Click here to see how to join the testing branch
I finally updated the documentation needed to make mods for alpha 11. The wiki has been rewritten, meaning you can no longer find modding info on it for Alpha 10 and earlier versions of the game. You can find the wiki here.

I'm adding a task/reward system for the next update. It's no secret that Software Inc. does not hold your hand at any point. You are expected to figure out what you want to do yourself, using the various systems the game has to offer. A lot of players, myself included, need some guidance, to help figure out what is possible. I hope to address this with a task system, that rewards you with furniture unlocks. I will not be gating any of the current furniture behind this feature, and most of the unlocks will be cosmetic or gimmicky, without throwing the game's balancing off, of course.

When the reward system is done, I will focus on polishing Alpha 11, so I can release it officially.

I will then start working on convention and update mechanics, which will probably go in separate releases. However, I expect to avoid breaking save compatibility, so these features will still be part of Alpha 11.

When the convention and update mechanics are ready and released, I will move out of alpha and into beta. This does not mean I won't add any more features or that early access will be ending any time soon. Beta just means I won't be overhauling any of the main features, in a way that would completely break save compatibility, as I've done with each major update during the alpha phase. I'm still planning on working more on the deal system, project management and stocks, but the focus will be on bugs, polish and content. How the game plays at this point will be pretty close to the final version, though.


Lasse updated 14 furniture models for this patch.

Alpha 11.4.12 fixes bug in SIPL causing game to break randomly when generating review article

Alpha 11.4.11 fixes save not loading properly if a furniture mod was missing

Changes

• Furniture now has a LocalizedName variable to seperate their identification name from their UI name (Check the mod wiki)
  
• Added save file loading screen
  
• Added splash screen while the game loads to avoid looking like a failed launch
  
• Fixed stat window sick day localization
  
• Extended SIPL with xor, break statement, Min and Max enumerable functions and ability to use Enums when assigning or comparing

Fixes

• Fixed game mistakenly warning player that a project was missing qualified workers, because a feature no longer required work
  
• Fixed TyD export not escaping backslashes in strings

Optimizations

• Improved batching of transparent materials like glass
  
• Improved wall furniture culling
  
• Optimized LOD of all computer add-ons
  
• Furniture visibility calculation has been time sliced
  
• Optimized SIPL memory management and enumerable functions

Alpha 11.4.9 (2020-03-04) fixed benefit window being broken

Changes

• Added company statistics to company sheet window
  
• Overhauled skyscraper generation (Still using placeholder art)
  
• A lot of detail windows can now be closed by clicking the same button that opened them
  
• Added ability to change default company car color
  
• Subsidiary project queue now shows unscheduled releases
  
• Specialization panel now shows how many specialization points are left for each role

Fixes

• Renaming a team would reset its color
  
• TyD parser did not ignore semicolons between tables and lists
  
• LOD meshes weren't cleared by default for furniture mods
  
• Game will now try to force placement of wall furniture when loading fails, to avoid "First wallEdge was null" error
  
• Various other fixes

Optimizations

• Improved furniture search performance

Changes

• Teams are now sorted in selection window based on when they were last chosen for a type of task
  
• Added ability to assign a color to teams

Fixes

• Fixed being able to make products that had no OS support for fundamental features
  
• Fixed research button not notifying player of new research unless it had been clicked once
  
• Tons of other fixes

Optimizations

• Improved performance of pathfinding system
  
• Added LODs for vertex heavy furniture

Graphics

• Lamp
  
• Floor lamp
  
• Florescent lamp
  
• Outdoor lamp
  
• Desk lamp
  
• Coffee machine
  
• Espresso machine
  
• Toilet
  
• Sink
  
• Water cooler
  
• Big plant
  
• Floor plant
  
• Table plant
  
• Table cactus
  
• Briefcase
  
• Broom
  
• Coffee cup
  
• Food plate
  
• Hammer
  
• Pot
  
• Water cup

Click here to see how to join the testing branch
The Software Inc. team has grown by one, as we now welcome Lasse, whose work you’ve already seen on the character models and cars, in the game. Lasse will be working part-time on making the game look a lot better, while he studies. For this update, he’s improved a bunch of furniture, that sorely needed it, and updated the trees.


