Alpha 1.6 Update - Polish and Paint
I've been focusing on retesting every existing feature and fixing issues over the past week. With the Steam Early Access 3 weeks away, I'll be sending out press builds soon and want the game to be as stable as possible. This means the Stock Market feature won't be ready until after the Steam version is live. Having said that, Alpha 1.6 is now live and there's a few new things in addition to those mentioned in the last post.
You can now buy Lottery Tickets from the Mall. This probably sounds strange in a game about smart financial decision-making. The lottery is drawn at the end of each week. If you lose, nothing happens except you wasted your money, but if you win your happiness increases. On average you will lose money just like in real life, so playing the lottery is only useful as a way to increase happiness.
Next, I found some flaws with the way I was calculating repayment rates for home mortgages. I was using the same formula that was used for personal loans, but this made the monthly mortgage repayments very unaffordable. I've changed it so now when you take out a mortgage, it will always be paid back in 30 years (unless you pay off the principle early). This makes the loans much more affordable and realistic.
Improvements have been made to the personal loan and mortgage screens as well. They will indicate the current monthly repayments so you can work out whether you can afford the loan. You can compare the repayments with current rent prices to see if it's cheaper to rent or buy a house.
One thing to remember is that all loans are variable rates. This means if interest rates increase, then your repayments will increase as well. This is yet another reason to keep an eye on the Economic Charts I introduced in the last blog post. If you see interest rates are on the rise and economic growth is falling, be careful you don't borrow more than you can afford to repay.
Finally, you can now paint your Collectible containers! Just buy Cans Of Paint at the Mall like you would for your house, and then a Paint Container button will appear under the collection display.
Here's a list of all the changes in 1.6:
New Features
- Added super cool loading screen at start
- Added image for losing game
- Added economic indicator charts
- Added life goal history tracking and charts
- Added shortcut key configuration to Options
- Added details view for real estate in Possessions
- Added Financial Dimes subscription
- Added lottery ticket possessions
- Added painting Collectible containers
Gameplay Changes
- Reduced impact of some needs-based events
- Modified economic growth update rates
- Added capital gains tax for sold real estate
- Added separate Real Estate index and history tracking
- Decoupled house price index from economic growth index
- Changed mortgage repayments to 30-year terms
Bugfixes/Improvements
- Edge scrolling only happens when window in focus
- Made banking popups and alerts more consistent
- Fixed able to apply for home without home selected
- Removed Real Estate label from Possessions panel unless we have real estate
- Overhauled Statements display
- Lots of minor UI tweaks
- Fixed missing Coin Collecting Album from Collector's Store
- Split tax return into more specific income/expense categories
- Added estimated monthly repayments on mortgage and personal loan
- Fixed missing Bachelor Of Arts and Philosophy from university
- Fixed withholding tax not taking into account inflation
- Fixed yearly tax calculation not taking into account inflation
- Fixed medical bills not taking into account inflation
- Fixed missing sound effect for 'free' actions
- Fixed possessions not appearing in Possessions panel when hidden objects purchased
- Fixed repayments too high on mortgages
- Fixed loan principle increasing faster than repayments
- Fixed real estate investment interest being treated as tax offset instead of tax deduction
- Fixed Interest income going into tax payable instead of income column on tax return
- Fixed deadlock when processing transaction history causing game to hang
Comments
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Hi! I just downloaded the new 1.6 but it only gets stuck on the first loading screen. It cycles through loading "this " "grand" and "life", then it restarts that loop and just stays indefinitely on "this".
I let it go for a while. It then freezes/locks up for good. (Window turns white)
Hi, thanks for the report, can I ask what specs are your computer? Does Alpha 1.51 work fine for you?
Could you also paste the stuff in your log.txt file here when it locks up?
Hi! Yeah alpha 1.51 works just fine, I checked. Here's the logs.txt file:
Language testing doc: data/Languages\English.xml
Textures Size: 71
Textures Size: 20
FONT Loaded
Screensize: 9999 9999
OpenGL version: 4.4
Antialias level: 0
SetUILoadingSprite
SetUILoadingSprite
Start setting desktop properties
SetUILoadingSprite
Is CSS success: 1
SetUILoadingSprite
SetUILoadingSprite
Start setting intro desktop properties
Is CSS success: 1
Thanks for the log, your specs should be fine. I *think* the problem was the screen resolution, I found an old laptop to run it on and could reproduce the problem. Alpha 1.61 is uploaded to fix it, could you try that and see if it works?
It works! Amazing, thank you. Now it loaded nearly instantly, barely saw the loading screen.
And I'm running the game on MSI 6QF Leopard Pro, and there is a lot of specs here and i'm unsure which ones are relevant here, but I have a 64 bit Windows 10, Nvidia GTX960M graphics card, my processor is Intel i7-6700HQ and so on. Is that helpful in any way? I appreciate the quick response time by the way :)
PS. and I have 8 gigs of RAM, but I'm unsure which "grade" it is.