Development has been progressing smoothly. I've almost finished the overhaul of the development mechanics, I still need to rewrite software types, balance and bug fix. When the overhaul is done, I have to add some new features, before I can release the initial test version, including conferences and publishing deals (You can read more about it in the Trello). I don't expect the initial test version to have the software update mechanic, as that requires quite a bit of work by itself. I expect to be able to add it without breaking save files, so it isn't worth delaying for.

Specializations are now split up into three separate levels, rather than one continuous value. Each level has a major impact on gameplay, rather than just being a quality multiplier. For programmers and artists each level decides what level of features they can work with and not the quality they add, which means the "minimum specialization" hack I added in alpha 10 is no longer needed. Product quality is now controlled by the base skill of an employee and development speed is simply controlled by employee satisfaction, making it much easier to guesstimate timelines in the game. This change will most likely also bring back the progress bar in the alpha phase, which I know was a major pain point for some of you.


Leaders and marketing employees now also have specializations, which means you no longer send leaders off to a single HR course, instead you unlock HR features by levelling up leaders' HR specialization.

As employees increase their skill in a role, they also slowly earn experience which you can use to unlock the next level for a specialization, making education more RPG-like, but also way simpler and more discernible.

Most of the feature dependency systems have been removed, to declutter software and simplify creating new software. As such the feature tree has been removed completely. Software now consists of a few main features (up to one for each specialization) and contain a bunch of smaller sub-features that satisfy each target market differently. The main features can depend on other software, like how 2D graphics will depend on having a 2D graphics editor, but sub-features can't have any dependencies, other than their main container feature.


There are no longer patentable features, instead each specialization has a tech level that can be researched and patented. Each main feature has a tech level based on its specialization, which impacts the satisfaction of your target markets and development time.

The design document has been pagified to accommodate the new target market selection screen. It currently consists of 4 pages: General information, dependencies, target markets and overview/team assignment.


Each "sub-feature" has a level that controls its impact and the required level of employees to work on it. The max level features don't add anything to product quality, but actually change gameplay in some unique way. To accommodate this change I've written an interpreter from scratch, so you can write C# like code directly in your XML mod files, to add new and interesting features to your software types.

• Software licenses are now only paid for needs (Not operating systems), and they are paid monthly during development, instead of as a onetime fee at the beginning.
• The delay phase preceding the beta phase of development has been removed.
• You can no longer "over-design" a product, the design phase just ends at 100%
• The skill of applicants no longer depend on company reputation, but company benefits.
• I made some 3D animal models in my spare time to practice, which will be spread around the maps.

Alpha 10.10 adds the long requested feature: Paths. You can now build paths from the road construction menu and since employees walk slower on grass in this update, paths won't just be for looks.



Changes

• Added ability to favorite furniture to put it first, and filter furniture by favorites
  
• Added ability to fine tune sliders in options window using arrow keys while hovering with mouse

Fixes

• Employees will now attempt to get at a section of path in different ways if it is blocked, instead of just idling
  
• More work towards fixing save state corruption
  
• Benefits requiring money upfront (e.g. company car) would be free when activating them for new employees
  
• Fixed number keys getting translated as being 1 number higher in UI

Fixes

• Possible fix for rare save state corruption
  
• Fixed error sound still playing after successfully splitting a room
  
• Fixed being able to put furniture in invalid rooms by rotating near a wall while placing
  
• Improved feedback window content sizing at bigger UI zoom levels

Changes

• Added path system
  
• Added secondary role and task system, so certain tasks and roles can be prioritized over others
  
• Ability to drag selection to rectangle to select employees, furniture and parking spaces (using multi select will filter by current selection)
  
• Improved selection responsiveness
  
• Employee walk paths are now drawn when selected
  
• Snow is now dynamically added to exterior walls, roofs and paths (modding guide here: https://softwareinc.coredumping.com/wiki/index.php/Material_Modding )
  
• Added grass (you can increase the amount or disable completely in graphics options)
  
• Employees now walk 25% slower on grass
  
• Added performance column to active deals
  
• Road crossings are now added dynamically to improve look of roads and parking
  
• Added warning to product detail window when product has no more people to sell to
  