You can no longer plop down single units to cool down an entire building, instead you’ll need outputs for their cool air or hot water to disperse throughout your rooms. You’ll be able to automatically place them, and you won’t need to worry about temperature at all if you are just renting rooms. This change comes with a cool overlay visualizing how pipes and vents snake through your building. It also adds roof mounted ACs, which is the first item in Software Inc. to poke through the roof of a building.


Digital distribution no longer works on a per company level and is no longer exclusive. Companies will automatically sign up for your platform if the price is right, but you won’t get to sell 100% of their digital products. This also means I’ve been able to heavily reduce ISP costs.
The amount of deals you receive is no longer based on your business reputation, instead your business reputation controls how much money you will be offered. This means you should be seeing a lot more deals.

The funding + lawsuit exploit has been fixed.

Changes

• Added "Pass through" toggle when assigning teams to rooms, to completely avoid employees passing through other teams' rooms
  
• Added compatibility list in employee detail window
  
• Added lines from selected employee showing social effect of nearby employees
  
• Various UX improvements

Fixes

• Fixed bug stopping company types from being loaded from mods
  
• Various other fixes

Changes

• Added "Office dangers" tutorial, which prevents one burglary or fire in a single savegame, if tutorials are enabled
  
• Increased publisher mandated release date window
  
• Increased lower bound for printing deal payouts a tiny bit
  
• Increased dev speed a tiny bit in easy mode
  
• Made room light level less severe for guest satisfaction

Fixes

• Fixed bug which deleted guests if time was skipped between deal being generated and their arrival, causing player to lose deals
  
• Fixed group of burglars sometimes spawning on separate days, especially with more days per month
  
• Fixed keyboard inputs getting disabled when force closing out of a window with an active input field, e.g. pressing ESC with save game window open
  
• Fixed bug making it possible to clone a room and place it on top of itself in some cases
  
• Fixed long standing bug causing player to never receive deals regarding IP takeover
  
• Auto-placing radiators and vents now takes in-room collisions into account

Fixes

• Fixed game grinding to a halt during a fire if there were a lot of outdoor areas with furniture present
  
• Fixed bug when merging wall with an active radiator or ventilation unit
  
• Fixed scaling issues when placing furniture along walls, e.g. cubicle walls getting chunky
  
• Reverted change from point to spot lights as it seemed to spike GPU usage and cause heating issues, without affecting FPS much
  
• License price is now fixed to stop license fee exploit
  
• Ability to set release date for legacy publishing deals

Fixed bug when cloning or deleting rooms adjacent to walls that are smoothed

Changes

• Completely overhauled temperature system and furniture
  
• Digital disitribution is no longer exclusive or requires the player to make individual deals
  
• Heavily reduced ISP costs
  
• Player now receives all deals, but the payout depends on their business reputation
  
• Guests with deals will now lose their patience if the reception waiting room is too cold, dark, dirty and ugly
  
• Added smooth shading to curved walls
  
• Publisher now handles pre-release marketing automatically
  
• Companies will no longer offer publishing deals if they've sued the player
  
• Publisher funding is now based on company reputation
  
• Release schedule control for publishing deals is no longer optional
  
• Market recognition will no longer decline, if player hasn't released anything for a while
  
• Reduced how much employee skill impacts quality
  
• Rebalanced business reputation gain from support and marketing deals
  
• Employee requirements now scale with the amount of work left on a task, to avoid the last features in design or alpha taking a too long
  
• Satisfaction and effectiveness data overlays now work for employees + added germs, social and stress overlay
  
• Sidewalks are now generated dynamically on roads + added lip to suspended roads
  
• Improved furniture snapping (Especially helpful for Emonadeo's modular shelves mod)
  
• Burglars now prioritize the cost of furniture higher when deciding which room to steal from first
  
• The team selection window now shows minimum team compatibility instead of average
  
