.4.0):


Version 0.9.3.0.6

On IndieDB

Hi guys,

Nope, unfortunately, that’s still not the big update I wanted to post. I had a good progress in the last weeks, but still, I’m not done with it. Basically, the tech tree works fine, but I had to re-adjust hardware property points and further polish the hardware design system. I won’t lie, it is hard – but I really hope that the result will be a much better, more interesting game.

But I didn’t want to give you nothing – yet again. That’s why I made a small update for you even if it means double work on my side to migrate it into the development version as well.

Changes are:

  • I’ve rebalanced the RP points depending on difficulty. Many wrote that the game was too challenging, so I worked accordingly. This means that those who didn’t like the pace of the research will like this new version a lot. I myself think as well that it is indeed better balanced that way now.
  • I made it possible to turn off the “CEO Death” feature. Being more accurate I changed what happens if you don’t click on the checkbox asking about it, before starting a new game. Now if you say no to that feature, instead of “Game Over” you will just lose half of your current money in the game. That way the game will still punish you for overusing given marketing methods (lies increase stress!), but you won’t lose the game. This was also a priority task asked by you.
  • I’ve turned off the Auto Steam Cloud feature, what means that you will be able to delete the saved games on your hard drive if you feel that the mess is too big. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE Steam WARNING. You won’t lose your saved games.
  • I’ve fixed some country names.
  • And of course, I’ve updated the “Wall Of Gratitude” because I got a lot of support and feedback in the previous months (especially during my health issues) and I’m very very thankful for those who have/had the patience and the understanding.

Now, let me show you some pictures about the development version – SO AGAIN, NOT FROM THE CURRENTLY available version. Just to show you some progress.

For example here, you can see the tech tree as I’ve added a line of texts to the queue. Simply by choosing a tech in the future and clicking on the “add to queue” button adds all the required techs in a correct order. Also, if I remove a given tech, it will remove all its dependencies from the queue – making the research planning much easier.
Remember that you can zoom in and out in-game.

Here you can see the new Tech Queue. Do you see how all the techs required are on the bottom list? Earlier it wasn’t possible to add techs which were not available right NOW, so you had to wait until its direct requirement is yours. Now from the tech tree, you can plan into the future.

Also, see how the queue got filter options. If you prefer picking the techs one by one, then it is going to be very helpful in selecting the ones you need the most.

And here is a hardware design screen, the CPU. You can see the new heat metric and the other options. In the future you will be able to set the cache, overclocking and frequency separately according to the Roadmap of the game.
Also, now I will include a real production price metric shown in CTD as well, next to the PP value. The algorithm behind the CTD value gets your average cost per PP and multiplies it with the given PP value needed to produce the hardware element.

I hope you will enjoy the small update! I’m sorry that I’m not done with the big update, I’m really trying hard!

THANKS!

————————————————————————————-

And let me just put you here all the other tasty things coming in the future

Updates About The Coming Changes #4

On IndieDB!

Hello Tycoons,

Short introduction

I haven’t made a news post for a very long time and while I’m still lacking some stuff that I’d like to share with you, I’ve eventually decided to break the silence. It is better to show less than show nothing – I’m sure we can agree on that!
I’m absolutely here, working on the game in full-time, I haven’t started any new projects in the meantime. I really wanted to show you a complete tech three in this announcement, but unfortunately, I failed to deliver it so far.
I had some bad directions with it, also it has been expanded as the new features require it on the roadmap. I will talk about it and show the current state in this article – also I will talk about my progress and the lack of progress, new dilemmas and the nice stuff.

Still I’m following the game’s Roadmap:

How are things going?

Next to the fact that I’m working on really ambitious plans and the tasks I’m working on are not splittable and they cannot be published partially, the second reason why I’m not publishing new stuff is the Employee or Manager system that the game will get.
It is something that won’t be in the game for months yet, but it included some new technical challenges which had to be prototyped out and also I had to support my outsourced friend in the graphic/animation creation process, I had to test out everything so that later I will be able to use his work alone when it will be he who won’t be able to support me (time management in a single dev company lol). He makes nice 2D art but he has no experience in animation and game dev. (Remember, basically I’m alone developing the game and while I’m creating most of the visuals/graphics I needed more help this time – but this creates management tasks as well).