• Elevated roads no longer appear blocky in miniatures
  
• Added footprints and direction to dirt, and improved dirt spread
  
• Employees now actively look at what they're interacting with and randomly around when idling and walking
  
• Replaced newsfeed with offline patch notes in main menu
  
• Duplicate shortcut now works for rooms (in build mode) and room clone button works for furniture
  
• Anchor grid is now mapped to G by default and mapping is shown on grid gizmo
  
• Ability to use arrow, esc and enter key in save game window
  
• Price overlay when building will now default to being colored according to current bank balance
  
• Select building now includes roof in selection
  
• Improved how game generates nav and build mesh boundaries for modded furniture when using AutoBounds. Specifically sets minimum width and height for nav mesh and converts build mesh to a line if very thin. This should fix bugs with cubicles, if updated by author (If you are re-using the vanilla cubicle, leaving out nav and build boundary from the XML would be the best solution)

Fixes

• Fixed bug causing AI companies to sometimes heavily underestimate physical sales and not order enough copies
  
• Fixed room textures getting purged on Linux when changing resolution (would cause rooms to be black)
  
• Fixed options window spawning new controls every time it was opened
  
• Fixed snow and rain sticking to screen
  
• Fixed undo placing houses and skyscrapers in custom map mode not working
  
• Fixed employees walking through houses in town maps after load
  
• Fixed camera zoom being overridden by default value on load
  
• Coffee liquid held by employees on other floors would stay visible
  
• Fixed wall top edge sometimes having holes or poking out over outdoor areas
  
• Clone/blueprint tool will now correctly handle (recursively) surrounded open spaces in a building when checking for collisions
  
• Fixed FURNITURE_DEBUG lines not being drawn on top of everything else
  
• Fixed path to log file on Linux sometimes being incorrect

Optimizations

• Improved dirt mesh data handling
  
• Optimized all particle systems and disabled particle pausing to try and fix crashes caused by particle systems

Alpha 10.10 adds the long requested feature: Paths. You can now build paths from the road construction menu and since employees walk slower on grass in this update, paths won't just be for looks.



As you may or may not have noticed, Alpha 11 development has been delayed quite a few times now. The planned features for Alpha 11 have been quite clear in my mind, but I've been unable to figure how to add those features, without breaking other parts of the game. I've finally figured out how to make it happen, but this is turning out to be quite a big overhaul. Since Alpha 11 might be one of, if not the last Alpha release, I think having it be a major overhaul of the main game mechanics makes sense, as this might be my last chance to rectify the issues I have with the game.

I'll be looking out for bug reports on the new path system, while I plan out how to implement Alpha 11. I'll start implementing Alpha 11 once I'm confident the new path system is stable.

Once my plans for Alpha 11 are finished, I'll have a good idea of how long it'll take to finish the initial release, but for now I'll guestimate it at somewhere between 3 and 9 months. I'll keep you posted at https://twitter.com/SoftwareIncGame

Changes

• Duplicate shortcut now works for rooms (in build mode) and room clone button works for furniture

Fixes

• Fixed bug that would sometimes occur when splitting rooms

Changes

• Elevated roads no longer appear blocky in miniatures
  
• Added footprints and direction to dirt, and improved dirt spread
  
• Path materials can now be picked for outdoor areas
  
• Color window now changes based on whether selected rooms are outdoor areas
  
• Employees now actively look at what they're interacting with and randomly around when idling and walking

Fixes

• Pressing enter to confirm deleting save file no longer causes game to try and load said file afterwards
  
• Right clicking with path and any other object selected didn't group actions properly
  
• Coffee liquid held by employees on other floors would stay visible
  
• More fixes to room clone collision calculation

Optimizations

• Improved dirt mesh data handling

Fixes

• Fixed furniture wall offset algorithm in cases where furniture would get squished
  
• Fixed wall top edge sometimes having holes or poking out over outdoor areas

Fixes

• Fixed game breaking when modded furniture breaks
  
• Fixed game breaking when assigning project management leader to no team

Changes

• Improved path related pathfinding
  
• You can no longer place path ends on blocked areas and paths will snap to room boundaries, so they don't get blocked
  