• Police now show up quicker
  
• Software reviews no longer conclude by only considering whether the price is good
  
• Added online poll to main menu
  
• Removed leading zero when using AM/PM time

Fixes

• Fixed big lag spike when deleting furniture
  
• Fixed employees sometimes getting stuck forever after a fire, if a path leads up to the entrance of the building
  
• Fixed wrong license price calculation after changing price on a product
  
• Fixed AI using tools and supporting operating systems that the player had put ridiculously high prices on
  
• Fixed AI porting to both released and unreleased version of an OS, if player ever supported it in unreleased form
  
• Fixed employees pretending to work in design phase even though their specialization levels were too low
  
• Fixed getting "transfer to subsidiary" message when trading IP nobody is interested in
  
• Fixed locked furniture not getting removed when buying an office building "from the future" and refunding the cost
  
• Fixed contents insurance price not taking days per month into account
  
• Out of range errors caused by the Start Options mod no longer make the game unplayable
  
• Fixed not being able to build anywhere due to malformed paths
  
• Various other fixes

Graphics

• Tree models
  
• Instant coffee
  
• Wall lamp
  
• Stove
  
• Medium + Small Server
  
• All Product printers
  
• AC unit
  
• Roof AC
  
• Electric radiator
  
• Ventilation
  
• Radiator
  
• Small heater
  
• Ceiling fan
  
• Central heating

Perishables like coffee, snacks and food must now be refilled every day at a monthly cost (Done automatically). This also means there's a limit to how many employees one fridge, vending machine or coffee machine can satisfy. A small mini-fridge has been added as a free alternative to the vending machine.

Tech levels are no longer limited by which operating systems you choose to support. This change might seem somewhat unrealistic, but removing it will speed up tech adoption rate in the market, improve the benefits of researching and patents and finally, it will enable the ability to create updates for your software (this mechanic won't be out for quite a while, though).

The first page of the design document has been completely overhauled to resemble the old design document more. This allows players who don't won't dive into the complexity of the new software system to still play the game as normal. The design document tutorial has been split up into 3 different tutorials to account for this change.

Stocks are now valuated based on a running average of the income from a company's primary services and products. This should eliminate any exploits using loans, funding, etc. However, I'm not convinced this is the best solution.

Plus a ton of bug fixes and optimizations.

• Fixed grass being placed on top of basement stairs
  
• Fixed wall z-fighting visible in the garage by insetting door frame a tiny bit
  
• Fixed bug when sorting tools by tech level and then going to pick operating systems
  
• Various other fixes

Changes

• Made medium and easy mode a bit easier by increasing base sales rate
  
• Tech levels of a new AI company's first release have been limited
  
• Changed networking unlock date from 1990 to 1985 to allow for quicker adoption rate and more hosting deals

Fixes

• Fixed AI being able to pick features not supported by operating systems
  
• Various other fixes

Alpha 11.3.6 (2019-11-25): Moved console away from OnGUI to try and fix crash bug

Alpha 11.3.5 Fixes(2019-11-24)

• Fixed issues with design document sometimes not enforcing tech level limits
  
• Fixed bug where tools dependencies would get disabled if the software had network features
  
• Fixed not being able to see buttons in design document properly with active subsidiary
  
• Fixed "Accept all and close" in wage negotation window showing hourly salary change
  
• Fixed UI antialiasing fix for Linux breaking tons of UI collision checks

Alpha 11.3.4 Fixes (2019-11-23)

• Disabled UI antialiasing by default in Linux to fix bug where the screen would glitch in-game
  
• Fixed game breaking when project management couldn't find a applicable tool

Alpha 11.3.3 fixes bug occurring when project management tried to launch alpha review.

Alpha 11.3.2 fixes bugs when splitting room and loading trees.