The third reason is that life made it hard for me to keep my deadlines in the last months. First, my landlord asked us to leave the flat where we live and it was hard to find a new rent, while it was also a great financial load on me. And after the move when I felt I can really dig into the work I got sick. I had several tests (and others are still going on) because of the severe pains I have lately, but doctors still couldn’t find out what my problem is. Luckily it seems I don’t have liver and heart abnormalities (which were the first danger factors) and now it seems that either I have some kind of infection and/or neurological issues.
I won’t abandon the game! I just can’t work as much as I’d like to and as I used to. Often full days are off because of that. Possibly one of the reasons I’m ill is that I overwhelmed myself last year. But whenever I feel okay, I’m working – and I’m still in love with it. Don’t worry, I will carry this out.

And actually, I put together some nice stuff! I know that some of you are really not interested in all of that, but I really felt I should talk about them. Your support means a lot to me! Also, if you miss updates, follow me on twitter (@Progorion) there you will know everything about me and Computer Tycoon in the meantime!

So what’s new around the game?

As you remember, when the Manager System (let’s call it like that from now on, because those guys will be managers, not simply “employees”) will be added to the game you will start in this garage.


Basically here I will introduce the game features one by one eliminating the “crash course”. Well, I will keep it as something like “Civilopedia” in the CIV series,
so those who are really interested still will be able to read it, but it won’t be a push into your face. I see how many of you hate reading! (oh, thanks for reading that long article!)

After you made your first computer model, and you sold some copies, you will get into your first real office. And look! Now the character animations are done, my assets are ready to go. From here you will work up into bigger and better offices!
Last time I posted the picture of the mini computers, now we added the tablets as well. Why not? It is totally fine to use tablets on a desktop nowadays.

So as you can see, the Manager System has its assets ready (excluding the faces I’m making paralelly) and the challanges are tested, now I won’t have to focus on it for long, so I will fully go back to the tech tree and other features which will be in the very next update.
On this screenshot you can see a new version of the tech list. I’ve got rid of the big icons, because we had to expand the list with new columns, also I wanted to give you filter options here as well. So it will be easier to find out what you’d like to develop. On this pictures, the empty columns will show the RP and manufacturing values, while
you also can see a column for the new heat/cooling parameter.

And here is the tech tree. Remember it is not finished. Even earlier base lines/connections are not finished as you can see, but we will have some longer, wider links as well.
The tech tree screen will have to show you the “research era”-s as well. Research eras will replace the restriction which made it impossible to research something in the game, that
was not invented in real life -7 years compared to the game’s current date. Instead, you will have the possibility to go as far as you can immediately, but you will have to pay
an extra cost for jumping too far from the current tech era – simulating the normal progress of technological development.

Also I’m thinking how I will inform the player about technology compatibilities. Here is an example! If you have a keyboard, but no displays… don’t you think you should be not able
to create a computer with a keyboard? While sometimes these inventions can be linked in the tech tree – preventing such unreal situations, sometimes they are not connected, so their
invention is still possible separately. Should I show these here somehow or I should expand the computer design screens? Let me know what you think! One of the promises of the roadmap
is a bit more real design system.

Yet another thing that I will have to care about is the option to buy blueprints from others. I think there will be 4 possible states for techs in your tech tree.

  1. You just don’t have it.
  2. You invented it yourself (so you can sell the license)
  3. You bought a specification of a competitor – so you will be able to go forward in the tech tree to other things which need this given bought specification, but still you won’t be able to use it in your own products.
  4. You bought a blueprint/license, so you can actually use it as it was your invention.

I’m trying to figure out a lot of things because all of the other screens are connected to these systems. And well, it is complicated.

What else I have? Well, next to the manager system, new techs and other features, I’ve made a new company logo, got new songs for the game, but I even made a new loading screen. How do you feel about it? The texts are not finished, but I really wanted to make it happen.
Those of you who used Commodore computers must remember to this or to a similar loading screen. If there is a game where an Easter egg like this is appropriate then it is Computer Tycoon.

So when will we get a new update?

As you probably know every summer we have sales on Steam. I’d love to publish a new version before or at least during it, but I’m afraid it won’t be possible due to my health issues and simply the amount of remaining work. But I really hope that on the next anniversary of Steve Jobs ( on October 5th) you will have most of the features of the game. That will be also the end of the first year of the game on Steam – so I’d like to make it big.

Until that, please continue sending your ideas and feedback about the current build on Steam. I got some really nice ideas in the forums (I read all of them, I’m sorry if I didn’t reply to any of yours – but be sure I saw it!) And please leave a review if you like the game!