• Added line to show if path is going to connect to a door
  
• Added performance column to active deals
  
• Clone/blueprint tool will now correctly handle (recursively) surrounded open spaces in a building when checking for collisions
  
• Ability to use arrow, esc and enter key in save game window
  
• Price overlay when building will now default to being colored according to current bank balance

Fixes

• Blocked path endings no longer break pathfinding and a warning has been added
  
• Adding door near path could make path corrupted and unselectable
  
• Undoing extending path in a straight line didn't work
  
• Optimized broken furniture smoke particles and disabled particle pausing to try and fix crashes caused by particle systems

Reported bugs fixed for path system, particle systems (should reduce crashes in Windows) and secondary task system

• Game would fail to save if a path system had been corrupted
  
• Fixes to path undo procedures

• Added path system
  
• Added grass
  
• Employees now walk 25% slower on grass
  
• Added secondary role and task system, so certain tasks and roles can be prioritized over others
  
• Improved selection responsiveness
  
• Snow is now dynamically added to exterior walls, roofs and paths
  
• Road crossings are now added dynamically to improve look of roads and parking
  
• Added warning to product detail window when product has no more poeple to sell to
  
• Anchor grid is now mapped to G by default and mapping is shown on grid gizmo
  
• Replaced newsfeed with offline patch notes in main menu

Fixes

• Fixed undo placing houses and skyscrapers in custom map mode not working
  
• Fixed employees walking through houses in town maps after load
  
• Fixed camera zoom being overridden by default value on load

• Ability to drag selection to rectangle to select employees, furniture and parking spaces (using multi select will filter by current selection)
  
• Employee walk paths are now drawn when selected
  
• Select building now includes roof in selection
  
• Improved how game generates nav and build mesh boundaries for modded furniture when using AutoBounds. Specifically sets minimum width and height for nav mesh and converts build mesh to a line if very thin. This should fix bugs with cubicles, if updated by author (If you are re-using the vanilla cubicle settings, leaving out nav and build boundary from the XML would be the best solution)

Fixes

• Fixed bug causing AI companies to sometimes heavily underestimate physical sales and not order enough copies
  
• Fixed room textures getting purged on Linux when changing resolution (would cause rooms to be black)
  
• Fixed snow and rain sticking to screen
  
• Fixed options window spawning new controls every time it was opened
  
• Fixed FURNITURE_DEBUG lines not being see-through
  
• Fixed path to log on Linux sometimes not working

Alpha 10.9.8 is officially out with reported bugs fixed.

(You can toggle the old grid manipulation panel in the options menu, if you prefer)

• Objects are now highlighted when cursor is hovering over them, to make selection more intuitive
  
• Ability to bind duplicate furniture key
  
• Reduced complexity of windows and doors during mini map generation when necessary to avoid hitting mesh vertex limit, because some of you managed to add at least 2730 exterior windows and doors in one save!

Alpha 10.9.5 fixes bugs in the Market recognition drop-down and column filtering.

• Furniture builder will now try to keep furniture inside room boundary instead of just giving up placement
  
• Ability to transfer IP to relevant subsidiary using trade button
  
• Specializations picked for HR now affects education choice
  
• Roof points can snap to grid
  
• Fixed some localization pluralizations
  
• Added inline functions to localization system, currently only includes Vowel, Plural, FirstOrCount function
  
• Market simulation now ignores in-house products when determining current highest tech level on market
  
• Shift click a work filter toggle to isolate it
  
• Better handling of error when generated mesh has too many vertices
  
• Improved feedback window message box
  
• Added salary NaN check to avoid game corruption and hopefully locate source of bug
  
• Fixed software type and category dropdown localization
  
• Overhauled options window
  
• Ability to set multi-placement as default mode
  
• Ability to disable rain, snow, thunder and lightning
  
• Added dynamic colorization to popup messages and message boxes
  
• Fixed window dragging and max size when UI is scaled

• Zoom to cursor instead of center of screen

Fixes

• Fix dropdown position when UI is scaled
  
• Fixed missing assignment buttons in deal window
  
• Improved handling of generated geometry to try and fix Windows crashes

The official Software Inc. soundtrack is complete! You can get it here

[2018-11-15]
Alpha 10.9.2 is out officially. The only change from 10.9.1 is that the furniture replace window has been fixed.