Changes

• Overhauled how stocks are valuated, mostly eliminating exploits
  
• Tech levels are no longer limited by operating system support
  
• Patent royalty and expiration have been reduced to account for income boost
  
• Perishables like coffee, snacks and food are now simulated, giving coffee machines, fridges, etc. a capacity and a monthly refill cost
  
• Added a small capacity mini fridge as a free alternative to the vending machine
  
• First page of design document has been simplified and tutorials split into simple, advanced and full
  
• Increased burglar cooldown further
  
• Doubled speed of fires and effectiveness of sprinklers, and heavily increased fire speed if nothing is present to burn
  
• Fires will no longer spread to a room that has already been put out
  
• Contents insurance is now paid out daily rather than monthly after a fire or burglary
  
• Added contents insurance payout notification
  
• Added repair and restore all button to build mode
  
• Added leader multitasking specialization and increased max leader specializations to 9
  
• Leaders now gain a little leader skill when doing any task
  
• The end quality of a product now affects how much it speeds up development of a sequel
  
• Added speed boost info to design document window
  
• Improved pathfinding when fleeing from fire
  
• Bug verification speed no longer depends on average team programming skill
  
• Made energy debuff kick in faster and improved coffee energy boost to combat it
  
• Company assets are now distributed equally among share owners when they bankrupt, otherwise it is sold off randomly
  
• Improved research UI feedback
  
• Changed tree shader to vary colors between trees

Fixes

• Framework and publishing royalties are now actually added to owner's account...
  
• Fixed employees taking 2 vacations in a row if their vacation started in January
  
• Fixed game getting stuck in fire mode because a basement spread its fire to the outside
  
• Fixed game getting stuck if burglar was caught on a road ramp, making police unable to get to them
  
• Security staff will now scare off burglars while walking between entrances as well
  
• Fixed art skill increasing in alpha phase with no art work left
  
• Fixed employees working at half speed in alpha phase if working as artist and programmer with only art or code work left
  
• Fixed design promotion warning having wrong info and appearing when promoting early in any iteration after the 1st
  
• Removed small chance of still selling copies with outrageous prices
  
• Fixed review count being wrong in the review start window in some cases
  
• Fixed undo not working for curve tool if colinear wall points were optimized out in the meantime
  
• Fixed issues loading software localizations in XML format. Please use the CONVERT_LOCALIZATION_TYD command to convert your localizations to the new format
  
• Various other fixes

Optimizations

• Heavily optimized saving and loading times
  
• Optimized employee pathfinding by pooling path lists
  
• Optimized grass system

I'm upgrading from 11.1 to 11.2 to signify the substantial balancing changes I've made. I still have some bigger research issues to sort out.

The game has gotten a lot more stable, and you should be able to play it without running into any major bugs or corruption (pending an Alpha 11.2.2 patch). The game might still have some bigger balancing issues and I will keep my eye on feedback.

The response to fires and burglaries have been pretty split, so I've added an option to disable it. I'm a bit saddened by this, since it removes some of the cool building layout challenges you get from having to consider security and safety, but I know some of you don't care for the building aspect of the game to begin with.

Fixes

• Fixed bug in save system that would break when serializing a hashset caused by pending lawsuit queue
  
• Fixed bugs in stock system
  
• Fixed face textures not getting applied properly when loading a saved founder in the customization menu
  
• Various other fixes

Changes

• Completely overhauled how market recognition is gained and how many fans are gained per sale
  
• Made simulation more forgiving of quality and marketing efforts
  
• Reduced marketing effort necessary to break into market
  
• Ability to queue employee classes and improved UX for education
  
• Greatly decreased employee requirements for porting tasks
  
• Added warning to avoid calling couriers unless it's an emergency
  
• Contracts will only wait 2 months before auto-starting and auto cancel if way past deadline
  
• Made Room Repair and Restore furniture buttons pulse to attract attention
  
• Increased effect of severance pay on lawsuit chance
  
• Added lawsuit reasoning if further explanation is necessary
  
• Internal lawsuits will now be bundled to a single class action lawsuit if possible
  
• Employees will now only sue for a specific number of reasons when fired
  
• Clarified research button text
  
• Art contracts now net less money since they avoid bugs
  
• Added software complexity warning to design document
  
• Reduced business rep from support deals and disabled bug fixing
  
• Heavily increased market recognition decay cooldown for software types
  
• Changed how speed decreases during design phase from slowing down at the end of each iteration to slowing down in the last iteration. Overall time hasn't changed
  
