Tag Archives: computer tycoon

Computer Tycoon – Company Building Sites and Graphics Optimization

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Hi all,

In the last 2-3 weeks, I was working on the building sites of the game. This was a hard period honestly, and this is the first time that I had some real trouble around the game.

Please don’t forget that still, you can register to my newsletter, so you can win a free copy of the game before release on steam. Also, I will look for testers using this email list. http://eepurl.com/cG63JD

Also, I’ve just created a subreddit for my game, where I will constantly look for the feedback! https://www.reddit.com/r/ComputerTycoon/

IndieDB

So, getting back to the topic, haha! It was a long time ago when I last created 3D games. The tools and the surrounded problems evolved a lot, and well, my knowledge faded away. I needed some time to get back!
For some time I really wasn’t sure if I want 3D parts into Computer Tycoon or not. But I ended up to include it. Simply, I felt that people will like it. I think it’s always rewarding to actually “see your empire” in the grand strategy aspect, so I implemented it in Computer Tycoon as well. I talked about this in earlier posts where I showed the country map of the game. I love strategy games where you can see your territory growing. But how about your company?
When people think about companies, even more corporates, they think about offices, factories. Yeah, kinda “workplaces”, right? So the best way to make your company be a living thing is to show those buildings, I guess. The problem is that this makes the game even bigger, and also I’m a bit afraid that thinking about other tycoon games, people will assume that you can freely build stuff on a map just as you do it in transport tycoon or rollercoaster tycoon.
But here, you won’t. This game isn’t about that kind of creativity. There is another line of tycoon games, where building/road/anystuff construction isn’t the main thing. Just remember to Game Dev Tycoon, where you create games, not roller coasters.
In Computer Tycoon the “building site” is where you see the infrastructure of your company. You can upgrade specific parts to get more productivity or research/marketing capability, new marketing methods and so on. And I decided to give you a living 3D animation representation of it. Simply, you just can’t put the buildings where you would like to because they have predefined positions. Maybe in the sequel! 🙂

But what was the problem? Well, I made you a so big and so detailed representation, with so many models, that the engine had some trouble. Of course, on my strong dev PC that was totally okay, but what about older computers? Tycoon games tend to have a small system requirement because they don’t have usually an impressive graphics quality. These games aren’t really about graphics.
So this was the dilemma… Should I keep this or not? Well, at this moment, I’m on the track to keep it. I made everything to optimize the graphics.

Using a Radeon HD 6850 card, you can get 58-60 fps on Full-HD (watching the biggest, most crowded scene). And using a Geforce 920M you can also get 30 fps on 1388×768 resolution.
The Radeon HD 6850 is a 5 years old video card, with a 2262 benchmark. The Geforce 920M is a relatively new video card for laptops with a 711 benchmark. I hope that it’s enough. This is something that I will need to test out on more systems. Yes, I really count on you in that! 🙂 Getting to this point was hard, pretty hard with very long nights. I just really hope that this level of system requirement is still acceptable. Feel free to check your own hardware on the benchmark list and put it in the comments to me.

Check out these screenshots of the building site. I guess that’s what is the most interesting for you out there. On the pictures, ambient occlusion is turned off. I’m still thinking if I want it or not.

Please stay tuned, and recommend the game to your friends who like retro computers and tycoon/strategy games. I really need your help. Multiple friends of mine have flopped games recently, and telling the truth, I’m a bit afraid at this moment that I will end up the same way. I work _literally_ all day and night to make this happen. Thanks for reading! 🙂

Computer Tycoon Building SiteComputer Tycoon Building SiteComputer Tycoon Building SiteComputer Tycoon Building Site   Computer Tycoon Building SiteComputer Tycoon Building SiteComputer Tycoon Building Site

The future of Tablets and Desktop Computers

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First of all, don’t forget to sign up to win a copy of the game here:

WIN A COPY

So basically Computer Tycoon starts in the 70s and ends up in the near future. You have the option to create two types of “main” computer such as “home computers” and “personal computer”, next to laptops and eventually tablets.

HC 01
As time pass in the game, you develop more and more advanced products. Computers are not even faster but smaller by time. It’s nothing new for you, right? What’s the story in that?

Well, before the tablets we had PDAs, and today we also have smartphones. What if our main computers could be so small and fast already, that making (big) desktop computers is going to be unnecessary? Our current smartphones have unbelievable computing capacities compared to old computers. For example, an 80286 CPU runs at 12Mhz. What’s that compared to an iPhone7 with Quad-core 2.34 GHz? I remember playing Master Of Orion II on my old Samsung Omnia using a dos box emulator lol! 🙂

So the question is that will we keep the desktop size, or Tablets or Smartphones will rule the market in the future? Or what if we will have crystal and light-based computers instead?
Computer Tycoon T01 Computer Tycoon T02

Computer Tycoon T03 Computer Tycoon T04

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, my vote is that we always will have a desktop version. Why? Well because it will be always cheaper and faster than making it smaller. That’s it. We already could have got rid of desktop computers, couldn’t we?

What’s _your_ opinion? Will desktops survive? Will we use tablets in the future or we will have chips under our skin instead?