This update mainly contains bug fixes and optimizations. Notably, I've updated to Unity 5.6 from 5.5 to try and mitigate several crash issues.

Work on Alpha 11 is still ongoing, but it is still in the design phase. Alpha 11 will be the final iteration of the development mechanic, so I want to make sure I don't make any big mistakes.

Changes

• Move to Unity 5.6
  
• Added syntax highlighting to mod source code reader
  
• Hold R while placing furniture to randomly rotate based on current angle snap
  
• Ability to control camera with touch using 2 fingers (Only tested on an MS Surface (which does not meet minimum requirements FYI))

Fixes

• Saves broken by having the start options mod installed and upgrading to alpha 10.8 without installing the updated mod will now have their difficulty setting clamped on load, if it is out of range
  
• Undoing deletion of rooms in basement could break game
  
• The previous bug could break saves such that altering rooms in the basement and ground floor would behave weirdly. A process to fix save files during load has been added, but might not work in all cases
  
• People no longer talk to themselves in empty meetings...
  
• Mod source code reader would break on long source files
  
• Various other fixes

Optimizations

• Optimized drop-down list handling
  
• Random optimization work in market simulation and main game loop

Slanted roofs and code modding is officially out. You can read more about code mods in my last announcement.

I tested Software Inc. on the latest version of Ubuntu and had some issues launching it, which was fixed by forcing fullscreen mode and re-launching and restarting until it just started working, which I guess is par for the course. The launch parameter to force fullscreen is: "-screen-fullscreen 1 -screen-width 1920 -screen-height 1080 -disableresolution", but switch out 1920 and 1080 with your screen resolution. When the game launches successfully you can set the game to fullscreen in the graphics options and remove the launch parameters, if you so desire.

• Fixed duplicating outdoor areas
  
• Fixed having to re-validate mods when using RELOAD_DLL_MOD

• Added slanted roofs
  
• New Autumn track by Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Added 2 new startup maps, a garage and a skyscraper
  
• Basements are now separated for blueprints and cloning
  
• Doubled starting cash on easy mode
  
• Changing team arrival and leave times will now take immediate effect
  
• Whether project management makes a product in-house will now depend on base product

UX changes

• Build menu category list now uses thumbnails instead of checkboxes and text
  
• Added calendar window when date is clicked to see employee and staff working hours
  
• Ability to manage staff room assignment from staff window
  
• Pressing the focus button (space by default) now cycles between all selected objects
  
• Ability to highlight unsupported rooms if cloning or blueprint creation fails

Fixes

• Fixed room grouping bugging out when re-grouping rooms
  
• Fixed bug regarding how door blockage is checked for doors to upper floor parking. Doors going nowhere or in basement will now show as blocked
  
• Various other fixes

Code modding

• Added system for compiling C# in-game and securing access to certain types
  
• More confirmation has been added before loading new or changed dll mods
  
• Added code mods to the Steam workshop
  
• ModMeta is now an Abstract Class rather than an Interface and the FloorMod has been updated to show examples
  
• DLL mods will now be queried to save and load data from save files
  
• Changed WindowManager interface to avoid misuse of active window lists that would cause crash (Use OnlyHide, StartHidden, Shown and OnClose to control lifecycle)
  
• Game assembly now includes xml documentation to help develop dll mods in Visual Studio (Only some of the codebase have been commented so far, mostly UI stuff)
  
• Improved logged message when an error occurs loading a dll mod

XML modding

• Deprecated mesh and snappoint Parent tag in furniture mods and added Parent ATTRIBUTE to all tags that searches everything in the furniture with a name(Use ComponentName tag to name Meshes and InteractionPoints, Name tag for Transforms)
  
• Multiple and custom lights for modded furniture using the LampScript's Lights variable(will automatically find all light components in a furniture if not manually set, at the expense of performance)
  
• Modded furniture can now optionally have the IsIconic variable set to an array of category names, if it should be used as a thumbnail for custom categories

Alpha 10.8.3 fixes further issues with mod loading.
Alpha 10.8.2 fixes some issues with mod loading.