• Added option to disable burglaries and fires

Fixes

• Undo system now remembers furniture assignment, which also works for restoring furniture after fires and theft
  
• Empty server groups are now preserved after fire and theft to avoid having to re-assign processes
  
• Fixed publishers handling printing and marketing no matter what player selected
  
• Fixed steam workshop buildings not loading at all
  
• Fixed founder having too many specialization points
  
• Fixed reputation gain from design document deals
  
• Fixed specialization progress bars and employee job assignments not resetting after a design phase iteration
  
• Fixed security guards not being able guard doors on elevated roads and incorrectly guarding upper floor rooms
  
• Fixed language setting resetting on launch when using workshop localization
  
• Hopefully patched crash bug occuring due to in-game console
  
• Security will no longer guard entrances that are only accessible from assigned rooms, i.e. bathrooms
  
• Window resize button disappeared after collapsing window
  
• Fixed a bunch of localization issues due to one cool bug reporter

This is a testing release, meaning your saves might break and the game might become unplayable sooner or later. You can enable backups in the options window. I will be watching the bug reports closely and patching often. You shouldn’t play the game right now, if you want a stable experience.

You can find information on joining the testing branch here.

Base mechanics
The entire flow of the game has changed, with the intention of making the game a little less chaotic and cryptic and making software more customizable and personal. To accomplish this, difficult to follow feature inter-dependencies have been removed. Software is now clearly split up into specializations and you no longer need to toggle all features to achieve good sales. Furthermore, I’ve added tech levels to replace patentable features, which are much more general and allow the market to run procedurally with no hard limits. Finally, I’ve added submarkets to make each product feel more unique and give the player more of a choice to define their product.



Upgrade to Unity 2017.4
The game has been through Unity 4, 5, (5.6) and now 2017. The major reason for wanting to update once again was to solve a bunch of crash issues and benefitting from Unity’s long-term support. The version of Unity I used for Alpha 10 hasn’t been supported by Unity for almost 2 years.

There are some drawbacks here, of course. Mainly compatibility. You can no longer play the game using DirectX 9, which means Windows XP is out (Minimum requirements have always been Windows 7, to be fair). The game no longer supports 32-bit OSX, i.e. it only supports OSX 10.9+, which deprecated 32-bit. To me, these feel like minor concerns compared to the benefit of getting a game that is a great deal more stable, I hope you agree.

Other cool stuff
The progressbar has returned to the alpha phase! I know this was a big point of contention for many of you, but the changes I’ve made, coupled with the iteration mechanic, has made the progressbar suitable again.

A lot of you also disliked all the physical distribution stuff (I don’t know if this was because you guys thought you were forced to own printers?), but you can now let a publisher handle all that stuff.

The wall curve tool!


Game engines are gone, and you now have software frameworks instead, which work for all software types.

Check the patch notes!

Modding
Old data mods will no longer work. Period. Software has changed completely, both in structure, granularity and file type.

I’ve not yet updated the modding wiki, I’m very sorry. I will get it updated before the official release of Alpha 11, so you have time to check the new stuff out. For now, I’ve uploaded the base game files so you can get an example of how software looks now: https://softwareinc.coredumping.com/wiki/index.php/Modding#In-game_content

All mod files that used XML now use to TyD. Furniture, material and localization XML files will still load, for backwards compatibility. You can read about TyD here: https://github.com/TynanSylvester/TyD/blob/efe423af6569e9c8bd7a2eee4837dd0f04421d51/Readme.md

You can convert your localization XML files to TyD files by using the console command: “CONVERT_LOCALIZATION_TYD YourLanguageNameHere”

Alpha 11.1.8 fixes (2019-10-08)

• Fixed not being able to restore furniture under some circumstances in lease mode
  
• Employees working in alpha phase with their secondary roles didn't gain programmer or artist skill
  
• Fixed employees sometimes failing to work in their secondary roles in the alpha phase
  