WE NEED *put here your language* LOCALIZATIONS!

Huh, I know, I know! Please understand that I have plenty of things to do and localizations will be possible to include only when the single English version is finished. As I promised earlier the game will have plenty of translations (professional ones and some community based) including:Chinese, German, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian and maybe a couple more.

Update about the coming changes of Computer Tycoon!

This is a cross-post from IndieDB!

Hi guys,

I’ve posted my last announcement a month ago, so it is really time to talk again! Unfortunately (as you can see), I absolutely failed in my original estimates about when I can give you my very next update. I’m really sorry about that, and I just really hope that the coming things will pay off for this as well.

I’m being late because how closely related are my systems in the game. For example, I’ve already added noise and heat. Heat is generated by hardware elements, while coolers can reduce it. And yeah… coolers often generate noise. But just imagine how many screens must be modified because of these two things? All of the lists, the hardware screens, the computer screens, research screens etc. And of course, techs are touched and the AI algorithms as well.
So, I just can’t modify one of them and release it, I have to modify everything and put it out together.

And these are two smaller changes. The research three, the new research system, the new design system is much bigger than that. But I truly believe that with the modifications you will get a much more interesting and more detailed game core – so it does worth it.

I’ve learned from it. I won’t promise new dates, haha! But I really wanna ensure you, that I’m still around and I’m working on Computer Tycoon in full-time. Okay… at least when I’m not moving to a new flat and I don’t miss even my internet connection. In the last week I didn’t have internet… guys it feels really bad not being able to communicate with ya!

I think most of you are interested in the visual things right now because everything else is laid out in the game’s roadmap (feel free to check it out again) here:

The Game’s Roadmap

So here are some pics for you! These are not in the game yet, these are only the assets that I and my friend are creating. Lately, he works a lot on Computer Tycoon. His name is Ede László, he made a lot of illustrations about the hardware elements of the game (follow him here: @ede_laszlo[www.instagram.com]).

But here are the pics, they talk instead of me…

So maybe as you remember, you start here in the garage:

Then later you will move to a normal office as you create your first financially successful computers:

That will be the moment when I will open up you the world map as well… and you will be able to hire some more managers.

And the office will improve by time… as you would expect. But you will end up being here:

Hey, I love sci-fi, how about you? 🙂

The guys you can hire are really not a focus of mine right now, it is much more a chill out activity of mine, but here is some more work in progress:

Maybe you’d like to see your computers in your offices, right? Well, you will (just as you can see it in the second pic of offices), but here they are:

I think these are some of the more interesting pics I can show you (meanwhile I don’t wanna show everything of course, but you can see some more offices in my last post). Remember that my main focus is still the design and feature expansion of the game, but showing the new research list (that is just basically longer, has more content – and actually is not final) seems to be boring and uninspirational for now.

The game sold around 8500 copies in its first 6 months. That puts the game into the 1% of indie games on Steam with similar or better results, that is awesome, thank you, guys! Although still, I would highly count on you in spreading the game. Please mention it on your fav. forums and social media sites, because that means a lot for a solo indie dev like myself.

Feel free to text me on the steam forums or on Twitter! Have a very nice day, and love your computers guys!

Your friend,
Andris

Computer Tycoon’s GUI didn’t have a good start

This article was cross-posted from IndieDB!

Hi guys,

In this article, I’d like to talk about the challenges of Computer Tycoon’s GUI. Computer Tycoon is the first game about Computer Evolution. It is a strategy and management game hybrid in which you see a lot of data. Showing a lot on different sized screens while having a unique style wasn’t easy to plan out.

I didn’t want to create a traditional GUI with rectangular screens. The Computer Designs of 70’s were really interesting. Some like them, some don’t, but they are definitely special and have a strong character. Computer Tycoon starts in this era, so I wanted to follow the shape culture of that era.

Designers always tried to create something fresh and give a feeling of futurism for their creations. This ended up having those rounded screen designs. The angles, the shapes are really strange for our eyes nowadays, but those times those were the future. Just think about sci-fi movies from the 70s and you will know what I’m talking about.
Having a well memorable GUI design is really important. Being influential and having something special is always recommended for indie games, so I took the risk of people don’t like the old-school forms, the unnatural and for some outdated solutions. I think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Another problem that this game has to show a lot of data. I mean a lot. This is a tendency for Grand Strategy games and Management games as well, so Computer Tycoon can’t be an exception. Some of these games show even more data… such as this. Simply we have a lot of important data that the user must see. It is already challenging, but showing them in rounded windows is even harder. The rounded edges can reduce the useable are tremendous.