You can now upload and download code mods in the Steam Workshop!

First off: Do not download code mods if you don't want to ruin your PC, but also don't want to verify the safety of the mod.

Here are some quick Q&As to explain what this change means:

As you most likely haven't noticed, because I literally just changed it, mods in the workshop are no longer called "Mods" but "Data mods". Everyone who has a "Mod" on the workshop should re-upload it to gain access to this new exclusive title.
A data mod is basically a mod that doesn't change how the game works, but gives the game more content to work with, which is what mods on the workshop have done so far.

Code mods are written using a programming language and actively change how the game works, add new mechanics on top of it or they pretend to be mods while they quietly mine bitcoin in the background.

The way code mods work in Software Inc. can pose a serious threat to your computer, since they have the same access to your files and internet that the game has, but have the advantage of not being developed by me.
Because of this, I had decided not to allow code mods on the workshop. Clever modders got around it by uploading their programs as text files, which is obviously not an ideal situation.

This latest update includes a way to load mods that are still in text format and actively tries to shut off parts of the mod that would access your internet or files.
Please note that the mods can still be very dangerous. I will try my best to moderate code mods on the workshop, but feel free to study the files, find and flag any malicious code yourself. The game will prompt you to read the code directly in the game before it loads any new or updated code mod.

You can just skip right along on here to the wiki, to read more about creating your own fancy cheats:
https://softwareinc.coredumping.com/wiki/index.php/Code_Modding



Changes

• Added system for compiling C# in-game and securing access to certain types
  
• More confirmation has been added before loading new or changed dll mods
  
• Added code mods to the Steam workshop

Fixes

• Game would break during loading when installing DLL mods for the first time
  
• Pre 10.7 blueprints that only contains basement rooms would break the game

Slanted roofs are finally in! I hope this makes up for the slightly misleading roofs in the town map screenshots I released, leading up to alpha 10.

Slanted roofs are currently purely cosmetic. I'll try to figure out some way to utilize them in a future update, but for now, they are free in-game.

I made some big changes to the DLL modding system, which will break all current DLL mods. See changes at the end of this post.

This marks the end of alpha 10. I'm keeping Alpha 10.7 in testing for a short while, to make sure there aren't any major issues.

• Fixed employee working hours in calendar window going 1 hour too long
  
• Fixed modded furniture with lights stopped working

• Added slanted roofs
  
• New Autumn track by Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Added 2 new startup maps, a garage and a skyscraper
  
• Basements are now separated for blueprints and cloning
  
• Doubled starting cash on easy mode
  
• Changing team arrival and leave times will now take immediate effect
  
• Whether project management makes a product in-house will now depend on base product

UX changes

• Build menu category list now uses thumbnails instead of checkboxes and text
  
• Added calendar window when date is clicked to see employee and staff working hours
  
• Ability to manage staff room assignment from staff window
  
• Pressing the focus button (space by default) now cycles between all selected objects
  
• Ability to highlight unsupported rooms if cloning or blueprint creation fails

Fixes

• Fixed room grouping bugging out when re-grouping rooms
  
• Fixed bug regarding how door blockage is checked for doors to upper floor parking. Doors going nowhere or in basement will now show as blocked
  
• Various other fixes

DLL modding

• ModMeta is now an Abstract Class rather than an Interface and the FloorMod has been updated to show examples
  
• DLL mods will now be queried to save and load data from save files
  
• Changed WindowManager interface to avoid misuse of active window lists that would cause crash (Use OnlyHide, StartHidden, Shown and OnClose to control lifecycle)
  
• Game assembly now includes xml documentation to help develop dll mods in Visual Studio (Only some of the codebase have been commented so far, mostly UI stuff)
  
• Improved logged message when an error occurs loading a dll mod

XML modding

• Deprecated mesh and snappoint Parent tag in furniture mods and added Parent ATTRIBUTE to all tags that searches everything in the furniture with a name(Use ComponentName tag to name Meshes and InteractionPoints, Name tag for Transforms)
  
• Multiple and custom lights for modded furniture using the LampScript's Lights variable(will automatically find all light components in a furniture if not manually set, at the expense of performance)
  
• Modded furniture can now optionally have the IsIconic variable set to an array of category names, if it should be used as a thumbnail for custom categories

This patch contains fixes for every bug reported in-game since the official release of alpha 10.