• Added missing localizations to founder look customization
  
• Fixed modded furniture appearing black due to accidentally only supporting hex colors
  
• Room dirt score wasn't refreshed on load causing cleaners to ignore room until new dirt accumulated
  
• Fixed specialization progress pop out stuck at 100% for design document iteration 2+
  
• Employees no longer ignore burglars
  
• Fixed being able to change leader during meetings
  
• Not getting any progress done on a contract now also subtracts the up-front income
  
• Fixed stairs going to basement sometimes not punching a hole through the ground on load
  
• Improved education error message
  
• Increased maximum specialization points for leaders to 6
  
• Decreased max bug count for smaller projects/contracts
  
• Added warning when guards are not assigned to rooms with door entrances
  
• Publisher will sue player for funding, if project is released without much progress

Changes

• Changed market satisfaction bars in the design document window to be clearer
  
• Made it clearer when build mode is deactivated due to fire or burglary
  
• Increased max loan amount to $1,000,000
  
• Ability to hover over red counters in bottom button panel to get explanation
  
• Added server status icons (OK, Overloaded, Fallback or Broken)
  
• Made it a bit easier to make sales in the beginning across all difficulties
  
• Boosted inital market recoginition gain
  
• Increased fan gain
  
• Overhauled marketing deal reputation effect to be easier

Fixes

• Game would break when trying to educate employee with maxed specialization points
  
• Pure art contracts would skip directly to iteration 4 during design phase
  
• HR education simulation would break game under specific circumstances
  
• Specialization level check on software projects didn't account for secondary roles
  
• Supporting in-dev operating systems had a bug that would break the game on release
  
• Sinks weren't being repaired as they had no repair interaction defined
  
• Fixed TyD parser breaking if file ended with a comment and no newline
  
• Forgot to remove minimum specialization bar from Team window
  
• Fixed game breaking if assigning security guard to rooms with no main entrance
  
• Software where it was possible to have 0 market satisfaction (anti-virus) would break game if released as such, due to divide by zero errors
  
• Fixed not being able to restore some furniture in some circumstances after fire and burglary in the same room (Only PC addons broke for vanilla game)

Alpha 11.1.6 fixes (2019-10-04)

• Cancelling a project with a publishing deal would break the game
  
• Publishing deal would get removed after design phase and cause publisher to not complete printing and marketing tasks
  
• Buggy price evalution during reviews caused it to always say product is overpriced
  
• Fixed bug where lonely employees would end up sitting next to a water cooler and working in the air
  
• Increased required distance before computers are considered in ear-range for social boost

Alpha 11.1.5 fixes (2019-10-04)

• A long-standing bug in the save system would break the game when saving/loading with an active alpha work item that was either an Operating System or had an active iteration task. This will fix broken saves, unless they've been saved over more than once after the bug first appeared
  
• Having a publishing deal with marketing would completely break the game and stop the market from simulating. This will fix broken saves
  
• Contents insurance slider didn't update after reload
  
• Having active porting tasks would stop game from loading. This will fix broken saves
  
• Moving company to the town map would fail to generate map and plots
  
• Updated education error message to clarify that employees need XP
  
• Burglar spawn rate has been modified to scale with company inventory value

Alpha 11.1.4 fixes (2019-10-03)

• Roads would flicker on OSX
  
• Some geometry became black when looking in top-down mode (Z)
  
• Having SSAA disabled would break mouse projection when toggling top-down mode (Z)
  
• Design tutorial will now continue when marketing window is closed, instead of requiring a press release, to avoid getting temporarily stuck
  
• Having food go bad could break game under certain circumstances
  
• You can now change operating system support in the design document after adding an OS exclusivity publishing deal, to avoid going back and fourth
  
• Publisher wasn't registered properly for printing or marketing, so they never did any
  
• Added publisher information to player release window and product detail window
  
• You can no longer toggle build mode while a modal window is open

Alpha 11.1.3 fixes (2019-10-03)