And this and my unfortunate weakness in general GUI planning made itself at the start of Computer Tycoon. Another problem was the close deadline that I had. I had to release the game close to the anniversary of Steve Jobs’ memorial day. This forced me to release the game a bit earlier as I should have done. People had windows not working, having layer issues that banned the user to close some windows in some scenarios, and having some buttons that were not enough straightforward, having menu systems that were tedious.

Lesson learned. I will never ever rush the release date. Especially not because of a marketing event that I didn’t execute myself but a bad small publisher team that fucks it up completely… but this is another story.

The GUI functionality problems are gone of course, for a long time. Also, the menu system is much better right now, but I release today a small style update. So check out the before and after pictures of the GUI. Still, there is a LOT to do, but the game will have so many modifications yet, with new screens and themes, that I don’t wanna get deep into it, yet. It is going to be a long ongoing process! I’ve reduced the angle of the list roundings, so I have more space., Also I gave a bit of shading, stroke, inner shadow/light AND I reorganized the upper information bar.

There were just too much information at the upper section in a single line. People can’t handle it…

I hope you like what you see! Remember checking out the game’s roadmap here:

Steamcommunity.com

I’m currently working on the tech/research updates of the game. You will get a tech tree and and some more!

Also please check out my friends site:

Razorsedgegames.org

He gives an awesome support and promotion for indie games for free on his site. He has a really nice community, so you could get eyeballs on your game if you share it with him!

And here are the before pictures:

Old Research ScreenOld Map ScreenOld Games Screen

And here are the new Screens! The small changes can make the difference, right?

New GUI 20180222New GUI 20180222 australiaNew GUI 20180222 compNew GUI 20180222 new computer liNew GUI 20180222 building siteNew GUI 20180222 resNew GUI 20180222 sitechooser

Roadmap and some news – Razors Edge

This article is crossposted from IndieDB!

Hi guys,

Before talking about the nasty stuff, please let me mention that Computer Tycoon is on sale until the end of the weekend. Now you can get it for 30% off. Don’t wait, because the later you buy the game the more expensive it will become! (You find the link to steam on the right side of this page).

Computer Tycoon had an awesome start. Not because of the millions of buyers, haha… but because it has a real core audience helping its development. The Roadmap is huge. Let me just list the areas where the game will have significant improvement and expansions:

01 – Research System Modifications/Extensions
02 – General GUI, and some small other improvements
03 – Dynamic World, Other Additions
04 – Employee system (+PP, +RP, marketing)
05 – Selling & Designing Hardware
06 – AI & Simulation Improvements
07 – Statistics and Feedback
08 – RPG Elements
09 – Governments & Long-Term Investments
10 – Historical Map
11 – Tutorials & Progressive Feature Introduction
12 – Localizations
13 – Community/Steam Features

Wanna you be LG or ASUS instead of IBM? Wanna you sell your hardware? Or sell your hardware to your competition? License your OS? Maybe support education in countries? Managing employees? In the upcoming versions, all of these will be possible!

Here you can see the full, detailed article about it with all of the crazy things:
The Official Roadmap Of Computer Tycoon

This Roadmap couldn’t be created without the fans. It really means a lot to me! Don’t hesitate to read the article and join the community right now if you are interested in management/strategy games and/or game development.

But I also got a lot of help from streamers and influencers. It is extremely valuable to watch how these people play even if they don’t have a real promotion value. This was one of the number one sources for me to see where and how should I improve the GUI and the texts in the game. Still… I have a lot to do, but I’m on it!

Also, there are some really special guys out there. I mean… the already mentioned guys are already awesome and extremely valuable, but there are just you know… those unbelievable people out there who want to HELP you. If you like indie games or you are an indie game developer, CHECK OUT this site:

Razorsedgegames.org

This site is for indies made by a single guy who was a developer himself earlier. He really knows how hard it is to be an indie and how harsh the market is. He gives free promotion, but this is not all. He helps you to manage your community, tell the things that you can’t, basically, he takes care of you if you leave him to do so. This level of support and enthusiasm is so rare that before finding him I didn’t think it can even exist. I’m sure his site will grow, so really… be sure to contact him if you have a nice game under your belt.