I've taken some much needed time off since alpha 10 released, which is why I've been mostly quiet on social media. I plan on releasing another Alpha 10 update introducing slanted roofs, after which I'll move on to Alpha 11.

The planned features, as they are listed on Trello now, will not change at this point. I will most likely still randomly add features not on Trello, like the previously added multi-floor parking, outdoor areas and upcoming slanted roofs, but I'm aiming for beta at this point, which means a complete freeze on new gameplay changing features (not including what's on Trello). I don't expect to reach beta within at least one year. Once in beta, development will focus on bugs, balancing, steam integration, localization and adding content.

• Fixed a bug that would allow a product to get sales with any price, if it was the sole release on an OS with active users
  
• Fixed game freezing due to HR hiring more than 300 employees in one go and optimized team compatibility calculation a bit
  
• Fixed deleting rooms under unowned roads when buying plot and added a warning
  
• Fixed being able to see and control product under development by going to product details from design document window
  
• Fixed tutorial arrows when UI is scaled
  
• Fixed money, reputation and market recognition dropdown panels not closing in build mode
  
• Fixed game breaking when filtering columns in product detail window
  
• Fixed default custom material for modded furniture having full emission/glow (use _EmissionColor)
  
• Fixed some issues with AC and central heating not updating when being moved or not having correct Type
  
• Fixed marketing deal not showing progress due to wrong value scaling
  
• Fixed debug spawning guests breaking game(will also fix bugged saves)
  
• Clarified error message when trying to change price of a free product
  
• Various other fixes

Alpha 10 is now stable enough for an official release. I might still have some changes that are big enough to warrant an update or two for Alpha 10. I want to cram as many features in as possible before moving on to Alpha 11, since the bulk of features planned for Alpha 11 will render Alpha 10 saves completely incompatible, as usual.

If you are not done with your Alpha 9 save file and want to continue playing Alpha 9, you can switch to the "old" branch by right clicking the game in Steam and going to properties and then betas.

I recommend going through the tutorials, as they have been updated to reflect changes in gameplay and new additions. A lot of strategies and play styles from Alpha 9 will not work in Alpha 10, since hiring and employee skills have been overhauled.

• Ability to lease rooms
  
• Ability to relocate company
  
• New plot system
  
• Added map editor, town map, map generation string, rain and thunder
  
• Multi-floor parking
  
• Ability to mod room material textures
  
• Overhauled hiring mechanic and employee skill system
  
• Overhauled employee satisfaction mechanic and added customizable employee benefits
  
• Ability to assign multiple roles per employee
  
• Ability to control subsidiary releases and assign tasks
  
• 5 new tracks from Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Added ability to change the price of a product
  
• Removed scenarios and added ability to take out loans in new game screen
  
• Overhauled temperature mechanics to instantly reflect changes instead of simulating in realtime
  
• Software sales are now calculated per OS market, so software released for different OSs are no longer in direct competition
  
• Plus massive amounts of bug fixes, QOL improvements and optimizations

Finally, I want to stress that Software Inc. is still in alpha, which means major features are still in development, so the gameplay might feel unbalanced at times, which is only exacerbated by the fact that nothing in Software Inc. is scripted. Sometimes the market lines up in a way that makes the game very easy, kind of like how Software Inc. became this (relatively) big success, considering I'm just one person who hasn't released any other games before. I've tried my best to balance the market, but I've also tried to keep it to a minimum, as the effort is basically wasted in the long run.