• Game would fail to load if non-existing language was set in the settings file
  
• Save game would faild to load due to (Clone) name sticking around from Unity, saves broken due to this bug should work again
  
• Moving company does not retain leasing mode status in new building

Alpha 11.1.2 fixes (2019-10-03)

• Game sometimes failed rebuilding all furniture after fires and burglaries
  
• Error message when clicking on empty areas in specialization star chart
  
• Crash dump and log file location was wrong in Windows build
  
• New default buildings weren't updated

Major changes

• Overhauled feature system, with special scripted features
  
• Added submarkets
  
• Added tech levels
  
• Overhauled skill and specialization system
  
• Added iteration mechanic to development phases, removing over-design mechanic and adding back progress bar to alpha phase
  
• Added publishing deals, currently only offered by AI to player
  
• Added software frameworks
  
• Overhauled marketing -> service role and added lawyers and lawsuits
  
• Added wall curve tool
  
• Employee salaries are now evaluated on an hourly basis, which enables part-time employees and adds a monetary penalty for working them for longer than usual
  
• Upgraded to Unity 2017

Minor changes

• Added bathroom sinks and germs
  
• Added fires and burglaries
  
• Added contents insurance
  
• Overhauled software peer reviews
  
• Computer price and performance scales dynamically based on available computers on the market
  
• Sitting near other employees with no cubicles or walls in-between will now affect how quickly social need deplete, depending on compatibility
  
• Employees now dislike working at night, but can be compensated for it to increase their mood
  
• Added lakes that will be spread around maps and block plot purchases
  
• Overhauled sun position and color and made it affect skybox and fog
  
• Software needs are licensed monthly during development and operating systems are bought per employee during development
  
• Removed delay phase during development
  
• Added different animals to each biome

UX

• Overhauled design document window to be multi paged
  
• Print ordering window now starts out with a suggested value
  
• You can now add and remove operating systems from a porting job and the entire task won't get stuck on an in-development operating system
  
• Added new tip speech bubble that will replace some hints
  
• Changed hiring window compatibility rating to be least compatible person on team, rather than average
  
• Overhauled console to have almost unlimited history and be height adjustable
  
• Added color blindness UI colors

Modding

• Added new atlas material for modded furniture, allowing having multiple textures for one piece of furniture that can be mixed and matched by the player
  
• Data mods and localizations are moving from XML to TyD
  
• All mod types can have a Localization folder with relevant localizations and they will be appended to the main localization files
  
• Base features no longer exist
  
• Implemented a compiler/interpreter from scratch to allow custom scripts in software feature definitions

Fixes

• Employee skill when hiring is now based on benefits rather than company reputation
  
• Fixed not being able to mod roof and path materials
  
• Fixed furniture interaction sound effects not playing since updating to Unity 5.6
  
• Roofs are now offset based on surrounding rooms, making it easier to build roofs up against rooms
  
• Fixed longstanding bug where the clock would never actually hit 59 seconds, effectively skipping an in-game minute every hour adding up to almost 5 hours in a year

I’ve finished all planned feature overhauls/additions at this point (except for conventions, more below). Now I need to do some usability, bug/testing and balancing passes, and finally rewrite tutorials and mod documentation, before I can release the initial testing build.


Alpha 11 development is now creeping on its 6th month. Alpha 10 took about 5 months from start to the initial testing release and alpha 9 took about 4 months. As the game gets more complex, overhauling core features takes longer, due to all the side effects a change has on the game’s systems. With this in mind, I’m now pretty certain Alpha 11 will be the last major alpha release before I move on to the beta phase, so I avoid spending an entire year on yet another alpha. Beta doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t add new features, it just means I won’t be touching the core gameplay mechanics.

I’ve decided to scrap conventions for the initial testing build. I don’t want to delay Alpha 11 any further. In Software Inc. terms, I haven’t even finished the design phase on this mechanic, so I’m putting it off for now.


You can now use a tool to click and drag walls to make them curve. Each segment of the curve must be at least 1 meter wide to allow for doors and windows, but the segment widths can be scaled dynamically while you are creating the curves.