So… I’ve talked about the plans and the support I got. But what happened in the game so far?

Let me show it to you by pictures. I’ve touched the research screen, added a feedback screen, made optimizations, game mechanic changes, balancing, MAC OSX support and so on…

wall of gratitude
copy protection virusBilly

games

internet

power supply

sweden

Hey, here is where I work… just wanted to show you that how looks an indie living room.. oh I mean my office.

Studioban smaller

Support the Games that you like or you won’t get new Indie Titles soon!

That’s true. All of my savings are in my game. This is not an amount like with Cuphead,
but to me, this is all of my wealth. I’ve put extreme nights into the game. Sometimes I didn’t sleep for days (!) just to make everything fine on the release day that is today on October 12th, 2017.

Pirates don’t care about the struggle of indie devs. But if the climate won’t change soon, you won’t get indie games like Computer Tycoon in the future. Because of that, I made a simple plan and a simple message for people pirating my game. Something that people will easily understand.

Influencers can put pictures onto the floppy disc in the main menu of the game. Something like this:

And I uploaded the game myself to piratebay.. This is my plan in three pictures:



Pirates could download the game in 1-2 days anyway. But now at least they will get a virus free version and I will have a message for them to consider. After seeing the message for 50 seconds they can continue playing. Who knows, if the press will like this, maybe I will hit stronger than the Game Dev Tycoon!

I will update this post about the download statistics of the PirateBay Version. But please people, support me and BUY it if you like it at least. Still, it is much better than with the cinema, where you don’t know what will you buy, right? I count on you, thank you!

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UPDATE: October 14th,2017 – The first Conversion!

I’m also poor. Really. I barely can pay my rent, I don’t have a car, I have only my PC, software and instruments such as guitars and a big midi keyboard. That’s it after 10 years of work as an IT specialist. Am I rich then, or is it okay to steal from me? We can always have excuses when we do something wrong,- it’s easier than saying: I’m sorry.

I’m really afraid of financial failure.

But at least this guy did the right thing eventually! Or maybe it was way too frustrating to watch a “Commandore” screen after every 100 days in the game? Who knows, but I hope more will do the same.
At this moment the game was bought by 803 people. The torrent version (and I already found multiple other pirated versions as well – of the game isn’t online for 48 hours), but it must have thousands of users, what could change my life and give birth for more games.

I’d love to hear some reactions about that.

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UPDATE: October 15th,2017 – The usual bad numbers.

3 days after the release we really have now “clear pirate” versions and from the statistics I can clearly see thousands of downloaders – meanwhile the game just reached the 1000 copies mark.
I guess from now on it will be very hard to fight against this.

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Computer Tycoon is the first game about Computer Evolution, could be called the “Steve Jobs Simulator”. I offered the game’s trailer in his memory on October 5th on the 6th anniversary of his passing.

Check out the trailer and the game, or… even buy it here:

http://www.computertycoon.com

 

THANKS!

Computer Tycoon’s trailer in Memory Of Steve Jobs, and a bit of back story!

Why Steve jobs?

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

Hi << Test First Name >>! This is a quote from Steve that I’m sure many knows. At the age of 10, I’ve built myself my first (very outdated) computer. When I played my first management games – I already knew that I MUST be a game developer. Unfortunately, my financial situation and generally the Hungarian environment didn’t let me do so.

Eventually, I became a developer and ended up being a solution architect/product owner. I led a project about biometric signatures for banks and the gov – I wasn’t poor anymore, I was well-paid and successful.

And unhappy.

I saw Steve talking about passion and motivation a lot of times during my life. And after a decade in the IT industry, I decided to give up my career, and try to make the huge step just from a hobbyist to be a real indie game dev.

Here is another quote:
“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

I burn my savings. I barely sleep. I risk a LOT. But now I’m happy – and I really hope that people will like what I created. That’s why I wanted to contribute the game to HIS memory! Also, I cannot tell any other name having a bigger impact on the computer industry. This is his death anniversary – but I hope that today I can give him a tribute by doing this – I’m sure that people will remember him for a very long time.