• Rebalanced marketing deal and hosting deal reputation effect and made companies cancel deals with bad player performance
  
• Made computer-auto-assign more likely to assign employees to computers in rooms that fit their role, if assigned
  
• IT support would sometimes not unreserve a PC, making it unavailable for use by employees for a random amount of time

• Added rain and thunder
  
• Added tutorial arrows to context menu

Fixes

• Fixed not saving employees' current retirement fund sum (Was still deducted from company monthly, so this was purely cosmetic)
  
• Fixed tutorial bugging out when going from Welcome to Leasing tutorial

Optimizations

• Switched to PA Particle Field system for snow and rain

• Added interaction point indicator when placing furniture
  
• You can now rotate snapping furniture using keyboard, instead of just click dragging

Fixes

• Fixed furniture placed on high shelves not being selectable
  
• Doorways that are blocked weren't ignored by pathfinding system, causing employees and staff to give up instead of trying alternative routes when pathfinding to a room
  
• Couldn't translate software features in product detail window
  
• Loosing reputation on marketing deals
  
• Going to build mode, pressing esc, and esc again shows non build mode windows in build mode
  
• Various other fixes

Optimizations

• Glass door stickman rendering

• New summer track from Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Remember team selection in hiring window
  
• Use hearts instead of a smiley face for market recognition
  
• Clarified outdoor furniture error message to include "fenced areas"
  
• Ability to copy multiple lines of commands at once in the console

Fixes

• Fixed HR not hiring anyone because a few people on the team were dragging compatibility down below minimum standards
  
• Taking over a project from project management doesn't update next release date on task
  
• Starting a support or marketing task on a product released using project management will now take over active task instead of doing nothing

• Overhauled distribution deal bidding mechanic
  
• Balanced digital distribution cost
  
• Greatly increased accuracy of ISP cost calculation
  
• Ability to see bandwidth percentage for each distribution client in the distribution window
  
• Balanced hosting deal income
  
• Added keyboard shortcut to button tooltips and keyboard bindings for toggling team labels and wire mode
  
• Split physical and digital distribution tutorials and updated digital distribution tutorial with fixes and going over the new bidding mechanic
  
• Job satisfaction can now affect chance to call in sick

Fixes

• Fixed game sometimes bugging out in distribution window due to how the physical copies sold value was retrieved
  
• Fixed localization of specializations on new pie chart legends
  
• Checking furniture collision on replace did not account for rotation correctly and would allow furniture to overlap and stick through walls after being replaced
  
• Tutorials shouldn't auto skip after first tutorial message if skip condition was met before the message was shown

• Fixed not being able to expand work items because buttons would pop up
  
• Fixed game bugging out if opening info window on a project that has dependencies in beta

• Ability to use software that is in beta for product needs (Allows you to develop games for game engines in beta)
  
• Press ctrl to autocomplete a room when building up against previous rooms
  
• New build track from Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Count employee sick days and show in employee window, complaint window and wage window
  
• Count complaints and resignations handled by HR and show in HR management window
  
• Specialization degrade should change based on difficulty
  
• Instead of hiring very low compatibility employees, low skilled leaders in HR will now just take longer to find applicants that are less compatible on average
  
• Add product detail button in distribution window and total copies sold column
  
• Filter furniture assign window by teams/roles assigned to room and include role with name
  
• Added legends directly on piecharts
  
• Specialization pie chart in design document is now separated by art and code (This is a temporary fix, as the design document will be overhauled in Alpha 11)
  
• Project info window now includes specialization chart
  
• Shift + click a label in a chart legend to only show that stat (helpful for quickly isolating one item in a company's cashflow chart)
  
• Renamed "units sold" to "Net units sold" to clarify that refunds have been deducted from the total
  
• Lowered leader skill gain from HR
  
• Added AI company specialization to company detail window

Fixes

• Fixed bug caused by one or more mods setting software as an OS dependency without that software actually depending on an OS. Mods with this issue will be disabled and mods will now be incompatible if they cause this issue together
  
• Employee complaint demands were calculated incorrectly
  
• HR will now reject complaints if the employee has already demanded too much
  
• HR should not educate employees that are about to retire
  
• Fixed some license key/pc combinations resetting license key every time offline version launched
  