Don’t forget to follow my project to see that in my game yourself!
Computer Tycoon Ultimate Computer

Computer Tycoon

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I posted this article on reddit, but I feel like I should have made it here. Anyways… That’s a story about me (András Illés) and my next game Computer Tycoon.BannerVersionFinal_center_1500_500

Business simulators are awesome, right? In those games, we can show to the world how good we are, how far could we go if we had the chance and the budget, right? Also, for some Computers are like our friends in our life, don’t you agree? Maybe I’m way too sentimental?

My name is András Illés and a year ago I started my indie game studio, we are working on an indie business simulator game called Computer Tycoon:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/computer-tycoon

BUT what’s the story in that?

Those good old games

My first business simulator game was SimCity. Do you remember to it?

The first SimCity running on DOS. My PC that time was a 286DX with a 20Mb hard disk drive. Of course, SimCity was a city building game (obvious haha), but from a game design/financial point of view, it’s still a business simulator. You must build, invest and expand. Your service is the city itself!

After that, I remember playing Transport Tycoon when I was around 10-11 years old. I was playing it on a 486DX computer. I was so impressed and so eager to get that money in the game and build bigger and bigger trains. Oh and the 2.5D! Isometric graphics, oh my god! I truly loved it.

Rollercoaster Tycoon? Does it mean something for you? In fact, my 486DX wasn’t fast enough to handle the graphics anymore. My solution was to watch the trees in the corner while I was doing nothing, but waiting for some cash. That was a lot of time (especially on a slow machine)… Still, I loved the game, especially the building part. What a creative and fun game! And yes, here we are again: I loved to make money.

Sometimes the sequels were awesome, sometimes I was disappointed. For example, SimCity 2000 and 3000 were awesome, but after that, the franchise is not so fun to me anymore. Or we got openttd that is just awesome!

The game dev tycoon is really a newcomer, but I really enjoyed it. Or we have now the TV Empire Tycoon (ok it’s a remake, but a very nice one), or Prison Tycoon, Blueprint Tycoon, Plant Tycoon and so on!

Somehow I feel like the games I like today are very similar somehow to the old ones. What do you think? Don’t you think that games tend to be more stupid year after year?

Those lovely computers
HC_02_CommodorePet_Version2

As years passed by I got better and better PCs, and I played more and more games. In fact, my first computer was Commodore 64, not the IBM 286DX. I changed the parts years after years, I had a 386DX, and a 486, several Intel Pentium 1 compatible PCs and so on, and so on.

With the Commodore64 I used a small TV from the soviet block called “Junost”:

But my actual first monitor was a CGA compatible monster! Oh wow in graphic mode it was able to use 4 colors, but in text mode, it was able to produce 16 colors! (I think my eyes got a strong damage from this monster haha!)

The other parameters of my systems were going up as well. Fun-fact that all of my computers were totally outdated all of the time. Partially because I live in Hungary and basically we didn’t have the stuff that people had years before us in the states or in west Europe (oh commercial was totally different those times), and the second reason that we were poor, so I had to “work” with those things that I was able to get. Poor here means likely even poorer than you think. Don’t assume that “hey this guy had computers what is he complaining about?” When I got the 286DX my classmates already had Pentium 1 computers at home. Still, I remember how excited I was before buying it. I had been reading books about DOS for weeks before that! It’s ok by the way, I learned this way a lot.

Just imagine my face when I connected the power supply cables to the motherboard inversely! The motherboard and the CPU died. Jep, today I know that blacks should have gotten to the middle. Well, that was a lesson to learn, that made me just more eager to study. Don’t be strict I was around 8-9 years old that time and nobody helped me to do these things.

Eventually, I ended being an IT guy. What a surprise, right? Today I have a kickass PC sitting next to me. 

After this journey here is the deal:

There are three things in my life that I always had a passion for: Computers, simulator/strategy games, and music.

Well, the third is slightly less important in my story now, but the first two had a huge impact on my life. That’s why I joined the IT industry: I always wanted to be a game developer.

Unfortunately, my financial background didn’t give me the chance to be a game developer in Hungary, so I went into the business sector and games and game development stayed to be a hobby. I reached over 10 years of experience a “solution architect” position so far, but something happened a year ago,- I decided to change my life and to share my life. To give something to the people around me, especially for youngsters. They will never have the chance to do what I did. The IT sector develops just way too fast for that since the 70s.

I’d like to push everything into a game. About games, about computers, about the poor kid’s dream of making money haha) Computer Tycoon is going to be my first real child. (oh yes, I’d love to have real ones in the future, but I’m just burning my career right now haha! ) Being a bit more serious, this is my BIG business game now, but it’s not a simulation anymore, and the difficulty is _hard_.

The indie scene is just perfect now for creating such a game with old qualities. But **I really need your support!** With opinions, with sharing my stuff and even testing my game. Please join to my newsletter so you can be informed about the game, or later even win a free copy:

http://progorion.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=71ce8f5703d536ba25d34f07e&id=ed1846b02a

But first of all, tell me about YOUR computers, and YOUR favorite simulator games. What did you like in them? What are your memories? In Computer Tycoon you will be able to replay these memories again, so I’d like to get as many impressions from you as I can.