A number of furniture now have a chance to start a fire when they break. Fires will spread and burn down furniture if not stopped, and die out after some time. All elevators in a building are disabled while the fire is ongoing. You can place fire alarms to alert people in a building and sprinklers to stop fires faster in a room.


Burglars will appear now and again and steal whatever they can. You can place security cameras around your premises to alert the police and hopefully apprehend them before they steal too much.

Inventory lost from burglaries and fires can be recouped by a new contents insurance feature.

• Updated to Unity 2017 for a ton of bug/crash fixes (This will deprecate support for Directx9, 32-bit OSX and Ubuntu version < 14.04)
  
• Improved the porting task so you can add and remove operating systems and not get stuck on in-development operating systems
  
• Software review system has been overhauled to give more control and be less vague
  
• All mods can now contain localizations, which makes localization handling better in mods and allows a single mod to contain translations of its written content in several languages
  
• You can now individually pick specializations in the new game screen

The base mechanic overhaul I wanted to achieve for Alpha 11 is pretty much done at this point and I’ve been working through the new big additions to Alpha 11 this past month. I still have to do a round of bug fixing and balancing when I’ve finished the additions, which could be quick or drag out, I can’t say for sure at this point.



To reiterate what I wrote last month, product updates will not be present in the initial test release, to avoid delaying it more than necessary. I’m only working on features that would break save game compatibility for the initial release.

Iterative development
Iterative development focuses more on working through a project several times, while reconsidering the design and refactoring, to end up at a final product, as opposed to the traditional waterfall model of working out a full design initially and sticking 100% to it throughout development.

You will be able to iterate on your design several times during the design phase to increase chances of creating a good quality product without too many bugs. However, a more effective use of your time will be to iterate during the alpha phase: When you finish a software review during the alpha phase, instead of not really being able to do anything about all the frowning smiley faces, you will be able to temporarily stop development to improve the design, based on your newfound knowledge, and increase the end quality of your product.

Publishing
You will now be able to hand off some of your profits to a competitor, to avoid having to print copies or micromanage your marketing efforts. You will even be able to fund projects with a publisher to get your company off the ground early on or to lessen risk later.

Frameworks
Game engines have been a special class of software, since they are the only dependency in Software Inc. that requires supporting the same operating systems when using them for development. In contrast to using a 3D modelling or music app for development, you can’t run your game without a game engine once your game is done. This added a bunch of unneeded complexity to the game, so they are being deprecated in favor of frameworks.

You will now be able to create a framework when developing any type of software, which can be licensed to other companies and reused in future projects to reduce development time. Game frameworks will be analogues to game engines.

Service role
As all roles now have individual specializations, the marketing role is being deprecated in favor of a new Service role, which can specialize in Marketing, Support and Law.

Lawsuits
You can now be sued by your employees or other companies, which requires service employees with the law specialization to fight.

Conventions
I called this "conferences" in earlier posts, but it seemed misleading considering what I wanted the mechanic to encompass.

You and other companies will be able to hold and attend conventions in a select number of conference halls with individual booth layouts. Each booth has an area which can be filled with equipment to market and entice convention guests. This will be purely UI based, there won’t be a fully rendered conference hall full of people, as that would require a whole alpha version by itself or maybe just a different game entirely.

• Lakes have been spread around maps
  
• You can now place sinks, which employees will seek out after visiting a bathroom to avoid spreading germs. Failing to place sinks will lead to nearby employees getting sicker more frequently
  
• Employee salaries are now calculated on an hourly basis and automatically scale with their hours, meaning you can now have part-time employees and you can no longer give employees extra hours without compensating them
  
• Employees now dislike night shifts, which you can combat with a night shift compensation benefit
  
• Sun position and color calculation has been revamped, adding a new colorful dusk and more striking shadows at dawn and dusk
  
• Most modding features have tentatively switched to TyD from XML
  
• Computer performance and price now dynamically scale based on other computers available, e.g. a computer from the 1980s wasn’t slow and cheap in the 1980s
  
• Fixed roofs being hard to place adjacent to room walls

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