• Fixed race condition during new game load that could cause game to not finish pre-simulation, causing general instability, and missing companies and products
  
• Fixed some issues with furniture mod error logging and added base furniture name case insensivity
  
• Added fix in cases where rooms grouped for rent would be recursive, causing an out of memory crash when loading a rentable building
  
• Budget is now set automatically when accepting marketing deals
  
• Rare race condition when checking furniture availability could cause game error when loading game or placing furniture
  
• Fixed game bugging out if employees are fired while interacting with them in the role management window
  
• Added custom string formatter to avoid game bugging out if localization uses the wrong number of arguments in a string
  
• Fixed plot panel being in the wrong place for larger GUI scales
  
• Various other fixes

I've done some "behind the scenes" design work on Alpha 11, and I've ironed out most issues I had with how the new feature system should work. I'm fast tracking alpha 10, so I can move on to alpha 11. I don't expect more than a hotfix or two before I officially release alpha 10. Note that this does not mean I'm throwing out all the feedback you have provided for alpha 10, it just means I'm putting off working on it, until I get the new feature system in place, as that will heavily impact gameplay.

Changes

• Added new plural/singular localization XML nodes, which contain both the translation itself in singular and plural form, plus the subject as a postfix in lowercase in a single XML tag
  
• Added ability to compare localization UI files from Console by writing e.g. "COMPARE_LOCALIZATION French English"
  
• New winter track from Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Added ability to change the price of a product
  
• Changed how price affects sales when price is below market average
  
• The AI will now try to port software to new operating systems and also kindly ask any dependent software developers as well, e.g. game engines for games. This should decrease the chance of the player gaining a lot of money purely by the virtue of being first on an OS
  
• Ability to see and change multiple teams' work assignments in the team window
  
• Added warning popup when two employees dislike each other to help identify the exact employees
  
• Compatibility is now shown for each team when changing teams for one employee
  
• Specialization chart no longer counts specializations below the minimum team spec level when calculating average for a team, which makes it easier to see the effect of raising minimum spec level on software quality
  
• Added price warning and ability to change price before release if a product is priced way over market average, as this was causing some unintended 0 sale products
  
• Increased amount of game dev companies to fill out void in categories (only affects new games)
  
• Rebalanced stress levels to make stressed employee way less stressed and lazy employees a little more stressed
  
• Rebalanced personalities traits so all extremes are possible and average personality combination has medium trait values
  
• Employees will now automatically prefer to use computers which boost roles they are assigned to (note that it is still first come first served, so someone less suited for a PC might call dibs before a better suited employee does, you can reverse this by assigning manually)
  
• Half follower loss rate if release date has been announced
  
• Improved computer auto assignment
  
• Furniture tooltips should go away once action has been carried out by player
  
• Grouping rooms for rent that are already grouped in the map editor will now ungroup them all
  
• Work item filters are now saved
  
• Proper tutorial for new team window options
  
• Rebalanced print deal payouts
  
• Added warning when subsidiary is running out of money
  
• Improved company cashflow chart color, order and highlighting

Fixes

• All active print deals would get cancelled every time a company went bankrupt
  
• Toggling all in the multi select window would untoggle everything that had been filtered by the current search
  
• Products which had a million dollar price tag could end up generating sales if no other product had been released in the same category for at least 5 years
  
• Sometimes AI companies would avoid releasing software in a specific category because another company was planning to do it in several years
  
• Lazy employees left too early on average
  
• Stove quality state had no bearing on cooking
  
• Trees visible underground on load
  
• Made furniture ownership checks more robust to avoid them switching around on load (won't fix previous saves)
  
• Fixed employees walking in and out of the elevator when reaching their floor for no reason
  
• Made employees more likely to pick parking spots that are closer in height to where they want to go
  
• Fixed instances of employees walking through cars and backtracking when going from parking space to room on upper floors
  
• Moved chair repair point closer to avoid it getting blocked by stuff behind the chair
  
• Changed "Not qualified for assigned tasks" to "Not qualified for active tasks" to clarify that it does not apply to finished assigned tasks