“Computer Tycoon is an indie business strategy game about Computer Evolution and starting your own company in the 70s. Lead the research race until 2034, create the best hardware and operating system, take care of your infrastructure and even handle your marketing. Find video game gems to promote them on your platforms, conquer the global market and became literally immortal. Players control the game from a world map from which the objective is to control available resources”

At this moment the feedbacks are great. The game often hits the first place on the IndieDB charts from more than 40k games, that is awesome. I’m really happy about that. If you’d like to upload the trailer somewhere, or feature it in any videos before the EA release on October 12th, feel free to do so, here you can download it for yourself:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/18nuft5cdypnotj/AACOvHpmSo08v-uQY5DRVVYQa?dl=0

Thanks for being here and supporting me! Every RT and share means a LOT to me!
Andris

The final rounds!

Hi guys,

This period of my life is very exciting and tiring at the same time. Just check out this pie:
resquetime

This is my month until now. blue means programming and graphic works directly, grey is when I’m working on marketing and social media, emails. Red is when I play or watch an episode of the Simpsons Family with my beloved (during dinner). On an average, it means more than 12 hours of work on a daily basis including weekends and here you can’t see the time that I spend _thinking_ about the game.

I do this for months now… Sometimes I work 16 hours on a day. Why all of this? Well, I cannot deny that I love doing it. I couldn’t do this otherwise. But this is also just way too important to me to take it not seriously. I would deeply regret later if the project fails financially that I didn’t do everything that I could.

Making a game is an extreme luxury these days. The worth of the time plus money that I put into this would be enough for a half flat. As Cliffski wrote, “if you are an indie, your game will flop and you will lose money”. Unfortunately, this can happen very easily and the changing steam environment (worse year after year) doesn’t make it easier to get visibility and revenue.

This night I’ve sent Computer Tycoon the GDWC (the game development world championship). I think most of the games win because of their visual appeal, so I’m afraid I can’t win. But I used their event as a deadline. I deeply believe in deadlines, those turn projects reality. I see failing so many people just being lost in their work for eternity without results. Also, I hope that they will give some kind of positive feedback that I could maybe use in my upcoming trailer.

The trailer! I have a private version at this moment. I got some pieces of advice from friends, but basically, everybody thinks it is pretty cool. This makes me very happy because I’m new with trailers. I’m very excited sharing it with you on October 5th in memory of Steve Jobs.
Still, I’d love to get any recommendations on this topic. If I’m the father of Computer Tycoon, Steve is its grandpa. The game is basically a “Steve Jobs Simulator”, simply I cannot sell it like that because of legal reasons. He is my biggest inspiration in this work! So… Could you maybe recommend me any places where it would be beneficial to share the trailer on the anniversary mentioning this relation? You can send me links to any groups, forums, sites etc. I’d be very happy to get any!

Also, I’d like to talk about the game news as well. I wrote so long time ago sadly, that I really have material to share with you.First of all, I made big changes to the GUI. Secondly I had heavy fights with my engine in the last weeks, and lastly, the game’s steam page silently has been created. Why silently? Well, originally I planned to release the game on October 5th. Steam administration non-sense made it impossible, unfortunately, so I had to postpone it to 12th (And putting the trailer to 5th to keep the anniversary). The problem is that this means only 1 week between the trailer and the EA dates and because of Steam Direct nowadays every project must be in a state called “coming soon” on steam for at least two weeks before release time. So I had to upload the game site before two weeks of my desired release date. I could put it on October 19th. But… because of the coming Halloween sale, I’m afraid to release the game any later than 12th. This forced me to create the steam page without the trailer.

I know this is a bad move. Uploading the site without a trailer is a bad practice. The reason why I decided to do it this way anyways is still the anniversary and Steve that is so important to me. I beg you to support me on that specific day, without your help this sacrifice will make more harm than good.

In the last last 12 days still, I have plenty of work. I have a very long bug list, and also two non-implemented features, that I’d like to carry out. Stay tuned! Soon I will send out keys to my subscription list as I promised earlier. And please check out the new GUI of the game! 🙂 Cheers!

 

Computer Tycoon Dominance Map

Computer Tycoon Dominance Map

Computer Tycoon Ease-Of-Use Map

Computer Tycoon Ease-Of-Use Map

Computer Tycoon - Customer Statistics

Computer Tycoon – Customer Statistics

Computer Tycoon - Hardware List

Computer Tycoon – Hardware List

Computer Tycoon - Research Screen

Computer Tycoon – Research Screen

Computer Tycoon - Technological Singularity

Computer Tycoon – Technological Singularity